IntelTrax: Top Stories July 27 to August 2
August 6, 2012
Data analytics solutions and other Business Intelligence tools were the primary focus of many of this week’s IntelTrax stories.
Big Data is a continued source of controversy within the analytics community, particularly regarding its existence and whether or not it is something old or new. “Big Data is Analytics for Dummies” argues that big data is simply the rebranding of an old concept.
The referenced article explains the reasoning behind the rebranding argument:
“Cloud computing, for instance, offers much the same thing “ASPs” offered ten years before, with the difference that this time round it is going to work. Similarly, analytics has been available for many years, as a high-cost service using high value supercomputers, and operated by white-coated high priests who have come into the field from linguistics, philosophy and computer science. If you have a big data set, and the money to have it explored, analytics has been there to reveal the secret trends within you information, which might give your business an edge.”
Another notable post from last week is “Data Miners and the Need for Certificates Debunked.” According to the article, due to the fact that every field has been infiltrated by data mining, the need for experts and certifications in the field has come about as a result.
When discussing whether or not certifications have value, the article states:
“The “data mining” definition has been created by marketing industries just to summarize in a buzz word techniques of applied statistics and applied mathematics to the data stored in your hard disk. I don’t want say that tools are useless, but it should be clear that tools are only a mean to solve a problem, not the solution. In the real world the problems are never standard and really seldom you can take an algorithm as is to solve them! …maybe I’m unlucky but I never solved a real problem through a standard method.”
A story that explains the importance of data analytics technology within the insurance industry is “Insurance Doubles Down on Analytics.” According to the article, insurance companies looking to detect fraud are strongly impacted by data and statistics which is one of the reasons why they are embracing the big data revolution.
The story cited:
“The report, which covers the spectrum of tools from business intelligence tools to advanced analytics tools, finds that the average insurer invests 9 percent of the IT budget on data and analytics. This amounts to almost $10 billion per year, and while the insurance industry has long used analytics for traditional risk-centric analysis, there is a shift in the ‘how, where, and when’ the industry leverages data and analytics, according to the report.”
As you can see, text analytics and big data analysis are becoming increasingly important for companies looking to manage their content in a way that makes the most out of a multitude of different types and structures of data. Digital Reasoning is an analytics company with experience providing affordable solutions for both the government and private sector.
Jasmine Ashton, August 6, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Business Intelligence Seen as Lucrative and Attractive Despite Challenges
July 26, 2012
With economic woes still plaguing much of the world—and for the sake of this particular discussion business driven European nations—it is no wonder that extracting business insights and opportunities have more than a little appeal. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be an easy fix according to what research firm Gartner has found. More on this subject is reported in, “Gartner Says CIO’s Rank Business Intelligence, Analytics No. 1 Issue in 2012.”
The report accumulates the views of almost 2500 CIO’s in 45 different countries and 37 different industries and shows that companies see business intelligence as a challenge.
The article states:
“Analytics and Business Intelligence tops mobile technologies and Cloud computing after a gap of 2 years as the biggest concern. Another clear cut challenge is the enormous lack of resources and skilled staff available to meet the Business intelligence and analytics challenge as well. 80% of CIO’s said that they need further improved resources to meet the challenge. The lowest area requiring significant improvement is Finance at 50%.”
Will companies fuel their funds and resources into this area now that an azure chip consultant says that they should? Probably, because all they seem to be looking for is the “next big thing” that will lead to a solution.
Megan Feil, July 26, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
New Big Data Duo Predicts Big Data Action
July 26, 2012
There is a new big data duo in town and they will bring more predictive big data action. Collaborations throughout history have brought some amazing results, and Expert Support NJ’s article, “Actuate and KXEN Collaborate to Offer Big Data Predictive Analysis” talks about this new duo’s analytical itinerary.
These two are predicting a productive future, as:
“Actuate and KXEN announced that they have entered into a partnership to make it easy for companies to optimize processes by installing predictive analytics on petabytes of big data. The partnership intends to combine the features and capabilities of Actuate’s ActuateOne and KXEN’s InfiniteInsight in order to facilitate rapid development of information applications that can be used for deep-dive analysis and realizing effective and collaborative decision making.”
KXEN proudly brings service with a smile. Their success lays in helping their customers get real business value from their investments in predictive analytics. They use all available tools to go deep within an industry and extract information. The end result, KXEN delivers analytic solutions custom designed to fit the needs of your company.
Actuate brings ActuateOne, their all in one program that rapidly develops and deploys custom BI Applications and Information Applications. Any application built with ActuateOne will add interactivity, dashboards, analytics, and deployment options for web and mobile applications.
The future looks promising for this well thought out collaboration. One thing is for sure, this duo will provide more predictive big data action.
Jennifer Shockley, July 26, 2012
KB Craw land Serda Lab Tie Up
July 20, 2012
There is an interesting new project in the works according to the article “KB Crawl: Conférence SerdaLAB” on Aboiron & Associates. If this collaborative project with KB Crawl and SerdaLAB works out, it could open a can of snails for those who make a living in intelligence solutions.
KB Crawl SAS is a French Publisher of competitive intelligence solutions. They proposed a data collection tool that monitors and collects information on the internet. This new tool utilizes a strategic intelligence platform that allows analyzing, sharing and disseminating information.
SerdaLAB was developed with the collaborative platform solution of KB Crawl. This is the first freemium site that offers a monitoring service that specializes in information management, electronic archiving, public data, information law, electronic business information, collaborative knowledge management, libraries and Eve.
SerdaLab offers many premium services to users, and:
“This site allows you to continuously monitor the innovations, trends, product news, feedback and key figures enabling professional market players or managers of information to benefit from a professional, or save time by collecting information sorted, filtered and decrypted.”
“SerdaLAB offers a free daily news brief of (market, product, key figures, and surveys) from 800 international sources. The information professionals and IT managers can access articles analyzing charge, and in the knowledge base of market participants by subscribing to the son of eve themed newsletter or the entire platform (grants free access to school).”
Free education and freemium services? With marketing like that it is no wonder KB Crawl is the most utilized competitive intelligence solution in France. KB Crawls project with SerdaLab just got very interesting.
Jennifer Shockley, July 20, 2012
Now Business Intelligence Is Dead
July 18, 2012
I received a “news item” from Information Enterprise Software, an HTML email distributed by InformationWeek Software. The story was labeled “Commentary.” I did not think that “real” journalists engaged in “commentary.” Isn’t there “real” news out there to “cover” or “make.”
Read the article. Navigate to “If BI Is Dead, What’s Next?” The “commentary” is hooked to an azure chip consultant report called “BI Is Dead! Long Live BI” which costs a modest $250. You can buy this document from Constellation Research here. First, let’s look at the summary of the report and then consider the commentary. I want to wrap up with some blunt talk about analytic baloney which is winging through the air.
Here’s the abstract so get your credit card ready:
We [Constellation Research] suggest a dozen best practices needed to move Business Intelligence (BI) software products into the next decade. While five “elephants” occupy the lion’s share of the market, the real innovation in BI appears to be coming from smaller companies. What is missing from BI today is the ability for business analysts to create their own models in an expressive way. Spreadsheet tools exposed this deficiency in BI a long time ago, but their inherent weakness in data quality, governance and collaboration make them a poor candidate to fill this need. BI is well-positioned to add these features, but must first shed its reliance on fixed-schema data warehouses and read-only reporting modes. Instead, it must provide businesspeople with the tools to quickly and fully develop their models for decision-making.
I like the animal metaphors. I must admit I thought more in terms of baloney, but that’s just an addled goose’s reaction to “real” journalism.
The point is that business intelligence (I really dislike the BI acronym) can do a heck of a lot more. So what’s dead? Excel? Nah. Business intelligence? Nah. A clean break with the past which involved SAS, SPSS, and Cognos type systems? Nah.
Information about point and click business intelligence should be delivered in this type of vehicle. A happy quack to the marketing wizard at Oscar Mayer for the image at http://brentbrown98.hubpages.com/hub/12-of-the-Worst-Sports-Logos-Ever
So what?
Answer: Actually not a darned thing. What this report has going for it is a shocking headline. Sigh.
Now to the “commentary.” Look a pay to play report is okay. The report is a joint work of InformationWeek and the Constellation report. Yep, IDC is one of the outfits involved in the study. The “commentary” is pretty much a commercial. Is this “real” journalism? Nah, it is a reaction to a lousy market for consulting studies and an attempt to breathe controversy into a well known practice area.
Here’s the passage I noted:
We all saw the hand wringing in recent years over BI not living up to its promise, with adoption rates below 20% or even 10% of potential users at many enterprises. But that’s “probably the right level” given the limitations of legacy BI tools, says Raden. I couldn’t agree more, and I’ve previously called for better ease of use, ease of deployment, affordability, and ease of administration. What’s largely missing from the BI landscape, says Raden, is the ability for business users to create their own data models. Modeling is a common practice, used to do what-if simulation and scenario planning. Pricing models, for instance, are used to predict sales and profits if X low-margin product is eliminated in hopes of retaining customers with products A, B, and C.
So what we are learning is that business intelligence systems have to become easier to use. I find this type of dumbing down a little disturbing. Nothing can get a person into more business trouble faster than fiddling around with numbers and not understanding what the implications of a decision are. Whether it is the fancy footwork of a Peregrine or just the crazy US government data about unemployment, a failure to be numerically literature can have big consequences.
Inteltrax: Top Stories, July 16 to July 20
July 16, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, some breaking news in the industry.
Our story: “Data Mining and Other Issues on Slate at 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings” showed that analytics is rightly on statistic experts’ radar.
“Mike Miller Joins Digital Reasoning as VP of Sales” provided a glimpse into the wisest hiring minds in the business.
“Florida Community Benefits Medically and Financially from Analytics” gives a glimpse at the immediate impact analytics is making on the community level.
News crops up in all areas of analytics, so it’s helpful to have stories wrangled up that might slip through the cracks. We’re here everyday, monitoring just such stories so you don’t have to.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
July 16, 2012
Companies Still Trying to Slay the Big Data Dragon
July 16, 2012
Rapid explosions of large volumes of data in near real-time have been posing challenges for companies worldwide. These same datasets have been creating fodder for global news outlets. A recent article from CIO UK discusses everyone’s favorite topic: big data. The article is entitled, “Business Intelligence and Analytics: Conquering Big Data.”
A research report from Aberdeen Group called Business Analytics in the UK: Transforming Data into Business Insight is discussed in the referenced article. One interesting tidbit we learned is that 93 percent of organizations surveyed reported that structured data is integral to their big data initiative. It is curious that the amount of structured data pales in comparison to unstructured, yet structured is what companies are utilizing.
The article states:
“The strategies and tools being used paint a picture of the current data management requirements and emerging solutions in the market. Interestingly, the most popular data source used in the Big Data initiatives has the smallest data footprint. Structured data in relational database, such as transactional information, while growing at over 36 percent year-over-year, shows nowhere near the growth of other, internet-based data sources.”
Companies are now employing business intelligence solutions to slay the big data dragon. In our perspective, it seems as if this should have been conquered already. Perhaps this is just another case of the media chasing a hobby horse.
Megan Feil, July 16, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, July 2 to July 6
July 9, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, some of the more interesting niches in the industry.
America’s passtime takes front and center stage in our story, “Baseball and Analytics Hit a Home Run,” which showcases the data explosion in the sport.
Wall Street, too, is a big center of analytic thought and our story, “Analytic Financial Trends” unlocks some of the big moves happening.
Finally, Washington has long been a supporter of big data and our story, “Data Mining to Play Role in 2012 Election” shows that Obama, Romney and other offices are using this technology to their advantage.
Analytics is invading our world, often in the most unexpected places. This is just a small sampling of the deep research we provide every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
July 9, 2012
New Version of Oracle Flexicube Boosts Banking
July 6, 2012
An article at 4-Traders reveals, “Oracle Corporation: Oracle Introduces Oracle FLEXCUBE 12.0 to Help Banks Meet the Needs of Gen Y Customers.” We are not sure what the banking needs of a Gen Y customer is. Isn’t unemployment in the double digits for this cohort? Actually, it seems the headline is using the phrase simply to mean bringing banks’ user interface technology up to date. Well, okay. The press release reports:
“New online capabilities provide spend analysis, alerts and reminders across portfolios and interactions, empowering customers to track expenses and investments and giving them greater control over their finances. Oracle FLEXCUBE 12.0 offers enhanced mobile banking capabilities with new versions of applications for the iPhone, iPad, and Java ME devices. Banks can now use Oracle FLEXCUBE to provide customers with real-time offers and coupons based on location for a more personalized experience.”
So, not Gen Y so much as anyone who banks online. On the bankers’ side, FLEXICUBE 12.0 boasts role-based dashboards, a more inclusive customer-interaction view, and built-in interaction with Oracle ATG Web Commerce and Oracle Real-Time Decisions. It also provides open development tools for creating and modifying the user interface, business logic, and integrations. This includes the Oracle FLEXCUBE Development Workbench for Mobile and Direct Banking, which helps with deploying functionality across platforms, including mobile devices.
Cynthia Murrell, July 6, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Another University Jumps on the Social Media Analytics Bandwagon
July 3, 2012
Digimind’s Web Intelligence Blog recently reported on a new partnership with the Faculty of Business and Law at De Montfort University in order to prepare the next generation of competitive intelligence students in the article “Digimind Partners With De Montfort Univeristy.”
According to the article, this partnership was initiated in order to introduce Strategic Marketing students to research techniques that are used by today’s intelligence practitioners. The hope is that it will help prepare them for their future careers by letting them use Digimind’s automated software platform.
Dr. Sheila Wright, the spearheader of the initiative, stated:
“By giving students access to the Digimind platform we’re giving them experience of the real world as well as opening their eyes to the range of sources available beyond Google. I want to prepare students for the daily reality of working in an intelligence department by giving them access to the tools needed to build real-time information dashboards, competitor benchmarks and company profiles. The skills the students acquire throughout the course offer them a distinct advantage in today’s competitive job market.”
It appears that Digimind has a new positioning and it is Marketing Intelligence. The question we have is, is this about education and learning or revenue generation? perhaps, it is some combination of the two.
Jasmine Ashton, July 3, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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