Inteltrax: Top Stories, June 25 to June 29
July 2, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, what’s new with some of the biggest names in the business.
One rising company is bringing bright minds together, as we found in the story, “Lexalytics Conference Tackles Future of Analytics.”
“Latest Angoss Software Targets Unstructured Data” shows how a company not used to making waves in big data is doing just that in a major way.
Finally, “Digital Reasoning Leads in Partnerships,” shows one of the brightest minds in the business teaming with other smart companies to form a big data hydra head.
Big data is moving fast and the companies within the industry look like an atom smasher at times, they are going so quick. Look here to find the breakdown of every move and news bit for analytics.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
July 2, 2012
Business Intelligence Niche Splits Open
July 2, 2012
Datamation says business intelligence is where the action is in “BI Goes Wild: Business Intelligence Becoming Ubiquitous.” Does that mean Search is of secondary importance? No (of course not!) but BI is in the spotlight because of its broadened adoption, as described in a new survey from Dresner Advisory Services.
Dresner’s 2012 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study queried professionals from around the world, though over half were in the US. Half the respondents were IT pros, about a fifth senior (non-IT) executives, and the remainder included a smattering of workers in marketing, finance, research and development, operations, and other roles. Survey takers represented a wide range of industries.
The study found that the use of BI applications has grown dramatically outside the traditional areas of information processing, finance, and marketing; the “other” category grew by 13% over the last year. The article notes:
“The improving ease of use and other factors are driving an increased number of BI tools in large companies. ‘The proliferation of multiple BI tools continues to accelerate as various lines of business independently invest in solutions,’ Dresner notes in his report. ‘Nearly half of the largest organizations reported the use of four or more tools.'”
The report noted that some key areas now using business intelligence include human resources, supply chain, R&D, and strategic planning. See the write up for some ways in which these “other” departments are making use of BI applications, as well as ways their traditional usage is changing.
Just remember: it would all be for naught if it weren’t for the ability to Search.
Cynthia Murrell, July 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Google Plus Is Not a Social Network
July 1, 2012
I read “Google+ Creator: Don’t Call It a Social Network.” The story makes it clear that a 20 something news service reported that Google Plus is not a social network. Okay, second, maybe third hand information is just the ticket for the 4th of July holiday crowd. For me, I was mildly curious. Here’s the passage which caught my attention:
Mashable sat down with Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social business, and Bradley Horowitz, Google+’s vice president of product, at the Google I/O developer conference. They were excited about the new Google+ features that were announced — the Events feature and the new tablet app — but they were also quick to downplay any comparisons to Facebook, or any suggestion that many people aren’t interested in joining Google+. “Google+ is just an upgrade to Google,” says Gundotra. “People have a hard time understanding that. I think they like to compare us with other social competitors, and they see us through that lens instead of really seeing what’s happening: Google is taking its amazing products, and by bringing them together, they just become more awesome.” Gundotra and others have said this before, and you get the sense that they really believe in their recipe for Kool-Aid. Google also released some new statistics to parry any stabs at accusing the network of not having a large and engaged audience — 250 million total users, with 150 million of them visiting every month, and half of those people signing in every day (if you’re doing the math, that’s 75 million daily active Plussers).
Two senior Google professionals and one interesting idea. Google Plus is not a social network.
My thoughts started to drift toward what my former history professor Dr. Philip Crane called “Stalin’s revisionism.” But I dismissed that idea. The notion that anyone today would reinvent or change the historical record is downright goose feathers, correct?
I did a quick search of Google+ social and Google Plus social and learned:
- Google.com reports that there are 423 billion hits on the query “Google+” social
- Google.com reports that there are 272 billion hits on the query “Google Plus” social
My hunch is that it will take more than a couple of interviews and a CNN story to alter the Google compensation plan which rewards Googlers for social products and services, Larry Page’s seeming obsession with playing catch up to the “new” Larry Page Mark Zuckerberg, and the series of social innovations which were flawed, late to market or flops (Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Knol, and so on).
Perhaps that chance association with Stalin’s revisionism was not too wide of the metaphorical mark. You may find “Google+: A Year of Missed Opportunities” a possible trigger for the double Googler about face.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Open Source BI Alternatives
June 29, 2012
Datamation has published a useful list, “50 Open Source Replacements for Proprietary Business Intelligence Software.” Writer Cynthia Harvey notes that recently, CIO’s responding to a Gartner survey cited BI and analytics as their top tech priority for this calendar year. That could mean paying big bucks for proprietary software, or it could mean choosing from a crop of open source options. The article notes:
“As the market for business intelligence solutions continues to grow, the open source community is responding with a growing number of applications designed to help companies store and analyze key business data. In fact, many of the best tools in the field are available under an open source license. And enterprises that need commercial support or other services will find many options available.”
The roster focuses on solutions that can directly replace existing proprietary tools. It lists spreadsheets; complete business intelligence platforms; data warehouses and databases; data mining and reporting tools; and enterprise resource planning suites with built-in business intelligence capabilities. It is a good list to keep for reference when it is time to add, expand, or upgrade BI capability.
But wait a second– we thought Datamation was a “real” news operation. With this list, it seems to be in the library vertical file business. Hmm.
Cynthia Murrell, June XX, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, June 18 to June 22
June 25, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, some fast-moving news in the big data business.
Our story, “Small Businesses Need Analytics Too” showcases the rising tide of small companies improving business through big data.
With the rise in big data business, “Analytic Customer Support Reaches New Heights” shows how helping the customer is helping vendors differentiate themselves.
Perhaps no news is bigger than the money IBM is spending on big data, as we covered in “IBM Sees the Future and Invests.”
The news landscape is always changing in big data. We’ll keep an eye on the small businesses and the IBMs and everyone in between to keep readers up to date, everyday.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
June 25, 2012
Inteltrax: Top Stories, June 11 to June 15
June 18, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, how governments and the voting public are utilizing big data.
In “Government Leads Way in Big Data Training” we discovered the private sector lagging behind the government in terms of user education.
Our story, “U.S. Agencies Analytics Underused” showed that even though we have all that training, some agencies still need more to fully utilize this digital power.
“Cultural Opinion Predicted by Analytics” used the Eurovision song contest to show us the power of people using analytics and gives the nugget of thought as to how this could be used in government elections.
While sometimes the outcomes contradict one another, there’s no denying that big data analytics is a huge part of governments around the world. Expect these facts to only rise as the popularity catches fire.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
June 18, 2012
Coveo Positions Itself Insight Solutions
June 15, 2012
Coveo has a new positioning with Insight Solutions. It does search, business intelligence, and compliance. We learn from “3i Group Leverages Coveo Insight Solutions for Knowledge Continuity and Expertise Finding,” posted at the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, of at least one company that is very happy with the product. The press release states:
“3i needed a flexible solution that would easily scale as the amount of information and information sources continued to grow. After evaluating several vendors, 3i selected Coveo’s Insight Solutions based on ease-of-use, flexibility and Insight Consoles, the presentation layer of Coveo’s intelligent indexing technology, which provides information from across sources in a single, unified view, configured by role — so that each user views and interacts with contextually relevant, dynamically updated information.”
3i Group is a leading international investment company who used to rely on the on-board search functions of a myriad of data sources, from email to file systems. Naturally, this approach wasted a lot of time, and the company is happy to have found a solution to that problem that has also turned up more useful information than workers knew existed. 3i is so happy with Insight Solutions, it plans to expand its use to other initiatives such as legal, compliance, and business intelligence. They also look forward to an upcoming enterprise-wide roll out via mobile devices.
This development is an example of how Coveo shows ingenuity in positioning its search technology. The company was founded in 2005 by some of the team which developed Copernic Desktop Search. Coveo takes pride in solutions that are agile and easy to use yet scalable, fast, and efficient. They also boast that “people like doing business with us.” That is something not every company can say.
Cynthia Murrell, June 15, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Prediction, Metadata, and Good Enough
June 14, 2012
Several PR mavens have sent me today multiple unsolicited emails about their clients’ predictive statistical methods. I don’t like spam email. I don’t like PR advisories that promise wild and crazy benefits for predictive analytics applied to big data, indexing content, or figuring out what stocks to buy.
March Communications was pitching Lavastorm and Kabel Deutschland. The subject analytics—real time, predictive, and discovery driven.
Baloney.
Predictive analytics can be helpful in many business and technical processes. Examples range from figuring out where to sell an off lease mint green Ford Mustang convertible to planning when to ramp up outputs from a power generation station. Where predictive analytics are not yet ready for prime time is identifying which horse will win the Kentucky Derby and determining where the next Hollywood starlet will crash a sports car. Predictive methods can suggest how many cancer cells will die under certain conditions and assumptions, but the methods cannot identify which cancer cells will die.
Can predictive analytics make you a big winner at the race track? If firms with rock sold predictive analytics could predict a horse race, would these firms be selling software or would these firms be betting on horse races?
That’s an important point. Marketers promise magic. Predictive methods deliver results that provide some insight but rarely rock solid outputs. Prediction is fuzzy. Good enough is often the best a method can provide.
In between is where hopes and dreams rise and fall with less clear cut results. I am, of course, referring to the use by marketers of lingo like this:
- predictive analytics
- predictive coding
- predictive indexing
- predictive modeling
- predictive search
The idea behind these buzzwords is that numerical recipes can process information or data and assign probabilities to outputs. When one ranks the outputs from highest probability to lowest probability, an analyst or another script can pluck the top five outputs. These outputs are the most likely to occur. The approach works for certain Google-type caching methods, providing feedback to consumer health searchers, and figuring out how much bandwidth is needed for a new office building when it is fully occupied. Picking numbers at the casino? Not so much.
What Is It? Business Intelligence or Analytics? Both?
June 14, 2012
With data stretched across entire enterprises stored in multiple repositories, it was no wonder that such business intelligence activities used to take up to 18 months. Reseller News reported on the change in technology in the article, “Enterprise BI Models Undergo Radical Transformation.” Now, business intelligence processes can happen in as little as two days.
QlikTech is one vendor that boasts this quick turnaround time. One of their clients, CareFirst, implemented their technology to supplement a project management product from CA Technologies. At this point, QlikTech has saved CareFirst $10 million in project costs.
According to the article referenced, CareFirst is one company leading the way for the transformation of business intelligence.
The article discusses how these next-generation data analytics solutions are utilized:
“Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) calls it the “new analytics.” Unlike previous BI and data analytics models that depend on centralized, top-down data collection, reporting and analysis, the new wave is all about giving access and tools directly to line-of-business users, who benefit the most from BI reporting and data analytics, PwC said in a report released Tuesday.”
Sure, technological innovations have allowed business intelligence to become more efficiently accessible to users across the enterprise, but this does not mean it is a different technology entirely. A different name will not generate new revenues.
Megan Feil, June 14, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, June 4 to June 8
June 11, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, how financial markets are being influenced and affected by big data analytics.
In “Venture Capitalists Invest in Cloud Based API Provider” we explore how tons of financial investments, namely in the cloud, are changing the game of big data.
In “UK Financial Industry Benefiting from Analytics” we discovered how England is attempting to avoid Eurozone financial catastrophe with analytics.
Finally, our feature, “Quantitative Financial Analytics is a Serious Weapon” dove headlong into this new buzzword and its impact on financial markets and the vendors supplying software.
With global markets plummeting or rising in equally shaky motions, analytics looks to be a potential stabilizing force. We’ll keep watching to see what kind of aid it can be.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
June 11, 2012
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