IBM Acquires i2 Ltd.
September 1, 2011
IBM purchased i2 Group. Founded in 1990 by Mike Hunter, i2 is a widely used content processing and case management system for law enforcement and intelligence professionals. The company received the EuroIntel Golden Candle Award, for its contribution to the global intelligence community. On several occasions, the ArnoldIT team worked on some i2 products several years. The company has moved outside the somewhat narrow market for sophisticated intelligence analysis systems.
“IBM Acquiring I2 for Criminal Mastermind Software” reported:
IBM plans to fuse i2’s products with its own data collection, analysis and warehousing software. It will then offer packages based on this combinations to organizations looking to spot suspicious behavior within vast collections of data.
Not surprisingly, there has been considerable confusion about the company. Part of the reason is that the name “i2” was used by a back office and supply chain company. The firm benefited from its acquisition from the low profile Silver Lake Sununu. Silver Lake purchased i2 from Choicepoint in 2008 for about $185 million. “IBM Bolsters Big Data Security Credentials with i2 Buy” opines that the deal was worth more than $500 million, a fraction of what UK vendor Autonomy commanded from Hewlett Packard in August 2011.
i2’s technology is not well understood by those without direct experience using the firm’s pace setting products. One example in the Analyst’s Notebook, a system which allows multiple case details to be processed, analyzed, and displayed in a manner immediately familiar to law enforcement and intelligence professionals. i2 acquired Coplink, developed at an academic institution in Arizona.
The core technology continues to be enhanced. i2 now provides its system to organizations with an interest in analyzing data across time, via relationships, and with specialized numerical recipes.
My position is that I am not going to dive into the specific features and functions of the i2 system. If you want to know more about i2’s technology, you can visit the firm’s Web site at http://www.i2group.com/us. The Wikipedia page and many of the news and trade write ups about i2 are either incorrect or off by 20 degrees or more.
What will IBM “do” with the i2 technology? My hunch is that IBM will maintain the present market trajectory of i2 and expose the firm’s technology to IBM clients and prospects with specific security needs. Please, appreciate that the nature of the i2 technology is essentially the opposite of software available for more general purpose applications. My view is that IBM will probably continue to support the integration of i2 Clairty component with the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Like the descriptions of Autonomy’s technology, some of the write ups about i2 may require further verfication.
We have reported on the legal dust up about the i2 ANB file format and some friction between Palantir and i2 in Inteltrax. Most of the legal hassles appear to be worked out, but contention is certainly possible going forward.
I have been a fan of i2’s technology for many years. However, some firms have moved into different analytical approaches. In most cases, these new developments enhance the functionality of an i2 system. Today we are featuring an editorial by Tim Estes, founder of Digital Reasoning, a company that has moved “beyond i2.” You can read his views about the Autonomy deal in “Summer of Big Deals”. More information about Digital Reasoning is available at www.digitalreasoning.com. Digital Reasoning is a client of ArnoldIT, the publisher of this information service.
Stephen E Arnold, September 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Summer of Big Deals
September 1, 2011
Will These Blockbusters Affect Business Intelligence?
The summer has been a hot one, not in terms of temperature, but when measured on the acquisition thermometer. First, Oracle the sprawling database and enterprise applications company bought InQuira. Then, Google took one third of its cash and the equivalent of two years’ profit and bought Motorola Mobility. And Hewlett Packard, one of the icon’s of the Silicon Valley way, spent $10 billion on its surprise purchase of Autonomy plc.
Business intelligence, intellectual property, and information management turned up the heat for investors and those tracking active market sectors. The market interest is high and many think these deals are likely to sustain their energy. But I don’t see it that way. I think the deals are more like dumping charcoal starter on charcoal briquettes: Very dramatic at ignition but certain to cool and fade into the fabric of day-to-day activity.
Starting a charcoal fire can produce some initial pyrotechnics. These fade quickly.
As the founder of Digital Reasoning, a company focused on delivering the next-generation solution-based on entity oriented analytics, I see these deals from the perspective of working with customers to solve big data analytics challenges. First, let me give you my view of information management and traditional business analytics and then outline where I think the technology and the market are going.
Business intelligence in general and analytics particular are now verbal noise. I know that most of the professionals with whom I speak interpret the phrase “business intelligence” in terms of their own experiences in getting information to make a decision. For some, business intelligence is a report and follow up telephone conversation with a human expert. Don’t get me wrong, consultants and advisors often do great work, but my point is that the phrase “business intelligence” is anchored in a method of information analysis rooted in human behavior unchanged since our ancestors sat around the camp fire roasting meat on sticks.,
The word analytics is equally difficult to explain. For many of our clients, analytics means SAS or SPSS (both the bread and butter of traditional statistics courses and business analysts from banking to warehouse management).
Inteltrax: Top Stories, August 15 to August 19
August 22, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, two from the healthcare world and one simply an enlightening profile.
The first story was called, “Australian Healthcare Embraces Data Warehousing,” showcased how the Land Down Under was hot-rodding its healthcare with the aid of analytics.
The next story, “Heritage Health Prize and Other Contests Boost Analytic Profiles,” showed how winning this prestigious prize has been the gateway to big things for analytics providers.
Another provider up to big things, Microstrategy, we discovered in our story, “Microstrategy Not Hitting Financial Bottom,” as we detailed how this company lost money because of some big hires last quarter. This story, though, applauded this loss, because it will pay off in the long run.
Whether a nation’s healthcare is improving itself now, a contest winner is about to see big things happen, or a scrappy analytics provider is tightening its belt to become better in the future, the world of business intelligence and big data is never short on drama. We’re going to bring you the inside scoop on all the happenings as this industry evolves.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax, August 22, 2011
Sponsored by Digital Reasoning, the developers of Synthesys, the next generation content processing and analytics system
Exclusive Interview with Ana Athayde, Spotter SA
August 16, 2011
I have been monitoring Spotter SA, a European software development firm specializing in business intelligence for several years. A lengthy interview with the founder, Ana Athayde appears in the Search Wizards Speak section of the ArnoldIT.com Web site.
The company has offices throughout Europe, the Middle East, and in the United States. The firm offers solutions in market sentiment, reputation management, risk assessment, crisis management, and competitive intelligence.
In the wide ranging interview, Ms. Athayde mentioned that she had been recognized as an exceptional manager, but she was quick to give credit to her staff and her chief technical officer, who was involved in the forward looking Datops SA content analytics service, now absorbed into the LexisNexis organization.
I asked her what pulled her into the vortex of content processing and analytics. She told me:
My background is business and marketing management in the sports field. In my first professional experience, I had to face major challenges in communication and marketing working for the International Olympic Committee. The amount of information published on those subjects was so huge that the first challenge was to solve the infoglut: not only to search for relevant information and build a list, but to understand opinions and assess reputation at an international level….I decided to fund a company to deliver a solution that could make use of information in textual form, what most people call unstructured data. But I knew that the information had to be presented in a way that a decision maker could actually use. Data dumps and row after row of numbers usually mean no one can tell what’s important without spending minutes, maybe hours deciphering the outputs.
I asked her about the firm’s technical plumbing. She replied:
The architecture of our own crawling system is based on proprietary methods to define and tune search scenarios. The “plumbing” is a fully scalable architecture which distributes tasks to schedulers. The content is processed, and we syndicate results. We use what we call “a source monitoring approach” which makes use of standard Web scraping methods. However, we have developed our own methods to adjust the scraping technology to each source in order to search all available documents. We extract metadata and relevant content from each page or content object. Only documents which have been assessed as fresh are processed and provided to users. This assessment is done by a proprietary algorithm based on rules involving such factors as the publication date. This means that each document collected by Spotter’s tracking and monitoring system is stamped with a publication date. This date is extracted by the Web scraping technology, from the document content. The type of behavior of the source; that is, the source has a known update cycle. We analyze the text content of the document. And we use the date and time stamp on the document itself.
Anyone who has tried to use the dates provided in some commercial systems realizes that without accurate time context, much information is essentially useless without additional research and analysis.
To read the complete interview with Ms. Athayde, point your browser to the full text of our discussion. More information about Spotter SA is available at the firm’s Web site www.spotter.com.
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2011
Freebie but you may support our efforts by buying a copy of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Google Conspiracy or Poorly Designed Web Sites?
August 5, 2011
It’s got to be tough being alpha dog. At least, it seems that way for Google who has one of the largest most used search engines in the world. With a slew of patent infringement lawsuits pending and several states looking into anti-trust issues associated with the top-dog, yet another company is complaining about Google’s business practices, as explained in the article, Local Business Site Challenges Google Ranking, on SiliconValley.com.
How search engines determine ranking is a closely guarded secret, a series of algorithms that can make or break websites, depending on where they fall in the rankings. This is precisely what ShopCity is complaining about. According to the small company, Google is ‘manually monkeying’ with the rankings in order for ShopCity sites to appear lower than Google owned competing sites.
Google asserts that ShopCity sites are low in the ranking because…well, they are basically bad sites. While ShopCity admits they are still working on building several of their sites (meaning they know their sites are rotten), many of the sites in the Bay Area, like ShopPaloAlto and ShopPleasanton, are alive and stuffed full of helpful and legitimate information. They believe those sites should be higher up in the rankings, as they are on Yahoo!
“Search industry expert Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, said such suspicions about a site as small as ShopPaloAlto.com are “ludicrous. If that was what (Google) was worried about, you would never find Yelp,” a formidable competitor for Google that offers restaurant reviews and business listings, Sullivan said. But Sullivan said Google should be able to differentiate between higher-quality ShopCity sites such as the Bay Area sites, and placeholder sites waiting until ShopCity makes partnerships with local groups for listings.”
Is ShopCity going to be just another flea on Google’s back, or will something come from their claims? Coincidentally, after the FTC inquiry was announced, ShopCity’s Bay Area sites jumped in Google rankings, causing a 400% increase in traffic, but then plummeted back to page seven of search results after only three weeks. A Google imposed penalty for outside complaints if the official explanation.
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 5, 2011
Sponsored by Quasar CA, your source for informed financial advisory services
Inteltrax: Top Stories, July 25 to July 29
August 1, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, each dealing either with some of the surprising negative news found in the analytics industry—each a lesson that can be learned for others. The system powering the Inteltrax system is called Augmentext.
Perhaps the most shocking tale of self-destruction we’ve seen in a while, “US Army is Not an Analytic Superpower,” detailed how this defense branch spent over $2 billion taxpayer dollars for an analytic tool that never worked, when private companies could have been contracted out for pennies on the dollar.
Another sort-of David and Goliath story, “SAS Falling Behind in the Cloud,” detailed how one-time business intelligence superpower SAS has rested on its laurels and, in the process, become a joke in the competitive and lucrative world of cloud-based analytics.
Finally, we served up a cautionary tale to those believing everything they read with “Parallel NFS Barely on the Radar.” This was a story of warning, as the company in question got some great press for its software, but has almost no history to back it up, which made us incredibly suspicious.
These three stories are, thankfully, the exception and not the rule. Every day we are wowed by news of analytics and business intelligence helping practically every business imaginable. However, there are always rotten eggs, even during an impressive time of growth. That’s why we’re here, to help readers sort out the good and the bad and make more informed decisions.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax, August 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Inteltrax: Top Stories, July 4 to July 8
July 11, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, particularly the ups and downs of corporations dipping their feet into the business intelligence pool.
We kicked off the week looking at a decidedly negative aspect of this theme. In the feature story, “Ticketmaster and Ticketfly Woefully Behind Other Analytics,” http://inteltrax.com/2011/07/ticketmaster-ticketfly-woefully-behind-other-analytics/ we were shocked to discover how poorly ticketing giants are using the wealth of data they are sitting on top of.
Computing kingpin, Apple, also seems to be playing with analytic fire with its BI security. Our story, “Apple Fails to Protect its BI Passwords,” http://inteltrax.com/?p=1923 took a deep look at how Steve Jobs and company failed to protect sensitive BI info and showcased a clutch of companies that could do the job the right way.
However, some big companies are coming to rescue struggling industries. We highlighted this exciting phenomenon in “Google and Others Aim to Rescue Newspapers,” http://inteltrax.com/?p=1919 the story of how the search monster’s Google Analytics and smaller companies are tailoring analytic software to make newspapers more efficient.
These stories all look at analytics and business intelligence with a wide angle lens. We do this because our data is being transformed into power right before our eyes and the people making the biggest noises, unsurprisingly, are the biggest companies. That doesn’t mean they’re the only ones doing something worthwhile, though, and we’re going to cover this revolution from all angles, great and small.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting
www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax, July 11, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, to June 30, 2011
July 1, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, particularly in regards to Data Mining.
First, in “Big Cinemas Storms the US Market by Utilizing Data Mining” we saw how India’s niche cinema operator has pulled in big revenue by strategically opening theaters in the US, plotting its attack with data mining.
In “FEMA Using Data Mining” we saw how the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be better utilizing its data mining services to recover millions of lost funds.
Finally, on the flipside, “Medicare Makes Bold Decisions with Data Mining” saw us concerned with Medicare’s recent opening of its information for data miners and its lack of security for sensitive information.
These three stories explored the upside and the possible downside of data mining. Whether it be used for successful business ventures, government stability or a possible security risk, this technology is a tantalizing reminder of the possibilities forming from years of information collection.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting Inteltrax atwww.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, July 1, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, June 10 to June 16 2011
June 20, 2011
For readers of Beyond Search who have an interest in data fusion and analytics, the editor of Inteltrax.com, our Web log tracking this market, provided us with a run down of last week’s top stories.—Stephen E Arnold
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured four key stories germane to search this week.
First, “Analytics for Cities” points out the many ways companies like IBM are strengthening search for city governments to run smoother using business intelligence and analytics.
Second, “Don’t Forget India When Pushing Analytic Chips Toward China” takes an in-depth look at the burgeoning Chinese analytic and search market. However, those betting heavily on China are doing a disservice overlooking India.
Third, “South Africa Ready to Join Analytics Boom” shows how some are declaring South Africa dead when it comes to using analytic search, however, a recent economic boom suggests otherwise.
Fourth, “The Rising Tide of Unstructured Data” http://inteltrax.com/2011/06/the-rising-tide-of-unstructured-data warns how unstructured data is a growing thread to the analytics and search communities alike.
Clearly, search professionals are being transformed by developments in predictive analytics, whether it is as far away as Africa or China, in their own city or even in their own business’ mounting pile of info. These are subjects that effect our global business world on almost every level and deserve our attention.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax June 20, 2011
Thanks to Digital Reasoning, a sponsor of Beyond Search
Update on Thetus Savanna
June 6, 2011
A Sys-Con Media article “Thetus’ Savanna Analytical Tool” provides an overview of the Thetus Savanna Analytical Tool by two authors and includes a video evaluation. We found the information interesting, but parts did look as if the Thetus marketing gene was dominant.,
The Savanna Analytical tool is designed to provide search, discovery and visualization tools for analysts. The article said:
Savanna uses tools such as Kapow to scrape websites and all-source data and then pushes them through MetaCarta (for geo-spatial analysis) and Janya (for real-language textual analysis). This data is then sorted into a Savanna’s application – enabling real-time search.
After the documents go through Kapow, MetaCarta and Janya, Savanna re-renders the documents and turns the masses of text into real pages making the search and discovery of the pages much easier.
The write up added:
Savanna’s search function crawls through the document repository added, and uses socio-economic indicators to categorize. It allows analysts to take a large number of search returns and narrow them down quickly and accurately.
If only all decisions could be so simple. Real data in real life can give even sophisticated systems indigestion.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
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