Protected: Microsoft Business Intelligence with SharePoint 2010
June 6, 2011
Consultant Benchmarks Business Intelligence
May 27, 2011
Business intelligence has seen tremendous growth and with so many different companies on the market all vying for clients it can become difficult for business owners to know exactly which one will adequately fit their needs.
We learned that InetSoft is a sponsor of the Aberdeen’s Group Agile BI Benchmark Study, which provides a detailed survey and analysis of how companies are currently using their business intelligence products and how they improve.
We found the notion of agile business intelligence interesting. Traditionally business intelligence required trained specialists and programmers with the ability to convert an end user’s dreams into the cold, hard reality of a report. Today end users want to do their own report building and data analysis. In our experience, this sounds great in a pitch focused on reducing headcount. However, in some situations, flawed data leads to even more suspect business decisions.
We learned from the announcement about the study that:
Agile BI is business intelligence that can rapidly adapt to meet changing business needs.
Okay.
Many of those surveyed admitted they were not delivering their business intelligence products on time and found it difficult to make timely decisions. Those companies that earned “Best In Class” were those that were able to provide fully interactive BI to their users. The write up asserted:
Managers need to get “hands-on” to interact with and manipulate data if they are to meet the shrinking timeframe for business decisions that they face.
Without building a solid foundation and taking control BI cannot be fully effective and is like a bird with no wings.
You can obtain a free complimentary copy of the report please visit http://goo.gl/3WujV. We have no idea how long the free report will be available. Act quickly.
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2011
Freebie
Digital Reasoning Continues to Expand
May 16, 2011
Move over Palantir and i2 Ltd. Digital Reasoning is expanding due to its rapid growth. As reported in MSN’s “Digital Reasoning Introduces Federal Advisory Board,” the data analytics leader has created a board to guide its push into the federal market. We learned:
With the federal government’s increased focus on cloud computing, (Digital Reasoning’s) flagship product Synthesys® provides a unique Entity Oriented Analytics solution that enables government agencies to tap into the power of big data. The Advisory Board represents a team with unique insight into the requirements of Big Data, text analytics and intelligence solutions for government agencies.
The board members are: Gen. William T. Hobbins, who retired as Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe; Bob Flores, founder and president of Applicology Inc., who spent 31 years in the US intelligence community; Anita K. Jones, who managed the Department of Defense’s science and technology program; Capt. Nick Buck, who spent 15 years in National Security Space, including 10 years in the National Reconnaissance Office; and Mike Miller, currently president of M4 Associates and previously VP of Juniper Networks’ Public Sector Division where he was responsible for all business with Juniper’s Public Sector customers in the US. This kind of talent should be valuable guiding Digital Reasoning’s federal sector strategy.
We have tracked this Franklin, Tennessee, company since its inception. To get some insight into the firm’s approach, you may want to read these two interviews ArnoldIT.com, the owner of this news service, conducted with Tim Estes, the founder of Digital Reasoning. The February 2010 interview explores the core technology of the firm and how it differs from other vendors’ methods. The December 2010 interview probes the new version of the firm’s flagship technology.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2011
Freebie
Visualization Components
May 15, 2011
David Galles, of the Computer Science University of San Francisco, gives us a useful collection of visualization components in his “Data Structure Visualizations” list. The structures and algorithms addressed include the Basics, Indexing, Sorting, Heap-like Data Structures, Graph Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, and “Others.”
In his page discussing visualizations, Galles explains,
The best way to understand complex data structures is to see them in action. We’ve developed interactive animations for a variety of data structures and algorithms. Our visualization tool is written in JavaScript using the HTML5 canvas element, and run in just about any modern browser — including iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, and even the web browser in the Kindle! (The frame rate is low enough in the Kindle that the visualizations aren’t terribly useful, but the tree-based visualizations — BSTs and AVL Trees — seem to work well enough).
Galles also provides a tutorial for creating one’s own visualizations. Check it out if you’re wrestling with your own complex data structures. As search vendors thrash and flail, business intelligence looks like a promising market sector. Nothing sells business intelligence like hot graphics. Just ask Palantir.
Cynthia Murrell May 15, 2011
JackBe Joins the Business Intelligence Is Easy Parade
May 13, 2011
In our sister publication Inteltrax, you can read about the machinations in the data fusion sector. We wanted to highlight this news story because it sheds some light on the attempt to make really complicated enterprise solutions look like child’s play. Child’s play, in our experience, is a good description for kids like Wolfie Mozart or the 11 year old Srinivasa Ramanujan. Other times child’s play is somewhat less sophisticated. I remember my finger-painting classics my mother taped to the fridge.
According to the eWeek.com article:
“JackBe Presto Enables Information With Ease” the JackBe Presto 3.1 development platform is not just your normal real-time intelligence product. According to the article unlike other business intelligence products Presto 3.1 allows users to build on their existing data structures and transformation tools, instead of replacing them.”
The article asserted that Presto can handle both internal and external data sources and also comes equipped with a number of tools to ensure that managers can easily utilize the data for their specific needs. I noted this passage:
Developers and power users can use these tools to quickly create applications that are easily reworked as needed to react to rapidly changing business conditions and requirements.
Presto’s App Store provides users with valuable applications which can be shared in addition to being deployed and giving users even more flexibility. In addition Presto can run on the cloud. Presto 3.1 may not fit in every organization but for most it would seem that the pros far outweigh the cons.
Is this business intelligence activity child’s play? For some licensees, sure. For others, the colors of my finger-painting masterpieces was often muddy and a bit of a mess. Make sure you have a Shirley Temple on your project, a young Shirley Temple, that is.
Alice Holmes, May 13, 2011
Freebie
Vertical Blog: A New Angle for Online
April 27, 2011
Our Overflight intelligence system tracks certain types of information. There are some basic Overflight services available from the ArnoldIT.com Web log. We have other systems running as well. One of these identified a new blog called Backnotch. Published by Jean Glaceau appears to cover one narrow segment of online information; namely, transactions related to Angola. What’s interesting about the publication is that the content appears to be summaries of publicly-accessible information. The Backnotch service is similar to a traditional abstracting service. The principal difference is that the contributors are offering some broad editorial comments. These comments, plus the collection of articles, comprise a useful resource for anyone looking at what types of open source information cover certain activities associated with Angola and related topics.
According to the About page of the blog:
In my first week of work, I decided to narrow my focus to a handful of issues which are covered in the open source literature. The information I located struck me as similar in some ways to a fictional story or a Hollywood film. Going forward, I want to continue to explore how the open source information follows a particular story and what entities surface in those stories.
The publisher is Jean Glaceau. When we did a couple of queries for him, we found a number of individuals in the hit list. We were not able to determine which Glaceau was running the research project behind the information service. We wrote the email address for the blog, but we had not received an answer as we queued this story for publication.
We checked out the search engine for the service, and it appears to have a backfile of about 60 articles. If Mr. Glaceau keeps up his current pace of content production, the service will generate about 50 to 60 stories each month. Our view is that online has moved from vertical search to vertical “finding” services.
We will check back with Backnotch in a couple of months. Worth a look.
Stephen E Arnold, April 27, 2011
Freebie
Improving Health via Analytics and a Competition
April 14, 2011
We have been poking around in health care information for about eight months. We have an exclusive briefing that covers, among other things, what we call the “shadow FBI.” If you are curious about this shadow FBI angle, shoot us a note at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. One of the goslings will respond. While you wait for our return quack, consider the notion of a competition to improve health care information in order to make health care better.
Competition promises better health care stated:
The goal of the prize is to develop a predictive algorithm that can identify patients who will be admitted to the hospital within the next year, using historical claims data.
According to the latest survey from the American Hospital Association more than 70 million people in the United States alone will be admitted to a hospital this year. The Heritage Provider Network believes that they can change all of that. The HPN will be holding a two year competition that will award $3 million dollars to the team that can create an algorithm that accurately predicts how many days a person will spend in the hospital over the next year.
An algorithm that can predict how many days a person will spend in the hospital can help doctors create new more effective care plans that can help “nip it in the bud” if there are any causes for concern. If possible the algorithm could help to lower the cost of care while reducing the number of hospitalizations.
This will result in increasing the health of patients while decreasing the cost of care. In short, a winning solution will change health care delivery as we know it – from an emphasis on caring for the individual after they get sick to a true health care system.
HPN believes that an incentive based competition is the way to achieve the big breakthroughs that are needed to begin redeveloping America’s health care system.
Leslie Radcliff, April 14, 2011
Freebie
More Crazy Stats: iPhone, Android, Whatever
April 11, 2011
Do teens buy mobile devices? Nah, most of the teens in Harrod’s Creek fire up the wood stove and use smoke signals. However, elsewhere teens and tweens are into mobile devices. Some schools in which reading, math, and cursive are part of the instructional program ban these gizmos. You know that works really well.
I read “One-Third Of Teens Plan To Buy An iPhone Soon.” The write up is almost as wacky in its data as the IDC forecast that Windows Mobile 7 will kick everyone’s tail in the mobile phone market pretty soon now. Er, there are some issues with supply chain, updates, and apps but IDC is never, ever, absolutely for always right in making predictions that sell reports.
Any way, the story about teens reveals that an Apple towel waver ran a survey and—guess what—the interview sample revealed that one third of those surveyed want an Apple iPhone. You can read some of the stats from the survey and draw your own conclusion. Here’s the statement I found interesting:
There is some small glimmer of hope for Spotify, Rhapsody, and other subscription services — 37% of teens said they’d consider paying $15 a month for a music subscription.
Okay, teens don’t have jobs. So who is paying? Check out this March 2010 report, which may be bogus as well, to get some color on what may be behind the survey conducted by a financial services professional.
My recollection is that when I had teens, I paid. So we have an interesting sample and an assertion that teens pay. No, teens consume. Adults pay. Minor point considering the sample, the questions, and the source. But, heck, I live in rural Kentucky. Who pays is important. Now the big omission is how one finds music. Isn’t search important? Is the survey blind to the Ping and Apple search challenges?
Search is not on the radar. Again. Not good.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2011
Recorded Future in the Spotlight: An Interview with Christopher Ahlberg
April 5, 2011
It is big news when In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the US intelligence community, funds a company. It is really big news when Google funds a company. But when both of these tech-savvy organizations fund a company, Beyond Search has to take notice.
After some floundering around, ArnoldIT was able to secure a one-on-one interview with the founder of Recorded Future. The company is one of the next-generation cloud-centric analytics firms. What sets the company apart technically is, of course, the magnetism that pulled In-Q-Tel and Google to the Boston-based firm.
Mr. Ahlberg, one of the founders of Spotfire which was acquired by the hyper-smart TIBCO organization, has turned his attention to Web content and predictions. Using sophisticated numerical recipes, Recorded Future can make observations about trends. This is not fortune telling, but mathematics talking.
In my interview with Mr. Ahlberg, he said:
We set out to organize unstructured information at very large scale by events and time. A query might return a link to a document that says something like “Hu Jintao will tomorrow land in Paris for talks with Sarkozy” or “Apple will next week hold a product launch event in San Francisco”). We wanted to take this information and make insights available through a stunning user experiences and application programming interfaces. Our idea was that an API would allow others to tap into the richness and potential of Internet content in a new way.
When I probed for an example, he told me:
What we do is to tag information very, very carefully. For example, we add metatags that make explicit when we locate an item of data. We tag when that datum was published. We tag when we analyzed that datum. We also tag when we find it, when it was published, when we analyzed it, and what actual time point (past, present, future) to which the datum refers. The time precision is quite important. Time makes it possible for end users and modelers to deal with this important attribute. At this stage in our technology’s capabilities, we’re not trying to claim that we can beat someone like Reuters or Bloomberg at delivering a piece of news the fastest. But if you’re interested in monitoring, for example, the co-incidence of an insider trade with a product recall we can probably beat most at that.
To read the full text of the interview with Mr. Ahlberg click here. The interview is part of the Search Wizards Speak collection of first person narratives about search and content processing. Available without charge on the ArnoldIT.com Web site, the more than 50 interviews comprise the largest repository of first hand explanations of “findability” available.
If you want your search or content processing company featured in this interview series, write seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2011
Freebie
Forrester Research on Social Business Intelligence
April 3, 2011
ECRMGuide.com interviewed James Kobielus, senior analyst at Forrester Research, for their article, “Social Business Intelligence- What Is It, and Do You Need It?”
Kobielus asserts that social BI is the essential new addition to business intelligence. It taps into information available on social networks that traditional solutions can’t capture. In particular, he mentions customer comments about your company, good, bad, or non-existent. He also emphasizes increased data available for predictive modeling tools.
Is this more baloney or pure intellectual gold? Pass the sandwich loaf please. We think social BI enthusiasts may overstating their case.
When asked about the risks of implementing social BI, Kobielus replied that companies must be careful to use only the official, sanctioned versions of records in order to avoid making costly mistakes. Important caveat.
As to the trend’s projection, Kobielus summarizes:
“There’s no clean delineation where traditional BI leaves off and social BI picks up because traditional BI is a moving target. Every couple of years it adds an additional layer of functionality that used to be bells and whistles but now is inherent. I think the social interface in the next year of two will become pretty much standard everywhere.”
We’ll see.
Cynthia Murrell April 3, 2011
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