Tableau Upgrade
January 25, 2011
Look out, BI providers, “Tableau Upgrade Heats Up Cool BI World” reports on Tableau Software’s new 6.0 version. The reviewer here is impressed with the easy to use visual discovery tool, leveraging of the underlying database, and scalability. Also of note is “Data Blending,” the ability to handle multiple data sources: “The lack of this option was one of the oft-cited reasons customers [previously] would choose other products over Tableau. With Data Blending, an end user can drag and drop new data sources onto a visualization. As long as the dimension names are conformed, the tool will automatically create the joins.” Her final analysis is that many people who haven’t tried Tableau before will now. There has been a lot of talk about Tableau and data integration, and this new version may catch search and content processors by surprise.
Alice Wasielewski, January 25, 2011
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Smart Business after the 2008 Implosion!
January 23, 2011
Is analytics everything these days? “10 Insights: A First Look At The New Intelligent Enterprise Survey” tells of the results of a MIT SMR/IBM global survey of executives who were asked about their use of information and analytics in management goals and practices.
Notable quote:
“Executives named ‘innovating to achieve competitive differentiation’ their top business challenge, significantly ahead of runners-up ‘growing revenue,’ ‘reducing costs’ and ‘acquiring customers.’ Top performing companies put an even higher premium on innovation than lower performers did.”
Hmmm. The economy has been the worst since the Great Depression, and increasing income and decreasing expenses rank way below innovation. Does this mean the economic crisis is really over or that companies simply recognize the power of setting themselves apart and above?
When there’s blood in the streets, buy property. Some other themes of the survey were the importance of company culture over technology, the need for someone to manage analytics at the central enterprise level like a “chief analytics officer,” methods for making information tangible, and the importance of analytics in every type of industry.
The real question can’t be answered by a survey, which is: Are companies smart enough to accomplish these goals?
Alice Wasielewski, January 23, 2011
Freebie.
Self-Service Business Intelligence: McDonaldization of Data
January 20, 2011
Drive into McDonald’s. Hear a recorded message about a special. Issue order. Get Big Mac and lots of questionable commercial food output. Leave.
Yep, business intelligence and “I’m loving it.”
No one pays much attention to the food production system and even less to what happens between the cow’s visit to the feedlot and the All American meal.
Ah, self-service. Convenience. Speed. Ease of use. Yes!
These days we pump our own gas (minus Oregon and NJ) and pour our own soft drinks. We Google instead of asking the reference librarian (usually).
Is this the future of Business Intelligence? “Soon Self-Service BI, SaaS to Dominate the Tech World” predicts that 2011 will bring an increase in self-service BI. According to SiliconIndia News: “Numerous vendors, including IBM, SAP, Information Builders, Tibco Software, QlikTech, and Tableau Software, already offer [self-service BI] tools, and adoption will accelerate as more companies try to deliver BI capabilities to nontechnical users, business analysts, and others.” The question becomes: Will the users know what the outputs mean? The SaaS part of the prediction I heartily agree with, in BI and everywhere else.
What if the data are dirty? Malformed? Selected to present a particular view of the Big Mac world? How about that user experience?
Alice Wasielewski, January 20, 2011
Exclusive Interview: Sam Brooks, EBSCO Publishing
January 18, 2011
We have been covering “discovery” in Beyond Search since 2008. We added a discovery-centric blog called IntelTrax to our line up in September 2010. One of the companies that caught our attention was EBSCO Publishing, one of the leaders in the commercial database, library information, and electronic publishing sectors. EBSCO has embraced discovery technology, making “search without search”, faceted navigation, and other user-centric features available to EBSCO customers. Chances are your university, junior college, middle school, and primary school libraries use EBSCO products and services. Thousands of organizations world wide rely on EBSCO for high-value, third party content, including rich media. You can get the details of the EBSCO content and information services offerings at http://www.ebscohost.com/.
I wanted to know how a company anchored in online technology moved “beyond search” so effectively. I spoke last week with Sam Brooks, senior vice president of EBSCO Publishing. He told me:
As library users have grown accustomed to the simplicity and one-stop shopping of web search engines, EDS allows users to initiate a comprehensive search of a library’s entire collection via a single search box. The true value of EDS is that while providing a simple, familiar search experience to end users, the sophistication of the service combined with the depth of available metadata allows EDS to return extensive results as if the user had performed more advanced searches across a number of premium resources.
EBSCO’s presentation is easily customized. This particular user interface matches the rich options available from such companies as i2 Ltd. and Palantir, two leaders in the “beyond search” approach to information.
The new discovery interface makes it easy to pull together a broad range of content to answer a user’s query. The interface then goes farther. Exploring a topic or following a research thread is facilitated with the hot links displayed to the user. The technology for the user interface is intuitive. Mr. Brooks told me:
By using our EBSCOhost infrastructure as the foundation for EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), the entire library collection becomes available through a fast, familiar, full-featured experience that requires no additional training. Additionally, unprecedented levels of interface customization allow libraries to use EDS as the basis for creating their own “discovery” service. Currently, users can access EDS via the mobile version of the EBSCOhost interface. Further, there will soon also be a dedicated iPhone/iPad app for use with EDS as well.
For the full text of the exclusive interview, navigate to the Search Wizards Speak feature at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2011
Freebie
IndexPing: A Useful Thing
January 6, 2011
Short honk: A reader sent me a link to IndexPing.com. The free service will send an email to a Web master each time the Googlebot nuzzles that Web site. Quite helpful because, despite the chatter at conferences about the utility of Web logs, not too many people pay attention to them. An arts-and-craft Web traffic report is today’s preferred way to keep tabs on a site’s exit pages.
IndexPing is easy to set up. Plug in your name, email, and Web site. Then within a half hour, maybe less, you will start getting emails that tell you when the Googlebot shows up. I contacted the developer of the site and found him enthusiastic and responsive, two qualities that other tech companies might do well to cultivate.
How does the site make money? You get a couple of sites free, then you pay. The goslings here in Harrod’s Creek were impressed with this useful service. Navigate to www.indexping.com and give it a whirl.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2011
Freebie unlike the SEO crowd’s graphically rich reports about baloney
Why I Love SAP?
January 2, 2011
It is 15 degrees Fahrenheit and snow is falling. Most American findability experts are in shut down mode. The weight of a lousy 2010 press the information retrieval wizards into quiet, hunched shapes. The countdown to the holiday season is underway.
What do I receive from SAP, an outfit that just admitted it misused Oracle’s intellectual property and has to pay a big fine? I got this email spam urging me to buy a copy of SAP Crystal Solutions. If you are not familiar with Crystal Solutions, one can suck in data and make some charts. If you want more information about this SAP product, navigate to the SAP Crystal Solution subsite on the SAP.com Web site.
What’s interesting is this remarkable offer.
Now I know gold is tough to read, and the magnify feature of my blog publishing system is pretty awful. Let me help you with the deal.
First, you can buy a bundle with enough stuff for four employees to be lost in SAP learning land for a year, maybe more if none of the staff is any good at business statistics. Second, the price of this deal is only $23,995, which is a discount of $8,769. That means the bundle costs $32,764.
A couple of observations:
First, I don’t know anyone who can spend $24,000 on a bundle. Those days are long gone. I got a check from a company that had in big letters “Requires two signatures if more than $20,000.” There you go. A bundle for the lucky dog with a credit card and the ability to spend $24,000 on an affordable business intelligence system. Quick get yours now.
Second, SAP is spamming me. I write a column for Information World Review that points out some of the more interesting activities of this company. I follow SAP because it had a search engine called TREX and I think it is still available.
Third, the buy online angle is interesting. I navigate to a Web page and take advantage of “year end savings.” Now that’s quite an offer to send as spam. Most of the pitches I get are for considerably cheaper products. I find spam really annoying, but the SAP spam is downright amazing.
Now get this. The fine print at the bottom of the email says the offer expired on June 30, 2010. Yep, that’s right June 30, 2010. As I write this, my trusty Timex tells me that today is December 15, 2010. Think SAP needs to rethink its email marketing campaign? I do. Don’t panic, gentle reader. I am queuing stories so this one is going to run 17 days after I save the file to WordPress. Such is the price of a free blog. That’s why I have two or three readers, and I am darned proud of that achievement.
SAP, I love ‘em.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2010
Freebie, unlike the expired bundle of Crystal Solutions goodies.
ArnoldIT Makes Overflight Changes
December 31, 2010
A new year is fast approaching. We have updated the Overflight service. We use the public facing and the behind the firewall version to track hundreds of companies in search and content processing. The public service is at www.arnoldit.com/overflight. When you click on the name of a company—for instance, Autonomy—the system pulls down content from some useful sources. You can see Moreover news, tweets, and blog posts about the company. We added YouTube videos, but there are mostly false drops. Some search vendors have names that are the same as a rock and roll bank (Thunderstone) or were used by shady operators in far off climes (Brainware). But when I make a video for Exalead, it will turn up in the Exalead video display on Overflight.
The changes for 2011 include:
- Rescoring and dropping the search vendors who are fleeing from enterprise search just belly flopped. We note these points, but do not elaborate on them in the public service. You can obtain current write ups on more than 50 vendors, but we do charge for these.
- Adding some companies, including a hot data fusion outfit (Digital Reasoning), the business intelligence player (Attivio), and a very interesting text processing outfit (Content Analyst).
- Tweaked the search terms to try and make the results more relevant. SDI (selective dissemination of information) queries often generate tons of false hits. We fiddled with the IBM and Oracle search strings, which are not particularly amenable to Boolean queries. We try for the public service to make the pages useful.
We anticipate that some vendors will want to know why they are not listed on the Overflight service. We cannot accommodate in the free service every search vendor. We use our judgment about what to put in the free Overflight service.
How do we use Overflight?
- When I get a call from an outfit with money to invest, I use Overflight to see which companies are hot on the days I am doing research. Check out the listings for Dieselpoint. You can see that there’s not much action. Now check out IBM OmniFind. See. The coverage provides a signal.
- We use Overflight to track trends.
- We find nuggets that other systems do not surface.
We do sell space in Beyond Search and interviews in the Search Wizards Speak series. Details about what we sell are on the ArnoldIT.com Web site.
In 2011, we will add a data fusion Overflight. You can read our new blog www.inteltrax.com and see if the content interests you.
The free stuff is provided for anyone’s use. Libraries and academic institutions can recycle the material without contacting me. Commercial outfits are asked to request permission to use this information. If you have a complaint or suggestion, use the comments section of Beyond Search or write seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. We check the Yahoo account every week or so.
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2010
Freebie. Free is offered “as is”.
Update about the Very Droll Kroll
December 28, 2010
Business Wire has released “Year in Review: Kroll Ontrack 2010 Discovery Trend Data Reveals Organizations Struggle with Preservation, Production and General Discovery Protocols.” Kroll is a unit of Altegrity and leading provider of data recovery, legal technology products and services, and information management. As Kroll analyzed itself, they have found five discovery themes prevalent in the past year.
“Among the dominant topics reoccurring in the 2010 judicial opinions were the pervasive struggle companies and practitioners continue to have with proper preservation techniques, the continued growth in intolerance by the judiciary for discovery failures and the renewed call for cooperation amongst counsel.”
Kroll also summarized their e-discovery opinions and found 84 cases that represent trends found across the country. Nearly every case about preservation and spoliation contained information about sanctions. As in the prior two years, sanctions are a dominant pain point for courts and counsel. Kroll states that businesses need to be aware about discovery protocols and information management can be used as a proactive tool to create clear policies to prevent future legal action.
Stephen E Arnold, December 28, 2010
Freebie
Palantir Explained
December 28, 2010
The Stanford GSB So Speaks Blog gives us details about “Shyam Sankar of Palantir Technologies at the GSB.” Palantir is company focused on counter-terrorism within and by using the digital environment. It’s better explained by this video. If you’ve ever seen an episode of NCIS, this is type of program they use to help them catch the bad guys. Apparently, four engineers developed Palantir within a week and the company was founded by the same team as PayPal—used by many EBay aficionados for secure business transactions. They’ve also invented a new buzzword: intelligence augmentation (IA).
“Palantir focuses on IA, rather than AI (Artificial Intelligence). Sankar mentioned a theory on AI stating that AI will continue to be “around the corner in 10 years” in perpetuity. As a result, Palantir focuses on augmenting the intelligence we already have.”
Palantir appears to be a superhero like program, but they are involved in a legal squabble. I may need intelligence augmentation to figure out who’s on first in that matter.
Stephen E Arnold, December 28, 2010
Freebie
Business Intelligence and Small Businesses
December 21, 2010
The Italian Datamanager has an article titled “The Intelligence and the Conquest of SMEs” that explains how business intelligence (BI) is growing in medium-sized enterprises in Italy’s social market economy (SME).
“The European market is expected to grow Bi in 2010 than in 2009. According to IDC, this increase will be 5.4 percent for both Query & Reporting Tools for the Advanced Analytics, compared to a growth in the previous year respectively by 2.5 percent and 4.9 percent. This increase is due to three main factors: first, the economic situation, which forces companies to look where to optimize for best effect on the bottom line, increased marketing leading provider of BI solutions and the maturity of the market.”
When companies gather business intelligence data, they apply it in a manner that best serves them. The article describes how companies use the data for management control, customer/product analysis, data integration and analysis, and simulated scenarios. The most interesting company profiled is Passepartout. It is developing an internal information access system. This is expensive and time consuming, but will be overall beneficial for Passepartout.
Whiney Grace, December 21, 2010
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