Food for Your Big Data Files
July 12, 2012
A couple of recent articles give us some observations about the field of big data. Karmasphere shares their research in “Karmasphere Unveils ‘Trends and Insights into Big Data Analytics’ Survey Results.” Meanwhile, Sys-Con Media answers the question, “Big Data & Analytics—What’s New?”
For the results of the Karmasphere study, click here (though you’ll have to register first.) The survey, performed this past May, assembled responses from 376 North American data analytics pros. One of the key findings: a lack of data experts in companies of all sizes is driving a need for self-service Hadoop access. Not surprisingly, SQL is seen as the primary skill set for data analytics. Also, big-data team members are widely being called upon to sport multiple (metaphorical) hats. Much, much more information is included; I think the full report is worth surrendering your email address.
In the Sys-Con article, Jnan Dash extols the progress of Hadoop. He writes:
“A friend of mine from my IBM days (an expert in Data Warehousing, BI, etc.) told me about the Hadoop conference he attended in San Jose few weeks back. When he attended the same conference two years ago in New York, there were hardly 200 attendees whereas this time, the number exceeded 2000 and it was a sold out event. This just proves how fast Hadoop has generated interest. He said that one theme in every presentation was the need for Hadoop skills as almost every presentation had a slide, ‘we are hiring’.”
Hiring is good. Very good. Make a note of it.
Dash shares his thoughts on three specific players in the Hadoop arena, Cloudera, Hortonworks, and MapR. He also plugs a couple of start-ups in the Hadoop-fueled business intelligence (BI) space, Datameer and Karmasphere. See the write up for more details.
He also notes that, because companies will not be eager to waste the existing investments in BI and analytics, integrating Hadoop with current technology will be a must going forward. Good observation.
Cynthia Murrell, July 12, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Is Mixpanel Tracking You?
July 11, 2012
A pair of articles highlight the ways in which Mixpanel is taking tracking software to new levels. Whether those levels are highs or lows depends entirely upon your perspective.
VentureBeat exclaims, “Mixpanel Now Lets Apps Target You—Yeah YOU—on a Deeply Personal Level.” Reporter Jolie O’Dell notes that Mixpanel is regarded as a provider of quality analytics. Now the company is working on tying data to individual users, a departure from the don’t-worry-this-data-isn’t-tied-to-you-personally convention we’ve grown used to. The aim, of course, is to target advertising with ever better accuracy. Reminds me of that scene from “Minority Report.”
Search Engine Marketing and Website Optimization’s blog is a bit more matter-of-fact than VentureBeat, stating simply, “Mixpanel is Tracking More Than Actions Now, Introduces User Analytics.” That piece also mentions that Mixpanel ties to individual users, and discusses related analysis:
“Specifically, when customers open up their Mixpanel dashboard, they’ll see a new menu under the ‘actions’ section called ‘people’, where they can get data about all of their visitors, such as gender, age, and country, and then correlate that data with user activity. . . .
“[Mixpanel’s co-founder Suhail Doshi] says the new features should be useful to companies of all sizes. If you’ve got a brand new website and only a few hundred visitors, you can look at the individual profiles. If you’re more established, with millions of users, you can still look for patterns among those users, and also target messages to specific groups.”
Great. I can’t say I’m surprised things are progressing this direction. I also can’t say I don’t appreciate not seeing ads about things I’m not interested in. Still, the whole trend leaves me a bit unsettled. Better get used to it, I suppose.
Cynthia Murrell, July 11, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Data Vibrancy: Pursuing a Full Spectrum
July 11, 2012
Vibrant Data has painted a pretty picture, but more detail is needed before it can be called a masterpiece. Ted’s blog, “Fellows Friday: The Vibrancy of Data” talks about the broad span of challenging areas, while repeatedly emphasizing the need for more collaborative research and problem mapping.
In the opinion of Vibrant Data, a few areas need a little brush work to create an efficient data ecosystem, and:
“From the structure of that network, we identified four Grand Challenge areas for democratizing data: Digital Infrastructure, Digital Trust (protection of personal identity, and reputation systems for accountability), Digital Literacy (widespread access to intuitively asking questions with data and thinking critically about the answers) and Platform Openness (the ability to copy, edit and customize platforms that facilitate finding meaning from data).”
The color image of their grand challenges is quite impressive at first glance, however Vibrant Data openly admits this is a work in progress. The plan to involve more people in the problem mapping will definitely allow for more input, but to what end? Collaboration can be beneficial but at the same time, too many artists can clutter up the original vision.
The overall picture that Vibrant Data is trying to create would allow everyday people to directly benefit from the enormous pallet of evolving data. With access provided, everyday users could avoid possible negative consequences and paint their own portrait.
Jennifer Shockley, July 11, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Unstructured Data Becomes the New Gold Rush
July 11, 2012
Knowledge is like gold, and today’s internet prospectors are digging deep for the ‘golden’ Data vein. Big Data offers a gold rush of information that may exceed the shiny nuggets of 1848. The big data cavern glimmers with possibilities according to Sys-Con’s article, “Actuate Unveils ‘Big Data’ Research Results” and data engineers are creating better tools. Data miners are digging for sophisticated analytics on unstructured content to be metamorphosed into pattern analysis, keyword correlation, incident prediction and fraud prevention. The purpose is to get data in active hands to be utilized for customer communications, management, profit and the overall organization’s evolution.
A study was done to determine the trials that companies face when digging deeper than the surface and:
“The findings highlight the contrast between organizations’ internal experience of accessing relevant, up-to-date decision-supporting information and their ability to pinpoint a wealth of data on almost any other subject via the public Internet.”
“As many as 80% of respondents admitted that they had no extended search capability across multiple repositories, while 70% said they found it “harder” or “much harder” (23%) to access key information held on internal systems versus that available on the Web, even though the content exists within their organization.”
Unstructured content was the golden glimmer that caught the organizational eye, now they have to access and deploy it efficiently. Rumors about this technology and its benefits will spread quickly, so it will not take long for this new gold rush to get underway.
Jennifer Shockley, July 11, 2012
The Mash Up Mixing Bowl
July 10, 2012
InetSoft Technology is mashing search technologies together with the availability of new custom data connectors for popular enterprise applications. This big mixing bowl will add connectors to the list of supported third-party data sources that do not already have open standards based connectivity according to Times Union’s article, “InetSoft Adds Google Analytics, AdWords, and Microsoft SharePoint as Data Sources for BI Dashboarding”.
The new InetSoft technology provides a smooth mix with an efficient transformation, as:
“Style Intelligence is a full-featured business intelligence solution for dashboard reporting that includes a powerful data mash-up engine. End-users get visually compelling, highly interactive access to data, and IT gets a highly customizable, easy to learn and quick to deploy business intelligence toolset and information delivery platform. Data mash-up capabilities allow for the integration of disparate data sources, enabling agile development and providing maximum self-service, while the application’s SOA architecture and open standards-based technology make for an ideal embedding and integration-ready application for dashboards, production reporting, and visualization.”
Those who take advantage of this new quick mix technology will get compelling visuals, along with highly interactive access to data. The IT department will find the technology easy to learn and highly customizable with a convenient business intelligence toolset and information delivery platform. The end result, InetSoft has mashed up search technologies into a big mixing bowl of efficiency.
Jennifer Shockley, July 10, 2012
A Visual Way to See What is Changing Within Wikipedia
July 9, 2012
Wikipedia is a go to source for quick answers outside the classroom, but many don’t realize Wiki is an ever evolving information source. Geekosystem’s article “Wikistats Show You What Parts Of Wikipedia Are Changing” provides a visual way to see what is changing within Wikipedia.
The performance program was explained as:
“Utilizing technology from Datasift, a social data platform with a specialization in real-time streams, Wikistats lists some clear, concise information you can use to see how Wikipedia is flowing and changing out from under you. Using Natural Language Processing, Wikistats is able to suss realtime trends and updates. In short, Wikistats will show you what pages are being updated the most right now, how many edits they get by how many unique users, and how many lines are being added vs. how many are being deleted.”
Enlightenment was gained when actually viewing the chart below:
This program calculates well defined reports on Wikipedia’s traffic, and Wiki frequenters might find the above chart surprising. The report in this case shows the reality that Wikipedia is an over flowing pool of information.
We are not saying Wikipedia is unreliable, but one should never solely rely on one information source. The chart simply provides a visual way to see what is changing within Wikipedia and help users understand how data flows. This programs potential for real time use on other sites could be tremendous.
Jennifer Shockley, July 9, 2012
Oracle Positions RightNow Technology
July 7, 2012
Since Oracle bought RightNow Technologies last October, we’ve been wondering how their customer-service-cloud technology will be positioned under new management. Oracle’s blog gives us some insight in the post, “Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences.” Besides detailing the uses of RightNow as they fit within the larger Oracle universe, the article lists Oracle University classes that can get users up to speed on the software.
Blogger Andreea Vaduva describes four tools available in the customer relations suite: the Knowledge Authoring tool; the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal; the Contact Centre Experience Designer; and Oracle RightNow access points. See the write up for details on each. She notes that marketing, survey creation and tracking, and sales tools are also included. Regarding the analytics tool, Vaduva enthuses:
“Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease.”
It sounds like Oracle is making good use of its purchase. RightNow Technologies was founded in 1997 in Bozeman, Montana. No stranger to the acquisition game, the smaller company snapped up HiveLive in 2009, and Q-go in 2011.
Cynthia Murrell, July 7, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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
Tools to Cut eDiscovery Costs
July 6, 2012
Enterprise Communications recently reported on an eDiscovery cost cutting method in the article “Cut eDiscovery Costs with Smarter Tools and Smart Scope.”
According to the article, eDiscovery has become quite the hiccup for people who work in the legal field due to the fact that it creates a headache for attorneys to manage the mass amount of electronic data that is constantly growing. Even more frustrating is the fact that the majority of the data being turned up is irrelevant.
In order to cost effectively and efficiently manage this data, the majority of courts set parameters that lay out the scope of eDiscovery. Once these are reached there are a variety of solutions available to search and manage your data.
When discussing the eDiscovery tools out there, the article states:
“More and more eDiscovery providers are developing software algorithms that in addition to searching your data, can also help you with the collection, review and analysis process. Known as computer-assisted review, and also including predictive coding, it is the latest trend to hit litigation circles and eDiscovery. Tools such as Axcelerate Review & Analysis from leading providers, Recommind, and Zoom from Equivio are examples of comprehensive predictive coding software that is available.”
We enjoy the way that this article simply lays out the eDiscovery tools available. Here are our only questions: Is this the ultimate pitch for search and content processing? and what about risk reduction?
Jasmine Ashton, July 6, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
Walmart Suffers Loses Its Innovation and Data Arm
July 4, 2012
Gigaom’s Eliza Kern reported on a significant loss from Walmart’s technology arm in the article “WalmartLabs Loses Kosmix Founders.”
According to the article, after a year of working in WalmartLabs as the innovative and data arm of the retail giant, Kosmix co-founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman have announced that they are leaving to “take time off from the industry.”
As a social media startup, after being acquired by the retail giant in 2011, Kosmix’s ability to aggregate social media and information about a particular topic allowed Walmart to analyze large sets of data and predict the buying habits of customers.
When explaining the goal behind WalmartLabs last Novermber, Harinarayan said:
“At Walmart Labs, we’re building a big and fast data group to combine store data with social media data in some meaningful way. For example, a Wal-Mart buyer in Arkansas doesn’t know the optimal time to stock football merchandise in Wisconsin. That buyer can look to the social streams to see when people in that region are tweeting about football or their favorite teams. Monitoring social media can even help Wal-Mart find breakout products.”
It looks like Walmart has some big shoes to fill in its technical line up. Hopefully the next group will stay longer than a year.
Jasmine Ashton, July 4, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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