Woopra Educates Users about Web Analytics
April 11, 2012
We paid attention in statistics class. The quality of the data and the questions one frames are key to making any analytics exercise work. Punching buttons and generating pretty charts and graphs are not too helpful if the underlying data and the questions are off base, incorrect, or training wheels for a hassled MBA.
Quora recently posed the question “Web Analytics: Most companies don’t use the full potential of their Web Analytics tools. What do you think?” and received eight answers.The most thought provoking response came from Natalie Issa, the Marketing Director of the web analytics company Woopra.
According to Issa, there are four key points one should keep in mind when tackling the web analytics challenge. These are: Google analytics, marketing vs. developers, large companies vs. small, and educating users.
When discussing the importance of educating users, Issa writes:
“Web analytics services need to invest and devote resources to educating users. The company I work for, Woopra, is tackling this head on by hiring individuals whose job it is to teach and create learning materials for our users to make sure they have all the support they need (if this sounds like your kind of job, feel free to message me :)). We’re also seeing more and more marketing firms and consultants helping small and medium size businesses with their web analytics needs.”
Does this mean that customers are making decisions without an appropriate understanding of what the math behind the system actually delivers? Our view: training wheels on analytics can produce some interesting consequences.
The reality is that analytics will not solve problems reliably unless the users understand the data and frame the correct question. Statistics 101. It is not the training; it is the fact that people want a silver bullet, not mental effort. Just our view, of course. Marketers have a different goal, and it is not education, is it?
Jasmine Ashton, April 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
New Book Helps Organizations Increase the Value of SharePoint
April 11, 2012
Frequent SharePoint blogger and author Christian Buckley has co-authored a book devoted to SharePoint 2010. Market Watch provides full details in, “Axceler Product Evangelist Christian Buckley Co-Authors New Book on Microsoft SharePoint 2010.”
“Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism and a Microsoft SharePoint Server MVP, has co-authored a new book titled, ‘Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real-World Projects.’ Buckley and co-authors Jennifer Mason, Brian T. Jackett, and Wes Preston help readers build effective business solutions with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 by following repeatable business analysis and design principles from real-world projects. This hands-on book, published by Microsoft Press, focuses on a different business scenario in each chapter, using a standard template to guide the reader through the solution-building process from start to finish. Readers can also learn how to utilize SharePoint out of the box to develop a corporate intranet, a media hub, a system to support distributed teams, and solutions to many other scenarios.”
Buckley often focuses his efforts on getting the most out of a SharePoint deployment, knowing that most organizations will not be satisfied with its out-of-the-box functionality. This book will no doubt improve the quality of life for many a SharePoint developer.
However, we wonder if there is not a simpler solution. Third-party solutions like those offered by Fabasoft Mindbreeze provide a seamless and intuitive add-on to an existing SharePoint installation. Bringing together semantic pairing, mobile capabilities, and a scalable solution for the Cloud or an on-site installation, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can save organizations from the cost of customization suggested by Buckley.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or more precisely understands exactly what the most important information is for you at any given moment. It’s a center of excellence and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud together.”
The more information, the better, and Buckley’s book is worth a read. However, do not neglect smart third-party options like Fabasoft Mindbreeze when analyzing the customization needs of your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Search Infrastructure Advice from PolySpot
April 11, 2012
We think highly of PolySpot. The open source search experts have published a new white paper titled “How Agile Enterprise Search Infrastructure Can Help CIOs.” The paper is a must-read for any organization working to bridle its data. The summary states:
“Implementing advanced enterprise search applications yields significant and helps solve major technical and business issues:
- Facilitate access to valuable information through a single gateway or profiled pushed content
- Deliver comprehensive information, not fragmented information
- Increase employees satisfaction thanks to higher relevance and findability
- Ease expertise finding
- Enhance access to legacy information systems
- Provide access to time sensitive information such as pricing, regulations, and procedures
- Federate legacy document management content locked in proprietary systems
- Reduce harmonization costs and contain software license fees”
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Paris, PolySpot designs search and information access solutions that help clients around the world boost efficiency even as big data multiplies at an astounding rate. Their tools offer universal connectivity, covering all business needs and ensuring that organizations can access the data they need, regardless of their structure, format or origin. They handle structured data with aplomb, of course, but pride themselves on their innovative cross-functional solution to unstructured data.
Cynthia Murrell, April 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thetus Rolls Out Multi Int Upgrade
April 10, 2012
Thetus is rolling out multi-intelligence software, we learn in Online PR’s “Thetus Debuts Newest Release of Multi-Int Analysis Solution, Savanna, at DoDIIS 2012.” The application builds on existing intelligence community investments, supporting the development of mission-specific functionality and enabling integration between agencies. Both worthy goals.
Savanna3 was just debuted at the Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems Worldwide Conference in Denver, Colorado. The conference is a place for defense and intelligence IT pros to share current and future capabilities, investigate solutions, and share best practices.
The write up reveals:
“Savanna is a multi-Int, model-enabled analysis solution that builds on customer’s existing investments and programs bringing together multi-source analysis techniques to enable faster, more informed decision-making. Savanna is a solution that provides an integrated user experience for search, visualization, discovery, and output of actionable intelligence all while providing robust, analytic capabilities.”
Founded in 2003 in Portland, Oregon, Thetus focuses on predictive semantic modeling, outcome evaluation, and ongoing development of best practices. They embrace the challenges of complex systems; that’s a very good thing for someone serving the defense/intelligence community! The company also boasts clients in the fields of energy, law enforcement, and environmental services.
Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Microsoft Watched and Learned as Markets Matured Over the Years
April 10, 2012
There are currently over 125 million SharePoint users and the goal is to reach 500 million with next release of Office. It is clear SharePoint is a ubiquitous system that continues to grow. And with consumers driving social and mobile demands, it is clear that SharePoint, and all of enterprise search, needs to keep up with the growing demand. Jeff Shuey continues the SharePoint mobile and social discussion in his post, “Social SharePoint – An Oxymoron?”
Shuey had this to say,
I wrote a post in 2009 asking — Is Microsoft late to the game? The answer then was yes. However, over the last few years the market has matured and Microsoft has watched and learned. They have taken the long standing Microsoft mantra of Any Place, Any Device and Any Time and have applied some SharePoint salve to it. As the Forbes article states … Microsoft is in a prime position to make it happen.
This is by no means the first discussion on social demands in the enterprise search world, but Shuey does add another interesting level to the discussion by bringing in other sources, like Forbes, and quotes and expert opinions.
Collaboration and social technology development is inevitable as business gets social. To tap into the new possibilities now without having to wait for a new release, consider a third party solution to complete your enterprise search system. We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. The Mindbreeze solution:
. . . smoothly integrates itself into your website so that the user doesn’t even realize that Cloud services are working in the background. Furthermore, InSite always knows what a user is interested in. Navigation behavior on the website serves as the basis for recognizing their interests. If the user finds themselves on one of your sub-pages on the topic mobility for example, even at this level Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite still displays further information such as blogs, news, Wikipedia etc. on the relevant topic.
Check out the full suite of solutions at Mindbreeze to see what works for you.
Philip West, April 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Lucid Imagination Lands Government Big Data Deal
April 9, 2012
Give me an “L,” give me a “U,” give me a…well if I ask you to yell out all those letters on the computer screen, people might begin to think you’re a few bytes short of a complete memory drive. The reason for my cheering, though, was inspired by MarketWatch’s article on “Intelligent Software Solutions Partners With Lucid Imagination to Tackle Government Big Data Challenges.”
Intelligent Software Solutions (ISS) and Lucid Imagination have entered into a two-year joint business development deal, where both companies will create big data search and analysis solutions. The government has been having trouble with processing “teraquads” of structured and unstructured data. The article said:
“ ‘Our relationship with Lucid gets us to a higher level of proficiency on this technology by putting experts on our team to work jointly with us to build tailored solutions for our customers,’ said Wes Caldwell, chief architect, Global Enterprise Solutions Division, Intelligent Software Solutions. ‘We are in the business of providing software solutions for our customers that allow them to mine, manage and analyze large amounts of data and to derive critical knowledge from that data. The promise of harnessing big data to deliver actionable intelligence from an often diverse and vast amount of data is quickly becoming a requirement for many of our customers. By leveraging Lucid Imagination’s enterprise open source search platform, we can deliver better value to our customer base. This partnership is a key component to that strategy and further strengthens our position in that area.’”
The main force behind the joint venture is Lucid Imagination’s open source enterprise search technology that allows companies to build their own search products. ISS will add Lucid’s people to their team and together they will deliver training and support services for their government clientele. Lucid Imagination is proving to the world how powerful and useful open source software can be. Is this the start of a new trend or will it pass by quickly?
By the way, “teraquads” sounds big.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Open Source Analytics Information Service Now Available
April 9, 2012
ArnoldIT has rolled out The Trend Point information service. Published Monday through Friday, the information services focuses on the intersection of open source software and next-generation analytics. The approach will be for the editors and researchers to identify high-value source documents and then encapsulate these documents into easily-digested articles and stories. In addition, critical commentary, supplementary links, and important facts from the source document are provided. Unlike a news aggregation service run by automated agents, librarians and researchers use the ArnoldIT Overflight tools to track companies, concepts, and products. The combination of human-intermediated research with Overflight provide an executive or business professional with a quick, easy, and free way to keep track of important developments in open source analytics. There is no charge for the service.
Stories include:
- White House Orders Big Data Solutions
- Public and Private Sectors Combine for Big Savings
- Analytic Revolution Looks Different from 90s Dotcom Boom
According to the publisher, Stephen E Arnold:
We believe that commercial abstracting and indexing services have become untenable for the busy professional. We have combined traditional indexing, literature reviews, and critical commentary which help reduce the time required to pinpoint the meaningful information in this exploding open source analytics field.
Our business model is to provide high value information without a fee. Individuals, law firms, and private equity firms wanting additional information about the people, companies, and products we cover are free to contact us. Like other professional services’ firms, we rely on motivated individuals with an information need to tap into our full-scale, in-depth research.
What sets TheTrendPoint and other ArnoldIT.com information services apart is that its approach is similar to that used by commercial information services such as Medline and Disclosure, two information services designed to make reference services more useful.
At this time, TheTrendPoint.com is designed to complement the finding services which ArnoldIT.com publishes. ArnoldIT.com is one of the leading sources of information on subjects ranging from search and content processing to next-generation intelligence systems.
New content is added to the service Monday to Friday. For more information about the service, contact the publisher at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Kenneth Toth, April 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Exclusive Interview: David B. Camarata, IKANOW
April 9, 2012
Kapow Aims at the Salesforce.com Ecosystem
April 9, 2012
Kapow is branching out. The company has posted a write up titled, “Kapow Software Announces Katalyst Apex Generator.” The Apex Generator integrates with the Katalyst platform in order to easily deploy Katalyst-built integrated processes directly into Salesforce. Kapow’s CTO Stefan Adnreasen stated:
“By strengthening our integration with Salesforce, we’re making it possible to rapidly automate business processes and deliver real-time information from external web apps directly into Salesforce or any Force.com app. Katalyst empowers Salesforce users to make decisions and take action based on a complete view of the information they need, rather than wasting time searching for critical information trapped in external systems.”
So if you’re a Salesforce user, you should check this out. Force.com is a cloud-based platform for creating and deploying collaborative enterprise applications. Their software can be modified to run on mobile devices.
Salesforce is not the only software Katalyst users connect with. In fact, Kapow Software addresses the growing need to integrate myriad applications within organizations. Katalyst has relieved pressure on numerous IT departments previously hampered by a lack of published application programming interfaces (APIs). Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, the company also has offices in New York, Austin, Frankfurt, and Copenhagen.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Inteltrax: Top Stories, April 2 to April 6
April 9, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, lesser known industries falling in love with analytics.
“Safety Analytics Fits Every Industry” showed us how big data is adding major advances in public and private security.
“Small Biz Gaining in Big Data” told more about what we already know: data analytics helps level the playing field for small businesses.
“Customer Service Propels Many BI Companies” delves into the ways in which supporting users is helping vendors succeed.
Analytics is invading our world, often in the most unexpected places. This is just a small sampling of the deep research we provide every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
April 9, 2012
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