Oracle Embraces Digital Reasoning
October 8, 2012
Digital Reasoning™, a leader in unstructured data analytics at scale is now a Silver Partner in Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized program. The “silver” designation means that Digital Reasoning benefits from Oracle’s complete solutions addressing unstructured data analytics where extreme scale and high performance are key customer needs. (For more information, see “Digital Reasoning Becomes Oracle PartnerNetwork Silver Level Partner.”
Digital Reasoning has integrated Synthesys®, the company’s software platform for unstructured analytics, with the Oracle Big Data Appliance. A white paper featuring benchmark performance information on the analytics of massive unstructured data sets of documents is available on our website. With the combined power of Synthesys and the Big Data Appliance users can now analyze tens of millions of documents in only a few hours as opposed to months with traditional methods.
Synthesys uses a unique combination of machine learning, patented advanced analytics and tight integration with Hadoop to automatically uncover critical information buried in documents, email, web content and social media. Synthesys has been applied to complex big data analytics challenges in the U.S. intelligence community during the past decade and is now being applied to big data analytics challenges in finance, healthcare and legal markets.
Rob Metcalf, president of Digital Reasoning, said:
We are excited about achieving Silver Level Partner Status in OPN. We see a lot of customer interest in combining Synthesys with the Oracle Big Data Appliance for high performance unstructured data analytics.
With its Silver status, Digital Reasoning is now able to develop, sell and implement Oracle’s 1-Click product portfolio, allowing us to increase competitive positioning and profitability with midsize companies. As an additional benefit, Digital Reasoning can now leverage the OPN Portal tools, resources and experts within the Oracle Partner Business Center to increase their market knowledge and ability to maximize customer sales and retention with Oracle. Silver Level partners are also eligible for discounts on Oracle training, lead registration via Open Market Model, entry into the Oracle Solutions Catalog, discounts on Oracle Linux and VM Support and more.
My view is that Oracle has rich capabilities which are now extended with the state of the art functionality provided by Digital Reasoning.
Stephen E Arnold, October 8, 2012
IntelTrax Top Stories: September 28 to October 4
October 8, 2012
Lately, the IntelTrax information and advanced intelligence blog has been covering a lot of stories related to risk analytics.
The October 4 post “Risk Analytics Becomes Big Business” explains how the days of manually entering data into spreadsheets are over and how risk can now be quantified and lowered with the use of analytics technology.
The article give an example of a company using analytics to mitigate risk:
“Numerix (http://www.numerix.com/), the leading provider of cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations and risk management today announced that Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), a pioneer in the Luxembourg financial industry has selected the Numerix CrossAsset analytics platform to support its model validation and model comparison processes. With Numerix’s highly flexible, fully transparent analytics architecture, BIL can conduct rigorous model analysis to independently validate pricing and risk sensitivity outputs, as well as make comparisons between different models to analyze how the outputs vary under different assumptions.”
Another article that emphasizes the financial impacts of data analytics is, “Effective Financial Data Analytics Rely on Quality.” This article discusses how important it is to utilize statisticians and data preparation along with a business’s strategy to form predictive models.
The article states:
“A critical aspect therefore is identifying what data is needed for effective prediction – and what data ends up actually being available and used to build the models. Most analysts can’t fix data – therefore they do the next best thing statistically, which is dropping or avoiding poor quality data.
Data analytics touches nearly all aspects of a business and it’s nearly impossible to achieve effective business intelligence without it.”
The Financial sector is not the only one that is using data analytics technology. It appears that the government is jumping on board the big data wagon as well. “Government and Utilities Get Big Data” explains how analytics spending has gone up quite a bit in the business world.
The article states:
“Utilities must solve data collection and storage challenges and learn how to analyze and act on new forms of information before they even get to the point of realizing real returns on their smart grid investments.
According to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant‘s Energy Practice, the worldwide market for smart grid data analytics is expected to grow steadily through 2020, with cumulative worldwide spending from 2012 through 2020 totaling just over $34 billion.”
One company that has worked to provide data analytics technology for both the government and financial enterprises is Digital Reasoning. Digital Reasoning uses automated understanding to tackle some of big data’s most messy challenges by enabling enterprises and agencies to detect fraud, uncover market trends, gain better insight into customer behavior, gain competitive advantage, and mitigate risk.
Jasmine Ashton, October 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Intel Trax Top Stories September 20 to September 27
October 1, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published a series of articles that explained the importance of integrating analytics solutions to increase performance efficiency within the workplace.
Big data can be quite confusing. That is why it is always great to listen to the opinions of experts in the field. “John Whittaker on the Need for Data Integration for Big Data Analytics” explains why successful big data analytics requires integrating data from a multitude of sources.
When explaining why big data integration is necessary, Whittaker said:
“One of the big aspects that people are trying to get a handle right now, and one of our major uses, is big data analytics. Once you get beyond the Google or Facebook use cases and start talking about how the rest of us will use big data, it is going to be analytics. Whenever you’re doing analytics, you want to marry information from different sources. You might want to be able to correlate what’s happening within your ERP and the operational data that might exist there, with experiential data from your website. The operational data often tends to reside in relational databases, but when you’re talking about experiential data, about how people are utilizing your website or what people are saying on social media about you, that sort of data resides within the unstructured big data world of Hadoop. It’s really about being able to marry these sources together into one environment and drive better decisions based on the information there is the primary value that the big data environment is going to provide for the normal enterprise.”
Along with integrating big data, many experts are also making predictions regarding the future of big data. “Predicting the Next Big Thing in Big Data” talks about some of the new up in comes in the industry that may make a big impact.
When explaining a new report that has come out, the article states:
“Big Data – The Next Big Thing”, a first-of-its-kind report on the ‘Big Data’ industry, focusing on the opportunities, challenges, and its impact on businesses globally. ‘Big Data’ relates to rapidly growing, structured and unstructured datasets with sizes beyond the ability of conventional database tools to store, manage, and analyze them.
The report identifies five key insights on global ‘Big Data’ trends and the opportunity it throws up for IT and analytics players in India. First, Big Data has become all-pervasive with the potential to create significant benefits for a number of sectors. The early adopters driving the business with appetite for Big Data analytics are industries such as Manufacturing, Retail, Financial Services, Telecom and Healthcare.”
In “Marketing Analytics Industry Expected to See Dramatic in India” references a report that shows companies are increasingly using marketing analytics technology as a way to stay ahead of their competition. This is particularly relevant in India because the marketing analytics industry is expected to grow from $200 million to $1.2 billion by 2012.
The report explains:
“Over the past few decades, the evolution in traditional media and the emergence of digital media has revolutionized the way products are sold to the customers. Marketing analytics play a pivotal role in helping marketers take informed data-driven decisions and effectively reach out to the audience. The marketing analytics industry is poised for exponential growth and India will be one of the foremost forces leading this revolution. This report is an effort to showcase potential of analytics to organizations, analytics players and prospective employees and will help pave the way for concerted effort to increase the usage.”
While these articles may discuss different aspect of big data, they all have one thing in common. They all call for a need for companies to invest in solutions that evolve with the times. Digital Reasoning is a big data analytics company that works within nearly every business sector to promote automated understanding over human effort.
Jasmine Ashton, October 1, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT, developer of Augmentext.
IntelTrax Top Stories: September 14 to September 20
September 24, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence systems blog delivered some interesting stories that are especially pertinent to those looking to solve the big data problem with analytics solutions.
One field that could see a great deal of benefits from data analytics is education. “The Future of Education Lies with Data Analytics” foresees an education system that is taught through computerized software programs that collect data on the length of time it takes students to master material. Unlike teachers who have limited time and availability, this software would provide instant feedback and compare students to classmates as well as other students across the country.
When discussing the value of this new system, the article states:
“In comparing these two learning environments, it is apparent that current school evaluations suffer from several limitations. Many of the typical pedagogies provide little immediate feedback to students, require teachers to spend hours grading routine assignments, aren’t very proactive about showing students how to improve comprehension, and fail to take advantage of digital resources that can improve the learning process. This is unfortunate because data-driven approaches make it possible to study learning in real-time and offer systematic feedback to students and teachers.”
In the field of data analytics, new and innovative partnerships are always coming about. “Tivo and Scripps Sign Deal to Improve Audience Analytics” announces a deal made between Tivo Research and Analytics and Scripps Networks Interactive, allowing Scripps to access TRA’s audience insights and analytics.
Here’s how it works:
“Media TRAnalytics® TV Auto Ratings launched in January 2012 and enables networks and advertisers to identify the right TV programming based on the make and model of automobile purchases by households watching specific networks and programs. By matching households of television tuning and automotive registration data from Experian Automotive’s North American Vehicle Database (NVDB), TRA provides advertisers, advertising agencies and television networks the industry’s largest household-level single-source solution to plan, buy, sell and evaluate the automotive industry’s current investment in television advertising.”
Big data analytics tools allow for companies to be able to gain valuable insights from your credit card statements, web searches, and social media activity. “Social Media Allows for Personal Analytics as Marketing Tools” explains how businesses can harness the data being put out of social media platforms like Facebook in order to gain insights in order to predict buying behavior.
When explaining the service, the article states:
“It also provides an interesting insight into the kind of machinations that Facebook itself could easily be doing with the data in house. Line this up with the output of Facebook’s own data export tool and you get a good picture for the truth of how much data is being collated. Consider combining patterns across tens or hundreds of millions of profiles with this level of detail and you start to get a picture of the power of the platform.”
Being able to uncover marketing trends and insights about customer behavior is becoming integral to the success of companies in nearly every field and industry. For those looking for an affordable solution that promotes automated understanding of big data analytics, consider Digital Reasoning’s flagship solution Synthesys.
Jasmine Ashton, September 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Top Stories: September 7 to September 13
September 17, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published articles on current trends related to big data, fraud detection, and analytics solutions that will help both of the previously stated problems.
“Real Time Analytics Makes an Impact” discusses how companies have spent the last couple of years making it so that their analytics solutions have zero lag time.
The article states:
“Operational Intelligence, basically, is real-time analytics over operational and social data. Operational intelligence, or OI as we like to call it, provides three important capabilities. First is real-time visibility over a wide variety of data. Second is real-time insight using real-time continuous analytics, and third is what we call right-time action, which means being able to take action in time to make a measurable difference in the business. We decided to focus on Operational Intelligence because it addresses some very important business problems that we felt were not well served by traditional software products today. These problems include service assurance in telco, social analytics for dynamic selling and brand management, real-time supply chain management, smart grid management in electrical utilities, and dynamic pricing in retail. These are just some of the examples.”
One way that analytics solutions have positively impacted a variety of industries is through the detection of fraud. “Fraud Analytics Deliver on Fine Art Forgeries” explains a new niche in fraud analytics that helps prevent substantial losses from individuals and museums.
The article informs:
“Just as with credit card fraud detection, the data sets created by digital authentication are quite large. Similarly, the modeling tools are extremely sophisticated, looking for patterns that would be unlikely from the painter just as a given purchase would be unlikely for a credit card holder. Zeroing in on the fraud can save an enterprise millions of dollars. Digital authentication is not real-time — it took two days to identify the fake Van Gogh. But in the world of art, that’s more than fast enough.”
When discussing advancements made in the industry, the information is often more well received when it comes from experts in the field. “Analytic News is Best From the Experts” showcases on experts opinion on the topic:
“Werner Vogels, a data guru as chief technology officer for Amazon Web Services, has been touting his interpretation of big data for almost two years. For him, managing a behemoth like Amazon, it’s not exactly what big data is, but what can be done with it.
“Big data is the collection and analysis of large amounts of data to create a competitive advantage,” he told a conference earlier this year.
“I am an infrastructure guy and for me big data is when your data sets become so large that you have to start innovating how to collect, store, organise, analyse and share it.”
Since technology is continuing to progress at rapid rates it is important the companies seek out a data analytics provider that evolves with the times. Digital Reasoning’s solutions, not only will protect your business from fraud, but its automated understanding for Big Data allows companies to find the necessary information they need to stay ahead of the competition.
Jasmine Ashton, September 17, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
More on Marketing Confusion in Big Data Analytics
September 11, 2012
Search vendors are like a squirrel dodging traffic. Some make it across the road safely. Others? Well, there is a squirrel heaven I assume. Which search vendors will survive the speeding tractor trailers carrying big data, analytics, and visualization to customers who are famished for systems which make sense of information? I don’t know. No one really knows.
Do squirrels understand high speed, high volume traffic? A happy quack to http://surykatki.blox.pl/html/1310721,262146,14,15.html?7,2007 for a fierce squirrel image.
What is fascinating is to watch the Darwinian process at work among vendors of search and content processing. TextRadar’s “Content Intelligence: An Unexpected Collision Is Coming” makes clear that there are quite a few companies not widely known in the financial and health care markets. Some of these companies have opportunities to make the leap from government contract work to commercial work for Fortune 1000 companies.
But what about more traditional search vendors?
I received in the snail mail a copy of Oracle Magazine. September October 2012. The article which caught my attention was “New Questions, Fast Answers.” The information was in the form of an interview between Rich Schwerin, an Oracle magazine writer, and Paul Sonderegger, senior director of analytics at Oracle. Mr. Sonderegger was the chief strategist at Endeca, which is now part of the Oracle family of companies.
I have followed Endeca since I first learned about the company in 1999, 22 years ago. Like many traditional search vendors, the underlying technical concepts of Endeca date from the salad days of key word search. Endeca’s innovation was to identify concepts either human-assigned or generated by software to group related information. The idea was that a user could run a query and then click on concepts to “discover” information not in the explicit key word match. Endeca dubbed the function “guided navigation” and applied the approach to eCommerce as well as search across the type of information found in a company. The core of the technology was the “Endeca MDEX” engine. At the time of Endeca’s market entrance, there were only a handful of companies competing for enterprise search and eCommerce. In the last two decades the field has narrowed in one sense with the big name companies acquired by larger firms and broadened in another. There are hundreds of vendors offering search, but the majority of these companies use different words to describe indexing and search.
One Endeca executive (Peter Bell) told me in 2005 that the company had been growing at 100 percent each year since 2002.” At the time of the Oracle buy out, I estimated that Endeca had hit about $150 million in revenues. Oracle paid about $1.1 billion for the company or what, if I am accurate, amounts to about 10 times annual revenues. Endeca was a relative bargain compared to Hewlett Packard’s purchase of Autonomy for $10 billion. Autonomy, founded a few years before Endeca, had reached about $850 million in annual revenues, so the multiple on revenues was greater than the Endeca deal. The point is that both of these search giants ranked one and two in enterprise search revenues. Both companies emphasized their technologies’ ability to handle structured and unstructured information. Both Autonomy and Endeca offered business intelligence solutions. In short, both companies had capabilities which some of the newcomers mentioned in the Text Radar article are now touting as fresh and innovative. One key point: It took 22 years for Endeca to hit $150 million and now Oracle has to generate more revenue from the aging Endeca technology. HP has the same challenge with Autonomy, of course. Revenue generation, in my opinion, has been time consuming and difficult. Of the hundreds of vendors past and present, only two have broken the $150 million in revenue barrier. Google and Microsoft would be quick to point out that their search systems are far larger, but these are special cases because it is difficult to unwrap search revenues from other revenue streams.
What does Mr. Sonderegger say in this Oracle Magazine interview. Let me highlight three points and urge you to read the full text of his remarks.
Easy Access
First, business users do not know how to write queries, so “guided navigation” services are needed. Mr. Sonderegger noted:
There has to be some easy way to explore, some way to search and navigate as easily as you do on an e-commerce site.
Most of the current vendors of analytics and findability systems seem to have made the leap from point-and-click to snazzy visualizations. The Endeca angle is that users want to discover and navigate. The companies referenced in the Text Radar story want to make the experience visual, almost video-game like.
IntelTrax Top Stories: August 31 to September 6
September 10, 2012
The IntelTrax advanced intelligence system blog provides summaries of articles pertinent to the world of data analytics and security. This week, we learned how the analytics market is continuing to grow, as well as some companies that offer excellent tools to help your company grow along with it.
“Cristobal Addition Strengthens Digital Reasoning” spotlights an important new addition to the board of the Tennessee based text analytics powerhouse, Digital Reasoning. Cristobal Conde has a rich history of working in the information technology field.
He states:
“I’ve been in information technology since the late ’70s when you had to build your own database manager. When companies like Sybase and Oracle developed commercial database managers – they made sense of structured data and allowed thousands of applications to be built on top…There is a pressing need to do something similar in unstructured data, and I believe Digital Reasoning is the company best positioned to do this.”
While the United States has a wealth of data analytics solutions to choose from, the Asian analytic market continues to gain in power and importance. According to “Asian Analytics Changing Fast” the big data analytics market in India is expected to double to $680 million by 2015.
Patrick Roland writes:
“This piggybacks on lots of other Aisa-centric analytic news. While many nations are flexing their muscles in big data, some American companies are catering to the industry, too. One prime example is the Chinese language support of Synthesys recently announced to aid the burgeoning data market in China. We expect more and more as places like the Philippines and Hong Kong begin making strides just behind power players like India and China.”
According to “Business Intelligence on the Rise” BI is one of the fastest growing industries and therefore smart businesses are utilizing this technology as a tool for growth.
The article explains:
“The big data opportunity is one of the biggest growth propellants for analytics. The vast amount of data that is available for analysis is exploding, however, it is housed in multiple silos of information with little or no cross-channel analysis of how the data correlates. For forward-thinking enterprises, big data can create value. Whereas BI traditionally performs structured analysis and provides a rear-view mirror into business performance, big data analytics provides a forward-looking view, enabling organizations to anticipate and execute on the opportunities of the future.”
We obviously are living in a world where BI and data analytics solutions are becoming an necessary part of business. Digital Reasoning offers a smart BI solution called Synthesis that delivers automated understanding for big data. The results are saved time and money.
Jasmine Ashton, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Search Analysis Reaches the Literary Canon
September 7, 2012
Search and data analytics have led to an interesting breakthrough in the classic literary cannon. Science Daily reports the findings of Matthew Jockers, an assistant professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in his use of text-mining to compare 18th and 19th century authors’ works with one another. The resulting article, “By Text-Mining the Classics, Professor Unearths New Literary Insights,” shares his findings. Jockers refers to the process as macroanalysis, which searches large amounts of text to systematically determine how books are connected to one another.
We learn:
“Jockers said the process of macroanalysis isn’t intended to be a computerized replacement for literary theory — rather, it’s a complementary method that, in the hands of theorists, can help them read and study classic authors’ works in new ways.
And he’s careful in his use of the word ‘influence,’ as well: While measuring and tracking true influence, either conscious or unconscious, isn’t really possible, Jockers said macroanalysis enables theorists to use measures of stylistic and thematic affinity as a clear indicator of an author’s influence.”
The findings open a whole new arena for literary theorists to explore classic literature. We find it exciting to see how the reaches of Big Data are affecting particular fields of thought and study. Digital methods and technology are advancing and this type of analyzing of large amounts of text is not as difficult as it may have once been.
Andrea Hayden, September 07, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
IntelTrax Top Stories August 24 to August 30
September 3, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog provided readers with some interesting stories regarding the state of technology and the big data trends.
“Automation Hot Trend in Business Intelligence” discusses the growing industry of business intelligence to help organizations manage their data. Automation has been an important part of many BI solutions that are currently on the market:
“One company that’s scouring the social web specifically for business-specific data is FirstRain, a startup with Penny Herscher at the helm. Her company extracts the hard-to-find nuggets of relevant Twitter data for sales and marketing professionals. The big perk with FirstRain is the automation–the heavy lifting. It adds context to the data it’s found and packages it up for business use so a sales professional can immediately understand their customers. Working with the broad range of companies seeking big data and analytics solutions, FirstRain has clients in the pharmaceutical industry, finance, insurance and beyond.”
Another post, “VMware Acquires New Data Solutions Technology” highlights the recent acquisition of a small tech start-up as a way to continue innovating and growing.
The CEO of Pattern Insight wrote in a recent blog post:
“Ever since we started Pattern Insight, our vision has been to change how people search, mine and analyze their vast amounts of IT and Engineering data. Log Insight, a log analytics product, is the culmination of our efforts aiming at management and real time operational analytics for IT data regardless of scale. Today, I am very pleased to announce that Log Insight, together with its technology and team, have been acquired by VMware. We are very excited for the opportunity to accelerate our vision and maximize the impact of our technology.”
“Data Analytics Is the New Tech Bubble” discusses some potential issues with those involved with big data analytics. The writer fears, that like the bursting of the tech bubble, Big Data can expect a similar reaction.
According to the article:
“We’re in the middle of a Big Data and Hadoop hype cycle, and it’s time for the Big Data bubble to burst….Yes, moving through a hype cycle enables a technology to cross the chasm from the early adopters to a broader audience. And, at the very least, it indicates a technology’s advancement beyond academic conversations and pilot projects. But the broader audience adopting the technology may just be following the herd, and missing some important cautionary points along the way.”
Sometimes it is important to cut out the middleman and invest in small companies that have more flexibility for innovation. Digital Reasoning understand the importance of automation and innovation and their flagship product Synthesys reflects that.
Jasmine Ashton, September 3, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
IntelTrax Top Stories August 17 to August 23
August 27, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some innovative articles regarding the state of analytics solutions and the various industries that they are permeating.
“Analytics Providers on Roll with Online Marketing” discusses how data analytics is slowly but surely breaking into the online marketing industry through partnerships that offer customers online marketing analytics.
The article highlights a recent partnership between Emory Digital and National Analytics:
“The platform includes a daily website audit, competitive position and gap analysis, website analysis, keyword analysis, link analysis, conversion analysis, benchmark tracking and ROI tracking, and project management. The software tracks Key Performance Indicators that go far beyond search engine rankings. It measures brand engagement, pages bringing traffic, page view per visit, new visits, time on site, bounce rate, goal conversions, ecommerce transactions and revenue and lead generation.”
Another industry that is starting to rely as heavily on data mining as rock mining is the field of geology. “Big Data Teams with Geologists to Mine the Earth” discusses how there is a new tool that speeds up the process of data mining and exploration for geologists.
The article details:
“GDD’s Field Data Integrator combines best-of-breed technologies for collecting, managing and analyzing data more rapidly. The end-to-end solution enables geologists to collect samples in shorter time frames, and then quickly analyze large volumes sample data for complex scenarios such as such as project timings, cash flows and profitability with greater sensitivity levels….GDD’s Field Data Integrator automatically synchronizes sample data from various field instruments, GPS, and cameras onto a ‘tough’ tablet using Bluetooth. Geologists enter notes directly onto the tablet using on-screen or wireless keyboards, enabling all data on samples to be collected automatically into a single source. The tablet then automatically synchronizes with a master database running Vectorwise whenever in mobile range, saving geologists time in manual data entry.”
The Financial industry is also being highly impacted by data analytics, according to “Cloud Makes Financial Analysis Easier.” The post discusses a new cloud based data visualization system called Adaptive Discovery. Adaptive Planning, the creator of the new product, claims that it has an intuitive visual interface that will appeal to business managers, allowing them to more easily access, analyze, and explore key financial and operational data.
The article states:
“Adaptive Discovery, the visual discovery application within the Adaptive Planning suite of performance management solutions, allows companies of all sizes to quickly and easily understand and take action upon their companywide data. Business users can easily compile, display and explore data from multiple systems and lines of business with highly visual, interactive dashboards and scorecards. The application presents data in ways that managers can easily grasp, so they are able to make better day-to-day decisions. Adaptive Discovery delivers an exciting new level of capability and interactivity that is far superior to both static data in spreadsheets and the limited reporting options available in existing enterprise applications.”
While Adaptive Discovery is one solution that improves data mining, there are also other affordable data analytics solutions on the market. Digital Reasoning has a long standing reputation of bringing data analytics to a variety of industries, including the financial world.
Jasmine Ashton, August 27, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
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