List of Business Intelligence Vendors
November 3, 2014
I came across a write up called “Yellowfin a Top Performing Dashboard and Ad-Hoc Reporting BI Solution across Many Categories in BARC’s The BI Survey 14.” What I found useful about the article was the list of business intelligence vendors. I am familiar with the search companies that say there are in the business intelligence game. I am skeptical about this type of pivoting because these outfits are rarely in the automated collection business.
Here’s the list of companies in case you are tracking this market sector:
- Arcplan
- Bissantz
- BOARD
- Corporate Planning
- Cubeware
- Cyberscience
- Dimensional Insight
- Dundas
- Entrinsik
- Evidanza
- IBM Cognos BI
- Information Builders
- Microsoft Excel, Power products, and SSAS (!)
- MicroStrategy
- Oracle BI Foundation Suite
- Pentaho
- Phocas
- Pyramid Analytics
- Qlik
- SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
- Tableau
- TARGIT
- Tibco
- Yellowfin.
No enterprise search vendors on this list. Is this more than a PR problem? Is it a credibility problem for search vendors who can flip from market to market without so much as a how de doo?
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2014
Google: Is Now a Good Time to Be Evil?
November 3, 2014
I got a kick out of “Larry Page: It’s Time to Change Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mission Statement.” I recall the time in 1999 when Mr. Page and I argued about truncation. He said in front of a Search Engine Conference audience in Boston, “Google will NEVER implement truncation.” Well, that notion did not last very long at all.
The Google “evil” tag has persisted for more than a decade. I think that a fellow named Paul Buchheit, who in Google lore, invented Gmail in his Google allocated free time. (That’s a myth for perhaps another Beyond Search post.)
I am fairly confident that “Don’t be evil” quickly became a bit of overused insider humor. “Evil” is a fuzzy concept and almost anyone who has had a brush with the GOOG knows that it is Google’s way or the highway. If the Google steamroller mashes a person or thing, then the mashee becomes part of the information highway in a sprightly manner. (There is a top one percent of the top one percent who actually work at Google in some professional capacity. Think of a modern version of the medieval Great Chain of Being.)
Now to the article. The write up reports:
Google’s chief executive Larry Page has admitted that the company has outgrown its “don’t be evil” and “make the world a better place” mission statement, but that what comes next is unknown.
In the manner of real journalists, the article adds:
Page insists that the company is still focused on the altruistic principles that it was founded on in 1998, when he and co-founder Sergey Brin were aiming big with “societal goals” to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
I love the last line of the article:
Page’s attitude is “well, somebody’s got to do it” and Google’s resources allow it to do more than most.
Oy! Such a burden. Anyone remember George Carlin’s quip about the supreme being:
If God is all powerful, can He make a stone so big that He Himself can’t lift it?
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2014
Stephen E Arnold
Overreliance on Search Engines?
November 3, 2014
The Salon.com article titled Google Makes Us All Dumber: The Neuroscience of Search Engines probes the ever-increasing reliance on search engines and finds that the way we use them is problematic. This is due to the way our brains respond to this simplified question and answer process. The article stipulates that the harder we work for knowledge, the more likely we are to store it. When it is as simple as typing in a search query and reading a simple answer, we will forget the answer as easily as we found it. The article explains,
“It’s not that the Internet is making us stupid or incurious. Only we can do that. It’s that we will only realize the potential of technology and humans working together when each is focused on its strengths — and that means we need to consciously cultivate effortful curiosity. Smart machines are taking over more and more of the tasks assumed to be the preserve of humans. But no machine, however sophisticated, can yet be said to be curious.”
We are all guilty of using Google as a shortcut to end a fight over a fact or using IMDB to quickly be reminded of that actor what’s-her-name in that movie whatdya-callit. But the article points out that as we lean more on search engines in this fashion it will only shorten our recalls and diminish our ability to ask interesting questions.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 03, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Context Relevant Security Software Sought After By Banks
November 3, 2014
The article on Owler titled Context Relevant CEO Is Too Busy For Ballmer— He’s Protecting The Global Financial Market delves into the behind-the-scenes of big data company CEO Stephen Purpora. His startup, Context Relevant, a machine learning and predictive analytics company, is inking big deals with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. The article explains,
“Context Relevant makes predictive analytics software that is currently being used by banks to predict how portfolios will be affected by changes. The technology also helps banks root out what Purpura calls “bad actors,” or those who would attack or steal from the financial system. “Banks sometimes have to find bad actors quickly because the bad actors threaten all of us,” he said. The system learns normal behavior so it can sense and isolate bad behavior when it occurs.”
According to the article, Purpora had no intention of getting into the bank security business only three years into the company’s life. But, when “a situation” arose with a bank and Context Relevant was called in for emergency help finding a bad actor. When the company’s software worked, and fast, other banks started lining up to work with Purpora. So far, the company has raised $42 million.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 03, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Predictive Analytics: An Older Survey with Implications for 2015
November 2, 2014
In my files I had a copy of the 2009 Predictive Analytics World survey about, not surprisingly, predictive analytics. When I first reviewed the data in the report, I noted that “information retrieval” or “search” were not to be found. Before the bandwagon began to roll for predictive analytics, search technology was not in the game if I interpret the survey data correctly.
The factoid I marked was revealed in this table:
The planned use of predictive analytics was for fraud detection.It appears that 64 percent of the sample planned to adopt predictive analytics for criminal or terrorist detection. The method requires filtering various types of public information including text.
Are vendors of enterprise search and content processing systems leaders in this sector in 2014? Based on my research, content processing vendors provide the equivalent of add-in utilities to the popular systems. The hypothesis I have formulated is that traditional information retrieval companies find themselves relegated to a supporting role.
Looking forward to 2015, I see growing dominance by leaders in the cyber OSINT market. Irrelevancy awaits the traditional search vendor unable to identify and then deliver high value solutions to a high demand, high growth market sector.
Has IDC or Dave Schubmehl tracked this sector? I don’t think so. As I produce more information about this market, I anticipate some me-too activity, however.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2014
Google: People, Just Do It Our Way
November 1, 2014
Not content to redefine relevance, Google wants Silicon Valley and by extension anyone who wants to be successful to do what Google says. Note. I am not saying “what Google does.” The point is “what Google says.” There is a difference.
In a massive public relations, marketing, brand boosting effort, Google taps the Financial Times to carry its message. You can find the 2,800 word article in the Financial Times at http://on.ft.com/10ceArV. You may have to register or pay for access once the hoo hah about “FT Interview with Google Co-Founder and CEO Larry Page” quiets.
I urge you to read the original write up. I want to highlight three comments or passages that shed light on information retrieval, which is my area of interest. Spoiler: Not good news for those who want relevant results.
Larry Page, not content with plain search, wants to do something bigger:
to use the money that is spouting from its search advertising business to stake out positions in boom industries of the future, from biotech to robotics.
Mr. Page wants the real movers and shakers to get in gear:
Page estimates that only about 50 investors are chasing the real breakthrough technologies that have the potential to make a material difference to the lives of most people on earth. If there is something holding these big ideas back, it is not a shortage of money or even the barrier of insurmountable technical hurdles. When breakthroughs of the type he has in mind are pursued, it is “not really being driven by any fundamental technical advance. It’s just being driven by people working on it and being ambitious,” he says. Not enough institutions – particularly governments – are thinking expansively enough about these issues: “We’re probably underinvested as a world in that.”
Technology, of course, is the one true way, but some people have not embraced Google’s view of what’s logical:
“I think people see the disruption but they don’t really see the positive,” says Page. “They don’t see it as a life-changing kind of thing. I think the problem has been people don’t feel they are participating in it.”
Like the recent Eric Schmidt opus How Google Works, Google executives want to be more than rich. Google wants to be the giver of wisdom. I am okay with that, but how many of those put out of work by technology will agree?
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2014
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