Full Service Providers Successfully Navigate and Mine the Digital Universe Resources
December 26, 2012
The various ways to utilize Big Data without suffering unnecessary storage headaches has made headlines over the past few years. Some software applications evolved early to create a cure. Steve Todd’s article “Information Playground: Technologies for the Emerging Digital Universe” rehashes the facts about M2M usage increases and the importance of processing that incoming data.
The digital universe is not emerging, as it reared its head a decade ago. Instead it is technology that is emerging, as new developers experiment with ways to manipulate and benefit from the massive amounts of incoming data:
“More and more streaming data will be ingested into in-memory, distributed data grids. The key is the in-memory, horizontal scale provided by these types of technologies. Business logic accepts streaming machine input from sensors and immediately stores them in either key-value (Gemfire) or SQL (SQLFire) format. More and more streaming machine data will be process in real-time by a technology known as CEP, Complex Event Processing. This is a method of tracking and analyzing (processing) streams of information (data) about things that happen (events), and deriving a conclusion from them.”
Thought provoking, but established developers considered these possibilities a decade ago and made provisions to navigate and mine the resources of the digital universe. We think preparing the enterprise for the continuing deluge of information will benefit from working with a full service firm such as Intrafind, whose consulting services can guide organizations through the strategy that will make the most of their data investments.
Jennifer Shockley, December 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary November 16 to November 22
November 26, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some excellent pieces regarding the state of big data and analytics technologies.
“Diversity is the New Key for Analytic Success” looks at how Burberry is using analytics technology to analyze customer buying behavior.
The article states:
“SAP is pushing further in this vein and has this week announced its SAP Customer 360 transactional system which the firm says is being used by fashion retailer Burberry to analyse customer buying behaviour and provide on the floor sales staff with access to big data analytics on mobile devices. This “immediate information” is then (in theory) available to help these same staff personalise fashion advice to customers.
Do we really want this amount of technology in our lives?
SAP’s other Co-CEO Bill McDermott has predicted that by 2030 there will be an additional two billion consumers on the planet by 2030 and … “They want to purchase in the digital world,” he said.”
Another interesting story, “Big Data Moves Continue” announced some impressive news in the big data community.
The article states:
“Cray announced it was awarded a contract to deliver a uRiKA graph-analytics appliance to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Analysts at ORNL will use the uRiKA system as they conduct research in healthcare fraud and analytics for a leading healthcare payer. The uRiKA system is a Big Data appliance for graph analytics that enables discovery of unknown relationships in Big Data. It is a highly scalable, real-time platform for ad hoc queries, pattern-based searches, inferencing and deduction.
“Identifying healthcare fraud and abuse is challenging due to the volume of data, the various types of data, as well as the velocity at which new data is created. YarcData’s uRiKA appliance is uniquely suited to take on these challenges, and we are excited to see the results that will come from the strategic analysis of some very large and complex data sets,” said Jeff Nichols, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.”
“Big Data Expert Overlooks the Obvious” shares some interesting thoughts on the future of big data. However, it leaves out some pretty important things.
The article states:
“The goal of all the discussion around big data and data analysis is, as I’ve argued, not to make the wrong decision faster, but to develop the best decision at the right time and deliver the information to the people that most need the information. In an Information Week column Wednesday, Tony Byrne argued small data beat big data in the presidential election.
Call it business intelligence, data analysis or predictive analytics, IT’s role here is to provide a foundation for your company to make the right decisions. Those decisions might be what to charge passengers for seats on a flight, how much to charge to for a season ticket or how many widgets to create to strike the right balance among manufacturing costs, inventory and availability. These decisions are fundamental to business success.”
When it comes to finding big data intelligence solutions that work for your organization, it is important that businesses find a trusted provider. Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys helps streamline expenses for intelligence, healthcare and finance clients.
Jasmine Ashton, November 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Rich Usable Search Solutions Beat the Wisdom of the Crowd by Integrating it
November 19, 2012
The CMS Wire’s article “Should I Auto-tag or Crowdsource my Metadata?” reminds us that humanity could quite easily be replaced by machines… in a good sci-fi movie. Those that stick to a more realistic view know that though we depend on machines for assistance, humans are still on top of the food chain. However, the enterprise eats a little differently.
Cooperation between man and machine goes a long way in establishing enterprise operational efficiency but conflicts can arise when trying to find efficient software to ease the data transition:
“It does not take a genius to figure out who won based on “who” can process a text prompt faster with a high rate of accuracy, provided human engineers are close behind to tailor parameters for improved accuracy. There is no guarantee that any institutional knowledge or necessarily any subject matter expertise will “automagically” show up in your results for tags. Let us return to reality, clear out any smoke screen of unrealistic expectations and remember what is the source of these tags and what does the source know.”
The human perspective is an important part of the process; however the wisdom of the crowds is rarely an effective tool for the enterprise. A system such as Intrafind that provides tagging seamlessly into business processes makes for a richer, more usable search solution. Reliable software solutions like this will surpass the wisdom of the crowd by integrating machine processes into a human defined structure.
Jennifer Shockley, November 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Generates ROI from All Forms of Data
November 19, 2012
Consulting company Deloitte released a new installment of Tech Trends called “Big Data Goes To Work.” It’s perfect timing for businesses that are understanding the complexity of big data – in positive and negative ways. Senior Vice President and CIO of Land O’Lakes Barry Libenson shares his company’s experiences in reigning in big data for ROI.
Unstructured and structured traditional data both carry weight when it comes to business intelligence. One group of data without the other does not inform business as comprehensively. Land O’Lakes has come to terms that both are imperative.
We learned more about the motivation for the big data push:
Demands for better information and more insights come from the business: finance wants profitability reports; the dairy business asks for improved forecasts; the seed division needs better information for the salesforce. You get the picture. We’re even analyzing satellite imaging data about individual farms and fields, and combining it with geological data to help farmers make seed choices that can improve their yield.
Land O’ Lakes may not know when they will need satellite imaging data about specific farms, but with the right business intelligence software and analysis by data scientists that data will amount to more than could be projected. Companies should look to information delivery experts like PolySpot for the greatest ROI.
Megan Feil, November 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
IntelTrax Summary: October 26 to November 1
November 5, 2012
The IntelTrax information intelligence blog posted some excellent articles this week discussing the importance of investing in data analysis technology to help improve the efficiency of workplaces.
“Big Data a Big Part of IT Spending” looks at some projections regarding the rate of IT spending growth, most of which went towards social media campaign spending. However, the spending is continuing to branch out as more and more industries are beginning to utilize the technology.
The article states:
“Big data this year will account for US$28 billion of IT spending worldwide, which will increase to US$34 billion in 2013, according to Gartner.
In a report released Wednesday, the market research firm said much of 2012 expenditure will be in adapting traditional tools to address issues related to the big data phenomenon such as machine data, social data, and the large variety and velocity of data. In contrast, only US$4.3 billion will be focused on new big data functionalities.”
As big data analytics becomes more mainstream, we are seeing more interesting ways that it is being utilized. “Big Data Justice League” examines the use of big data analytics to predict the criminal behavior of maritime pirates.
The article states:
“There are almost too many sources of unstructured data to grapple with: interviews with pirates in custody, news stories about piracy incidents, data from mobile phones found during investigations, e-mail traffic, and social media posts from the pirates themselves. And here’s where the story gets really interesting, in my opinion. Most of this data comes from disparate sources that can vex the best investigations. It’s not simply a matter of easily formatted spreadsheets with clean rows and columns. At warp speed, data comes in from the Web, mobile devices, PDF files and other documents — a potential treasure trove of hidden insights.”
Some companies that a new to the big data game take a little bit of time to see the return on their investment. “Data Scientists More Important Than Most Think” gives four major detractors to analytics success:
“1. 35% of the time, it is the missing analytics skills – For analysts – how well are they able to bridge the gap to business, to understand the real question behind the ask before they jump into the data pull? For PM’s and marketing managers – how well do they understand the recipe behind making decisions based on data (BADIR framework), how well familiar they are with the fundamental analytics technique?
2. 10% of the time, it is the missing decision making process – How does budget get allocated? What is the process of laying out product roadmap?
3. 25% of the time, it is the organization’s data maturity – how easy is to get to data, how many version of the truth exist, does data exist in its rawest form for everybody to aggregate as they please?
4. 30% of the time, it the management and leadership – how is the management making decision, how are they establishing roles and responsibility, how are they holding people accountable?”
Regardless of your industry or expertise in the data analysis field, Digital Reasoning can be of great help. It offers one of the best analytics platforms on the market and can get your house in order by using automated understanding for big data.
Jasmine Ashton, November 5, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: October 19 to October 25
October 29, 2012
This week, the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some interesting stories related to big data’s influence over modern enterprises and higher education.
The article “Text Mining Brings Out the Value on Big Data” explains how companies are turning data volumes into increased profits. Many companies are choosing to automate the process through data analytics and text mining software.
The article states:
“Many companies haven’t begun to benefit from valuable enterprise text data,” said Fiona McNeill, Global Product Marketing Manager for SAS Text Analytics. “Most know that information in-house and in social media must be analyzed to bring value. SAS Text Analytics are being used for patient safety in healthcare, digital content performance in the media industry, early-warning systems and citizen intelligence in government and more. Nobody delivers the depth and breadth of technology for analyzing structured and unstructured data that SAS does.”
“Higher Ed for Big Data” reports on new programs meant to reinvigorate the tech work force and bring young talent to the industry.
According to the write-up:
“Colleges and universities are moving swiftly to create advanced degree programs to help meet what’s expected to be rapidly rising demand among employers for specialists who can manage and analyze big data.
The schools are likely aware of a McKinsey report warning of a mega-shortage of analytical experts that could leave as many as 190,000 positions unfilled by 2018. They’re also responding to appeals from big employers like IBM and SAS Institute that have been lobbying college administrators to set up such programs.
Schools have offered analytics training for years, but the emerging advanced degree programs add instruction in the use of analytic and business intelligence tools to produce useful information from petabytes of data collected from social media sites, sensors, transaction records, mobile applications and other sources.”
PepsiCo is another large company that has recently seen the value of data analytics. “PepsiCo Acquires a Taste for Data Analytics” shares an interview with PepsiCo‘s Global Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Information Solutions Caroline Watteeuw.
Watteeuw explains one of the company’s new products:
“We are betting on what we call SMAC. It is Social, Mobile, Advanced and Immersive Analytics, Cloud. There are a couple of things that are not relevant for PepsiCo but interesting. I call them comeback kids. If you go back 15 years when Xerox was at its peak, it was all about very precise ink-jet printers. Right now, people are trying to use ink-jet printer technology and refocus it on creating organs (researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, for instance, are using modified ink-jet technology to build tissue and organ prototypes). It is absolutely phenomenal. Then there are three dimensional maps. You have 3D TV, gaming and printing. 3D maps will allow you to navigate through different layers of geography to do oil and gas exploration in a very different way.”
For those who are interested in getting the most of their big data, there are a variety of companies out there offering cutting edge solutions. We recommend Digital Reasoning for their long standing reputation as a leader in big data analytics that pushes the envelope.
Jasmine Ashton, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: October 12 to October 18
October 22, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog posted some informative stories regarding the state of big data analytics technology and its impact on marketers and retailers.
“Big Data Particularly Useful for Marketers” examines businesses can mine data that they are already collecting in order to increase revenue. The pressure to create a marketing strategy that is both customer and market driven is intense, and it has caused many marketers to turn to analytics solutions for aid:
“Marketing analytics used in conjunction with big data will help many organizations properly evaluate their marketing performance, gain insight into their clients’ purchasing habits, market trends and needs and make evidence-based marketing decisions. As one example, look at how politicians are using big data to identify their target audience and reach out to the so-called “silent majority.”
“Using Big Data Analytics to Predict Consumer Behavior” is another article that discusses the impact that big data analytics has on marketers. It examines changes in consumer behavior. Now, instead of marketers running the show, it is the customers who are leading market trends.
The article predicts:
“In the not-too-distant future, you will be able, for example, to change your contact information with many vendors at once, rather than many times, over and over, at many different websites. You will declare your own policies, preferences and terms of engagement—and do it in ways that can be automated both for you and the companies you engage. You will no longer have to “accept” agreements that aren’t worth reading because, as we all know, they cover the other party’s butt but expose yours.
In addition to your personal tool kit, you’ll have software that can knit together your apps with the services offered by companies, saving work for you and creating business for them—all in real time.”
Many smaller companies that are new to the analytics scene are choosing to invest in Google Analytics over some other solutions. “Google Analytics for Dummies” shares an article that provides a step-by-step look at how to use Google Analytics to determine the success of your sight.
However, the author explains:
“Google analytics are meaningless if you can not take the information it gathers and make necessary changes on your web site. Not everyone realizes this, but there are other companies out there that offer even more comprehensive analytics services than Google. Digital Reasoning has spent the past decade creating automated understanding for big data. Its flagship product Synthesys addresses big data challenges in the enterprise market – including Financial Services, Healthcare, Insurance Fraud, Electronic Discovery, and Enterprise Risk.”
Digital Reasoning is a company that has been working in the data analysis and management field to create a solution that takes the pressure off employees and automates the process. Synthesys is used by marketers worldwide to understand market trends and gain valuable insights into customer behavior.
Jasmine Ashton, October 22, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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
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