Protected: SharePoint Provides the Product, but ISVs Make the Money
December 7, 2011
Digital Reasoning Receives Funding from Silver Lake
December 6, 2011
Companies that combine big data expertise with analytics knowledge are a hot commodity these days as government and private firms are looking to invest in technology to make sense of the massive amounts of unstructured data being collected.
On this note, Big Data Analytics specialist Digital Reasoning announced in a December 6 news release “Digital Reasoning Raises Venture Financing for Automated Understanding of Big Data” that it has successfully raised Series B funding with help from In-Q-Tel, individual partners of Silver Lake, and other private investors. The company did not disclose the amount, but a GigaOM article uncovered it’s SEC filing which puts the number at $4.2 million.
In addition to achieving this feat, the company also welcomed industry veteran and Silver Lake Sumeru partner John Brennan to its board of directors.
Digital Reasoning uses its flagship product Synthesys to analyze unstructured and structured big data to reveal relationships between people, place and time. It takes text-based data and sifts through documents and connects the dots without company employees having to read them all. Digital Reasoning works with more than a dozen government agencies to uncover security threats and accelerate the time to actionable intelligence.
Brennan stated:
“Organizations in every market are looking for ways to exploit the information and intelligence embedded in unstructured data; Synthesys could be a transformational solution in the enterprise as organizations develop their big data strategies,” said John Brennan. “Digital Reasoning’s platform can go beyond its success in the government intelligence market to help enterprises quickly analyze big data to detect fraud, uncover market trends, gain better insight into customer behavior, and mitigate risk.”
The combined power of an investment of this magnitude and Brennan’s software and operating background will allow, the already successful, company to potentially expand beyond its current government intelligence work into new markets.
Jasmine Ashton, December76, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SAS Creates Customer-Centric Analytics Software
December 4, 2011
Business analytics and software firm SAS recently unveiled the Phillippine’s first customer intelligence software that can analyze data from online conversations and relationships in social networking sites.
The SAS Customer Intelligence, includes a range of applications that allow firms to better understand their customer base. These include: customer analytics, forecasting, and credit-scoring to choreographing multi-channel marketing strategies and gathering marketing data from social media.
NewsBytes Phillippines reported on the new software in the November 25 article “SAS Rolls Out First BI Software For Social Media in PH.”
the article states:
“SAS global senior product marketing manager Ken King said in a press briefing that the new software is a comprehensive tool that can monitor and analyze data from social media – a capability that ordinary statistics services such as Facebook analytics cannot provide.”
Customer decisioning is an important focus area for any business so I’m glad to see SAS’ investment in this area. This software will allow organizations to gain deeper customer insight, create and manage a customer-centric data repository, predict customer behavior, and give accurate customer profiles.
Jasmine Ashton, December 04, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, November 21 to November 25
November 28, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, the highs and lows of recent analytics news.
On the high side, was our story “Speech Analytics Market Approaches Billions” that chronicled the success of applying unstructured big data analytic techniques to recorded speech, such as in call centers.
On the low side, we found “Mobile BI Takes a Surprising Misstep” explores how the once bustling mobile BI market recently took a hit.
And somewhere in the middle, we found “In-Memory Databases Cause a Stir” attempted to draw the line between traditionalist and futurists of analytics.
It’s a wild ride every week in the world of big data analytics. Sure things go bust, underdogs appear from nowhere and divisions are drawn. Stay tuned to see where it all leads.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
November 28, 2011
Bloomberg Discovers Palantir: Huh?
November 23, 2011
News flash! Bloomberg Businessweek has realized that Palantir, which has garnered more than $90 million in funding,is indispensible to the US intelligence community. Er, okay. You will want to read this “real” news story yourself. Just point your monitored browser at “Palantir: The War on Terror’s Secret Weapon.” Palantir has been a well kept secret at least in Bloomberg’s news room. Palantir ended up in a nifty legal spat with i2 Group, not part of IBM. The settlement was sealed, which certainly catches the attention of the goslings in Harrod’s Creek, but not the “real” journalists in New York. The fact that Palantir is the PowerPoint superstar which has the attention of those attention deficit disorder presenters is not on the radar of the Bloombergians.
Here’s the passage which I enjoyed:
The origins of Palantir go back to PayPal, the online payments pioneer founded in 1998. A hit with consumers and businesses, PayPal also attracted criminals who used the service for money laundering and fraud. By 2000, PayPal looked like “it was just going to go out of business” because of the cost of keeping up with the bad guys, says Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder….PayPal’s computer scientists set to work building a software system that would treat each transaction as part of a pattern rather than just an entry in a database. They devised ways to get information about a person’s computer, the other people he did business with, and how all this fit into the history of transactions. These techniques let human analysts see networks of suspicious accounts and pick up on patterns missed by the computers. PayPal could start freezing dodgy payments before they were processed. “It saved hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Bob McGrew, a former PayPal engineer and the current director of engineering at Palantir.
Want more? Well, the story sprawls over six pages.
My view?
First, point your browser to www.inteltrax.com and read the stories about Palantir.
Second, what about the legal dust up? Well, run a Google query and get the scoop. The legal documents are quite interesting as well. The interesting information is available on WestlawNext and Lexis. The free Web content is, well, not industrial strength.
Third, what about Digital Reasoning, a company with groundbreaking entity based analytics? Check that out at www.digitalreasoning.com . For more amusement look at www.recordedfuture.com.
You can read interviews with founders of companies with technology that goes beyond Palantir at these two links:
We are not “real” journalists. On the other hand, you will get some insight into what’s happening with next generation analytics. No turkey on Thanksgiving at Beyond Search.
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2011
Freebie. Unlike Palantir’s solutions.
Inteltrax: Top Stories, November 14 to November 18
November 21, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, Some exciting nes among our favorite providers.
The most interesting tale came from, “Tibco and Digital Reasoning Give A Glimpse at Operational Thinking,” which looked at the minds of the CEOs of these exciting organizations.
In “IBM Ready to Take Analytics Seriously” we discovered some interesting news that shows the computing giant is pushing all its chips into the analytic pile.
However, our story “Qlik Tech’s Collaborative BI is Too Much of a Good Thing” shows that too many cooks can spoil one’s analytic soup.
Here’s just another quick sampling of the many ways big data analytics is changing. And we’re following the biggest names in big data everyday, noting the moves and blunders therein.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting http://www.inteltrax.com/
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
Inteltrax: Top Stories, October 31 to November 4
November 7, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, its impact on businesses and nations around the globe.
A good overview of this topic was our article, “Businesses Prepare for Analytic Bandwagon” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2674 which showed proof that businesses across all industries and sizes are latching onto the power of big data analytics to improve their bottom lines.
More specifically, we saw its impact on a tiny nation in the story, “New Zealand Stepping onto World BI Stage,” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2687 which showed how that country’s passion for big data with companies like Right Hemisphere and ComOps.
We issued a firm warning to any business trying to get something for nothing in “Freemium BI Software Not the Total Answer to Analytic Woes,” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2694 which warned that free BI tools are no match for the investment of proven analytic tools.
This is a wide swath of analytic focus, but each well worth the attention. Whether it puts a small country on the tech map, offers companies chances to get more competitive or also tempts budgets with worthless freebees, IntelTrax is watching the pulse of the industry to keep readers informed.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax
Watson Does Big Data Plus Game Shows
November 3, 2011
And why not? Watson is IBM’s magical solution to Lucene’s unexciting key word search functionality. Oh, Lucene is under the hood, but the Watson system is much, much more sophisticated. And Watson can do “big data.” We are not sure what that means, but it is a game show system, right?
A new software initiative has IBM cheerleading for Watson and analytics. Yahoo! News reports that “IBM Unveils New ‘Big Data’ Tools.” The new tools, aimed at the healthcare, marketing, and other industries, are built partially around components IBM acquired with its purchases of Netezza and Cognos. The healthcare analytics, though, were grown from supercomputer Watson’s legendary artificial intelligence. IBM’s Watson, of course, became famous for beating Jeopardy!’s all-time biggest (human) winner in February 2011.
Of the new applications, writer Barry Levine explains:
The new software tools are intended to make a difference in a business environment that is awash with data. IBM said 90 percent of the world’s data, including information generated by sensors, mobile devices, online transactions and social networks, has been created within the past two years. . . . [The software] allows users to analyze unstructured data from such sources as social networks, mobile devices and sensors, as well as structured data in databases.
Based on Hadoop, IBM InfoSphere BigInsights will be accessed via the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. A basic free version is available, but the company hopes businesses will subscribe to the priced-by-the-hour enterprise version.
An added twist is the availability of a location-aware analytics tool, IBM Cognos Mobile, that will be available for free to mobile devices. I think that might just turn out to be the most exciting part. Will IBM tackle another game show or just stick with demonstrations to future Harvard MBAs.
Cynthia Murrell November 3, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Predicting Stocks. Become a Billionaire.
November 2, 2011
Web search and the stock market? MIT’s Technology Review examines the correlation in “Web Search Queries Predict Stock Market Trading Volumes.”
We’ve known that online searches can reflect real-world events; for example, searches about the flu parallel the spread of the flu and colds. The connection between Yahoo! queries and the stock market, unearthed by Matthieu Cristelli at the Institute of Complex Systems in Rome and his associates, seems a bit less straight forward:
“They say the volume of search queries related to companies on the NASDAQ-100 are correlated with the volumes of trades in those same companies in the following days. That’s surprising because Cristelli and co say that most web users check each stock of interest just once per month. This implies that they are not expert traders. So the effect emerges from the collective but uncoordinated activity of many inexpert users–a kind of wisdom crowds. Just why this should be the case is a mystery.
In the case of the flu, sufferers can be expected to research their symptoms online. There’s no such straightforward connection between those inexpert users and trading trends. Writer KentuckyFC posits that search terms could reflect more immediate influences, such as news stories or advertising blitzes.
Cristelli submits that following these queries can be of use, particularly in predicting financial distress. Hmm, perhaps we could have used this a few years ago. We recall that Hakia made a splash with a similar assertion earlier this year. Watch for new members of the world’s richest people list from the search community.
Cynthia Murrell November 2, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Datafiniti: Is a Successful Data Search Engine Possible?
November 1, 2011
A Houston-based startup is looking to change the world of open source search and public data, a difficult yet honorable task.
Datafiniti is taking on the challenge, which proves to be especially troublesome for users who don’t know data is available and don’t know how to work the programs to get to the information they want and need. Datafiniti hopes to make the task as simple as a basic Google search for Web sites.
The web-based service requires SQL parameters to be entered into a search box. Once users get the information they need, they can use the API in their own applications or export it.
GigaOM’s article “Datafiniti Builds a Web scale Search Engine for Data,” tells us more about the service. We learned:
The service is pretty clearly targeted at developers wanting to build data-centric web applications and, as founder and CEO Shion Deysarkar explained to me, Datafiniti tries to differentiate itself with the aforementioned API. Users get just one API that offers up access to multiple data types, which contrasts with the traditional mash up experience of using a different API for each data source. As of a couple of weeks ago, Deysarkar told me Datafiniti consisted of about 15 million records, but it’s constantly growing, and his goal is to index ‘any and all structured data on the Web.’
Our opinion? This is a good idea. But can the project be sustained? The US government cut back on data.gov, and Google is ridding itself of their open source search next year. Perhaps a more user-friendly interface will help.
Andrea Hayden, November 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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