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
Study Finds Four Stages of Big Data and No Universal Solution
November 2, 2012
Get ready for another study on big data. This one is from IBM and the study was conducted in conjunction with University of Oxford. Forbes gives the report in “The Four Phases of Big Data.” This study surveyed 1,061 companies around the world. From this data, IBM identified four phases of big data adoption, which include educate, explore, engage and execute.
Twenty four percent of the 1,061 companies interviewed were in the educate phase, with another forty-seven percent having moved up to the explore phase. Just 6 percent of the respondents had made it the execute phase. Notably, this study concluded that big data leadership transitions from the realm of IT to business leaders as big data strategies are adopted over time.
The author shared the following overarching thoughts:
We’ve always had data. Social networks and mobile devices simply create more data. Today, we have the opportunity to store and analyze this data more effectively than in the past. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” solution for big data. The solution requirements vary based on criteria such as need for real-time analytics; need to support wide varieties of unstructured data and volume of data. As we can see from the IBM study, big data adoption is in its infancy.
No “one size fits all” solution for big data is dead-on right. We have seen great innovations from many companies. Recently, PolySpot has piqued our interest, but companies need to do the leg work necessary to research the best fit for their needs.
Megan Feil, November 2, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Data Analytics Steamroller
November 2, 2012
IT professionals may soon find themselves very, very busy, according to Datamation’s “Data Analytics: Advanced Roll-Out is Accelerating.” The article reports on a new survey from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, which found demand for advanced analytics tools in finance, marketing, and operations departments poised to rise dramatically over the next few years. With the adoption of more advanced tools should come an increased demand for serious IT chops. The article reports:
“IT pros in the BI/analytics world can thank our old friend unstructured data. Incorporating emails, text messages, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, Word docs and other unstructured information into a data warehouse already populated with rows and columns of production, sales and personnel information has been a wish list item for almost a decade.
“And it’s extremely difficult to do – spreadsheet jockeys who are wizards at nested formulas and linking Excel to DB2 or Oracle 8 aren’t ready to deal with the wide variety of data types that marketing, customer service and other departments need to examine.”
The shift even has some organizations, like Procter & Gamble for instance, breaking up their IT departments and dispersing their analytics experts among other departments. Writer Larry Marion observes that “IT pros will be pushed and pulled as the organizational disputes drag on.” They can take comfort, though, in their enhanced job security. Still an extremely valuable commodity.
Cynthia Murrell, November 02, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Gets More Predictive
October 30, 2012
I heard the cheerleading over the news broadcasts about the terrible storm. I urge you to read “Google Now: Behind the Predictive Future of Search.” But the “real” story from the “real” journalist is the subtitle: “How Google Learned to Un Fragment Itself and Create the Next Big Thing.” Faint praise. No. Bold assertions about the “un fragmented Google.”
The guts of the story pivot on Google’s new service Google Now. The idea is that “now” information is what defines the modern mobile user. I use my mobile as a phone and to check email. Therefore, I struggle with the “predictive future” thing.
The idea is that
… your phone is more “Personal Assistant” than “Bar bet settler.” The difference is that the former actually understands what you need while the latter is a blunt search instrument.
Universal appeal is assumed. The secret ingredient for the predictive search magic is Android 4.2.
Here’s the write up’s digest of the “big thing”:
It’s essentially an app that combines two important functions: voice search and “cards” that bubble up relevant information on a contextual basis. Actually, Google Now technically only refers to the ambient information part of the equation, a branding kerfuffle that distinguishes it from Apple’s Siri product yet still causes confusion. Those cards might contain local restaurants, the traffic on your commute home, or when your flight is about to take off. They appear automatically as Google tries to guess the information you’ll need at any given moment. While it seems like a relatively simple service, it’s only really possible because of the massive amount of computational power Google can leverage alongside the massive amount of data Google knows about you thanks to your searches.
The predictive search functionality has been part of Google Web search since August 2012. The key point is:
These new cards are actually similar to a feature that Google added to its web search results this past August, both in content and in style. That’s probably not an accident — if you assume Google has already won the battle for search, the next battle is giving you information before you even search for it. When it comes to deciding which data to give you, Barra tells us that Google has “a pipeline […], possibly in the hundreds of cards” from its many engineering teams. Rather than flood users with all of those new cards, Google is taking a slow and steady approach to adding those new features — if only because right now it can only add those cards with a software update.
The numerical recipes behind the Now service include neural networks (what I call smart software) and knowledge graphs (entity relationships). Both of these methods have been in development and use for years. Google itself owns a chunk of a company which has quite sophisticated predictive technology. There is more to come from Google, including hot visualizations and improved voice interaction with mobile devices.
If you want to see a write up that puts the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to shame, check out this story. Like the cheerleaders, there will be changes in the line up with each update cycle. For now, the magic is in the eye of the True Believer.
I just make voice calls and check email.
Stephen E Arnold, October 31, 2012
The Fragmentation of Content Analytics
October 29, 2012
I am in the midst of finalizing a series of Search Wizards Speak interviews with founders or chief technology officers of some interesting analytics vendors. Add to this work the briefings I have attended in the last two weeks. Toss in a conference which presented a fruit bowl of advanced technologies which read, understand, parse, count, track, analyze, and predict who will do what next.
Wow.
From a distance, the analytics vendors look the same. Up close, each is individual and often not identical. Pick up the wrong shard and a cut finger or worse may result.
A happy quack to www.thegreenlivingexpert.com
Who would have thought that virtually every company engaged in indexing would morph into next-generation, Euler crazed, and Gauss loving number crunchers. If the names Euler and Gauss do not resonate with you, you are in for tough sledding in 2013. Math speak is the name of the game.
The are three very good reasons for repackaging Vivisimo as a big data and analytics player. I choose Vivisimo because I have used it as an example of IBM’s public relations mastery. The company developed a deduplication feature which was and is, I assume, pretty darned good. Then Vivisimo became a federated search system, nosing into territory staked out by Deep Web Technologies. Finally, when IBM bought Vivisimo for about $20 million, the reason was big data and similarly bright, sparkling marketing lingo. I wanted to mention Hewlett Packard’s recent touting of Autonomy as an analytics vendor or Oracle’s push to make Endeca a business analytics giant. But IBM gets the nod. Heck, it is a $100 billion a year outfit. It can define an acquisition any way it wishes. I am okay with that.
Information Delivery Leaders Like PolySpot Light Way for Big Data Software Development
October 29, 2012
The influx of big data in a variety of industries has created a myriad of effects ranging from legal and privacy to business and money. A recent Inc article, “Big Data, Big Money: IT Industry to Increase Spending” discusses the latter. A recent study by research firm Gartner is highlighted in the article. The report said spending will reach $28 billion in 2012 and $34 billion in 2013.
To add to the significance, by 2016, big data technology will account for $232 billion of worldwide IT spending. If it is not already a standardized requirement in information management practices, it is on its way to becoming just that.
We more from the article about this high-growth sector:
While most current spending goes toward adapting traditional software to big data technology, 45% of future spending each year will go to social network analysis and content analytics, the study noted. Gartner also projected that development in “big data functionality” (which can be defined as, essentially, turning big data into something functional) will drive $4.3 billion in software sales in 2012.
An increase in software sales is, of course, a welcome development in the larger scale economy, but it is also good news for improvement in software developments. Leaders in information delivery such as PolySpot are lighting the way for many more to follow.
Megan Feil, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Salesforce Expands Marketing Cloud with Social Analytics
October 29, 2012
Social analytics vendors are in the spotlight this week thanks to a big expansion from Salesforce.com. The enterprise cloud computing company is leading the shift to the social enterprise with its Marketing Cloud ecosystem expansion, bringing in twenty social analytics vendors to enable more insights from a single dashboard and help companies make better, faster business decisions. We learn in “Salesforce.com’s Marketing Cloud Adds 20 Social Analytics Vendors” on ZDNet that OEM text analytics company Bitext was included in the signing with the “world’s only integrated social media marketing platform.”
We learn about the platform in the article:
“Essentially, it promises to turn insights into action and connections into customers for life because of the way that brands can engage them using this platform.
With the addition of the services from these social analytics firms, Salesforce said that customers should be able to ‘create a dashboard that delivers a single social snapshot of their company using the analytics that are most valuable to their specific business.’ This includes support for content in 17 languages.”
Bitext will be assist in that anticipated language support, providing multilingual sentiment analysis, which will help companies connect with customers across the world more quickly and efficiently than ever before. The company’s multilingual sentiment analysis solution, which will be integrated into the Marketing Cloud, will help businesses expand globally via social networking.
Andrea Hayden, October 29, 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
Is HP Autonomy Pursuing the Analytics Leaders?
October 27, 2012
I don’t want to name the leaders in business analytics. The reason is that I am not exactly sure what “analytics” means. I learned this week that IBM Vivisimo is in the race. Add to this outfits like Oracle, SAP, and almost every other blue-chip technology vendor and I have a tough time figuring out what company does what. You, gentle reader, may be more informed on this matter than I. No problem. I am an old goose in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I find the relabeling of companies not known for their math skills when it comes to meeting sales targets now in the Premier Math League amusing.
I do want to note the write up “Shifting Gears, HP Revs Up Analytics Services,” which appeared in that estimable “real” publication Information Management. The key point of the story for me was not the reference to HP as “struggling.” I hopped right over the suggestion that HP had to “reinvent its enterprise direction.” Right. The big item was the reference to HP’s embrace of Vertica and Autonomy. No odd couple this. Both firms embrace broad swaths of data and information management.
One passage which caught my attention. The source I believe is Danila Meirlaen, HP outsourcing division vice president. Herewith the snippet:
[HP’s] changes are reflected in this new service, with heightened analytics capabilities based on Autonomy’s IDOL platform and expertise, Meirlaen says. However, she says that layoffs have not impacted the analytics outsourcing team that has been tapped to take on this new service venture. In addition, many Business Analytics Service members have “industry specific” specialties in areas like finance, risk management and marketing.
I find the notion of outsourcing interesting. I am okay with the Autonomy platform. I think, however, there may be some effort required to apply Autonomy’s analytics with Vertica’s capabilities. The “vertical” angle reminds me of content processing vendors who deploy solutions which snap in to financial services, health care, and other juicy industry segments.
Here’s the prediction from an azure chip consultant, Mukesh Dialani, IDC:
A stronger focus on business analytics backed by an industry specific approach will reap benefits to their overall outsourcing business and BPO business in particular.
Hundreds of companies big and small are likely to work overtime to prevent HP from making a free for all even more crazy.
Stephen E Arnold, October 27, 2012
Twitter User Analytics Not Surprising
October 26, 2012
Some interesting Twitter demographics were revealed in the article “Typical Twitter User is a Young Woman with an iPhone and 208 Followers” on Gigaom recently. The article covers a study, “An Exhaustive Study of Twitter Users Around the World,” completed by analytics firm Beevolve, offering information about who is using Twitter and why. The findings tell us that our stereotypes about Twitter users are most likely true: most Twitter users are women, iPhone users, young, and tweeting about family and fashion. And of course, their background is probably purple.
We also learn:
“The most useful part of the study, however, is that it provides a good view of how ordinary people use Twitter. For instance, it reveals that 25 percent of Twitter users have never tweeted, the average number of followers is 208 and that 81 percent of users have fewer than 50 followers.”
Very interesting stuff, but this system is a key indicator of exactly what? We wonder if there is a disproportionate number of users in New York and San Francisco too; location demographics would be informative. Looks like businesses on Twitter just need to learn how to appeal to the all the other twenty-something purple-loving iPhone users like me.
Andrea Hayden, October 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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