How much data is too much? To begin considering an answer to this question, it’s important to realize it isn’t even the correct question. Instead, we should be asking what data should be used. Read More
The New York Times, in a March 22 article, focused on the challenges for Kodak, the onetime king of photography, as it attempts to redefine itself in a fast-changing business environment.
Kodak’s researchers actually invented digital photography in the ’90s, but the company remained focused on the revenue generated from traditional photography. Even before cameras became an essential part of the smartphone, sales for traditional film were plummeting.
“For Kodak, the advent of digital photography was ruinous. Today it has $2 billion in annual sales, compared with $19 billion in 1990 when consumer film was king. It now has 8,000 employees worldwide; it had 145,000 at its peak,” the Times article points out.
The point here is to not single out Kodak for any past decisions or performance. The list of large 20th Century companies that could not adapt to a changing technological (or consumer) landscape is endless. Read More
Much has been written about big data and how it is revolutionizing business and business intelligence. Today, we’re going to give some recognition to a less hyped sibling – small data.
Allen Bonde, VP of Product Marketing and Innovation at Actuate, has been written about small data in many places, including the Small Data Group blog. His definition of small data:
“Small data connects people with timely, meaningful insights (derived from big data and/or “local” sources), organized and packaged – often visually – to be accessible, understandable, and actionable for everyday tasks.”
Put even more simply, big data is about machines; small data is about people. Read More
If anyone still has any doubts that the movement toward data-driven business is accelerating, take a look at the nation’s campuses.
Bachelor’s degrees in statistics have jumped 95% since 2010, according to Fortune magazine, citing new data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and reported by the American Statistical Association (ASA).
Computer science remains a leading STEM major (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), with a 92% increase in degrees over the same period. Programming and software development are not far behind. Read More
If you are following the business intelligence space, it seems that there are new surveys every week confirming the growing use of BI in a competitive landscape.
Whether the research comes from academia, research analysts, consultants, large enterprise solutions providers or smaller BI vendors, it all points in the same direction: We live in a fast-paced, data-driven world. Those organizations who don’t keep up will be left behind.
A global report from the consulting company Capgemini is one of the latest in a massive deluge of studies, which reflect this acceleration of data growth and the business world’s attempts to keep pace with it. Their survey found that 64 percent of enterprises in North and South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific believe that big data is changing traditional business boundaries. It also found:
User adoption of cloud business intelligence tools has jumped over the past three years and will continue to grow, but it’s clear that many organizations are still slow to take the leap because of security concerns even if they’re unfounded, according to multiple observers.
SearchBusinessAnalytics recently explored that hesitation in an interview with Howard Dresner, founder, president and chief research officer at consultancy Dresner Advisory Services. His company has conducted an annual Wisdom of Crowds Cloud Business Intelligence Market Study since 2012.
The article points out the Dresner survey found nearly two-third of the vendors consider cloud BI “critically important” to their businesses. However, more than half of them have no plans for cloud deployments. Read More
A recent article Small Business Trends article offers “4 Reasons Data Driven Small Businesses Are Embracing Big Data.”
The article includes this telling quote: “Previously the exclusive domain of statisticians, large corporations and information technology departments, the emerging availability of data and analytics – call it a new democratization – gives small businesses and consumers greater access to cost-effective, sophisticated, data-powered tools and analytical systems.”
A Tuesday press release from Izenda and Pareto Business Group, a Windsor, Ontario-based company, confirmed that statement. Pareto chose Izenda as a technology partner “because it provides enterprise class capabilities and superior usability, a value that allows for white-labeling to the small and mid-sized market.” (Read the full press release on PRWeb.) Read More
Did you BYOD to work today? BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, has been evolving as a business practice since at least 2009 in many industries. The idea of employees using their own laptops, tablets or cellphones for work has many supporters and many skeptics, especially those worried about security.
Regardless of viewpoint, BYOD is here to stay. A November 2014 study from Tech Pro Research found 74 percent of responding companies permit or plan to permit BYOD. Their study also looked into the impact wearables and the IoT (Internet of Things) are having on BYOD policies. Read More
In July 2011, Gartner released a report “The Consumerization of BI Drives Greater Adoption.” Its main focus, the thinking at that time, was that business-intelligence tools were too difficult to use, slow to respond or didn’t deliver relevant content. A key sentence from Gartner’s press release: “BI users want to be able to just pick up and use the technology — they don’t want to have to read the manual.”
Today, Gartner, Gigaom Research, Forrester and others are all focusing on the benefits of self-service BI. Gigaom, in a recent white paper underwritten by Izenda, explored the importance of embedding BI tools inside applications. “Reporting and analytics must be embedded inside applications and end-users must be able to use their interfaces not just for running reports, but for designing them,” analyst George Anadiotis wrote.
It’s no surprise that end-users, whether digital natives or older consumers weaned on Amazon, Google and Facebook, have high expectations that the applications they use at work are modern, portable and easy-to-use. In a data-driven world, they want to create their own reports, dashboards and visualizations when they want it, where they want it and on whatever device they are using. Read More
Have you heard the acronym SMAC? SMAC stands for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud, the four parts of what many describe as a new “digital industrial revolution.”
The term has become a buzzword among many tech and business leaders in the past few years. “The notion of combining social, mobile, analytics and cloud into one architectural pipe is gaining traction,” reads the headline from Computerworld.
“It’s like an industrial revolution of sorts, where you’re achieving the digital critical mass of some key foundational elements,” Ed Anderson, research vice president at Gartner, told the magazine. “We have this platform in cloud services that presents us with unlimited capacity of computational resources. With mobile we have this unprecedented ability to put connectivity into the hands of individuals and devices. Analytics gives us specific insights we never had before, and social media makes it all personal.” Read More
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