Izenda Embedded Analytics and Technology Blog

For 11 years, we’ve heard the buzzword “the long tail” prominently discussed in business. First applied to companies like Amazon, the theory is that the company makes more money through the volume of sales from lesser-known books and movies over time than it does from the popular blockbusters. The long tail of the sales chart is so long that all the small sales of lesser-known products add up to something very big.

Former Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson first popularized the phrase in a 2004 magazine article and expanded upon it in his 2006 book, “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.”

What does this have to do with business intelligence? Richard Back, a BI architect at IPL, makes the connection in a recent post for Tech Radar. He brings the long tail concept into the world of data and analytics. Read More

In the not-so-distant future, this likely will happen when you have a car accident. Sensors, connected with smart apps, will instantly: a) Gauge how seriously you may be hurt. b) Report the accident location to police and medical personnel. c) Determine how much damage your vehicle has sustained. d) Report the accident to your insurance company. e) If warranted, offer options on how to replace the car. f) If warranted, even alert your attorneys.

Sound far-fetched? Not in the world described by Daryl Plummer, Research VP and Gartner Fellow. He gave a Gartner local briefing last week in Atlanta titled “Securing Digital Business Through an Internet of Things.”

Plummer focused on the implications for business in this growing Internet of Things (IoT) world, where everyday objects and machines have network connectivity, allowing them to send or receive data. Read More

The “dark Web” – the Wild West of underground Internet sites – has received a lot of attention and notoriety of late. But many people may not have heard of “dark data.” Practices regarding dark data have prompted a lot of discussion in data management circles.

Gartner originally coined the term. Condensed here, the definition of dark data is “the information assets organizations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes.”

Organizations often retain dark data for compliance purposes. “Storing and securing data typically incurs more expense (and sometimes greater risk) than value,” Gartner writes. Read More