The headline on a recent article by ZDNet’s Ed Bott asks: Did the browser wars finally end in 2014?
The phrase “browser wars” even has its own page on Wikpedia, defined as “competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers.” Read More
Almost everyone in the business world has had the same experience. Create an Excel document, define the header columns and start typing in data. Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet application long has been the backbone of business, with early versions going back to the mid-‘80s. And it’s not going away anytime soon.
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Ever since computer scientists used early graphics cards to generate beautiful fractal images, we have been fascinated with turning data into something visual. For practical applications, this means taking data we have and using visualization techniques to give the eye something to find trends or patterns. For the artist, visualization takes on a different meaning. Some examples: Read More
Each day, a news story details a data breach at another company, heightening public awareness of the issue. People want to know what is happening with their personal data — and how it is being used.
While organizations see the effectiveness of using data, they want to avoid embarrassing incidents such as Target predicting a teenager was pregnant before her parents even knew. This means walking a fine line between privacy and BI. Read More
IBM and Microsoft recently announced they will be partnering to create a Microsoft .NET runtime for IBM’s Bluemix cloud platform. As part of the agreement, IBM will make its WebSphere Liberty application server, MQ messaging middleware and DB2 database software available on Microsoft Azure. IBM will also be sharing its PureApplication Service on SoftLayer on Azure in the near future. In turn, Windows Server and SQL Server will become available on IBM’s cloud platform.
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The thought of having real-time team data at your fingertips is enough to cause nightmares for a bartender who makes his money from baseball stat hounds. Typically, they argue incessantly over stats. Yet that may be exactly what’s in store for sports fans around the world.
What started as a tool for teams to analyze opponents for upcoming games is slowly being turned into a way for armchair quarterbacks to make sure that they have the best fantasy football team out on the virtual gridiron. Let us take a look at the origins of big sports data and how Microsoft plans to put it in the hands of sports fans. Read More
The New Year is quickly approaching. Not surprisingly, the business intelligence landscape continues to grow and evolve. Let’s take a look at what the New Year might hold in store for BI technology in 2015.
Hail to the Chief
The New Year might find us looking to the rise of the CDO, or Chief Data Officer. Industry experts are predicting that nearly 50% of Fortune 500 companies will be looking to have someone operating in this role in 2015. The CDO’s role is corralling the growing amount of data that now streams into businesses. The CFO will be tasked with overseeing all the moving parts in the data stream, like the gathering, cleaning and storage of data. This role is moving out of the responsibility of the CIO simply because of the amount of time that is needed to cover data management. Look to see news on these new masters of data in the upcoming year. Read More
In what Variety called “groundbreaking” Netflix recently announced two exclusive content deals, the first with Imax and the Weinstein Co. to fund and simultaneously release a sequel to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and a four picture deal with Adam Sandler. Similarly HBO has been making its content available on-demand and viewable on tablets, smart phones and other devices. Traditional ways of producing, distributing and consuming content are changing rapidly in the entertainment industry, and the same is true with self-service business intelligence (BI) and reporting.
What Does the Term Self-Service BI Really Mean?
There is no avoiding the fact that self-service business intelligence is here to stay. Recent market studies have shown that a majority of users (55%) are using self-service tools. Projections indicate that this trend will continue to increase. Just as in the entertainment industry, disruptive technologies are giving users power to explore BI data and reports when and where they want to, in order to make informed business decisions. Read More
Many of the goals behind big data involve using data to find trends and predict behavior. The process of creating complex algorithms that to do this is known as Machine Learning. In the past, large enterprises have leveraged machine learning to their advantage, employing data scientists to create models that predict things like hospital readmission likelihoods.
Building a machine learning system used to require a great amount of effort. Highly technical statisticians, programmers and data scientists were needed to do things like collect and massage data into a form which could be used by the model. The software that was used to develop these tools required a considerable amount of expertise and could be very expensive. Read More
