Cutter Consortium: Business Intelligence

How Some Enterprises Are Using Hadoop

10 Apr 2012 16:49:48 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

Companies have used Hadoop mainly to process high volumes of unstructured data for Internet operations. In particular, Internet giants such as Facebook, Yahoo!, and Google regularly use it to sift through log files maintained on thousands of Web servers to extract data for reporting and other purposes to optimize their online systems and processes. Yahoo!, for instance, has Hadoop (running on approximately 42,000 servers) to help drive personalized advertising and other content and to provide enhanced anti-spam capabilities in Yahoo! Mail, among other uses.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120410.html

Collaboration and Tools: An Historical Context

3 Apr 2012 15:19:54 GMT

May, Thornton | E-Mail Advisors |

Somewhere in prehistoric times, a clever ancestor stumbled upon the advantages of applying shareable knowledge to common problems. Thus, collaboration was born.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120403.html

Log Analysis for SLA Management

29 Mar 2012 19:54:54 GMT

Kothari, Chetan; Nautiyal, Shalini | Executive Updates |

SaaS is increasingly considered "enterprise grade" by many IT buyers and a viable choice in achieving reduced costs, improved service, and ongoing, timely functional currency. The benefits of SaaS force enterprises to provide their offerings via a SaaS model in order to compete with competitors. As such, demand for SaaS delivery continues to grow while sales of traditional on-premises solutions decline.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/updates/2012/bitu1203.html

Customer-Friendly Analytics

29 Mar 2012 19:52:26 GMT

Mohandoss, Ramaswami | Executive Updates |

The advent of Big Data has opened up enormous opportunities for retail enterprises to track and gain important insights about customers. Thriving customer analytics depends on the availability and credibility of the underlying data. Strong trust in the vendor enables the customer to voluntarily share this behavioral data. For analytics to sustain and help retain customer trust in the long term, the usage of analytics should be aimed toward enhancing something that is more important to the consumer (e.g., satisfaction, experience) than the enterprise (e.g., sales transactions).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1207.html

Hadapt: A Hybrid Hadoop-Relational Analytics Platform

27 Mar 2012 19:43:35 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 27 March 2012 |

One important development expected to lead to greater use of Hadoop and MapReduce in the enterprise is the (ongoing) integration of the technologies with relational databases and SQL-based tools. And, as I said in my last Advisor ("What's Microsoft Doing with Hadoop?"), most of the major database vendors' RDBMS now facilitate (at least) the two-way exchange of data between Hadoop and their respective products. Two vendors, EMC-Greenplum and Teradata-Aster Data, have tightly integrated the MapReduce distributed computing framework with their data warehousing and analytic database products to facilitate in-database MapReduce processing. More recently, startup Hadapt Inc., has developed an advanced hybrid platform that tightly integrates the relational data model with Hadoop and the MapReduce parallel data processing framework. Hadapt is an interesting platform that deserves further consideration.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120327.html

Leadership Development: Intuition, Science, or Luck?

20 Mar 2012 19:15:42 GMT

Houston, Richard T.; Houston, Douglas | Journals |

In their well-researched article, Richard and Douglas Houston propose "a scientific approach to leadership" and explain how organizations can develop a leadership competency model to bring this about. Drawing on their deep experience and database of thousands of leadership profiles, they provide a useful, empirical framework for assessing and improving leadership skills.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/03/itj1203c.html

Is Leadership a Science?

20 Mar 2012 19:13:00 GMT

Ellyn, Lynne | Journals |

Is leadership a science? Whether you subscribe to the notion of leadership as science or consider it more of an art, we hope that this issue of Cutter IT Journal will provide tools and insights to improve leadership development in your own organization.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/03/index.html

Expertise and Access to Data: Managing Their Impact on Team Learning and Performance

20 Mar 2012 19:09:51 GMT

Hughes, Michael | Journals |

Michael Hughes reminds us not to forget the team and how they learn. While team learning might seem somewhat tangential to the topic of leadership, Hughes persuasively argues that "it move[s] the problems of understanding and managing team dynamics out of the sometimes slippery realm of 'soft' leadership skills -- with their emphasis on interaction styles -- into the more prescriptive science of learning theory." Through the use of learning theory, IT leaders are better able "to manage their teams for the correct balance of innovation and efficiency."

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/03/itj1203e.html

Leadership Is Situational, Is It Not?

20 Mar 2012 19:06:20 GMT

Chan, David; Woodman, Mark | Journals |

In this article, David Chan and Mark Woodman dispute the idea that leadership is a science but acknowledge the contribution neuroscience may make to understanding leadership. They assert that leadership is situational and provide many examples. Fair enough. However, the examples given from history are basically military in nature -- certainly a very different situation from trying to implement SAP or complete code reviews for a new product. I would suggest that it is time to drop the war/sports/conquest context for leadership and focus on employees and business leaders trying to make a living and find meaning in their work. And, as Chan and Woodman note, we can definitely skip the "wild, drunken orgies" as a means of team building!

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/03/itj1203a.html

IT Leadership: You Must Be All In

20 Mar 2012 19:03:37 GMT

McComb, Craig M. | Journals |

Unlike the authors of our previous two articles, Craig McComb discounts the notion of leadership as science and declares instead that "leadership is an endeavor of passion." While skills are necessary -- and McComb makes a strong case that technical knowledge is required to lead well in IT -- he insists that leaders need passion to succeed. I would agree, since leadership can be so challenging and exhausting. McComb provides us with some of his personal story, relating how his passion for leadership development drove his quest to become a better leader.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/03/itj1203d.html

Mind the Gap: Avoiding the Abyss Between Leadership and Management

20 Mar 2012 18:54:35 GMT

Charette, Robert N.; Gentry, Kerry F. | Journals |

Cutter Fellow Robert Charette and coauthor Kerry Gentry take on the differences between management and leadership and tell us some depressing tales of modern leadership failures in business and government. They assert that the failures signal a dearth of leadership and an excess of management. In the end they provide us with a useful model -- the Leadership Wheel -- for assessing leadership traits and emphatically argue that leadership is a science!

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/03/itj1203b.html

Exploring the Scope of Social BI in a Health IT Organization

20 Mar 2012 18:52:16 GMT

Hazra, Tushar | E-Mail Advisors |

Business intelligence is nothing new to the business and IT worlds, but it is hardly business as usual when it comes to leveraging BI in the growing field of social media-oriented business. With the advent of social networks in business operations and the exponential growth in supply and demand of data, the application of BI in the analysis of business and data analytics is growing rapidly across the industry. The evolution of Big Data adds a new dimension to the impact of social BI in making informed business decisions.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120320.html

Attention IT: Technology Is Not the Way to Collaboration

16 Mar 2012 15:22:33 GMT

Coleman, David | Executive Updates |

With more than 2,000 collaboration vendors offering solutions, is it hard to determine which is the best one for your organization? Or is that the wrong question? Successful collaboration is more about fitting a tool, process, and team rather than just looking at a particular technology. It is this holistic view that helps organizations not only be successful with collaboration, but thrive on it. Let me tell you an apocryphal tale of two communities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1206.html

What's Microsoft Doing with Hadoop?

14 Mar 2012 15:04:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

I've said for some time now that one of the more important developments that will lead to greater use of Hadoop and MapReduce in the enterprise is integration of the technologies with relational databases and SQL-based BI tools. Realizing just how important Hadoop is when it comes to the future of data analysis, Microsoft has been working to bring the power of Hadoop to the Windows platform.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120314.html

Put Big Data in Perspective -- Part II

14 Mar 2012 15:01:06 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors |

In my last Advisor ("Put Big Data in Perspective -- Part I"), I discussed the basics of Big Data, what it is, where it comes from, what's it good for, and so on. In this Advisor, I want to put Big Data into the perspective of enterprise information architecture.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2012/ea120314.html

CEP Technologies Optimize Modern Business

12 Mar 2012 14:57:53 GMT

Gerden, Eugene | Executive Updates |

Certain business situations require analytics to monitor operations as close as possible to real time. However, delays caused by moving data in the repository for its analytical treatment are usually too long to enable companies to respond efficiently to queries -- or to take actions in real time. One of today's biggest challenges is the need to act efficiently amid the huge volumes of constantly changing information.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1205.html

Hadoop in the Enterprise: High-Performance Processing for Big Data Analytics

6 Mar 2012 14:11:34 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Reports |

This Executive Report examines the technology behind Hadoop and MapReduce, with an eye toward how more mainstream organizations can use it. It covers new developments in the Hadoop ecosystem and commercial developments coming from various vendors -- all of which are making it more practical for organizations to implement and administer Hadoop applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2012/01/index.html

Predictions on Collaboration in 2012: The Smarter CIO

6 Mar 2012 14:08:11 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors |

Over the last year, discussions with the CIO around social applications have changed. I did some research in June of 2011 that showed that 45% of the CIOs we interviewed thought IT was in control of social programs in the enterprise. Of the participants in our research, 12% believed that the C-suite was in control of social in the enterprise. When asked who controlled the budget for these social projects and implementations, 40% believed IT controlled it, and 18% felt the C-suite controlled it.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120306.html

Mobile BI Success at Herbalife

21 Feb 2012 14:21:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

Back in 2010, in a report on mobile BI (see BI Unwired: The Case for Mobile, Vol. 10, No. 9), I commented on a mobile BI application in use at that time at global nutrition company Herbalife. This sales performance and employee recruitment app was built to deliver information dashboards to management via the iPhone. Recently, I've been researching how organizations are using mobile BI applications implemented for tablet devices to help them extend BI capabilities to their mobile workforces. Doing so, I've found that Herbalife continues to expand its use of mobile BI. The company's latest mobile app is impressive due to the degree of functionality it provides. Herbalife's use of mobile BI is also interesting because it offers insight into how the implementation of mobile technologies can lead some organizations to upgrade their back-end systems to take advantage of the real-time capabilities afforded by mobile applications in general, and mobile analytics in particular.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120221.html

Collaboration Technology: State of the Art and Implications

21 Feb 2012 14:17:16 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates |

In this Executive Update, I explore the need to develop and encourage collaboration, which has become increasingly urgent in recent years as organizations confront the changing realities of the modern world. Collaboration is seen as critical to responding to the increasing real-time pressures of markets and technologies, to achieving new product success, and to extending corporate and departmental capabilities. Companies must collaborate internally to take advantage of existing expertise and product knowledge and to extend that knowledge to remote workers. Externally, companies must collaborate with external suppliers in increasingly complex scenarios, including outsourcing vendors to ensure that processes remain firmly integrated with the business.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1204.html

Getting Data Integration Out of the Mud with Hypernormalized Data Designs

14 Feb 2012 14:02:53 GMT

Hughes, Ralph | E-Mail Advisors |

It still amazes me how many enterprise data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) projects struggle, often to the point of paralysis, with the "Inmon/Kimball" debate. This impasse revolves around whether a DW/BI program should insist upon routing all information through a complex, third normal form (3NF) data layer or take it straight to a user-intelligible star schema repository from where it can be reported more or less directly. It's easy to fault the 3NF for more than doubling the complexity, expense, and data latency of a DW/BI project, but also for being of zero direct value to the project sponsors and their stakeholders. On the other hand, projects that deliver data immediately to star schemas can quickly become complex themselves as the scope of the warehouse grows. When the conformed stars scale out, they too end up necessitating enormous reengineering efforts whenever the underlying business requirements change.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120214.html

Do We Have to Hug? Part II -- Collaboration Tools

9 Feb 2012 13:32:24 GMT

Love, Jim | Executive Update

In Part I of this two-part Executive Update series, we looked at the barriers to and possible benefits of collaboration. I examined the "four pillars of collaboration," which provide a foundation that supports collaboration and collaborative structures. I also put forward the proposition that there are a vast number of tools available to facilitate collaboration in the modern enterprise. Many are available for little or often no direct cost. Even though we are still in the relative infancy of collaboration tools, what is readily available is mature, feature-rich, and, in many cases, scalable to the enterprise level.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1203.html

Predictions on Collaboration in 2012: Vertical Not Horizontal Collaboration

7 Feb 2012 13:24:49 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors |

I started to see this trend play out last year, and this year I expect it to be more popular based on the advice I have been giving some of my vendor clients. Here is the story: two collaboration companies (both direct competitors) came out with not only solutions, but solutions where collaboration was integral to a critical process as well as a specific vertical market.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120207.html

Agile: 10 Points of Organizational Friction

2 Jan 2012 15:28:13 GMT

Collier, Ken |

Agile adoption for data warehouse and BI is on the rise. Agile can shorten development cycle time, improve quality, and help ensure that you build the right BI solutions for business decision makers. However, conventional IT organizational structures, policies, processes, and procedures are sometimes inconsistent with the tenets of agility. Values like customer collaboration, face-to-face interaction, and continuous delivery of value are often impeded by IT organizational protocols. Here are the top 10 points of friction that I frequently see in companies that I assist in agile adoption. While many of these also impact software teams, DW/BI departments are often more directly impacted by them.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2012/apm120202.html

Packaged Big Data Appliances = Hadoop in the Enterprise

31 Jan 2012 16:20:32 GMT

Hall, Curt |

An important development bound to positively impact the use of the open source Apache Hadoop technology in the traditional enterprise is the introduction of packaged Big Data appliances from the enterprise hardware and software vendors. These offerings -- from Oracle, EMC Greenplum, Dell, and NetApp -- bundle Hadoop distributions along with database, storage connectors, and other software for integrating Hadoop applications with various data sources and into an organization's data center. They also come preinstalled on hardware or include hardware-based storage systems. All offer various levels of support for organizations wanting to build and run Hadoop applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120131.html

Social Media Speaks Out

27 Jan 2012 15:49:18 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J.; Schiavone, Vincent J. |

Advances in the components of computing have enabled massive social media sites and application tools like Facebook and Google. It is the scale of these platforms that makes social networking interesting and economically viable, politically potent, and of great interest to businesses. As Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole and Cutter Senior Consultant Vincent Schiavone point out in their leadoff piece on social media, this new form of computing is powerful because of its massive reach and its massive volume of data and interactions. With social media now so globally pervasive, the authors pose a simple question: why wouldn't a company invest in social media, especially in the analytics of social media? They deftly delve into the critical elements of a social media strategy, how companies ought to take advantage of this technology, and how the future of social media may unfold. Here in 2012, any company that thinks social media is a passing fancy or isn't relevant to them simply hasn't been paying attention.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201a.html

The Consumerization of IT: Predictions, Wishes, and Dart-Throwing Monkeys

27 Jan 2012 15:46:36 GMT

Love, Jim |

Cutter Senior Consultant Jim Love, is correct in pointing out that the tension between the current consumer market and the resistant IT organization will be a challenge in 2012. Love argues forcefully that we in IT should not resist this change but embrace it. If we think more broadly about what is going on, it becomes clear that cell phone data networks are continuing to grow faster (although sometimes not fast enough); are being augmented with WiFi networks at home, work, and play; and are being used to reach hundreds of millions of user devices with powerful CPUs distributed across the globe. With the ubiquity of Internet protocols and with HTML5 poised to be a common-enough user interface development environment, consumer devices and software can now reach unprecedented scale at lower costs than ever. Love writes that the "tipping point" for consumerization is near. I would argue it is past us already, and the rest is merely denouement. Laggard IT shops will have to catch up to those organizations that sprinted ahead.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201c.html

Hot IT Trends 2012

27 Jan 2012 15:01:43 GMT

Kellen, Vince |

Each of these trends described in this issue is powerful on its own and requires devoted study from IT planners and leaders. Taken collectively, they can be a rather large tsunami that engulfs organizations faster than they can adjust. 2012 will likely emerge as a critical transition year in which two well-established trends, social media and consumer technology, meet up with two emerging trends, Big Data and cloud computing, and transform corporate IT from the inside and the outside. There is a lot of promise and peril in these trends. To some, they represent the beginning of the end of the modern IT organization. I -- and I think our authors -- would disagree. This is merely the end of the very early phase of an important transformation that will require all the best and brightest IT leaders across the globe. New tools enable new strategies, and, boy, do we have new tools available to us in 2012! To sort this out, I encourage you to read on and learn how these trends will impact you and your organization.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/index.html

An Executive Primer on Big Data

27 Jan 2012 14:56:03 GMT

May, Thornton |

Thornton May, pokes holes in the term "Big Data," pointing out that it has no clear definition and that the focus on "big" may miss the mark. May makes clear that the variety of types of data, the variation in analysis methods, and the speed of business decision making should also be considered when looking at the Big Data trend. He then goes on to give several current, real-world examples of organizations that have successfully used Big Data methods for business advantage (and one that didn't).

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201b.html

Predictions on Collaboration in 2012

26 Jan 2012 14:24:50 GMT

Coleman, David |

Every year I am asked, "What's next for collaboration?" I came up with 10 predictions for 2011, with about an 80% accuracy, according to my own calculations. I began to work on this year's predictions in mid-December, hoping to finish them by the New Year. This year's predictions cover a wide range of collaboration topics, from community management to reinventing the supply chain. I have been thinking a lot about my predictions and wrote about a number of them on my blog (www.collaborate.com). I offer my eighth prediction in this Advisor and will describe my final two predictions in subsequent articles.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120124.html

Collaborative Intelligence

23 Jan 2012 14:21:57 GMT

Coleman, David |

We have all heard of IQ (intelligence quotient) and even EI (emotional intelligence), but very few people seem to deal with collaborative intelligence (CI). I have been focused on collaboration for the last 20-plus years, and I have become aware that true collaboration rarely is successful unless all those involved have the mindset of collaboration. This is not as easy as it sounds, even though thousands of collaboration vendors promise great collaboration by using their tool.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1202.html

Weeding and Seeding Internal Crowdsourcing Initiatives

18 Jan 2012 19:38:28 GMT

McLellan, Sam; Muddimer, Andrew | E-Mail Advisors |

A 1983 New Yorker cartoon shows a man taking his son on a walk. "It's good to know about trees," he says to the boy, then adds almost as an afterthought, "Just remember, nobody ever made big money knowing about trees."

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2012/itj120118.html

The Value of Social

17 Jan 2012 19:18:56 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors |

With Facebook closing in on one billion people (one in every six people on the planet is on Facebook), it is clear that consumer social networks are having great influence on how the enterprise is now using these technologies. It is this transfer of technology adoption from the consumer to the enterprise that is interesting.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120117.html

Cloud Strategy: Some Good Tactics to Implement

11 Jan 2012 18:53:51 GMT

Teti, Frank | Executive Updates |

It appears lately that all business consulting has something to do with cloud computing. For instance, an organization I am currently working with has a mandate in place requiring all forward-engineering projects to be developed using a virtualized cloud environment. This effort is, in this organization's "corporate mind's eye," a way to prepare it to move production applications into the cloud, which is something it has not previously done. The company believes that this tactic will ensure that cloud architects are competent at administering applications hosted in the cloud, since code development within the cloud is relatively transparent from a developer's perspective.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/updates/2012/bitu1201.html

"Big Data" Is More than Just a Lot of Data

10 Jan 2012 18:48:27 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

"Big Data" was one of the hottest IT buzzwords of 2011, and you can expect the hype only to increase this year. BI vendors, the IT press, and analytics gurus go on and on about the need for organizations to meet their Big Data requirements. All the excitement around Big Data is not just hype, however. Today we are seeing organizations develop some very impressive applications that were impractical, if not impossible, just a few years ago. Still, the term is misleading, because processing Big Data can actually involve more than just handling a lot of data. It can also require processing diverse (nonrelational in nature) data as well as streaming, fast data. This can pose a number of application development and operational issues.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120110.html

HPC Steroid for Big Data

9 Jan 2012 18:40:42 GMT

Hate, Sudhanshu | Executive Updates |

Today's unprecedented growth rate of data (structured and unstructured) necessitates faster and cost-effective processing for near-real-time decision making. Over the years, many have viewed high-performance computing (HPC) as a monster too complex and too unaffordable for processing large data. However, that viewpoint is changing rapidly due to open source innovations such as Apache Hadoop, the advent of the cloud, and simple and affordable platforms like Microsoft. In this Executive Update, we examine how various HPC techniques, deployment patterns, and Microsoft technologies are emerging to solve various Big Data problems.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1201.html

Creating Crowd Value: Taking the Next Step Beyond the Social Enterprise

3 Jan 2012 18:36:42 GMT

Coleman, David | Executive Reports |

As a business leader you're probably just starting to contend with social networks in your business and often find them to be of questionable value. The "social enterprise" is being touted as the next big thing: the new way to do business and a "social" way to do business. But the next big thing in collaboration is crowds, not the social enterprise. Social is only a new method of connecting and discovering information; it does not enable and guide action or have an outcome or result. Business is about delivering results and for that you need a crowd. In this Executive Report, I define a crowd as a network of people that has business value and drives an outcome, task, or goal. Understanding how crowds can add value to your business and making sure your business does not get disintermediated (the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain) by a crowd-based business is the focus of this report.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/07/index.html

The Year Ahead: Will 2012 Be a Breakout Year for Predictive Analytics?

3 Jan 2012 18:34:02 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

Happy New Year! As we head into 2012, I thought I'd offer some predictions as to what I see happening with predictive analytics. This analysis is based on various surveys and other research1 we've conducted over the past year or so, as well as on discussions with readers, clients, and vendors.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120103.html

Top Intriguing Data Insight & Social BI Articles for 2011

27 Dec 2011 18:28:20 GMT

Coburn, Karen | E-Mail Advisors |

This week, we're taking a look back at five of the most-intriguing articles published in Cutter's Data Insight & Social BI practice over this past year. As you might imagine, it was no small task to cull the list and pare it down to just five articles. Look for these lists from each of our four practice areas for a compilation of Cutter's 20 most-intriguing articles of the year. Stay tuned for the next issue of this Advisor on 3 January.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111227.html

Creating the Crowd Value: Taking the Next Step Beyond the Social Enterprise

23 Dec 2011 18:24:58 GMT

Coleman, David | Executive Summaries |

As a business leader you're probably just starting to contend with social networks in your business and often find them to be of questionable value. The "social enterprise" is being touted as the next big thing: the new way to do business and a "social" way to do business. But the next big thing in collaboration is crowds, not the social enterprise. Social is only a new method of connecting and discovering information; it does not enable and guide action or have an outcome or result. Business is about delivering results and for that you need a crowd. In this Executive Report, I define a crowd as a network of people that has business value and drives an outcome, task, or goal. Understanding how crowds can add value to your business and making sure your business does not get disintermediated (the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain) by a crowd-based business is the focus of this report.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/summaries/2011/07/index.html

Agile Analytics

21 Dec 2011 17:28:37 GMT

21 December 2011 |

Does your Agile BI delivery team routinely fail to complete the user stories it commits to during sprint planning? Then this Advisor is for you!

http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/resource-centers/business-intelligence/agile-analytics.html

Agile Analytics: Curing the Common Hangover

20 Dec 2011 16:27:48 GMT

Collier, Ken | E-Mail Advisors |

This Advisor is a continuation of the "Scrum Ain't Enough" series (see "Agile Analytics: Community, Customers, and and Collaboration," 18 October 2011, and "Agile Analytics: Evolving Excellent Data Models and Architectures," 22 November 2011) I started in October. With this series I aim to convince you that Scrum, while useful, is not by itself sufficient to gain the greatest benefits of agile analytics. It must be augmented with other important behavioral and technical practices to produce the real horsepower that agile analytics has to offer.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111220.html

Enterprise BI Architecture Groups: The Key to Effective Agile Data Warehousing Programs

15 Dec 2011 15:55:00 GMT

Hughes, Ralph | Consulting |

Agile data warehousing delivers powerful BI applications in the shortest time frame possible, yet coordinating multiple fast-moving BI teams demands more than simple project management. Organizations need an enterprise business intelligence architecture (EBIA) function to coordinate high-level requirements, designs, and technologies in order to avoid ruinously expensive mistakes and redundancies.

http://www.cutter.com/workshops/enterprise-bi-architecture-groups.html

Corporate Use of Text Mining and Analysis: Part III -- Social Media Analysis Trends for BI and CRM

14 Dec 2011 15:40:42 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates |

In June/July 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 61 end-user organizations about the adoption and use of text mining and analysis. One set of questions examined corporate attitudes and trends pertaining to tracking and analyzing data from social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to assist with PR, marketing, and other corporate initiatives. The goal was to identify trends that you can use to gauge your organization's efforts at monitoring and analyzing social media.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1124.html

Shopycat and Muppet: Social Analytics Fueling the Next Generation of E-Commerce Applications

13 Dec 2011 15:34:28 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

The latest news to set the social analytics world buzzing is retailing giant Walmart's "Shopycat" social shopping application for Facebook. In a nutshell, Shopycat uses social data to allow consumers who indicate that they like Walmart's Facebook page (currently 11+ million people) to recommend gifts for their Facebook friends from Walmart.com, Walmart stores, and select partners. By combining search with social media analysis, Shopycat generates customized gift recommendations for a user's Facebook friends ranging from music, books, and movies to games and electronics. To the user, Shopycat looks pretty much like any other Facebook page -- except it sports a cute cat logo. But it is what's going on behind the scenes -- in the form of social analytics, search, and semantic analysis -- that is important to us.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111213.html

The Indoor Garden: Cultivating Openness Inside the Organization

8 Dec 2011 19:06:59 GMT

Feller, Joseph | Executive Reports |

Over the last decade, we've been engaged in an exploration of open innovation, crowdsourcing, peer production (such as open source software and Wikipedia), and related phenomena. In this Executive Report, I examine what we've learned about (and from) these phenomena and explore how these lessons can be applied to knowledge sharing, information processing, and product/service co-creation processes within "internally open" organizations.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/06/index.html

Webinar: Agile Analytics

7 Dec 2011 18:52:22 GMT

Collier, Ken | Events |

The year 2011 has seen a proliferation in agile adoption for data warehousing, BI, and analytics teams. But applying the incremental delivery of working features and the evolutionary development of a DW/BI system by adapting to frequent customer feedback can be a pretty big shift in thinking.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/agile-analytics.html

Social Media Analysis for Reputation Management

6 Dec 2011 18:41:31 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

If there were any lingering doubts as to social media's potential to attack an organization's brand or reputation, they now have been laid to rest. The most recent incident involves an undercover video circulated by an animal rights group that shows alleged cruelty at a large egg supplier's farms. Release of this video has resulted in fast-food giant McDonald's and retailer Target dropping this supplier. Even more stunning is that social media has been used to attack (quite successfully) an entire industry. The recent Occupy Wall Street grassroots campaign managed to reportedly get thousands of people to move their bank accounts from major financial institutions to credit unions and smaller local banks.1 Fortunately, social media is not a one-way street. Just as it can be used to attack a specific product, brand, company, or industry, it can also be used to defend their reputations.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111206.html

Social Media and Unified Communications: Turning Cost Centers to Profit Opportunities in the Enterprise

6 Dec 2011 18:39:24 GMT

Kursh, Steven R. | Executive Updates |

My objective in this Executive Update is to provide some perspective on social media and the implications of what we call the "social media opportunity" when your company assesses its IT investment opportunities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1123.html

Webinar: Agile Analytics

7 Dec 2011 14:17:31 GMT

Measuring Collaborative Value

29 Nov 2011 15:56:58 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors |

For the last decade I have been asked, "What is the ROI for collaboration?" I have come to several conclusions about this: one, that it is the wrong question to ask (and is a trap in itself) and two, everyone wants collaboration, but no one seems willing to pay for it.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111129.html

Agile Analytics: Evolving Excellent Data Models and Architectures

22 Nov 2011 15:32:10 GMT

Collier, Ken | E-Mail Advisors |

Last month I began an Advisor series that I am unofficially calling the "Scrum Ain't Enough" series (see "Agile Analytics: Community, Customers, and and Collaboration," 18 October 2011). If your organization has adopted agile, or is considering agile, then I suspect you�ve been exposed to Scrum -- the current most well-known agile flavor. Scrum is easy and accessible for new agile adopters, and the Scrum Alliance has done a brilliant marketing job. While Scrum provides a set of effective techniques for managing iterations and requirements, it does not address technical discipline, release planning, program management, and other important considerations. This Advisor series is designed to help you truly benefit from agile analytics (and agility in general) -- not by discarding Scrum, but by augmenting Scrum with other important practices and techniques.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111122.html

Social Analytics: Architectures, Strategies, and Technologies

17 Nov 2011 15:28:25 GMT

Collier, Ken | Executive Updates |

How does the explosion of social media and the blogosphere relate to your company? Are customers using Twitter and Facebook to talk about their experiences with your products or services? How do global geopolitical events impact your business? What about natural disasters and weather-related phenomena? An increasing number of organizations are discovering the tremendous potential of consolidating publicly available (mostly unstructured) information into their business intelligence initiatives. Companies doing this are gaining advantage by detecting leading indicators of change in the marketplace and evaluating how that change affects their particular business.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1122.html

Toward a Knowledge Architecture

15 Nov 2011 16:07:31 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | E-Mail Advisors |

First came the realization that the collective knowledge of an organization or, for that matter, the individual knowledge of its members, is not solely held in libraries of documents. There is also the tacit knowledge that people have in their heads a relatively small fraction of which can be teased out and made explicit through various knowledge-capture efforts such as storytelling and interviews. Then there is a latent form of knowledge, which consists of knowing who to ask on a given subject; something I described in a previous Data Insight & Social BI Executive Update ("It's Not (Just) What You Know; It's Who You Know." Vol. 10, No. 9), and which leads us to a collaborative and even social approach to knowledge management (KM).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111115.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Has your organization standardized on any text mining products?

15 Nov 2011 16:00:14 GMT

Cutter Consortium |

Curt Hall recommends that organizations that haven't already standardized on a text mining product consider doing so. "Simply put, the benefits gained by standardizing IT product(s) in general can include better leverage over vendor licensing agreements, more streamlined maintenance, and reductions in support costs. Moreover, standardization can also help prevent organizations from ending up with a bunch of different applications built using a bunch of different and/or incompatible tools."

http://www.cutter.com/press/111115.html

Benefits from Social Media Monitoring Not Always Apparent

8 Nov 2011 15:17:35 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

A recent experience with my ISP got me thinking a lot about the role social media can play in customer service and how companies looking for immediate payback may be missing the bigger picture when it comes to social media monitoring and analysis. You see, most businesspeople consider social media as a vehicle for delivering some immediate (i.e., "real-time") business benefit -- usually this means driving increased sales. Don't get me wrong, social marketing is of huge importance and should definitely be part of your organization's marketing and PR strategies. The reality, however, is that some of the most important benefits to be gained from tracking and following customer social media interactions may not be so immediately realized and straightforward to measure in terms of ROI. Or, put another way, the return may not take the form of increased sales but rather as insight that organizations can apply to improve some business process or activity. This is especially true when it comes to optimizing customer service.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111108.html

The Lawful Interception of Social Media: Security Over Privacy

7 Nov 2011 14:57:46 GMT

Peshin, Esti | Executive Updates |

Governments utilize lawful interception (LI) as a means of law enforcement. LI consists of obtaining telecommunications data -- both the signaling information and the content of the communications themselves -- in order to identify and circumvent potential threats and crimes and to gather evidence against the perpetrators.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1121.html

Press Release: Cutter Consortium Announces Practice Name Change

3 Nov 2011 18:20:20 GMT

Cutter Consortium |

IT consulting and advisory firm Cutter Consortium announced its Data Integration, BI & Collaboration practice will now be known as the Data Insight & Social BI practice.

http://www.cutter.com/press/111103.html

The Barriers to Collaboration

1 Nov 2011 18:02:40 GMT

Love, Jim | E-Mail Advisors |

We have to strip away the myths and misunderstandings about collaboration if we are going to find strategies to overcome them. And overcoming these obstacles to collaboration, while difficult, is very possible. Wikipedia, open source, and social collaborations are among the many examples that prove we can transcend these obstacles. We can achieve true greatness. So what are the real barriers? There are a number of them, but two of the major categories are ...

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111101.html

What's the Status of Unstructured Data Analysis Initiatives? Where Are the Bottlenecks?

25 Oct 2011 17:36:21 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 25 October 2011 |

For the majority of end-user organizations, analyzing unstructured data for BI and other decision-support needs is still a fairly new practice; it's of serious interest but, at this stage, primarily in the investigation and experimentation stages. I base this finding on recent Cutter research, where 24% of surveyed end-user organizations indicate they currently use text mining and analysis tools, applications, and practices for analyzing unstructured data in some capacity or another.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111025.html

Big Data Analytics

20 Oct 2011 16:35:13 GMT

Dooley, Brian | Executive Updates |

The phenomenal growth of digital data over the past several decades, known today as Big Data, has created a range of issues and opportunities. In the earliest days, accessible data consisted of alphanumeric records and simple text. These could be organized, managed, and stored with relative ease. Today, however, data available both inside the corporation and on the Web includes structured and unstructured text, audio, video, graphics, sensor data, application records, and streams of all types of information. As such, data has doubled every 18 months or so; so, too, has storage capacity. These multiple petabytes of data constitute a vast wealth of useful information. However, this information is growing beyond our current capabilities in making use of it.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1120.html

Cloud Computing: What You Want Is What You Can Get

19 Oct 2011 19:14:01 GMT

Malladi, Suresh | E-Mail Advisors |

A recent Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey sponsored by Microsoft on cloud computing has highlighted the fact that lack of awareness of cloud computing benefits is a big hindrance to wider adoption.1 This is no surprise, as the technology is still maturing and many concerns about security, privacy, and reliability persist. Additionally, misconceptions such as thinking that cloud computing is just about provisioning infrastructure on demand may mask the possibilities the cloud can deliver. My intent in this Advisor is to highlight some scenarios where the cloud is offering advantages beyond and inclusive of cost dimension, in the hopes that it might stimulate more thought about the potential of cloud computing.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2011/itj111019.html

Agile Analytics: Community, Customers, and Collaboration

18 Oct 2011 19:06:51 GMT

Collier, Ken | E-Mail Advisors |

The year 2011 has seen a proliferation in agile adoption for data warehousing, BI, and analytics. This excites me, but I'm worried about a trend I'll call, "basic Scrum only." The lure of Scrum is that it is popular and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this leads many IT leaders to believe that daily Scrum meetings, short iterations (sprints), and ScrumMaster certification for project managers is all that is necessary to "go agile." Not surprisingly, I'm hearing an increasing number of "agile isn't working for us" stories.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111018.html

Employee Monitoring on Social Networking Services: Employers Must Wake Up!

11 Oct 2011 18:52:24 GMT

Peshin, Esti | E-Mail Advisors |

Most employers opt to monitor what their employees do while at work. The employer's interest is to ensure that the employees perform their jobs adequately and refrain from performing harmful actions, either intentional or unintentional, that may harm the company. A few examples of such harmful actions, which an employer might want to be alerted to and potentially circumvent, include the following:

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2011/itj111012.html

Exalytics Appliance for Extreme Analytics

10 Oct 2011 18:26:58 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

The latest big news to rock the BI and data warehousing world is Oracle's Exalytics BI Machine, which was introduced at the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, California. Exalytics is an important development for a number of reasons. First, it is a true data warehousing appliance that combines (Sun) hardware and an in-memory database1 with various Oracle BI software optimized to support high-end analytic processing. In short, the introduction of Exalytics gives Oracle a very capable high-performance analytic appliance designed to counter offerings from IBM, Teradata, EMC, and SAP. In particular, Exalytics represents a direct challenge to SAP's own in-memory database offering, HANA, which SAP has been hyping for some time now.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111011.html

Corporate Use of Text Mining and Analysis: Part II -- Development Issues and Software/Services Trends

5 Oct 2011 14:02:50 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates |

In June/July 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 61 end-user organizations about the adoption and use of text mining and analysis. The goal was to uncover corporate adoption trends and examine application development issues to discern how organizations use unstructured data analysis technologies and practices.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1119.html

Web 3.0: Myth or Reality?

4 Oct 2011 18:32:03 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors |

Is Web 3.0 just hype, or are people actually working with these technologies? Do people even understand what Web 3.0 is? That is what my colleagues and I endeavored to find out through a survey in June 2011 of about 200 people to see if they understood and were applying Web 3.0. Some of the results were expected, but there were some surprises, too.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111004.html

Do We Have to Hug? Part I -- Building Collaboration

29 Sep 2011 17:41:20 GMT

Love, Jim | Executive Updates |

How would you feel if you owned a Ferrari and couldn't get it out of first gear? That's exactly what's happening in many companies when it comes to collaborative technologies.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1118.html

Innovative Applications of BI Analytics

27 Sep 2011 17:13:24 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

I've been researching new, innovative applications of BI and analytics. By "innovative," I mean applications which, although I hate to use the (overused) term "game changer," have the potential to significantly change the way organizations utilize BI and analytics. Two domains in which BI analytics are being applied to enable new forms of analysis and decision support that were, for the most part, impossible -- or at least impractical -- to carry out even a few years ago are monitoring crowd behavior via mobile consumer devices and social video analysis.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110927.html

How 21st-Century Enterprises Grow

22 Sep 2011 15:30:02 GMT

Evernden, Roger | Executive Updates |

It's your first briefing from the CIO: First and foremost, we need to keep everything up and running. And we absolutely have to meet mandatory compliance and regulatory deadlines. Then we've got to complete the integration project that kicked off following a big acquisition a couple of years ago, and it had better deliver the planned cost reductions and efficiencies, and on time, because we can't go back on our promises to shareholders. In parallel, we desperately need to transform our business and systems -- cracks are showing and getting bigger, and we're falling far behind competitors in meeting even basic customer expectations.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/updates/2011/eau1111.html

Webinar: Social Media and the Enterprise

21 Sep 2011 15:57:51 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Events |

Social media, including but not limited to social networks, are no longer just where you spend your evenings when there is nothing on TV! They are increasingly relevant not only to the professional life of your colleagues and employees, but also to the relationship between an organization and its customers or associates. Yet social media still evoke fears, mostly of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/enterprise-social-media.html

I as Usual Is Insufficient: A Letter from Cutter's New Practice Director of Data Integration, BI & Collaboration

20 Sep 2011 15:48:59 GMT

Collier, Ken | E-Mail Advisors |

Dear Colleague, This letter introduces you to Cutter's redefined practice: Data Integration, BI & Collaboration. I know it's a mouthful, so let's just call it "DBC" for short. As the new Practice Director, my aim is to shape this practice to best address your needs, but more importantly to continuously adapt as your needs change. I also suspect you are looking for Cutter to assist you in staying aware of emerging ideas and trends that might benefit your organization. Please consider this letter an open invitation to join an ongoing dialogue that will help me shape this practice appropriately. I hope you'll share your questions, ideas, and feedback to make this venture a success.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110920.html

Collaborative Tools and Enterprise Innovation

19 Sep 2011 15:44:08 GMT

May, Thornton | Executive Updates |

Cisco and Microsoft are betting big that they can create collaborative toolsets compelling enough that people (i.e., customers, developers, employees, investors, and regulators) would deem an enterprise crazy to not be Cisco/Microsoft-enabled. On the flip side, a barbarian hoard of entrepreneurs, ISVs, and venture capitalists are betting these vendor giants will not be completely successful. A fascinating David vs. Goliath battle will characterize the next decade for those who wish to collaborate.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1117.html

Enterprise BI Architecture Groups: The Key to Effective Agile Data Warehousing Programs

13 Sep 2011 15:11:58 GMT

Hughes, Ralph | Executive Reports |

Agile data warehousing delivers powerful BI applications in the shortest time frame possible, yet coordinating multiple fast-moving BI teams demands more than simple project management. Organizations need an enterprise business intelligence architecture (EBIA) function to coordinate high-level requirements, designs, and technologies in order to avoid ruinously expensive mistakes and redundancies. An effective EBIA function must provide not only guidelines and reviews but also services and support to the agile teams in order to obtain their willing participation and compliance so that, out of all their loosely coupled efforts, an enterprise data warehouse will emerge.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/05/index.html

Corporate Spending Trends for Text Mining and Unstructured Data Analysis Efforts

13 Sep 2011 15:10:01 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

A recent survey conducted by Cutter Consortium helps shine some light on corporate spending trends for text mining and analysis as well as organizations' overall attitudes toward the importance of having the capability to analyze unstructured data.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110913.html

[Untitled]

21 Sep 2011 14:45:17 GMT

IT Strategy: What vs. How

21 Sep 2011 14:41:14 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | Executive Updates |

I recently finished grading about 60 graduate student papers on IT strategy. Without going into the details of the assignment, suffice it to know that I provide students with a template for developing IT strategies that must be applied to their companies, or to a company at which they've worked. Their assignment is to describe and prescribe what's happening at their companies and what their companies should do.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/updates/2011/bitu1111.html

Webinar: Social Media and the Enterprise

2 Nov 2011 19:19:21 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Events ::

Social media, including but not limited to social networks, are no longer just where you spend your evenings when there is nothing on TV! They are increasingly relevant not only to the professional life of your colleagues and employees, but also to the relationship between an organization and its customers or associates. Yet social media still evoke fears, mostly of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/enterprise-social-media.html

Corporate Use of Text Mining and Analysis: Part I -- Adoption Trends and Application Domains

8 Sep 2011 18:53:15 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates ::

In June/July 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 61 end-user organizations about the adoption and use of text mining and analysis. The goal was to uncover corporate adoption trends and examine application development issues to discern how organizations use unstructured data analysis technologies and practices.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1116.html

The Evolution of Web Conferencing

6 Sep 2011 18:35:52 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors ::

Web conferencing today is essentially what it was back in the mid-1990s. Yes, there are a few more bells and whistles, but most of the hundreds of Web conferencing tools (WebEx, Citrix Online, IBM Sametime, Microsoft Live Meeting, Adobe Connect, and many others) available today are there to support meetings. Could it be that they meet our needs for meetings so well that the technology has not needed to evolve? Hardly! Since Web conferencing (even Web native tools) are still very 1.0, they are focused on content, not people (Web 2.0).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110906.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Which major issues impede your organization from using predictive analytics?

2 Sep 2011 18:31:40 GMT

Cutter Consortium ::

Curt Hall was not surprised that "lack of knowledgeable staff" was the #1 obstacle to implementing predictive analytics applications in our survey. He concludes this "indicates that the technology is still not widely understood by corporate business leaders and IT. This is also a strong indicator that vendors and predictive analytics proponents have work to do when it comes to educating organizations on how to go about practically applying the technology. However, the introduction of more predictive analytics offerings and services in the cloud (i.e., SaaS) should help alleviate this problem because they offer organizations more straightforward and affordable access to predictive analytics tools and services without the end-user organization first having to outlay considerable up-front costs."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110906.html

Creating and Governing Communities of Practice Webinar

2 Sep 2011 17:59:34 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Webinars/Multimedia ::

The value of Communities of Practice in improving knowledge sharing, employee motivation, career development and an organization's image has been validated by a number of case studies. But how do you go about it? Leave it totally to employees, and the communities may not take off. Apply excessive controls, and participants will resist the heavy hand of management.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/webinar/2011/communities-of-practice.html

Where Organizations Apply Text Mining and Analysis

29 Aug 2011 17:56:42 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors ::

According to our latest survey, the primary domains in which organizations use, or plan to use, text mining and analysis tools and applications fall under the three principle areas of CRM: sales, marketing, and customer service. As shown in Figure 1, these three domains rank among the top four, with customer service by far outranking all others as a popular application area in which organizations apply software to analyze their unstructured data.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110830.html

[Untitled]

9 Sep 2011 17:56:05 GMT

Collaborative and Social KM Solutions

29 Aug 2011 17:50:45 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Executive Updates ::

In a recent Executive Update, I established that while early knowledge management (KM) relied on the organization and classification of document repositories, today's KM success depends on the crucial integration of the human aspect with enterprise strategies.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1115.html

Using Enterprise Architecture for Governance, Alignment, and SOX Compliance

29 Aug 2011 17:45:59 GMT

Finkelstein, Clive | Executive Reports ::

In this Executive Report, I describe a practical approach utilizing enterprise architecture (EA) for rapid compliance with business governance requirements such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Throughout the report, I show how senior management can establish internal controls by using a governance analysis framework (GAF), which is used to align and document the relationships within an enterprise that support financial and other reporting requirements. The framework is based on a comprehensive organizing framework using the Zachman Framework as well as proven EA methods and tools for the documentation and management of a GAF. It also ensures that senior management is able to comply with the internal control reporting requirements of Section 404 of SOX.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/reports/2011/06/index.html

Webinar: Social Media and the Enterprise

2 Aug 2011 14:56:04 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Events | 02 November 2011 | Business Intelligence

Social media, including but not limited to social networks, are no longer just where you spend your evenings when there is nothing on TV! They are increasingly relevant not only to the professional life of your colleagues and employees, but also to the relationship between an organization and its customers or associates. Yet social media still evoke fears, mostly of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/enterprise-social-media.html

Webinar: Creating and Governing Communities of Practice

31 Aug 2011 14:47:43 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Events | 31 August 2011 | Business Intelligence

The value of Communities of Practice in improving knowledge sharing, employee motivation, career development and an organization's image has been validated by a number of case studies. But how do you go about it? Leave it totally to employees, and the communities may not take off. Apply excessive controls, and participants will resist the heavy hand of management.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/communities-of-practice.html

Buys Autonomy, Junks Tablets and Phones and Possibly More

23 Aug 2011 13:55:52 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 23 August 2011 | Business Intelligence

The latest big acquisition to affect the enterprise software and BI and data warehousing (DW) markets is HP's announcement that it will acquire KM/enterprise search and unstructured data analytics leader Autonomy Corp. for approximately US $10.2 billion. This acquisition represents a key part of HP's new plan to remake itself into an enterprise services player; the company announced it will junk its new tablet and smartphone products, and maybe sell -- or spin off into a separate company -- its PC business.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110823.html

Is It Time to Radically Change Your Approach to CRM?

22 Aug 2011 13:48:39 GMT

Love, Jim | Executive Reports | 22 August 2011 | Innovation; Business Intelligence; Business-IT Strategies

CRM continues to ride a growing wave of interest as businesses struggle to find any way to gain advantage in difficult markets and difficult economic situations. Companies have demanded, or at least pursued, strategies that I call the "Three Fs" (features, functions, and fads). Vendors have responded. New features, new functions, new fads, and even new CRM packages have hit the market at an amazing rate. Ironically, in the midst of this explosion of offerings, few companies have exploited the features of their existing systems. All too often, CRM systems remain caught in a vicious cycle of overpromise and underachievement. Customers are making radical changes to the way they behave in relationship with the companies that serve them. Can these same companies avoid radical changes to systems they count on to develop and manage those relationships? Tinkering won't do. In this Executive Report, I explore the real changes required to reinvent CRM and successfully address the challenges of the 21st-century customer.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/04/index.html

Twitter, CEP, Market Dynamics, and the Wisdom of Crowds

16 Aug 2011 16:20:02 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 16 August 2011 | Business Intelligence

There have been an increasing number of references made recently to the concept of analyzing information emanating from social media sites to gauge consumer sentiment and using these findings to perform real-time stock market analysis and interpretation. Of particular interest is a study published by scientists at Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana, US) and the University of Manchester (Manchester, UK), which shows that social media can improve the accuracy rate of predicting the stock market.1 This study sought to apply the principles of behavioral economics -- in which emotions have been found to be able to profoundly affect individual behavior and decision making -- to societies at large to see whether such emotional states can affect their collective decision making. Specifically, the scientists set out to determine whether the public mood correlates or is predictive of economic indicators.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110816.html

Strategic IT Planning: Get the Business of It Right

10 Aug 2011 17:16:43 GMT

Benson, Robert J. | E-Mail Advisors :: Strategic IT planning is central to establishing the IT vision and, more importantly, the vision of how IT will propel the business (or government agency) forward. It's one of the seven basic competencies every CIO and IT organization should master to bring value to the business.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110810.html

Measuring Decision-Making Transparency

10 Aug 2011 17:15:47 GMT

May, Thornton | Executive Updates :: Management scholars in the year 2040 will undoubtedly label the second decade of the third millennium as the point in time when decision-making transparency became widely recognized as a preferred and affordable source of competitive advantage. This year, the colliding vectors of globalization, economics, demographics, technology, and politics place transparency at or near the top of executive agendas around the world. 1 As part of various programs for CIOs, I have created communities of interest (CoIs) around the issue of decision-making transparency at such programs as the Value Studio at Florida State College, the CIO Practicum Series at University of Kentucky, the CIO Solutions Gallery at Ohio State University, and the Olin Innovation Lab at Olin College of Engineering. This Executive Update sets forth preliminary findings from my ongoing research.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1114.html

The Consumerization of BI and Data Warehousing

9 Aug 2011 17:14:31 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors :: The consumerization of enterprise software encompasses the adaptation and use of consumer-oriented software, devices, and marketing and delivery practices to support corporate business users. Although the BI and data warehousing vendors were initially somewhat slow to embrace this trend, they are now quickly moving to do so.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110809.html

Social Media and the Enterprise: Part II -- From Fear to Reasoned Adoption

5 Aug 2011 17:13:19 GMT

Social Media and the Enterprise: Part II -- From Fear to Reasoned Adoption :: Social media is increasingly relevant not only to the professional life of your colleagues and employees, but also to the relationship between an organization and its customers or associates. Yet it also evokes fears, including confidentiality breaches and productivity losses. Some concerns are exaggerated, in part because the risks are not specific to the new medium. Others are real, and each enterprise needs to assess for itself whether it can mitigate them well enough to proceed. This Executive Report, the second in a two-part series, discusses the issues and risks of social media -- attempting to distinguish justified concerns from irrational fears -- and concludes by proposing steps for a reasonable corporate social media adoption roadmap.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/03/index.html

Business-Driven Roadmaps and Funding ModelsBusiness-Driven Roadmaps and Funding Models

3 Aug 2011 17:12:15 GMT

Ulrich, William | E-Mail Advisors :: Business architecture not only provides a vision for aligning stakeholder value and customer experience across business units and product lines, but it also allows executives and portfolio managers to change the nature of planning, roadmap development, and related investment strategies. Through our consulting practice, my colleagues and I have reviewed a good number of business transformation plans and have found that many of these plans have several things in common...

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110803.html

Corporate Social Media Data Analysis 2011

2 Aug 2011 17:11:16 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors :: Analyzing social media data in support of corporate BI practices is currently limited; however, it does appear that the practice is increasing. Moreover, interest among organizations in the possibility of analyzing social media data in the near future is quite strong. These findings come from a recent Cutter Consortium survey conducted in June/July 2011 of 61 end-user organizations worldwide and their plans for using text mining and unstructured data analysis technology and practices. One set of questions examined corporate attitudes and trends pertaining to tracking and analyzing data from social media sites.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110802.html

Corporate Use of Predictive Analytics: Part III -- Development Issues, Standardization, Spending Plans

1 Aug 2011 17:09:55 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates :: In February/March 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 60 end-user organizations various questions about the adoption and use of predictive analytics. The goal was to uncover corporate adoption trends and examine application development issues to discern how organizations are applying predictive analytics technology and practices to structured data analysis.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1113.html

Webinar: Social Media and the Enterprise

2 Aug 2011 15:53:16 GMT

Webinar: Creating and Governing Communities of Practice

31 Aug 2011 15:48:33 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Events | 31 August 2011 | Business Intelligence

The value of Communities of Practice in improving knowledge sharing, employee motivation, career development and an organization's image has been validated by a number of case studies. But how do you go about it? Leave it totally to employees, and the communities may not take off. Apply excessive controls, and participants will resist the heavy hand of management. http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/communities-of-practice.html

Identifying Your Key Stakeholders

27 Jul 2011 15:28:52 GMT

Cohen, Moshe | E-Mail Advisors | 27 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

IS departments interact with a multitude of stakeholders through the inception, development, and completion of projects. Whether assessing the needs of internal departments, developing partnerships with external partners and vendors, managing deadlines and deliverables, or setting expectations for end users, IT professionals must be adept at identifying key stakeholders, understanding their interests, and then communicating and negotiating with them effectively throughout the life of the project.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110727.html

How Is the Economic Uncertainty Affecting Corporate BI and Data Warehousing Initiatives?

26 Jul 2011 15:22:56 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 26 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

With all the drama surrounding the US government's attempt to increase its debt ceiling limit, the talk of dire consequences that could result from failing to do so, as well as the economic problems that continue to plague various EU countries, it seems fitting to examine how the ongoing economic unrest is affecting corporate BI and data warehousing efforts. Several Cutter Consortium surveys help to provide some insight into the matter.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110726.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does your organization currently use advanced data visualization tools for exploratory data analysis?

26 Jul 2011 15:18:08 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 26 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

Advanced data visualization tools allow users to more easily formulate hypotheses about the data under analysis, which is useful for a variety of BI applications, including exploratory data analysis, visual reporting, and for comparing/assimilating multiple metrics displayed on a single screen or dashboard. Curt Hall was surprised that just over one-fifth of those surveyed were using such tools, predicts increased usage, as the technology is "becoming increasingly embedded to front-end dashboards, scorecards, and other business measurement applications in order to provide less-technical business users with data analysis capabilities."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110726.html

Social Media in the Service of Modern Business

21 Jul 2011 14:40:50 GMT

Gerden, Eugene | Executive Updates | 21 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

Despite its youth, in recent years social networks have become a common and integral part of modern life. Social media appeared on the Internet 10 years ago, and at the time nobody could have predicted its success. Today, its influence on our lives is so great that the number of people participating in some social media outlets already exceeds the population of certain countries.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1112.htmlhttp://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1112.html

Decision Making Under a Different "Hat"

20 Jul 2011 14:15:17 GMT

Pritchard, Carl | E-Mail Advisors | 20 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Executives make decisions every day. They base them on their wealth of personal and professional experience. They base them on the available information sets. They base them on what they believe is in the proverbial "crystal ball" because of what they've seen in the past. The problem is, each of us has only one true past.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110720.html

A Structured Approach to IT Cloud Migration

20 Jul 2011 14:08:34 GMT

Cohen, Beth | Executive Reports | 20 July 2011 | Enterprise Architecture; Enterprise Risk Management & Governance; Business Intelligence

Migrating IT systems and infrastructure to cloud ecosystems cuts costs and improves service delivery. However, moving complex IT infrastructures directly to cloud architectures is not simple or easy. As discussed in this Executive Report, an enterprise needs to look not only at the technical aspects but also at how migration will affect business operations. Taking a structured approach to cloud migration projects bypasses roadblocks and allows for intelligent decisions that will benefit the business.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/reports/2011/05/index.html

Use of Advanced Data Visualization for Exploratory Data Analysis

19 Jul 2011 13:30:16 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 19 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

Advanced data visualization tools were first applied in the scientific and engineering domains for building models for complex applications involving extremely large data sets containing many variables, such as fluid flow analysis, aerodynamic simulation, and interpreting atmospheric data. Over the past few years, we've seen advanced data visualization used to support more general business applications. Cutter Consortium's survey of 60 end-user organizations' predictive analytics efforts helps shed some light on the extent that organizations are using advanced data visualization tools for exploratory data analysis.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110719.html

Social Media and the Enterprise: Part I -- From Apprehension to Explosion

19 Aug 2011 13:27:44 GMT

Baudoin, Claude R. | Executive Summaries | 19 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Social media, including but not limited to social networks, is no longer just where you spend your evenings when there is nothing on TV. As we'll explore in this two-part Executive Report series, it is now increasingly relevant not only to the professional life of your colleagues and employees, but also to the relationship between an organization and its customers or associates. Yet social media still evokes fears, mostly of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses. This series examines the pros and cons of social media and proposes reasonable steps for a corporate social media adoption roadmap.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/summaries/2011/02/index.html

Social Media and the Enterprise: Part I -- From Apprehension to Explosion

18 Aug 2011 13:23:16 GMT

Baudoin, Claude R. | Executive Reports | 18 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Social media, including but not limited to social networks, is no longer just where you spend your evenings when there is nothing on TV. As we'll explore in this two-part Executive Report series, it is now increasingly relevant not only to the professional life of your colleagues and employees, but also to the relationship between an organization and its customers or associates. Yet social media still evokes fears, mostly of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses. This series examines the pros and cons of social media and proposes reasonable steps for a corporate social media adoption roadmap.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/02/index.html

Cloud Computing: The New Foundation for Corporate IT?

13 Jul 2011 15:20:57 GMT

Shum, Annie | E-Mail Advisors | 13 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Cloud computing "as a platform" will change the economics of computing by replacing up-front CAPEX with a more scalable, variable cost structure based on an on-demand, (almost) friction-free entry/exit, elastic, pay-as-you-go model. Increasingly, a growing number of organizations will find it compelling to consider cloud computing as a utility-based alternative (or supplement) to privately owned, on-premises data centers. Additionally, organizations, notably nimble entrepreneurs and cash-strapped startups, will be able to punch above their weight class and accelerate time to value.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110713.html

MicroStrategy Transaction Services: Insight to Instant Action

12 Jul 2011 14:59:44 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 12 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

In December of 2010, I discussed BI and data warehousing developments that companies should be examining (in 2011), including mobile BI (see "What Lies Ahead: BI and Data Warehousing Predictions for 2011," 14 December 2010). Basically, I said that companies should consider carefully how mobile BI can benefit their organization. This should include focusing on enabling existing applications with mobile capabilities to extend their usefulness as well as identifying new applications that can take advantage of the unique capabilities afforded by mobile technology. In particular, I said that companies should devote considerable attention to the integration of mobile BI with operational systems. It is here that I expect to see some of the greatest payback from implementing mobile applications in the enterprise. Why? Because I see the integration of mobile BI and operational systems as a possible "killer" application that will allow on-the-go users to make fact-based decisions that they can immediately apply to effect a change in some business process or transaction.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110712.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does IT deliver value? (% of managers who agree that it does, 2008-2011)

12 Jul 2011 14:55:50 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 12 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

Bob Benson happily reports an upwards trend in business management's perception of the value IT's delivers. He states, "In my client and workshop experience, companies whose business management does not believe IT delivers value are much more difficult to work with. That is, when business managers do not see IT delivering value, they are much more resistant to participating in governance, or assisting in planning and prioritization. Most often, IT folks have built few relationships with business managers, which simply adds to the 'value disconnect.' This is unfortunate."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110712.html

Press Release: Cutter Consortium Welcomes New Consultants to its Team

11 Jul 2011 14:52:16 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 11 July 2011 | Agile Project Management; Business Intelligence

Cutter Consortium is pleased to announce that Hubert Smits and Ralph Hughes have joined our team as Senior Consultants.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110711.html

Android Apps: Implications for the Enterprise

7 Jul 2011 14:41:04 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates | 07 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

The onslaught of mobile devices into the office is no surprise. It has been going on for years, with workers bringing their PDAs, BlackBerrys, and smartphones to work, and, most recently, their iPhones and iPads. The latest generation of smartphones and tablets offer a new range of functionality that makes them both more useful and more dangerous to the enterprise. While some accommodation has already been made within the enterprise for Apple's devices, the new range of Android phones and tablets is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with, which we will explore in this Executive Update. Android offers several considerations that could very well cause these devices to be treated differently.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1111.html

Mobile Opportunities and Strategic Challenges: Choosing an OS

7 Jul 2011 14:35:14 GMT

Kursh, Steven R. | Executive Updates | 07 July 2011 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Many of us face challenges associated with the rapid growth in mobile application opportunities. Our choices are not so much centered on whether we should commit resources to develop mobile apps for internal use (i.e., the why) or apps for our customers and prospective customers (as discussed in a previous Executive Update), but rather the who, what, and how of execution.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1110.html

Achieving Immediate BSM Success

6 Jul 2011 14:06:34 GMT

Keyworth, Bill | E-Mail Advisors | 06 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Most successful IT executives grasp the minimal appeal of business-alignment metrics focused on application downtime, system uptime/availability, speed of endpoint provisioning, mean time to repair (MTTR), and other measurements essential in tracking the efficiency of IT operations. That isn't a new doctrine. What might be new is the "business" language required to relate IT deliverables to the end users' business objectives. If the IT deliverable is of no importance to the business function, then IT should eliminate or repackage it into a service that carries appropriate business value.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110706.html

Webinar: Social Media and the Enterprise

2 Nov 2011 16:43:27 GMT

Webinar: Creating and Governing Communities of Practice

6 Jul 2011 16:35:44 GMT

Interest High, But Hadoop Still Has a Ways to Go

5 Jul 2011 16:26:57 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 05 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

There has been a lot of talk lately about Hadoop and MapReduce in the role of analyzing "big data."1 Our research shows, however, that use of Hadoop and MapReduce in traditional enterprises (i.e., non-Internet-based companies) remains quite limited compared to other technologies such as high-performance analytic databases and analytic appliances. For example, a fairly recent Cutter Consortium survey found that just 3% of organizations surveyed said they are using Hadoop/MapReduce to bolster their predictive analytics and data mining capabilities, while 6% said they planned to do so within the near future.2 (The survey did not consider the extent that companies were using these tools). Another survey we conducted about a year ago found similar results.3 However, our latest survey does show increased interest by organizations in wanting to use Hadoop/MapReduce, with approximately 26% saying they are seriously investigating the possibility of applying these tools.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110705.html

Collaborative KM

5 Jul 2011 15:54:48 GMT

Baudoin, Claude | Executive Updates | 05 July 2011 | Enterprise Risk Management & Governance; Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

In a 2010 Executive Update, I talked about the transition from a document-centric approach to knowledge management (KM) -- with its emphasis on content management systems (CMSs) and search engines -- to "social KM," in which, to quote the title I gave that Update: "It's not (just) what you know; it's who you know."

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1109.html

Aligning Enterprise Architecture, Strategy, and Portfolio Management

5 Jul 2011 15:50:21 GMT

Finkelstein, Clive | Executive Reports | 05 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

Success with enterprise architecture depends on strategy, rather than on existing business processes. This leads to the development of a strategic model of the enterprise as a "picture of the business" for management, while also being a high-level enterprise model for IT. This strategic model is analyzed to derive a portfolio of systems based on management priorities. This Executive Report demonstrates methods you can use to derive project plans and project maps from data maps by inspection. These easy-to-apply methods have not previously been used in data modeling and promise to transform portfolio management.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/reports/2011/04/index.html

Software Cloud Computing: Part II -- How to Spend $20 Billion

1 Jul 2011 15:47:07 GMT

Bennatan, E.M. | Executive Updates | 01 July 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Agile Project Management; Business Intelligence

Here's a question for you: who do you think is planning to spend $20 billion a year on cloud computing, every year? I can't imagine that you came up with any answer other than the US government, and you're right. Well, almost.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2011/apmu1112.html

The Public Clouds Are Coming Faster

29 Jun 2011 15:10:00 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 29 June 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Regardless of what you think about cloud computing, one thing seems certain: while adoption is still very early, cloud computing is growing very fast. Before we begin to discuss this, let's quickly define some terms.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110629.html

Social Media Monitoring Industry Trends: Integration with General CRM Platforms

28 Jun 2011 15:04:41 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 28 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

Back in May, I discussed the development of industry-specific social media monitoring and analysis solutions, basically saying that such focused applications will make it easier and more practical for end-user organizations to supplement their traditional CRM, marketing, BI, and other analytics efforts with insights gleaned from analyzing social media sites (see "Industry-Specific Social Media Monitoring Applications on the Rise," 24 May 2011).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110628.html

The Coming Tsunami: In-Memory Databases, Part II

23 Jun 2011 13:52:18 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 23 June 2011 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

In last week's Advisor, I began a discussion of SAP's new HANA architecture (see "The Coming Tsunami: In-Memory Databases, Part I," 16 June 2011). SAP's long-term strategy is to use this architecture also as a persistent store of data for its transactional system, hence the inclusion of a row-oriented database. This is a polite way of saying that sometime in the future you won't need another vendor's database system. The HANA architecture uses flash memory as the persistent store, so there will be no spinning disks. SAP's software will be able to replicate its transactions in real time to HANA, without needing nightly or batch-oriented ETL processes to load the system or maintain aggregates. The appliance is able to import data from other systems easily using conventional ODBC/JDBC methods. The architecture also has a real-time replication component that I assume will be used for making copies of the data inside for recovery and performance purposes.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2011/btt110623.html

Cloud-Based/SaaS Predictive Analytics: What's the Outlook?

21 Jun 2011 13:30:45 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 21 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

I've been saying for some time now that the advent of cloud-based predictive analytics offerings -- such as those from in2Clouds, Predixion Software, and Quiterian -- is an important development due to its potential to stir up the market for data mining and predictive analytics. A Cutter Consortium survey1 in February/March 2011 sheds some light on the use of these products.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110621.html

BI and Open Data in the Cloud

16 Jun 2011 16:56:41 GMT

Di Maio, Paola | Executive Updates | 16 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

As I explore in this Executive Update, one of the most interesting and challenging scenarios ahead for BI comes from the predicted "shift to the cloud."1 According to NIST, cloud computing -- as probably everyone knows by now -- is "a model for on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."2 Essentially, every bit of data stored on the Web, including pages and photos on social networking sites, blogs, posts to mailing lists and so on, is now considered to be in the cloud.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1108.html

The Latest in Data Virtualization from Composite Software

14 Jun 2011 16:19:02 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 14 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

This week, I spoke with the folks from Composite Software about the latest version of the company's data virtualization1 platform, Composite Enterprise Information Server 6.0. Composite Software's latest version adds new source data integration capabilities to the mix of sources it can access and integrate. Specifically, this includes the ability for Composite to access high-performance analytic databases such as Sybase IQ and HP Vertica, in addition to IBM Netezza (which it has supported for over a year now). Moreover, Composite can now access "noSQL" technologies, including Hadoop/MapReduce and other "big data" sources. Composite has also added new performance capabilities to Composite Information Server.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110614.html

Corporate Use of Predictive Analytics: Part II -- Application Areas and Implementation

9 Jun 2011 15:02:04 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates | 09 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

In February/March 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 60 end-user organizations various questions about the adoption and use of predictive analytics. The goal was to uncover corporate adoption trends and examine application development issues to discern how organizations are applying predictive analytics technology and practices to structured data analysis. Hall, Curt | Executive Updates | 09 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1107.html

Corporate Spending Trends for Predictive Analytics

6 May 2011 14:29:00 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 06 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

A survey conducted by Cutter Consortium in February/March 2011 offers some insight into corporate spending plans for predictive analytics.1 Specifically, when asked, "Does your organization plan to increase or decrease spending on predictive analytics and data mining this year (i.e., 2011) compared to last year?" participants responded as shown in Figure 1.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110607.html

Green Warehouses for a Greener World

31 May 2011 15:15:27 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 31 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

Going "green" and conducting a well-thought-out sustainability program can affect an organization's operating efficiency and corporate reputation, both of which can positively impact its bottom line. BI has a major role to play in an organization's efforts to improve sustainability and do something positive for the planet. BI is also playing a huge role in consumers' energy-consumption efforts, which will lead to an even greater ability to protect the environment by reducing the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and helping to lower the need for new power-generation facilities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110531.html

Big Data Meets the Real World

26 May 2011 15:08:36 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 26 May 2011 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence

There are a lot of things in the IT world that don't make sense right off the bat. One of them is the role of data in the world of management and analysis. Since the beginning of the computer revolution, managers and technology people have vastly underestimated the role that good data plays in decision making. Over the years, more and more sophisticated tools for manipulating larger and larger mounds of data -- 4GLs, multidimensional databases, management dashboards, and so on -- have promised to revolutionize management, only to come up short in practice.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2011/btt110526.html

Energy Informatics Getting Energized

25 May 2011 14:47:33 GMT

Pritchard, Carl | E-Mail Advisors | 25 May 2011 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

A colleague and I started talking and writing about Energy Informatics about three years ago as a result of a request from the Advanced Practices Council (APC) of the Society for Information Management to make its members, typically CIOs, aware of developments in green IS. Our ideas were well received, and Energy Informatics emerged from the APC-funded research.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110525.html

Embedded Analytics: Business and Intelligence Together

25 May 2011 14:44:22 GMT

Ramakrishnan, Babu Narayanan | Executive Updates | 25 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

Embedded analytics has gained significance recently, as businesses seek more optimization. This Executive Update deals with the context of embedded analytics, its technicalities, and inherent challenges.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1106.html

Industry-Specific Social Media Monitoring Applications on the Rise

24 Jun 2011 14:31:05 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 24 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

Almost every minute consumers make comments about some book, car, restaurant, hotel, salon, or what have you on social media sites like Twitter, Yelp!, Facebook, OpenTable, and so on, which their friends and other consumers read to inform their own decisions. Most organizations are well aware that such comments can influence consumer purchasing behavior (especially when it comes to friends reading friends' comments). They also understand that the insights gained from monitoring and analyzing social media conversations could help them better market and sell to prospects, serve customers, and better understand what's being said about their brands, products, and even their competitors. The trouble has been that finding, monitoring, analyzing, and utilizing this information in a practical way has been difficult for many organizations due to a lack of focused, industry-specific applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110524.html

Chromebooks Will Shake Up Enterprise Computing

18 May 2011 14:43:37 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 18 May 2011 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Enterprise Risk Management & Governance; Business Intelligence

Google's introduction of the Chromebook has serious implications for cloud computing and IT -- and threatens to shake up enterprise computing. Google is hoping that companies will find Chromebook's reduced maintenance and lower cost of ownership too good to resist. But Google does not expect companies to embrace Chromebook overnight. Rather, the company is betting that Chromebook adoption will gain momentum as organizations warm up to the concept -- just as has been the case with cloud computing, in general.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2011/ea110518.html

Streaming Analytics for High-Volume Real-Time Analytics

17 May 2011 14:40:13 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 17 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

We first started hearing about streaming analytics (especially by IBM) back in 2009. As the name implies, streaming analytics systems analyze high volumes of continuously streaming data -- both structured and unstructured -- in real time to create a forward-looking analysis of data and to continuously refine these findings as additional data is made available to the algorithms.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110517.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How would you rate the success of your organization's predictive analytics efforts to date?

17 May 2011 19:53:30 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 17 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

According to Cutter Senior Consultant Curt Hall, the volume of respondents who felt that it is simply too soon to tell how successful their efforts in predictive analytics have been is important, and understandable, "given our earlier finding that most organizations' experience to date with predictive analytics involves the development of prototype or initial applications that have yet to make it into production." He went on to assert that "demand is beginning to appear this year, and we should expect to see it accelerate over the next two to three years."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110517.html

Corporate Use of Predictive Analytics: Part I -- Adoption Trends and Attitudes

12 May 2011 19:20:39 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates | 12 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

In February/March 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 60 end-user organizations various questions about the adoption and use of predictive analytics. The goal was to uncover corporate adoption trends and examine application development issues to discern how organizations are applying predictive analytics technology and practices to structured data analysis.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1105.html

Stumbling Blocks to Greater Use of Predictive Analytics

10 May 2011 18:36:03 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 10 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

According to our research, interest in using predictive analytics by end-user organizations is very high. More than half of organizations say they consider predictive analytics strategically important. Yet use of the technology, although increasing, is still fairly limited. So what are the biggest issues standing in these organizations' way? Cost? Although always an issue, it is by no means the biggest. Winning project support from upper management? Nope. Ability to prove ROI or make the business case for using the technology? No. Data ownership issues? Wrong again. In fact, all of these issues rank considerably low on the list of impediments that organizations say are hindering their efforts to utilize predictive analytics. Rather, the three biggest problems they face are the following:

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110510.html

How Cloud 2.0 Offers a Way Out of Silicon's Limits

5 May 2011 14:13:55 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 05 May 2011 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence; Business-IT Strategies; Enterprise Architecture

Let's face it. We are at the end of Moore's Law. The common version of this law says computing power doubles every 18 to 24 months. Advances in silicon engineering have made this possible. But this natural law of silicon is driven by the fundamentals of materials science and the laws of physics. Unless we find a way to change the gravitational constant of the universe or surpass the speed of light, we are likely to face another four decades of computing unlike the past four decades.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2011/btt110505.html

Hoorays for Hadoop: User-Friendliness Matures

3 May 2011 14:45:16 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 03 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

Last June,1 I wrote that traditional enterprises are interested in taking advantage of the Internet-scale "big data" processing capabilities offered by MapReduce2 and open source derivative Hadoop,3 which are used primarily by such Internet-based companies as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! Basically, Hadoop's growing popularity has caused traditional enterprises to consider the possibilities of using it to assist with their large-scale data analysis operations. For the most part, however, they have been hindered by a lack of friendly tools and a shortage of experienced developers knowledgeable in how to go about implementing Hadoop applications they can use to support their existing data warehousing and BI environments.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110503.html

Crowdsourcing Predictive Analytics Development

26 Apr 2011 18:53:08 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 26 April 2011 | Business Intelligence

Over the past year or so, I've discussed some of the more important factors I see influencing the growing use of predictive analytics and data mining (see "The Slow, Steady Climb for Data Mining, Predictive Analytics," 1 February 2011). I have noted one trend in particular that I think holds considerable potential but is really just getting underway, which is the advent of cloud-based predictive analytics and data-mining applications and services. Good examples are offered by companies like Predixion Software (see "Predixion Insight: Self-Service Predictive Analytics in the Cloud," 21 September 2010) and in2clouds (see "Predictive Analytics with in2clouds Rides a Wave," 29 March 2011).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110426.html

For Want of a Nail: Managing Supply Chain Risk

21 Apr 2011 15:44:00 GMT

Charette, Robert N. | E-Mail Advisors | 21 April 2011 | Enterprise Risk Management & Governance; Business-IT Strategies

On 17 March 2000, there was a small fire at a Royal Philips Electronics semiconductor plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. The fire was caused by lightening hitting a power line, which shut down the power to cooling fans in a furnace operating at the plant. The fire was put out in less than 10 minutes, but eight trays of silicon wafers -- enough for several thousand mobile phone chips -- were rendered useless.

http://www.cutter.com/content/risk/fulltext/advisor/2011/erm110421.html

Cloud Standards Ramp Up, Gain Key Advocates

20 Apr 2011 15:12:37 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 20 April 2011 | Enterprise Architecture; Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Cloud computing has emerged as an attractive alternative to on-premise IT, offering organizations cost savings and greater flexibility in how they license, develop, and manage applications and how they store and manage data. But the big "however" with cloud computing remains a lack of open -- and generally accepted -- set of standards, benchmarks, methodologies, and best practices. This absence is standing in the way of more widespread adoption of clouds by end-user organizations.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2011/ea110420.html

But How Will Consumers Respond?

19 Apr 2011 15:06:22 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 19 April 2011 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business-IT Strategies

Last week, marketing giant Epsilon Interactive reported that hackers had gained unauthorized access to a gigantic trove of email addresses the company manages for its various clients. In fact, this might be the largest data breach ever (or at least ever reported), involving what some estimates report to be millions of customer email addresses and names. About 50 of Epsilon's clients are affected. They include stores such as Target and Walgreens; credit card firms and banks such as Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, US Bank, and Barclays Bank; and travel and amusement companies such as Hilton Worldwide and Disney.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110419.html

Seven Fundamental Checks Before Adopting a Middleware Adapter

14 Apr 2011 14:40:05 GMT

Mohandoss, Ramaswami | Executive Updates | 14 April 2011 | Business Intelligence

Middleware software adapters used between dissimilar technologies play an important role in data integration. Dissimilar technologies in this context could be ETL, database, an enterprise package solution, such as SAP, or any technology that can consume or source data. These middleware adapters could be developed by participating technology vendors, through a strategic partnership, or by a third-party independent software vendor. The adapters implement each other's native APIs to exchange data by providing better performance when compared to an open standard (e.g., ODBC). With multiple middleware options in the market, it is an important decision point for an enterprise to identify that right "strategic adapter" for a particular context. This Executive Update provides a seven-point checklist of technical capabilities that an enterprise can employ while evaluating various options before adopting a particular adapter.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1104.html

As Unstructured Data Rises, So Does View of Text Mining

12 Apr 2011 13:56:05 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 12 April 2011 | Business Intelligence; Business-IT Strategies

Back in December, when making predictions for the upcoming year regarding important BI trends, I wrote that we could expect to see use of text mining and analysis increase in 2011, just as it has almost every year since we've measured its adoption (see "What Lies Ahead: BI and Data Warehousing Predictions for 2011," 14 December 2010).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110412.html

12 Steps Toward Confident Excellence

6 Apr 2011 14:49:04 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 06 April 2011 | Business-IT Strategies

Excellence is an old topic, more honored in a book than observed in the workplace. Nonetheless, it is an important topic because of some almost unbearable forces that are shearing the workplace.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit110406.html

Corporate BI, Data Warehousing Spend Trends in 2010-11 Stay Consistent

5 Apr 2011 14:44:36 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 05 April 2011 | Business Intelligence

A Cutter Consortium survey conducted in February/March 2011 of 89 end-user organizations based worldwide1 helps provide some insight into corporate BI and data warehousing spending trends.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110405.html

Predictive Analytics with in2clouds Rides a Wave

29 Mar 2011 18:36:27 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 29 March 2011 | Business Intelligence

Last month, I discussed some of the factors influencing the growing adoption of data mining and predictive analytics (see "The Slow, Steady Climb for Data Mining, Predictive Analytics," 1 February 2011). In particular, I noted a developing trend that is going to have an impact on the use of predictive analytics and data mining: Cloud-based data-mining applications and services. Basically, I said that the availability of data mining/predictive analytics via the software as a service (SaaS) model is important because it puts the technology -- one that has typically been hard to get started with because of complexity, cost, skill set requirements, processing needs, and so on -- within reach of more end-user organizations that otherwise might not be able, or would be unwilling, to attempt to use the technology. I cited Predixion Software, which I discussed last year (see "Predixion Insight: Self-Service Predictive Analytics in the Cloud," 21 September 2010).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110329.html

Reporting from Japan, Libya Show Limits of Real-Time Information

22 Mar 2011 18:24:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 22 March 2011 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Real-time coverage of the recent disasters in Japan, the social unrest in the Middle East and Africa, and the Allied bombing campaign underway in Libya all expose the limitations of such information; specifically, the clear need to put real-time information into some kind of context with the use of additional, supplemental information. I discussed this in 2003, at the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Now, eight years later, recent world-shattering events have made the limitations of real-time information even clearer.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110322.html

BI for the Rest of Us

16 Mar 2011 17:21:31 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates | 16 March 2011 | Business Intelligence

Bringing BI down to the coalface has long been a goal for both vendors and IT managers -- in light of the fact that BI remains largely confined to the 15%-20% of workers in an organization who analyze data. While analysts require sophisticated information and provide essential services in dissecting long-term trends and strategic possibilities, decision makers in the operations area require increasingly sophisticated real-time analysis of data presented in an accessible manner to which they can respond. This has resulted in continuing pressure for "BI for the masses" or "BI for the rest of us."

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1103.html

For Mobile BI, Tablets Expected to Spell a Boost

15 Mar 2011 16:55:19 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 15 March 2011 | Business Intelligence

We're now seeing organizations across almost every industry develop mobile BI applications that employ interactive dashboards, reporting, visualization, and other functionality tailored to specific users or groups that extend the usefulness of their BI and performance management systems. They're doing this by putting KPIs and other metrics into the hands of their employees when they are on the road or visiting a client site.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110315.html

Two Moves Shake Horizon for High-Performance DBs

8 Mar 2011 19:01:59 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 08 March 2011 | Business Intelligence

Over the last two weeks, we've seen two moves by enterprise vendors making acquisitions of high-performance analytic DB vendors:1 Hewlett-Packard (HP) acquired Vertica, and Teradata bought Aster Data Systems.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110308.html

Current Solutions for Unstructured Data

24 Feb 2011 14:17:16 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Summaries | 24 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

Unstructured data, particularly text, makes up at least 80% of all corporate data and an incalculable amount of potentially relevant data on the Web. As we explore in this Executive Report by Brian J. Dooley, developing the capability to mine these information stores and apply the data to business processes is an imperative. Analysis must meet real business needs, however, and must coexist with and contribute to information developed from structured data in data warehouses. Emerging technologies and processes are beginning to make this possible, opening the way for a wide range of important capabilities and consequences.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/summaries/2011/01/index.html

Current Solutions for Unstructured Data

24 Feb 2011 14:14:59 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Reports | 24 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

Unstructured data, particularly text, makes up at least 80% of all corporate data and an incalculable amount of potentially relevant data on the Web. As we explore in this Executive Report by Brian J. Dooley, developing the capability to mine these information stores and apply the data to business processes is an imperative. Analysis must meet real business needs, however, and must coexist with and contribute to information developed from structured data in data warehouses. Emerging technologies and processes are beginning to make this possible, opening the way for a wide range of important capabilities and consequences.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/01/index.html

Hearsay Social Keeps Corporate Eye on Social Media

22 Feb 2011 18:45:08 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 22 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

Some of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of companies wanting to use consumer-oriented social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for marketing and other purposes have to do with compliance and worries about brand management. This is especially true for financial services and insurance companies, which face considerable scrutiny from government regulatory agencies. As an example, my nephew, who worked for a large financial services company, told me that his group had been wanting to make use of consumer social media for marketing and other customer engagement efforts for some time; however, his company had standing orders against such practices because management was simply too afraid that sensitive or embarrassing information might somehow "leak" onto the Web. There was also the big question of compliance; particularly the archiving of messages.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110222.html

How Far Along Are Organizations in Their Mobile BI Efforts?

15 Feb 2011 18:13:16 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 15 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

Last month I said that, according to our research, more than half of organizations currently view mobile BI as a strategic priority for their organizations to have, while others foresee mobile BI becoming a strategic imperative within approximately the next 6-12 months (see "Targeting Mobile BI as a Strategic Priority," 4 January 2011). I added that the main domains and applications in which organizations are applying mobile BI capabilities are the same ones that they have been supporting with BI all along -- those relating to what fall under the traditional CRM umbrella: sales, service, and support. These findings come from a September/October 2010 Cutter Consortium survey of 59 end-user organizations worldwide that are implementing mobile BI technology and practices.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110215.html

In-Memory Technology Gains Popularity in Business Environment

14 Feb 2011 18:23:16 GMT

Gerden, Eugene | Executive Updates | 14 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

In recent years, demand for new BI technologies has significantly increased amid an expanding desire by business to receive all required information in a timely way without the risk of losing value.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1102.html

Revolt in Egypt Was Under Our Social-Media Noses

8 Feb 2011 19:19:09 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 01 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

Last October, I discussed in an Advisor developing trends pertaining to social media monitoring and analysis (see "Psst ... Listen in as Some Business Tune in to Social Media," 5 October 2010). In that article, I pointed to a growing demand for software, services, and personnel to enable organizations to analyze social media as well as to interpret and apply the results to achieve some kind of business objective or competitive advantage. I also noted that this demand would mainly come from commercial organizations seeking to capitalize on social media as new advertising, marketing, and customer-interaction channels.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110208.html

The Slow, Steady Climb for Data Mining, Predictive Analytics

1 Feb 2011 19:04:13 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 01 February 2011 | Business Intelligence

Back in December, when I offered predictions concerning important BI trends I saw for the New Year, I said that adoption of data mining and predictive analytics would experience steady growth in 2011, just as it has over the past 10 years or so (see "What Lies Ahead: BI and Data Warehousing Predictions for 2011," 14 December 2010).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110201.html

Vendors Address Mobile BI Security

25 Jan 2011 19:40:04 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 25 January 2011 | Business Intelligence; Enterprise Risk Management & Governance

One of the biggest concerns among organizations when it comes to adopting mobile BI is security [1]. This is hardly surprising, given that security has always been a major concern of any mobile corporate application, particularly the fear of unauthorized access to, or loss of, sensitive corporate data. That said, I'm happy to report that the vendors have gone to significant lengths to ensure that developers have a broad range of tools they can employ to ensure the security of mobile BI applications operating on smartphones and tablet devices. This includes leveraging the security capabilities of their BI platforms and other enterprise applications (e.g., SAP Authentication, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol authentication (LDAP)), as well as data encryption techniques to help ensure the security of mobile BI applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110125.html

Predictive Analytics: Fresh Sets of Eyes for Police

18 Jan 2011 17:12:38 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 18 January 2011 | Business Intelligence

One of the hottest areas for applying data mining and predictive analytics is in assisting police with fighting crime. In fact, I've noticed that police departments around the world are increasingly turning to predictive analytics technology. Some police agencies -- including those in the US cities of Memphis, Tennessee; Chicago, Illinois; Richmond, Virginia; and Los Angeles, California; as well as in the UK -- have had projects and applications either in use or in various stages of development and testing for some time now. While just this month, a city close to me -- Santa Cruz, California -- announced a project to apply advanced statistical modeling and predictive analytics to assist its police department.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110118.html

Is There Something Happening Here? (Yes, and It’s About Control)

13 Jan 2011 18:32:19 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 13 January 2011 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business-IT Strategies; Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

The last decade of bubble-induced growth was book-ended by the twin events of 9/11 and the great recession. This next decade, with this recession as one of its very own bookends, looks like it might unleash demons all its own. Where this will lead isn't exactly clear.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2011/btt110113.html

If You Build It, They May Not Come

12 Jan 2011 18:17:34 GMT

Baudoin, Claude R. | Executive Updates | 12 January 2011 | Agile Project Management; Business Intelligence

With apologies to people who loved the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, the title above is an easy metaphor for what often happens these days when an organization attempts to develop and launch its own social network: it builds it, opens it with a fanfare ... and almost no one comes to the party.

In this Executive Update, we examine this new twist on the longstanding "build vs. buy" debate, based on several examples. We see what factors influence success or failure, and we attempt to draw some practical guidance about how to leverage the vibrant environment of social platforms that has emerged in the last three years.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1101.html

WikiLeaks and Data Security in a Web 2.0 World

11 Jan 2011 18:15:34 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 11 January 2011 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

In this day and age of WikiLeaks, can we really consider any data in electronic format truly safe? This biting question is raised again and again in government, military, and corporate offices the world over. Moreover, I would argue that it is one of the more important questions of our day as we increasingly turn to information systems to help us deal with (if not outright save us from) many of our most pressing problems.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia110111.html

Leveraging New E-Government Services Through the Open Social Standard

22 Dec 2010 15:20:03 GMT

Viniegra, Carlos | Executive Updates | 22 December 2010 | Business Intelligence

Social networks and cloud computing solutions are two of the contemporary trends governments are eagerly trying to engage and use. Mexico's recent experience exploring ideas related to cloud computing and social networks shows that through these technologies, governments can go beyond being users and become driving forces within the new technological landscape, while providing a new generation of e-government services. In that light, this Executive Update explores how the Open Social Standard (OSS) can become a starting point to do so.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1012.html

A Model to Evaluate ETL Design Effectiveness

7 Dec 2010 14:51:39 GMT

Mohandoss, Ramaswami | Executive Updates | 07 December 2010 | Business Intelligence

Participants in the design phase of an ETL (extraction, transformation, and loading) project can include architects, designers, database administrators, developers, and managers. Thus, design discussions can be biased and driven by an individual's gut feeling or past experience. It becomes difficult to objectively evaluate two design options proposed by individuals who come from different backgrounds. This Executive Update provides a technology-agnostic mathematical model that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of two design options that intend to solve the same problem.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1011.html

BI Unwired: The Case for Mobile BI

1 Sep 2010 14:44:16 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Reports | 01 September 2010 | Business Intelligence

Corporate adoption of mobile BI -- the ability to access, view, and interact with corporate data on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets via reports, interactive dashboards, visualizations, and ad hoc reporting -- was fairly limited for its first five years or so. Today, organizations are increasingly employing mobile BI applications. This Executive Report by Curt Hall examines the potential implications of mobile BI. It covers technology, tools, and applications and examines business benefits afforded by mobile BI, as well as important issues involved in implementing mobile BI applications.

http://www.cutter.com/bia/fulltext/reports/2010/09/index.html

What Lies Ahead: BI and Data Warehousing Predictions for 2011

14 Dec 2010 19:26:18 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 14 December 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

As the New Year approaches, I thought I'd offer some predictions and recommendations on the key BI and data warehousing developments and practices organizations should focus on. In general, 2011 looks to be a great year for BI and data warehousing. Many of the technologies and techniques we've been discussing for the past year or so are finally coming together in ways that make it more practical for organizations to deploy them.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101214.html

The New Pork Belly: Buying, Selling Commodity Computing Units

9 Dec 2010 19:20:51 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 09 December 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence; Enterprise Architecture

Imagine, if you will, that all owners of data centers and agents representing buyers of computing cycles get together daily and buy and sell commodity computing units (we'll call them containers) in an open exchange. Now imagine another group of buyers and sellers who are not just exchanging those containers, but buying and selling options on the containers -- the right to buy or sell those containers at a future date. This exchange would be trading the 21st-century equivalent to the pork belly. Pork bellies were introduced as a commodity in the early 1960s in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in tradable units of 40,000 pounds.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2010/btt101209.html

Mobile BI Means Self-Service BI

7 Dec 2010 19:16:09 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 07 December 2010 | Business Intelligence

Two important benefits afforded by data warehousing and BI are that they enable the distribution of standardized business information and standardized measures across the various parts of the organization. Providing access to data warehouses, BI, and business performance management systems via mobile devices can extend the usefulness of such applications, making their information and analytics even more beneficial to the organization. In fact, mobile BI actually goes hand-in-hand with efforts to make BI ubiquitous by empowering workers with self-service capabilities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101207.html

KM in Perspective: The Dynamic Knowledge Synchronization Model

1 Aug 2010 17:07:19 GMT

Unhelkar, Bhuvan | Executive Reports | 01 August 2010 | Business Intelligence

Knowledge synchronization is a crucial aspect of knowledge management (KM) that bridges the gap between the tacit, subjective knowledge stored in people's heads and the explicit, objective knowledge stored within the organization's IT systems. This Executive Report by Bhuvan Unhelkar presents the dynamic aspect of such knowledge synchronization through the use of mobile technologies. The four specific characteristics of mobility -- location independence, real-time interactions, formation of dynamic user groups, and provision of dynamic organizational context -- are utilized in this model to pave the path for a dynamic learning organization.

http://www.cutter.com/bia/fulltext/reports/2010/08/index.html

Simulate Social Crises and Strengthen Your Defenses

30 Nov 2010 16:43:58 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 30 November 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

A couple weeks ago, I discussed how social media monitoring and analysis tools can be used to defend an organization's reputation (see "Play Better Defense With Social Media Monitoring," 16 November 2010). Basically, I said that social media monitoring and analysis can help a company develop a broad understanding of the opposition it faces regarding a new product, service, or specific incident without having to resort to covert operations or subterfuge. I added that this analysis is based on a greater sampling of many social media sites, providing a much more comprehensive and balanced understanding than is typically possible from tracking just one or a few online groups or social sites manually.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101130.html

High-Performance Analytic Databases Set to Take Off

23 Nov 2010 16:34:59 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 23 November 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Adoption of high-performance analytic databases1 by end-user organizations has experienced moderate but steady growth since their inception. According to Cutter research, about 18% of end-user organizations use high-performance analytic databases to support their BI data management and data analysis efforts. Although current use is still somewhat limited (i.e., still below the 20% mark), regarding future trends, I expect to see the adoption of high-performance analytic databases accelerate over the next 12-16 months as organizations seek to implement new data warehousing/BI architectures to support improved data management and enhanced processing capabilities for analytic needs. This Advisor is about what I see as the important trends and developments driving this adoption.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101123.html

Play Better Defense With Social Media Monitoring

16 Nov 2010 18:04:24 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 16 November 2010 | Business Intelligence

Last week, it was in the news that a Pacific Gas & Electric executive admitted to having used an assumed name to infiltrate an online discussion group organized by consumers who are against the deployment of the utility company's smart electricity-usage metering devices. The executive indicated that his goal was simply to get a better understanding of what his company's customers are thinking. Unfortunately, however, the incident has resulted in something of a PR problem for the company. This development offers a timely reminder of another scenario in which social media monitoring and analysis tools can be usefully applied.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101116.html

How the Economy Is Affecting Corporate Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

9 Nov 2010 17:55:58 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 09 November 2010 | Business Intelligence

A recent Cutter Consortium survey [1] helps shed some light on the effect that the economic downturn is having on corporate BI and data warehousing efforts. The good news is that the impact appears to have lessened, as more organizations report that the economy is no longer having a significant negative effect on their BI and data warehousing initiatives. However, the picture remains somewhat muddied; some organizations report that there is still some lingering impact attributable to the uncertain state of the economy.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101109.html

A Systems View of BI

5 Nov 2010 16:09:53 GMT

Di Maio, Paola | Executive Updates | 05 November 2010 | Business Intelligence

Since the publication of my Executive Report about open innovation for BI,3 which discussed issues surrounding BI from a systems perspective and explained the central role of people in the BI processes, the practice has begun to consider the less explored human and organizational aspects, as well as its technological and computational sides. The result is a new way of looking at data-centric applications as one aspect of a bigger, exciting world of embedded intelligence.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1010.html

BI Vendors Ramp Up Efforts to Go Social

2 Nov 2010 16:00:29 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 02 November 2010 | Business Intelligence

While making predictions for the new year last December, I said that it would become more practical for end-user organizations to take advantage of social BI in 2010, because BI vendors would increase their efforts to add to their platforms social media, such as blogs, wikis, social networking, BI search, and mashups.1

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101102.html

Collective Intelligence: Key Research Findings and Their Implications for BI and Decision Making

26 Oct 2010 15:44:59 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 26 October 2010 | Business Intelligence

I've been thinking a lot about the findings from a new study cowritten by Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Union College researchers, which was recently published in the journal Science [1]. The study analyzed the collective intelligence of groups, and I have been thinking about how this research could have important implications for corporate decision making and BI -- especially for collaborative or "social" BI.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101026.html

Mobile BI Sets Some Courses in Uncharted Waters

19 Oct 2010 20:18:22 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 19 October 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

In August, I said that we are seeing an increasing number of organizations developing mobile BI applications (see "Mobile BI Comes of Age," 10 October 2010). I added that what is driving this trend is the much more advanced capabilities of the new breed of smartphones and mobile devices -- particularly, the iPhone and iPad and Android and BlackBerry offerings. These greatly enhanced devices, coupled with greater and more widely available wireless bandwidth, in addition to an intense corporate focus on business performance management, are helping to drive the greater use of mobile BI.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101019.html

Endeca Latitude: Enterprise Search Meets Self-Service BI

12 Oct 2010 19:59:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 12 October 2010 | Business Intelligence

I've been checking out the new BI search1, 2 platform from Endeca Technologies: Endeca Latitude. Latitude is based on a hybrid search/analytical database designed to provide nontechnical end users with self-service BI exploration capabilities. It combines the ease of enterprise search with the analytical power of BI (hardly surprising since Endeca began as an enterprise search player that has increasingly moved into BI search and analytics).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101012.html

Psst ... Listen in as Some Businesses Tune in to Social Media

6 Oct 2010 03:02:51 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 05 October 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

It's no secret that corporate use of social media as a valuable source for better understanding and engaging customers is still fairly limited at this time. Likewise, current usage of data acquired from social media sites to bolster corporate BI efforts is also quite limited. That said, and having given a lot of thought to the current state of social computing, I still believe that social media analysis is set to experience considerable growth in the near future.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia101005.html

IBM Buys Netezza, Joins the Appliance Craze

28 Sep 2010 14:24:34 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 28 September 2010 | Business Intelligence

The most recent major acquisition taking place in the BI and data warehousing market has IBM buying Netezza Corporation, a data warehousing appliance pioneer, for about US $1.7 billion. This deal is significant for several reasons. First, the market for data warehousing and BI appliances is hot, and Netezza's products are well established. Moreover, it will help flesh out IBM's offerings with a very capable and attractively priced line of analytic appliances that the company currently lacks.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100928.html

Predixion Insight: Self-Service Predictive Analytics in the Cloud

21 Sep 2010 14:12:49 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 21 September 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Do you think data mining and predictive analytics are too complex to deliver via the cloud? Better think again, because that's what Predixion Software is now doing. Moreover, what Predixion has done with its Predixion Insight offering is not simply host some complex data-mining workbench in the cloud. Rather, what the company is delivering is predictive analytics in a friendlier and intuitive format -- complete with comprehensive models and analytic workflows -- that put the power of predictive analytics in the hands of analysts and Excel power users via a self-service on-demand model. As if this weren't enough, Predixion is pricing the service (starting) at US $99 per user per month. Now, I hate to use terms like "game changer" and "disruptive," but in this case, Predixion Insight just might be the real deal. I had a chance to get briefed by the folks from Predixion Software and check out the company's new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100921.html

Weighing the Meaning of the Relative Term "Big Data"

14 Sep 2010 13:59:53 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 14 September 2010 | Business Intelligence

The term "big data" gets thrown around a lot these days. The vendors are all talking about the need for organizations to meet their "big data" requirements. The same is true for the data warehousing and BI gurus. But just what actually constitutes big data depends a lot on whom you're speaking to.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100914.html

Beware the Silver Bullets

8 Sep 2010 21:42:47 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 08 September 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business-IT Strategies; Business Intelligence

Sometimes I wonder if, as an industry, we ever learn. Two recent projects that I've worked on got me thinking about this. In both cases, the companies are replacing existing custom-built applications with new commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications. And while that in itself is not necessarily a bad strategy (in fact, I absolutely agree with that approach for one of these clients), problems arise when the expectations and promises are out of line with reality.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2010/ea100908.html

Miners That Shed Light: Some Innovative Predictive Analytics

7 Sep 2010 21:39:40 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 07 September 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Earlier this year, I discussed an apparent growing interest by organizations in using data mining and predictive analytics ("How Do Your Data Mining and Predictive Analytics Grow?" 23 February 2010). I noted that several developments account for this trend. One is that organizations now find themselves with so much data that they are looking for ways to capitalize on this valuable resource. More important, I said I believed that data mining is better understood today, and that the tools are more comprehensive and friendlier. As a result, organizations are now more open to using predictive analytics.

I've continued my research on the use of predictive analytics and have found a number of interesting applications, several of which I've decided to discuss in this week's Advisor.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100907.html

It's Not (Just) What You Know; It's Who You Know

7 Sep 2010 21:38:45 GMT

Baudoin, Claude R. | Executive Updates | 07 September 2010 | Business Intelligence

The mantra "It's not what you know, but who you know" has uncertain origins. Two early attested references are from 1914 and 1918, in the context of US labor relations. For the following 90 years, the phrase was mostly used in politics and in business -- and in the world of lobbyists, which is the intersection of the two. It's also been used by sales representatives and business development managers -- in fact, by everyone whose job is essentially relational -- and usually in a positive way; for example, by people who brag about the size of their Rolodex and the professional advantage it gives them.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1009.html

Doing Business in, with, and through Virtual Worlds: Part II

10 Sep 2010 21:29:59 GMT

Feller, Joseph | Executive Updates | 06 August 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts;Business Intelligence

This Executive Update series examines how organizations, particularly commercial firms, are beginning to exploit virtual worlds in order to create and capture value. In Part I, 1 I pointed out that virtual worlds have been with us for a long time (they predate the Web by more than a decade). Nonetheless, these technology platforms captured the imagination of mainstream Internet users only recently (coming in through the side door of computer gaming). In 2010, we're only beginning to explore their business applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/updates/2010/bttu1008.html

Five Steps to Implementing MDM

1 Aug 2010 21:21:01 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 01 September 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

In my last Advisor ("How to Make MDM Go: Start with Architecture," 18 August 2010), I discussed the role of enterprise information architecture in Master Data Management (MDM). In this Advisor, I look at the steps to implementing MDM once you have your information architecture in place.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2010/ea100901.html

How Big Are Corporate Data Warehouses and How Fast Are They Growing?

31 Aug 2010 21:18:42 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 31 August 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Agile Project Management

A survey [1] we conducted in February/March 2010 offers some interesting insights into corporate data warehouse data volume trends. Specifically, when asked, "What is the size of your organization's current data warehouse?" survey participants responded as follows:

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100831.html

The Emergence of Organizational Intelligence

1 Jul 2010 20:57:27 GMT

Veryard, Richard | Executive Reports | 01 July 2010 | Business Intelligence

Organizational intelligence is a new way of looking at business improvement and survival, combining the latest management thinking with advanced software technologies to produce highly effective organizations. People and technology have complementary forms of intelligence, and in an intelligent organization these abilities are coordinated and mobilized to the best advantage. This Executive Report by Richard Veryard surveys the six key capabilities of organizational intelligence and shows how a range of organizational and technological innovations each contributes toward the whole framework.

http://www.cutter.com/bia/fulltext/reports/2010/07/index.html

A Lean Approach to Data and Process Integration

24 Aug 2010 20:29:30 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 24 August 2010 | Business Intelligence; Agile Project Management

I've been checking out a new book, Lean Integration: An Integration Factory Approach to Business Agility. As its name suggests, this book examines the application of lean principles to enterprise data and process integration. Although the authors John Schmidt and David Lyle are both now executives at Informatica Corporation, it's important to understand that the lean integration concept is not dependent on Informatica's1 or, for that matter, any other vendor's particular data integration products. The authors strove to make the book vendor-neutral. In other words, lean integration entails implementing process and methodology as much, if not more, than some vendor's technology. That said, lean manufacturing is a fascinating concept that combines practices from lean manufacturing with software development -- the goal being to align functions, eliminate waste, and promote ongoing improvement across an organization's key integration activities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100824.html

How to Make MDM Go: Start with Architecture

18 Aug 2010 20:14:07 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 18 August 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

In my last Advisor ("Understanding the Master Data Management Challenge," 4 August 2010), I discussed the demands of Master Data Management (MDM), particularly the difficulties of combining data from multiple sources. The crux of the challenge is not moving the data around, but determining the correct representation of the data at the enterprise level, establishing the business rules to transform data from multiple different and overlapping sources, eliminating discrepancies (cleansing), and coordinating updates of overlapping data across sources. In this Advisor, I'll describe the role of information architecture when implementing MDM.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2010/ea100818.html

Early Bird Look at Using Social Media Data for Corporate BI

17 Aug 2010 20:07:53 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 17 August 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Use of data acquired from social media sites Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yelp!, and LinkedIn by end-user organizations to support their BI and data warehousing efforts is quite limited. Moreover, it appears this will remain the case for the next 6-12 months or so. However, trends do tend to suggest that the use of data gleaned from social media sites for corporate BI efforts will start to ramp up in the not-too-distant future.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100817.html

Mobile BI Comes of Age

10 Aug 2010 20:11:24 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 10 August 2010 | Business Intelligence

Mobile BI is hardly new. Many of the BI vendors introduced software and services that allowed users of BlackBerrys, PDAs, and other mobile devices to generate, view, and drill down on reports based on corporate data as long ago as 2001.1 Mobile BI also got somewhat of a "shot in the arm" upon Apple's introduction of the iPhone, with vendors launching BI extensions to their BI platforms designed to support mobile BI capabilities via the iPhone.2 But for the most part, corporate adoption of mobile BI was fairly limited for its first five years or so.3 This now appears to be changing. Today, we are seeing an increasing number of organizations employ mobile BI applications. What is driving this trend is the much more advanced capabilities of the new breed of smartphones and mobile devices -- particularly Apple's iPhone 4 and iPad. These greatly enhanced devices, coupled with greater and more widely available wireless bandwidth, in addition to an intense corporate focus on business-performance management, are all helping to drive the greater use of mobile BI.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100810.html

"Big Data" Issues Affecting Corporate BI and Data Warehousing

16 Aug 2010 19:59:42 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates | 05 August 2010 | Business Intelligence

In February and March 2010, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey that asked 99 end-user organizations about their various data warehousing, BI, and other analytic efforts. One set of questions sought to determine data growth issues that organizations are facing with these efforts. Basically, my goal was to determine data growth trends and how they affect organizations.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1008.html

Understanding the Master Data Management Challenge

4 Aug 2010 19:56:30 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 04 August 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

Master data management (MDM) is nothing new, but recent trends in the enterprise and industry seem to be breathing new life into it. All of the major platform/infrastructure vendors now have products in this space, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, as well as many vendors focused specifically on MDM. In addition, SOA provides the infrastructure to implement "entity services," which basically is the same concept (and may even be implemented using an MDM product), helping to increase awareness. So perhaps the first question is: what is master data?

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2010/ea100804.html

Troubling Challenges for Corporate BI, Data Warehousing

3 Aug 2010 19:54:29 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 03 August 2010 | Business Intelligence

According to our latest research,1 overwhelmingly, the most troublesome "big data"-related challenges organization face with their data warehousing and BI efforts are (1) meeting complex query-processing requirements, and (2) transforming and loading data due to data volumes and windows of opportunity. Other issues, including administering and managing the data warehouse, scalability, data storage issues, data quality, and avoiding unplanned downtime, rank considerably farther down the scale.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100803.html

The Skinny on High-Performance Analytic DB Adoption

27 Jul 2010 14:50:07 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 27 July 2010 | Business Intelligence

High-performance analytic databases1 are receiving increasing interest by end-user organizations. This is understandable, given the ever-increasing amount of data that organizations are accumulating -- causing a data glut that is, quite simply, putting a strain on organizations' data warehousing and BI activities. Our most recent survey2 on high-performance analytic databases uncovers some interesting findings regarding their adoption and use.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100727.html

As E-Books Rise, Reasons to Keep Real Books Remain

22 Jul 2010 14:37:55 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 22 July 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence

A couple of months ago, I wrote an Opinion for the Cutter Trends Council titled "The Book Is Dead, Long Live the e-Book" (Vol. 10, No. 9). It was one of the hardest articles I have ever written because, while I felt that the conclusion -- that printed books are likely to be replaced over the next decade by e-books -- is true, I love real books. I live in a very big house filled to the rafters with books. In fact, one of the reasons that my wife and I bought this house was the ample (at that time) bookshelves -- the house actually had a small library.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2010/btt100722.html

"I Want My Life Back" ... A Case for Shutting Up

21 Jul 2010 14:35:06 GMT

Pritchard, Carl | E-Mail Advisors | 21 July 2010 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence; Innovation

Of Cutter Consortium consultants, I believe I may have a unique distinction: I’m a former member of the inside-the-beltway media. I was the news director at WASH-FM and the community affairs director of news radio WTOP for a number of years before jumping into the "real world" as a manager, project manager, and, later, executive. The journalistic prism through which I view the world often causes me to shake my head, but no more so than with the recent episode involving British Petroleum’s Tony Hayward, who said (shortly after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster began) that he wanted "his life back."

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2010/bit100721.html

Unpacking a Loaded Term: How "Persistence" Relates to Data

21 Jul 2010 14:32:48 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 21 July 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

Persistence in computer science refers to the characteristic of state that outlives the process that created it. Without this capability, state would only exist in RAM, and would be lost when this RAM loses power, such as a computer shutdown. (Wikipedia)

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2010/ea100721.html

The Operational Data Store Makes a Comeback

2 Aug 2010 14:31:46 GMT

Norris-Montanari, Joyce | Executive Updates | 21 July 2010 | Business Intelligence

If your organization has a lot of disparate operational systems that require integration for day-to-day tactical reporting, auditing, monitoring, and feeding of other applications, what do you build? An operational data store (ODS).

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1007.html

Trends and Developments in Complex Event Processing

20 Jul 2010 14:28:41 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 20 July 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Complex Event Processing (CEP) [1] is generating increasing interest among companies due to its ability to increase operational efficiency by providing a means to identify and interpret the effect of seemingly unrelated events taking place across the organization and then notifying the appropriate stakeholders with near zero latency. But the market for CEP software has undergone a number of important developments over the past year or so. Consequently, I thought I would examine them in this week's BI Advisor.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100720.html

Social Business Intelligence: Why Every Company Needs Social Media

1 Jun 2010 19:56:49 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J.; Schiavone, Vince | Executive Reports | 01 June 2010 | Business Intelligence

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole and Vince Schiavone focuses on the roles that social media can play in the execution of your business strategies and the improvement of your business processes and models. The report describes a process that should lead to the optimization of social media in your company. It recognizes the role that social media can play in improving conventional processes such as marketing, branding, customer service, innovation, training, and R&D, as well as how social media can fundamentally refine old processes for business value. The report also provides a social media optimization blueprint consisting of strategy, architecture, skills assessments, and project slates. Special emphasis is placed on the value of "listening" to internal and external social media. Ultimately, the report argues that social media is a relentless trend that all companies must understand and exploit. There's no hiding from the social media tsunami.

http://www.cutter.com/bia/fulltext/reports/2010/06/index.html

Semantics, Pragmatics, Outsourcing Shape 'Net's Future: Part II

15 Jul 2010 19:43:53 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 15 July 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence

In my last Advisor on this subject (see "Semantics, Pragmatics, Outsourcing Shape 'Net's Future: Part I," 1 July 2010), I explored the two dimensions of information (semantics and pragmatics) and identified a continuum of tolerance for error in interpretation (from none to a lot). This Advisor concludes with Part II, which focuses on how this model explains what has been going on in computing and what the future holds.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2010/btt100715.html

In Transition to Cloud, Future May Turn Inside-Out

14 Jul 2010 19:42:42 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 14 July 2010 | Business-IT Strategies; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence; Innovation

Apple continues to make waves with the iPad and the iPhone. The iPad is probably already a US $2 billion line of business in a scant 80 days. Name another product that generated so much revenue so fast. I am finding how Apple pulled off that feat to be a more significant lesson in the design and engineering of a businesses than the glitz and splash of the iPad usability. Apple is adept at building business models perhaps more so than devices, at least for now.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2010/bit100714.html

Greenplum Buy Steers EMC Toward Data Warehousing

13 Jul 2010 19:38:59 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 13 July 2010 | Business Intelligence

EMC Corporation announced it is acquiring data warehousing database vendor Greenplum, Inc. for an undisclosed amount. This deal is important because the addition of Greenplum's analytic database and cloud data warehousing infrastructure offerings will enable EMC to form a new data warehousing/analytics division within its information infrastructure business. In short, this deal will help EMC move beyond being considered primarily as an enterprise information/storage provider, in effect allowing the company to enter the growing market for enterprise data warehousing and analytics products.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100713.html

Lyzasoft: BI and Social Media Done Intelligently

6 Jul 2010 19:22:21 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 06 July 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Recently, I had the chance to check out an interesting company called LyzaSoft, Inc. Why am I excited about LyzaSoft? Because it has made the most innovative use of social media combined with BI of any vendor that I've come across.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100706.html

Semantics, Pragmatics, Outsourcing Shape 'Net's Future: Part I

1 Jul 2010 19:45:04 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 01 July 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence

Recently, I was having a short exchange with Dr. Ken Calvert, chair of our computer science department at University of Kentucky. The topic was relational databases. The question: are they relevant anymore? Do we need still need to teach formal means of describing, searching, and using information? Or can industry get by with less certain but still useful methods for describing, searching, and using information?

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2010/btt100701.html

Trends in Corporate Data Warehouse Consolidation

29 Jul 2010 19:39:59 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 29 June 2010 | Business Intelligence; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Based on our research over the past few years, it's apparent that the need to consolidate disparate data warehouses and data marts has become an ongoing trend among organizations wanting to upgrade their BI capabilities. According to a Cutter Consortium survey,1 approximately 26% of end-user organizations have either already conducted, or are involved in carrying out, some type of effort to consolidate their data warehouses and data marts.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100629.html

Social Computing Everywhere = Social Business

24 Jun 2010 19:34:06 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 24 June 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

Back in March, I discussed some of the important developments involving the incorporation of social computing techniques (i.e., blogs, wikis, social networks) with enterprise software (see "Facebook for the Enterprise: The New Business Social Networking Model," 16 March 2010). Basically, I said that it is now practical for companies to provide their employees with the ability to collaborate in nearly real time over a secure, private social network designed to support business requirements. My comments were in response to industry developments in which such software vendors as Salesforce, Tibco, and SAP have added Facebook and Twitter-like capabilities to their respective enterprise platforms.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2010/btt100624.html

Text Mining and Data Warehousing for Optimizing Preventative Maintenance

22 Jun 2010 19:29:29 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 22 June 2010 | Business Intelligence

Last month (see "Corporate Use of Text Analysis and Mining Grows," 25 May 2010), I wrote that organizations are showing more interest in using text analysis and mining tools to support their BI efforts. I based my comments on the results of a Cutter Consortium survey [1] that found that approximately one-quarter of end-user organizations surveyed are now analyzing text/unstructured data in some capacity to support their BI efforts. In addition, 18% of these same survey respondents indicated that they now integrate unstructured data into their data warehouses to support their BI initiatives. A joint project between airplane parts manufacturer/distributor B/E Aerospace, data warehouse vendor Teradata Corporation, and text mining and analysis tools vendor Clarabridge, Inc., provides a good example of how organizations are combining text mining and data warehousing.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100622.html

BI: Lessons for Business from the Sports World

1 May 2010 20:26:14 GMT

Maurno, Dann A. | Executive Reports | 01 May 2010 | Business Intelligence

Today's BI providers struggle with lightning-fast data mining and presentation -- two things that sports intelligence providers have mastered. The announcer's teleprompter and on-screen graphics prove that information can be both instantaneous and engaging. The sports world has also mastered mining and refining historic data for the highest possible intelligence. This Executive Report by Dann A. Maurno makes the connection between the industries, with strong recommendations for BI providers and users.

http://www.cutter.com/bia/fulltext/reports/2010/05/index.html

Complex Event Processing: Technology, Products, and Applications

1 Apr 2010 20:23:32 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Reports | 01 April 2010 | Business Intelligence

Complex event processing (CEP) monitors, aggregates, and analyzes large volumes of events in real (or near real) time across multiple data streams to offer instantaneous insight into live data on markets, transactions, customers, and operations -- thus enabling immediate response and better decision making based on timely information. CEP is generating greater interest as a way to increase operational efficiency. This Executive Report by Curt Hall examines CEP technology, as well as available CEP software vendors and products, and provides an overview of CEP applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2010/04/index.html

Draining an IT Swamp Calls for EA Vision

16 Jun 2010 20:08:14 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 16 June 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business-IT Strategies

Enterprise architecture is not about low-hanging fruit; rather, it is about making sense of an enterprise's IT business processes, databases, applications, and technology. While a few years back it was possible for organizations to manage their IT infrastructure one system at a time, that is no longer true. More and more of our applications are interconnected, share data, and, increasingly, share resources. Indeed, it is impossible in this age of "virtualization" and high-speed communication to say exactly where a given application may be operating and on which data device the data for that application may reside.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2010/ea100616.html

Will New Developments Help Spur Greater MapReduce/Hadoop Use in the Enterprise?

15 Jun 2010 20:06:14 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 15 June 2010 | Business Intelligence

There have been a number of recent developments pertaining to the use of MapReduce1 and its open source equivalent, Hadoop.2 These developments are important because they should help spur greater use of MapReduce and Hadoop by traditional enterprises looking to take advantage of their big data assets by implementing applications that can rapidly process vast amounts of data in parallel on large clusters of commodity hardware. These new tools provide organizations with better options for implementing, managing, and using MapReduce applications -- particularly those based on the Hadoop open source implementation.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2010/bia100615.html

Business Architecture: Expanding the Value Proposition Webinar

10 Jun 2010 20:02:16 GMT

Ulrich, William M. | Webinars/Multimedia | 10 June 2010 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Intelligence

Are you leveraging business architecture to facilitate strategic planning, address executive priorities, deliver customer value, leverage investments in major initiatives and deploy horizontal solutions across business units? If not, you may be underutilizing and undervaluing business architecture. When leveraged effectively, business architecture offers the cross-functional, cross-disciplinary transparency required to deliver bottom line business value. Whether you are jumpstarting your business architecture efforts or have deployments in place, this webinar will discuss how to expand the value proposition of this critical business discipline. Join Cutter Senior Consultant William Ulrich as he discusses how business architecture has been used in practice and how it will evolve long-term.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/webinar/2010/business-architecture-value.html

Corporate Adoption and Usage Trends for High-Performance Analytic Databases

10 Jun 2010 20:00:38 GMT

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates | 10 June 2010 | Business Intelligence

In February and March 2010, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey that asked 99 end-user organizations about their various data warehousing, BI, and other analytic technologies and practices. One set of questions sought to determine corporate adoption and usage trends for high-performance analytic databases.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2010/biau1006.html