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Learning about Text Analytics

Posted by Seth Grimes
Friday, August 29, 2008
9:52 AM

I spend a lot of time on teaching materials on text analytics: articles, presentations, and courses. I've gotten positive feedback about my introductory materials, which I designed for practitioners (like myself) rather than for academics or researchers. There are great resources out there — technical papers and white papers, case studies, software, etc. — but you have to get the basics down first.

Continue reading "Learning about Text Analytics"

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Posted by Neil Raden
Friday, August 29, 2008
9:01 AM

There's been a lot of buzz lately about Google's MapReduce framework for speeding up the processing of large datasets. It makes you wonder, did Google just dream this up in last couple years while all of the database vendors were sleeping? Or, paraphrasing Isaac Newton, were they standing on the shoulders of giants?

The answer is, both.

Posted by Curt Monash
Thursday, August 28, 2008
8:53 AM

Greenplum and Aster Data have both just announced the integration of MapReduce into their SQL MPP data warehouse products. So why do I think this could be a big deal? The short answer is "Because MapReduce offers dramatic performance gains in analytic application areas that still need great performance speed-up." The long answer goes something like this.

The core ideas of MapReduce are:

Posted by Cindi Howson
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
8:56 AM

Back from sunny San Diego, place of TDWI's annual world conference.

I kicked off my week with a birds-of-a-feather networking event. The most popular table? The business-IT partnership, which also happens to be one of the top barriers/enablers to BI success (according to research from my book). The different perspectives — and just how polar opposites they could be — bordered on amusing.

Posted by Phil Kemelor
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
7:53 AM

Last week, European Web analytics vendor Nedstat announced a new feature called "Live Segmentation," which enables you to develop customized behavioral analysis across unaggregated Web data.

This is a big step for Nedstat. Readers of the Web Analytics Report know that this missing capability was somewhat of a downside to an offering that competes in Europe with the likes of Omniture, and WebTrends — two vendors already providing a "data warehouse"-type of feature that enables deeper and more customizable analysis.

Posted by Seth Grimes
Monday, August 25, 2008
1:50 PM

Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Research, says that Yahoo "will be launching a new generation of search in two to three months... Search is going to move in a completely new direction." The initiative, one would infer from today's Financial Express interview of Raghavan, will build on Yahoo's BOSS (build your own search software) platform, which implements a "self-service Web services model for developers and start-ups."

Posted by Curt Monash
Monday, August 25, 2008
8:18 AM

David Raab is a great fan and former reseller of QlikTech's QlikView. His recent lengthy post about the product (I hesitate to call it "detailed" only because he rightly observes that QlikTech is in fact stingy with technical detail) is positive enough to have been recommended by the company itself. Specifically, it was cited in the comment thread to my recent post on QlikTech, where David himself also addressed some of my questions.

But of course, no technology is perfect, not even one as great as David thinks QlikView is.

Posted by Tony Byrne
Friday, August 22, 2008
2:20 PM

At the TDWI Summit this week, I had the opportunity to talk about Web Analytics with enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) execs. I came away concluding that the worlds of enterprise data and Web metrics still remain far apart.

I've argued before that the separation is partly technical and partly cultural. BI managers are wary of the firehouse of Web traffic data, and most Web managers just don't think much about non-Web data stores and the value of Web site metrics to the broader enterprise.

Posted by Curt Monash
Thursday, August 21, 2008
8:13 AM

If there's one central theme in my DBMS2 blog, it's that modern database management system alternatives should in many cases be used instead of the traditional market leaders. So it was only a matter of time before somebody sponsored a white paper on that subject. The paper, sponsored by EnterpriseDB (disclosure noted), is now posted along with my other recent white papers. Its conclusion — summarizing what kinds of database management system you should use in which circumstances — is reproduced below.

Many new applications are built on existing databases, adding new features to already-operating systems. But others are built in connection with truly new databases. And in the latter cases, it's rare that a market-leading product is the best choice. Mid-range DBMS (for OLTP) or specialty data warehousing systems (for analytics) are usually just as capable, and much more cost-effective. Exceptions arise mainly in three kinds of cases:

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
7:35 AM

The recently released Forrester Wave for Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms assesses 12 BI vendors/tools. The report does not include Excel as one of the 12 solutions, which led me to ponder: Can we consider Excel a BI tool in its own right?

The Forrester report (The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008 - free copy courtesy of SAS) specifies that, to qualify for the survey, the vendor (and tool) must provide:

Posted by Mark Madsen
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
7:21 AM

Talend announced an open source data quality offering today. The company has been moving very quickly to fill out all of the basic components needed for a complete data integration suite. In June the company delivered Talend Open Profiler for data profiling, and the Open Studio ETL tool contains changed data capture (CDC) features. While not a full suite yet, these are a big expansion of functionality in short time. Unfortunately you'll have to wait a few weeks. Data Quality won't be ready for download until September.

Posted by Seth Grimes
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
1:58 PM

"Gaining traction" is a good description of Kognitio's Data as a Service message. I spoke to company execs at this week's Data Warehousing Institute Conference, and I reviewed results of a survey they released at TDWI. Signs are that Kognitio's DaaS positioning is helping the company define itself and carve a niche in the crowded and dynamic data warehousing-analytics market. That positioning may need tighter focus, but focus will surely come as the company signs some of the prospects it has gained since its February North American launch.

Posted by Curt Monash
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
9:00 AM

I talked with executives at Nuremberg, Germany-based Exasol last week — at 5:00 am ET! — and of course want to blog about it. For clarity, I'd like to start by comparing/contrasting the fundamental data structures at Vertica, ParAccel, and Exasol. And it feels like that should be a separate post. So here goes.

Posted by Mark Smith
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
8:35 AM

Business Objects an SAP company brought forward the integrated strategy for where they plan to advance their organization and products into the future at last week's 2008 Influencer Summit. The core emphasis was on the product strategy and the success of the portfolio of products across enterprise performance management (EPM), governance, risk and compliance (GRC) and business intelligence (BI) and information management. This is a blend of products from Business Objects and SAP, along with companies they have acquired over the last couple of years. Business Objects has focused on how they can advance their products to address the broad set of user demographics and interactive requirements of them across organizations using Web 2.0 Internet technology.

Posted by Kas Thomas
Monday, August 18, 2008
4:31 PM

Big Blue recently released its IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force 2008 Mid-Year Trend Statistics report, and it contains more than a few eyebrow-raisers. For example: Web-application-based security vulnerabilities have begun to outnumber reports involving conventional viruses and trojans (of the kind that target the operating system). We're now at the point where 51 percent of newly discovered software vulnerabilities depend in some way on Web-page interactions.

Also, there's been a sharp surge in the number of vulnerabilities that involve SQL injection (as opposed to cross-site scripting). Meanwhile, the use of infected image files (.gif or .jpg) as a way to inflict mayhem is on the decline.

What really got my attention, though, is the new Top Ten list of vendors with the most vulnerability disclosures. Normally you would expect Microsoft to be at the top of that list (I would, at least). Instead, it's at Number 3, behind Apple and... Joomla!. Fortunately, Joomla! can be secured, but it's quite possible that many novice Joomla! installers do not.

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Sunday, August 17, 2008
11:48 PM

Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICC) are all the rage, but it's clear that experts still disagree on a fundamental precept on the matter: Who should own the BICC?

Last week I had the opportunity to listen in on a Forrester Research Business Intelligence webinar (moderated by Doug Henschen) on the topic of BI competency centers. The question as to who should own the BICC came up at the end of the presentation. One expert's response was: assuredly, the business should own the BICC — business intelligence is all about business, and business ownership brings along business commitment. Another expert disagreed: given the various technical complexities related to business intelligence and data integration, BICC, she thought, is probably better managed by IT.

Posted by Curt Monash
Friday, August 15, 2008
10:15 AM

There are two recent patent lawsuits in the data warehouse DBMS market. In one, Sybase is suing Vertica. In another, an individual named Cary Jardin (techie founder of XPrime, a sort of predecessor company to ParAccel) is suing DATAllegro. Naturally, there's press coverage of the DATAllegro case, due in part to its surely non-coincidental timing right after the Microsoft acquisition was announced and in part to a vigorous PR campaign around it. And the Sybase case so excited one troll that he posted identical references to it on about 12 different threads in this blog, as well as to a variety of Vertica-related articles in the online trade press. But I think it's very unlikely that either of these cases turns out to much matter.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
12:53 PM

At the conclusion of Business Object's Influencer Summit yesterday, Jonathan Becher hosted a wrap-up Q&A with Doug Merritt, Marge Breya and Sanjay Poonen. Rather than attributing quotes to each executive, I've consolidated the responses on five topics:

Posted by Cindi Howson
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
11:56 AM

"It's a case where one plus one equals three." Speaking at the first-ever Business Objects Influencer Summit in Boston this week, this is how Sanjay Poonen, SVP and GM of Performance Optimization Applications, explained an increase in BI revenues at the company since it became a unit of SAP.

Normally, following an acquisition, sales decline for the first year or so. Not so with SAP's acquisition of Business Objects, with Poonen claiming sales were 30% higher in the first half of the year compared to 2007. He explained that there is a difference in market dynamics when a market leader acquires another leader versus a niche player. Surprising as well is that company officials estimate half the sales came from new accounts, so the strong performance is not only from Business Objects tapping existing SAP customers.

Posted by Seth Grimes
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
11:31 AM

Back in July 2005, I published a column titled The Limits of Prediction that addressed barriers to the adoption of predictive analytics. I've continued to think about the topic even as politicians come up with yet more wishful-thinking panaceas like off-shore oil drilling to reduce gasoline prices and business — for instance, the real-estate, financial, and automotive sectors — reports huge losses derived from in-hindsight foolish decisions. All those folks spend massive sums on IT and analytics. Why didn't they know better?

Posted by Sandy Kemsley
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
9:39 AM

I was in rainy Boston yesterday at the Business Objects Influencer Summit, which was kicked off with Jonathan Becher, SVP of Marketing for Business Objects. It's a very process-oriented message (which explains why I'm here): using business intelligence to drive process efficiency, improve insight to close the gap between strategy and execution, and add flexibility to create new business processes that align operations to strategy.

Becher was joined by Doug Merritt, EVP and GM of Business User Global Sales (moving from a product role), who continued with the message of how total insight allows organizations to optimize business performance. Merritt discussed a number of customer case studies, focusing on how their easy-to-use end-user tools are being used to solve real business problems.

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Monday, August 11, 2008
11:47 PM

It's a disquieting thought, but signs are that 2009 may be the worst year for technology workers since the dot-com debacle. A recent poll of economists suggests that things will get worse before they get better — at least where the U.S. economy is concerned.

The survey – 50 economists polled by the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter – expects the air to go out of the economy as the temporary lift to consumer spending (tax rebates) fades, and predicts that the sluggish economy will push the jobless rate to 6 percent in December and to 6.1 percent by the end of next year. The last time the unemployment rate was as high as 6 percent was in October 2003.

Posted by Mark Smith
Sunday, August 10, 2008
8:36 PM

I attended the Actuate user conference last week where they brought forward a series of new advancements utilizing open source and new platform capabilities. Actuate's upgraded performance management applications and advancements in mobility further extend their use. Actuate is well known to larger corporations for vast deployments of reporting and information to the enterprise and across the Internet to customers and suppliers. Actuate has been recently shifting away from direct engagement in traditional BI market of query, reporting and analysis to data warehouses and instead extending their support of developers through open source and Internet/Intranet type applications. Actuate is extending support for Rich Internet Applications as the need for information across business and to consumers requires very scalable platforms that integrate across the enterprise.

Actuate also entered into the open source market in 2005 with BIRT (BI and Reporting Tools) contribution to Eclipse and their open source BIRT community. Actuate has bet that the use of open source will be a key component for their future and starting point for developers, where at some point will purchase support, services and then the more robust commercial products. In fact, Actuate open source efforts now contribute 10% of Actuate revenue. This open-source-based approach to commercial enterprise software expands Actuate's reach across the world and deepens relationships with developers. The benefit for developers is that it is easier to download and work with their basic products before determining what is needed for deployments that require support, services or higher-end technology.

Posted by Seth Grimes
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
9:58 PM

The Lexalytics-Infonic merger announced last week creates a company, focused on sentiment analysis, that is poised to compete with larger, established text-technologies vendors. The companies' market presence hasn't been huge — Infonic's text-analytics division booked £600 thousand (about $1.2 million) in 2007 sales, and Lexalytics, a rapidly growing US start-up, earned $1.5 million in 2007 — but the combined company should be worth more than the sum of the parts. Whether it will be worth enough to justify a $40 million valuation of the deal, which exceeds Infonic's $23 million market capitalization, remains to be seen.

Posted by Doug Henschen
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
12:16 PM

When it comes to IT research, Gartner's "Magic Quadrants" and Forrester's "Wave" rankings carry a lot of weight with would-be technology buyers, but these reports lean more toward assessing vendors rather than products. Granted, when you're spending six or seven figures with a vendor, things like "completeness of vision" and "ability to execute" certainly matter a great deal, but most would-be buyers are equally hungry for hands-on analysis of the software they might end up using every day. In the business intelligence market, that gap is filled by Cindi Howson's BIScorecard. Here's a peek at the top-level scores, plus a link to five helpful recommendations.

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
6:10 PM

What's common between one-click purchasing and cloud computing? Ponder that a moment. If you haven't guessed already, the former was assigned a ridiculous patent, and now the latter is on its way to an equally unwelcome trade mark.

Intellectual property protection, in the form of patents and trade marks, has long been hailed as a cornerstone of healthy capitalism. Unfortunately, it has also demonstrated the propensity to be a roadblock in the way of healthy capitalism. The classic example is, of course, Amazon's controversial "one-click" patent, which was, amazingly, expanded and then apparently (and thankfully) rejected by the USPTO.

Posted by Shawn Shell
Monday, August 4, 2008
3:36 PM

The SharePoint IT Pro Documentation Team recently published a blog post on the various Microsoft "enterprise" search technologies. The post did a nice job of clarifying the role of each of Microsoft's various search tools, save FAST (but more on that in a bit). Even the post's author, Kathy Narvaez, admits she has trouble distinguishing the various " ...flavors of Microsoft enterprise search;" Hence the blog post.

Posted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe
Friday, August 1, 2008
12:46 PM

Microsoft SharePoint goes open source? Shock, horror! Ok, well not quite, but an open source alternative to SharePoint is now an option with the release of Alfresco's Lab 3 Beta product. The new module allows you to hook Office into Alfresco, giving you the option to use Alfresco as opposed to SharePoint as your collaboration platform.

It's an interesting option. As readers of the CMS Watch ECM Suites Report 2008 know, Alfresco is one of the more interesting ECM vendors around. The question you might ask yourself however is, why would anyone want to do use Alfresco instead of SharePoint? Clearly open source enthusiasts will herald this as a major breakthrough — and those enterprises that espouse open source may well become customers. But then again, if you are going to dump Microsoft for the back end, why use Office at all, given there are open source alternatives?