Midsize Insider is a valuable repository of expert content tailored for small-to-midsized business owners and IT decision makers. Expert insights and perspectives in the Midsize Insider are gleaned from actionable business experiences and will assist readers in creating efficiencies, cutting costs and delivering results.
Mobile data consumption is at an all time high, and is expected to continue growing at colossal rates - faster than data usage by desktop PCs and laptops. Mobile users are hanging up on costly 'cheap' calls, and using social ...
Aberdeen Groups finds that best in class companies use service firms to augment their ERP strategies. Data mining for actionable ...
A couple of weeks I was having a conversation with a group at Enterprise Data World in San Diego about self-service BI. The consensus seemed to be that although businesses are jumping on board and implementing some form of self-service, ...
The data and analytics for website traffic provide midsize businesses with the information needed to improve and manage a website. These metrics offer important factors when improving a website, which can also improve site revenue and traffic. Each site has ...
Web traffic from tablets and smartphones has been on the rise in recent years as users become more accustomed to using mobile devices rather than traditional desktops to navigate the web. However, even though Android has been gaining in sales, ...
Today business intelligence (BI) has emerged as a must-have technology for any midsize company, because of the versatility the field has within a midsize setting. By using a proper business intelligence tool, midsize companies can make sense of the troves ...
Using business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools in your midsize enterprise is one of the best ways to secure your competitive position. Research shows that companies that make good use of BI and analytics software enhance their financial position and ...
The business analyst has become an increasingly important part of the successful operation of any midsize enterprise. A result of greater reliance on software as a service (Saas) provided by external vendors is less need for IT professionals to be ...
Visual analytics are an important tool for IT administrators to use to help their midsize businesses become more efficient and effective. Everything employees and executives do within a company generates data. This may cover planned production, sales, marketing, human resources ...
Big data is being used to provide insights on people in the work place, including both employees and job applicants. Dubbed "work-force science," many companies like IBM and Oracle are taking a closer look at what data, algorithms and metrics ...
Large enterprises rely on business intelligence to maintain and grow market share. But because these big companies tend to be the most visible users of big data, are they affecting how the concept of big data it is defined? Is ...
A revolution has occurred in business. The new "business normal" is defined by disruptive change; now is a more uncertain time than any other time in history for businesses. They face greater demands than ever from stakeholders, customers, and regulators ...
A key challenge for companies seeking better customer relations is to use the large amounts of data they collect to improve the way customers experience their organizations. In a new study, the CMO Council finds that IT and marketing professionals ...
In their 5th annual Digital IQ Survey, investment firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently found that four main barriers are standing between businesses and proper use of big data. The wholesale adoption of this type of data analytics is still in its ...
Small businesses can run on peer-to-peer networks, but as the business grows, it needs computer information systems that can handle the increase in traffic. Traffic growth can be internal or external. Online businesses usually see both of these metrics increase, ...
For the community of IT professionals at midsize firms, both analytics and business intelligence (BI) are familiar terms that convey a straightforward meaning. Analytics is the art and science of finding patterns in data. As such it has been a ...
Business Intelligence (BI) tools provide the architecture for midsize businesses to translate otherwise meaningless collections of data into actionable information that can be used to make decisions. No matter how complicated or simple, BI tools are often the backbone of ...
Agility in business is no longer optional for midsize businesses; it's a must for success. But what exactly does agility mean? The term "agile" originates in a process created by software developers that was focused on meeting users' needs, delivering ...
A recent study completed about data management professionals reveals that senior IT administrators are still hesitant to make use of big data. The world of analytics has grown to such a tremendous size that professionals seem to be unwilling to ...
Midsize businesses face many challenges. With more customers using web and mobile interfaces to interact with companies, one of the most pressing is how to cope with ever larger volumes of data on all aspects of their operations.While the petabytes ...
Does big data help a business or hinder it? The problem most midsize businesses face today is that data is coming in at such a rate that IT staff can barely keep up with it. It's too much information for ...
The BI market place is flooded with messaging from vendors saying they can provide analytical platforms and access to information faster, better, easier, and cheaper. This is true in many ways due to the shifts in technology: storage is more ...
According to Thomas Davenport, writing for the Wall Street Journal, business analytics is moving into what he calls "Analytics 3.0," a combination of the small, structured data sources of version 1.0, with the big data collection and Hadoop warehousing of ...
These days, when enabling effective collaboration, documents are often shared between users inside and outside of the workplace, it is vital for midsize companies to have proper safeguards in place to ensure that when they are shared with third parties, ...
When it comes to web traffic, tablets rule. According to a new study, for the very first time, tablets are now driving more traffic to Internet sites than smart phones. The study is interesting for midsize businesses who aim to ...
Enterprise data continues to undergo a transformation. The buzzword "big data" is ubiquitous in the media, appearing almost daily in mainstream newspapers and broadcasts. The growth of social networking drives both the volume and velocity of data, and the successful ...
IT research firm Gartner has revised its IT spending prediction for the year 2013. Gartner expected a trimmed IT investment outlook for the running year due to global economic concerns such as the US budget debates and the Cyprus dept ...
Mater Data Management (MDM) solutions enable companies to organize the processes, governance, policies, and standards that revolve around their common data. At one point, MDM solutions were only considered by enterprise-level businesses. However, in today's fast-paced business world, midsize firms ...
IBM is making a grab for more clout in the growing business analytics market with their acquisition of California company Star Analytics. They haven't been shy about snapping up other business intelligence (BI) properties such as Varicent and Cognos, and ...
Technology research firm Gartner recently honored business process management (BPM) in technology companies at the 2013 BPM excellence awards in London. The winning companies are British Telecommunications (BT), the Lego Group, and online insurance company Verti, according to ITProPortal.British Telecommunications ...
The continuing sense of frustration with IT everywhere has resulted in a shift to decentralization of roles that were formerly the strict domain of IT. Ultimately little of what IT has done has gone away, but much of it is ...
Do you need to engineer a rapid improvement in business performance? Data insights can help you. Your midsize business can gain these insights by implementing a range of business intelligence tools to harvest, analyze, and implement information generated through internal ...
According to Gartner, big data is of big interest to IT managers today. The research firm predicts that IT leaders will continue to invest in larger scale deployments to remain competitive in the market. As big data solutions become more ...
Big data has brought business analytics to the front seat in market research. There are two types of data that businesses rely on to make better marketing decisions: primary data and secondary data. Both B2B and B2C midsize businesses benefit ...
I just caught this article in the Insiders Group blog and thought I would comment about our demand forecasting experiences and how they can be applied to the midsize business. About the sales forecast. Or for that matter any forecast. ...
A new study of advertising on Facebook suggests that the impact of Web advertising is more subtle than online advertisers have assumed. It isn't all clicking on ads. Just seeing the ads can influence users - an influence that can ...
In today's competitive marketplace, it is crucial for midsize companies to utilize technology to gain every advantage possible in the areas of increasing revenue while improving the customer experience. The field of customer intelligence has emerged in recent years to ...
The past few years have been marked with many advancements in technology – better processing speeds, higher storage capabilities, flexible deployment models, broader mobility, and a focus on business-facing software solutions. And all of these have led to better BI: ...
This is a classic example of vehicle routing using analytics. I have worked on problems as disparate as ambulance routing in semi rural counties and routing log trucks to pulp mills, to minimizing the travel of fork lifts in product ...
To make the most of "big data," midsize companies must not only collect but analyze its constant flow. IT admins, therefore, need to both identify reliable sources of data and information for mining and leverage robust business intelligence (BI) solutions.Finding ...
Using business analytics can give you deeper insights into what's really happening in a midsize enterprise. The best analytics tools can help IT managers turn streams of unstructured data into information that CEOs can actually use. While much of the ...
The question of the day is whether mid-market companies can really use and gain benefit from Big Data and Predictive Analytics. Although many companies in this category don't have a great deal of expertise in this area, with a bit ...
Sales organizations have many more sources of information available to qualify prospects and understand when and how to approach them. ...
Is operational data alone enough to grow your business? Every day your business generates more data. All your operations, both internal and external, provide additional information that can help you to improve your business. The issue with the data is ...
How can smarter analytics help midsize businesses? We live in an era of big, plentiful data - the issue is how to use it effectively, and IT administrators can take a leading role in making this happen. A smart analytics ...
A new survey has found that HR professionals are seeking big data solutions. For midsize companies, effective human resource software positively impacts morale and therefore affects the bottom line. The right analytics software can make a difference. Too Much Data ...
Information Management (IM) is a foundation upon which companies are forging competitive advantage. Consider attracting customers with the savings potential of telematics and the claim savings opportunities it creates. It’s an absolute game changer in the auto insurance industry and ...
While customer information management might conjure up images of customer files and CRM software, they are only part of the story. Today, customer information includes not only traditional transactional and customer data, but also the wealth of customer feedback and ...
Any sales professional worth her salt knows to “follow the money.” Traditionally, we interpret that as, “Who has the budget?” While that’s important, it’s no longer sufficient for sales success, or more importantly, for our customers’ success. We have to ...
Today's world is full of unstructured data. It has been said over and over again that 80 percent of the entire planet's information falls under this category. To remain competitive, midsize firms must make sense of it when they can ...
Stored data is a revenue generator for businesses, according to Gartner vice president and analyst Bill Hostmann - but only when it's properly analyzed and the results of that analysis applied. Speaking at the company's Intelligence and Information Management Summit ...
Midsize IT admins face the hard reality of big data coming from a host of internal and external sources, all of which needs to be stored, mined, and ultimately used to plot a company's future course. Companies must therefore find ...
When you stop to consider the overwhelmingly rapid evolution that has taken place with midsize business, it's a wonder IT can keep up, let alone understand how to gain competitive advantage. In the last decade, commerce has shifted toward an ...
When search ads appear on tablets they are more effective. That's according to new findings which show the impact that tablets will have on marketing and advertising campaigns at midsize firms today.The SearchThrough search advertising, companies can place online advertisements ...
Business intelligence (BI) is now the fourth largest applications software segment, according to a new Garner study. Midsize firms are projected to be part of BI's continued growth.A Steady Growth PredictionGartner says the BI software spending market is set at ...
With its focus on more informed, timely decision making, business analytics has understandably become a buzz-worthy topic among chief executives and strategy makers in recent years. But the future of business analytics is moving down through the rest of the ...
The term “big data” is ubiquitous in business today, and predictions that surround big data and related analytic technologies abound. The proliferation of information and diversity of opinion on this subject makes it difficult for midsize business leaders to determine ...
Business process automation (BPA) techniques attempt to automate specific IT functions. By restructuring resource and labor distribution, in addition to implementing integrative software, midsize businesses can gain several advantages through increased automation, including reduced costs and streamlined work flowThe Case ...
Midsize firms are unlocking the answer to the question: What is data mining? The fact is, it enables them to make better business decisions by analyzing all the volumes of information collected on a daily basis. It is a very ...
Big data demand is on the upswing at midsize firms. According to a new survey by Microsoft more than 75 percent of midsize firms intend to implement big data solutions by next year.Big NeedsMicrosoft sponsored the survey "Global Enterprise Big ...
Traditionally, a company's management information system managed two kinds of data, operating and customer data. Operating data was internal and the operating managers had access to it. Customer data was for marketing managers, and the sales and marketing people used ...
A lot of ingredients go into keeping restaurant kitchens moving smoothly to serve their customers. One of those ingredients is data - not just the pattern of customer orders, but the availability of fresh ingredients and a host of other ...
Midsize businesses are looking for effective governance software to manage their growing data. Technologies like virtualization and cloud computing have changed the game, as has the consumerization of IT and BYOD policies. As a result, IT managers at midsize firms ...
Customer feedback is no longer a "nice to have" feature for companies. Gone are days when midsize businesses could operate on simply the strength of their good name, responding to customer concerns at leisure. Now, consumers expect companies to engage ...
Information is constantly generated - and now stored - by companies of all sizes. This digital proliferation has been termed "big data," and smart organizations are learning how they can uncover actionable insights from huge volumes of customer, employee, and ...
Many midsize firms will be heading to Predictive Analytics World conferences this year to learn about ways to capitalize on the surge of digital data. Various industry professionals will converge in Toronto, London, Berlin, and various US cities, ready to ...
Using online analytics could give your midsize business a competitive edge. That's because, increasingly your customers are going online and mobile. A 2012 survey by Pew Internet found that 81% of American adults use the Internet. What's even more important ...
Most midsize companies view analytics as an indispensable business tool. It helps track email campaigns, monitor social influence, and follow visitors all the way from the landing page to the shopping cart. Content analytics puts an interesting twist on what ...
Database sizing remains an enigma to many. The norm for years has been to “guesstimate” and pad. And pad and pad. Every level and every signer wants to be sure they have padded so the system does not need additions ...
A competitive advantage results from the unique characteristics of your business, and it allows you to perform better than competitors in specific areas. Traditional competitive advantages have been due to factors like location, cost advantages, team capabilities, and product development. ...
When performing business analytics, a wide variety of disparate data sources makes the overall work more unwieldy. Because of this, data integration becomes a vital part of any analytical solution. It is important to consolidate as much of any corporate ...
Big data has become one of the hottest buzzwords in the information technology industry. However, due to the vast nature of the field, many midsize businesses now entering the area often are overwhelmed with the options available to them when ...
Big data is not just a buzzword. Big data is ... really, really big. It is estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes--or 2.5 exabytes--of new data are generated every day. About 90 percent of the data now stored anywhere in the ...
The CIO role is changing. A changing business environment is redefining the role from a technically-focused one to that of a true business leader. We’ve been saying this for years, but this time, it’s for real. Companies are increasingly “meaning ...
Strategic business intelligence - the words are simple, yet many midsize businesses are unsure how to integrate a business intelligence system into their workflow. Part of the problem is the amount of data generated - it can be so overwhelming ...
Twitter has become integral to the online presence of any social business. After Facebook, it's the second most popular social media site (according to BizJournals). That's why it's important for businesses to measure their interactions with a Twitter analytics solution. ...
A great deal of ink and electrons are being spilled over the Big Data revolution. It is not hype. The ability to store and crunch data is growing at a spectacular rate. These vast quantities of data can provide a ...
The ability to run industry analysis could make the difference between running a midsize business that is truly competitive and having one that is barely hanging on. There is a huge amount of data out there to inform your business ...
The 2013 business analytics market is one of widening gaps between expectation and application performance, says a recent Big Data report by research firm Ventana. As companies demand more from their business intelligence (BI) and data mining solutions, midsize business ...
Application performance monitoring (APM) solutions are necessary for apps to run at their best. With the rise of virtualization and cloud technologies, midsize firms today look to implement reliable, integrated APM solutions to unlock their data analytics needs.The Wonders of ...
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University may have found a new way to facilitate trend analysis using big data from social media. The researchers have developed a filtering technique to help find relevant information from Twitter feeds. Using this filtered data, ...
Cloud computing, mobile technology, and business intelligence (BI) are three of the hottest trends in the tech media world. Yet does all the talk about them reflect reality or, as has happened before in the tech universe, does it contain ...
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of guidelines with a focus on service management. The ITIL framework is often behind the successful organization and management of a midsize firm's IT infrastructure. Today it is considered the most ...
Fusion-io just announced a new flash product designed for companies that want to convert a large data center to the fastest memory available. The move raises some questions about where memory in the data center is headed, and getting on ...
Today's consumers have more options than ever when it comes to choosing products and services, which might find your midsize business in a cramped market. A successful branding strategy can help your company stand out from the crowd, differentiating your ...
With each passing day, midsize organizations accumulate more and more data, either through new innovations using existing infrastructure or through new endeavors like cloud computing. As the value of all this data starts to become clear, there is going to ...
IBM today accelerated its strategy to drive big data and cloud computing adoption with the addition of new Power Systems ...
Predictive analysis is an effort to divine future behavior based on current and past data. Using statistics, machine learning, modeling and data mining, predictive analytics solutions help businesses make smarter decisions by offering insights about customer and employee behavior as ...
Data backups and long term data archiving in coming decades may be in the form of biological DNA data storage. DNA carries the promise of vast density and stability, and could mean that data could last forever. According to an ...
Data mining is a popular term for one step of the knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) process, which allows companies to "sift" through large data sets and find previously unknown patterns or relationships. Precursors to the term, used in the ...
The big data era poses its share of challenges for data security. Data isn't just bigger: It is more complex, stored in more varied ways, and the most sensitive data may not be obvious. All of these factors can make ...
Companies look for competitive advantages, especially the sustainable kind. They result in higher profitability, but their key feature is a moat. This means that competitors who want to duplicate your success will find it difficult. They have to figure out ...
Gathering customer demographics requires IT at midsize businesses to do more than focus on big data. In fact, rather than focus on big data, which has been the popular trend in businesses of all sizes for the last few years, ...
In a digitized world, whether you are a brick and mortar or an e-commerce midsize business, you can use digital data to gain a global competitive advantage...if you know what data you need and how to put it to work ...
Despite relatively low retail numbers, mobile data traffic continues to grow exponentially. A recent article in Forbes detailed impressive numbers for the mobile industry, stating, "In Belgium, the leading operators KPN, Mobistar, and Proximus all saw more than 100% growth ...
Information technology services are the backbone of every company in this globalized, online, instant-access world. IT in midsize business is one segment that continues to grow. As an IT professional, you can remain competitive and establish your expertise with IT ...
It has been two months since the launch of what Microsoft hoped would be its new flagship operating system, Windows 8 - a move CEO Steve Ballmer considers one of the top three events in the company's history. The jury, ...
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is offering a new storage service tailored to the demands of big data. The service, called High Storage, will offer fast access to large amounts of data. For IT at midsize firms, options such as this ...
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled a new round of updates to the AWS cloud space. The latest service addition is called the Data Pipeline, a workflow-based tool that enables IT managers to automate and schedule data workflows from a ...
Most companies have developed their IT infrastructure on three levels. They process some data locally, some on enterprise-wide systems, and some equipment serves to interface with external IT systems. For midsize businesses, local processing can mean a single location or ...
"Big data" has progressed beyond its initial buzzword phase into a business reality. Judging from most media reports, data-focused jobs are expected to increase dramatically over the next few years as businesses seek to make sense of the tremendous flood ...
Startup Food Genius is bringing big data analytics to the food industry by using data gathered from menus to better understand things like restaurant trends, food concepts, and customer dining behavior. An article from GigaOM reports that the company database ...
Analytics is the term applied to the mass amounts of data analysis that occurs within companies that allows business leaders to understand and interpret client behavior.What Are Analytics Able to Tell You About Your Business?While most people are familiar with ...
As the IT side of midsize businesses continue to grow, the question of what to do with all that unstructured data becomes more important. It's a question that isn't going unnoticed by the major players in the tech industry, and ...
Information is not static. On the other hand, the ways that information is used and preserved in an organization are not completely chaotic. Information has a lifecycle, which invites and requires information lifecycle management. Information is created either in a ...
A recent Magic Quadrant report from research firm Gartner shows that while the master data management (MDM) market has a wider variety of tools than in past years, those tools come from fewer vendors. With enterprise and midsize IT pros ...
As another year draws to a close, it’s the perfect opportunity to reflect on what your business or organization has ...
It was bound to happen. It was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before somebody somewhere would figure out a way to take the countless images uploaded to the world wide web every day by average people and ...
The trend the industry is seeing where staff members bring their own smartphone or tablet computer in order to improve their own personal productivity is often seen in media reports. Typically this is discussed as Bring Your Own Device or ...
Google will reportedly modify search results showing snippets from websites. The move is one of several that Google will voluntarily undertake in order to allay antitrust concerns raised by the FCC. The Google search tweaks underline one of the basic ...
I was fascinated to read that the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, is apparently using a specially defined dashboard on ...
Big data is everywhere, and almost everything from an IT perspective. Any piece of information that can be collected, should be, and then it should be mined for clues about how - in conjunction with other disjointed data pieces - ...
Want your business to thrive? Then you need analytics tools. These tools are the only way you can make sense of the ever-increasing data streams flooding into your business. Analytics is a growth area for IT professionals. For midsize businesses, ...
Been reading in recent Inc Mag articles recently and found this one by Scott Gerber that was on point. Answering ...
In a recent keynote speech, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman tried to rally her troops, boost customer confidence, and reassure investors that the technology giant is ready for a comeback. It seems to have worked; HP's stock is up 3 percent ...
The desire to get a glimpse into the future is an ancient one. But most of the methods people try in attempting to do so did not work very well. Horoscopes and Ouija boards do not offer reliable results. Even ...
Big data specialists Cloudera just completed another round of funding, this one valuating the company at close to a billion dollars. This new funding makes it obvious that the smart money in Silicon Valley is betting on an explosion in ...
Business intelligence is a relatively recent term coined to refer to the processing of raw data into a usable format for immediate use in marketing and many other disciplines, including finance, as demonstrated in a recent article in CIO. Earlier ...
Are you on the fence about the value large quantities of big data can bring to your midsize business? If so, it may be time to another look at the reasons data is so important to organizations. Chances are, your ...
I have been looking at both engaging and value adding plays for the midsize business in loyalty systems. I ...
Strategic analytics is nothing new for midsize businesses, but new tools mean you can get more from analytics than ever before. For as long as people have been doing business, they have analyzed the factors that affect their daily operations, ...
Considering the rapid growth of business information, even at midsize companies, data analytics becomes an important part of deriving competitive value from that mass of facts and figures. Having a well-honed process in place, supported by technology, goes a long ...
If you are a midsize business executive looking to increase productivity and decrease the costs of information gathering and analysis, it may be time to question your intelligence.Business intelligence (BI) refers to a wide range of technology applications and tools ...
Announcements of partnerships and alliances come in every day. I seldom comment on them. After watching the industry for decades, I've come to view these announcements with a great deal of skepticism. Most midmarket decision makers would be well advised ...
Hewlett-Packard (HP), isn't having a banner year. With losses in hardware sales and a less-than-stellar profit outlook, CEO Meg Whitman needs some good news. The purchase of Autonomy - and with it, the IDOL information management product - looked like ...
Midsize IT admins often read "Big Data" as "big problem," since high expectations now exist not only for the collection of information but cost-effective use. To make matters worse, admins also have to sell the idea of data analysis to ...
Obama's campaign technology may have changed the game for future political campaigns. Instead of relying solely upon the track records of seasoned consultants to lay out strategy based on gut instinct, experience, and interpretation of the poll-of-the-day, Obama's strategy was ...
While most midsize businesses know that social media sites are valuable online marketing tools, few understand how to monitor and interpret their activity on these sites.Social media analytics efficiently provide valuable insights into how well your efforts contribute to your ...
An interesting piece just received about how IBM is provide financing for its clients. Quite a broad opportunity to drive opportunities for growth. ' ... IBM recently announced that it is providing its ecosystem of business partners with $4 billion ...
The explosion of big data remains one of the most important current technology trends for the senior IT professional. It is important to realize big data provides an opportunity for midsize businesses to beat their competition by leveraging enhanced business ...
If you’re a regular visitor to my blog, you may remember that I’ve previously written about the hazards that can ...
Every midsize business wants to gain a competitive advantage, especially in a tight economy. One way to do that is by implementing a business analytics solution for your business. Everything you do in the company and all your external interactions ...
Many company owners wonder how business analytics can help them. The truth is, it's the best way to keep your business healthy. Every business has streams of data generated from both internal and external operations. This type of analytics helps ...
Both campaigns in the 2012 presidential election put big data analytics to work for their "ground games"--identifying the voters who supported them and getting them to the polls. And the analytics efforts of the two campagns had very different results, ...
A common challenge for businesses of all sizes is the necessity to do more with less; to deliver greater benefit ...
Finnish company Nokia has released a lower price point for the Lumia 920 than rival smartphones by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. The low purchase price encourages consumers to purchase the model, which may boost Nokia sales and increase ...
Location analytics may bring added value to organizations' data mining activities by offering broader and more detailed ways to look at customer behavior. By looking at what people do, what paths they take, and what they buy, it may be ...
A new computing speed champion, the Titan supercomputer, is now open to scientific researchers. In the near term it will be used for such timely tasks as modeling the behavior of hurricanes. Other scientific uses range from improving the combustion ...
Those of you who read my blog regularly may remember that I recently published an article entitled “Using Data to drive Sustainability”, where I referred to the Desert Mountain Golf community. Desert Mountain is a mid-size business located in Arizona, ...
As a midsized company, you've likely built a talented, experienced, and energetic marketing team. If you've done your job right, you've created a critical mass of both people and skills that meet your needs today and, hopefully, for your future ...
Patent disputes are nothing new in the technology market, but they have typically centered around consumer product usability and design. Now, IBM partner BrightStar Partners (BSP) is under fire for its work on IBM Cognos analytics software--and the suit comes ...
Don't expect a mobile app for either one of them. But IBM is updating its SmartCloud and InfoSphere offerings to meet the challenges of the big data era. Amid the waves of consumer-gadget hype that are overwhelming tech news, this ...
A survey conducted by technology research firm Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) finds that top business executives want big data access for more of their employees in hopes that more people using analytics tools would lead to a more productive organization. ...
Environmental sustainability is a dilemma for today’s organisations and consumers. Organisations generally want to maximise profits—but there’s increasing attention and ...
Readers of my blog know that I’m a technology buff. After all, it’s big part of how I keep the lights on. Lesser known, though, is that I fancy myself a respectable tennis player and a pretty big fan of ...
A new catch phrase has been getting a great deal of attention in the information technologies market recently. Let's consider what this phrase refers to, whether it is really something new, the up and coming tools that allow organizations to ...
The Google policy of combining all privacy settings into one catchall generated a lot of controversy. And now it is generating some action. The EU is telling Google to provide an opt-out for its customers.For the IT community at midsize ...
The privately held cloud vendor 1010data has launched Analytical Dataspace, a cloud-based community that essentially serves as a marketplace for buying and selling big data as well as platform for accessing analytics applications and tools.Although the company is not new ...
Google's neural network, distributed across 16,000 processors and running over 1,000 computers for 10 days, made some advances in the artificial intelligence field by learning to recognize people, animals, and other objects by "watching" YouTube videos. According to an article ...
OCDQ Radio is a vendor-neutral podcast about data quality and its related disciplines, produced and hosted by Jim Harris. During this episode, Ed Abrams and I discuss cloud computing for midsize businesses, and, more specifically, we discuss aspects of the ...
Data analysis gets a great deal of press. It's the "next big thing," the way companies will get ahead of their competition or dig themselves out of a market rut. But with data warehouse layers and online analytical processing (OLAP) ...
TechAmerica have released a new big data report looking at the role of government in big data analysis. The report details the current level of engagement in the area and also points to what the government can do going forward ...
In my second book, The Next Wave of Technologies (originally published in early 2010), I wrote about the difficulties that many organizations face as they attempt to move away from antiquated technologies, applications, systems, and mind-sets. Long story short: Change ...
Big Data is hot, and a part of the Big Data buzz is that it is too big to be handled by traditional relational databases. But at a recent Oracle event in San Francisco, a number of users of Oracle's ...
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see ...
Midsize business IT pros have a dual problem with big data: sorting through the reams their company generates every day and figuring out "what comes next" from that extrapolated data. Pundits love to talk at length about the future of ...
The large enterprise can think about how to systematize their business processes and the rules that they use to make ...
“With social media analytics,” Ed Abrams and Jay Hakami recently blogged, midsize businesses “can calculate the ROI and assess the effectiveness of their social media marketing campaigns by tracking both the actions of consumers and the influence of their top ...
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing…” – Albert Einstein How does ...
An interesting example of how a mid market company can gather and integrate and leverage data.
It's easy to criticize Google. They're a big player in the industry, worth billions of dollars and constantly in the news over one alleged privacy breach or another. The company offers a wealth of useful, innovative services. While lauded for ...
Innovation is critical for organisational survival. Whether it’s a new product innovation, or creating better and slicker processes, organisations need to adapt to stay afloat. They need to find new ways to reach out to their customers, and new ways ...
Big data seems to be the catchphrase of the moment, but for the company known as GoodData, business intelligence and big data is more than just mining data to find more efficient ways of operating or to save costs; it's ...
With the latest upgrades to its big data tool BigQuery, Google continues its quest for dominance in the big data services market. The big data market has seen rapid growth as enterprises search for new ways to collect and analyze ...
Google has faced a number of controversies surrounding Internet privacy laws as various IT security research firms, rivals including Microsoft and Apple, and even government agencies have leveled accusations against the way it stores and uses personal information from its ...
I have been giving quite a bit of thought lately to the topic of enterprise risk management. In large part, this stems from the fact that I have worked on more than a few projects in which my client’s risk ...
Have you ever done a Google search and realized that some of the sites showing up were related to the keyword phrase but did not exactly match the search phrase? This is Google synonym recognition, which is a part of ...
The tech world has seen many trends since computers exploded more than three decades ago. In the last 30 years, those trends have included Internet, smartphones, but now the latest trend may be related to software instead of hardware. The ...
After taking some strong hits last year due to manufacturing issues, the market for digital storage is roaring back to life with impressive growth numbers and strong signs of a bright future. While good news on its own, the market's ...
By Ed Abrams (left), IBM VP of Global Midmarket Business, & Jay Hakami (right), President and CEO of Sky IT Mid-Size retailers and suppliers are in the midst of evolving the way they are serving the individual consumer. Every Facebook ...
Business technology concepts don't always have to be first deployed in some factory or office setting, where the pure banality of the subject is enough to cause disinterest in even the most ardent observer. Some of the most exciting aspects ...
The IT research company Gartner Inc. claims open data can prove to be far more valuable for generating business growth and innovation. The benefits of big data are less apparent for many small and midsize businesses because smaller firms have ...
OCDQ Radio is a vendor-neutral podcast about data quality and its related disciplines, produced and hosted by Jim Harris. During this episode, Paul Gillin and I discuss social media for midsize businesses, including how the less marketing you do, the ...
The growing use of big data by firms is driving major IT vendors like Symantec Corp. to develop solutions that make big data analysis easier and more affordable, which comes as encouraging news for midsize businesses using or considering big ...
2013 IT budgets look to have hit a stalemate, according to research conducted across Europe by IDG Connect. The research shows that for the coming year, IT business and decision-makers were almost evenly split between supporting IT initiatives that either ...
Midsize businesses and other enterprises must think about policies to manage the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, say Gartner research analysts. The trend is likely to increase in coming years, and enterprises need to get ready. It is likely to offer as ...
In this three-minute overview video, I explain Apache Hadoop and touch on some of its functionality. What say you? This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise ...
Microsoft was caught sending private information back when it released its Windows 98 operating system, and now SmartScreen will send application information in Windows 8. Microsoft has slowly moved away from privacy concerns and some newer settings check for validity ...
In April 2012, Google released a change to the algorithm called Penguin. This new algorithm change hit several midsize businesses on the Internet that are now tasked with cleaning up inorganic backlinks. The Penguin update evaluates backlinking efforts used by ...
Five years ago, you could come up with a content idea, throw up a blog, and place ads on it for revenue. Even midsize businesses monetized pages and external blogs, using ad revenue networks such as Adsense, Infolink, or Adbrite. ...
Business organizations are accumulating big data at unprecedented rates, but turning big data into big revenues is still a major challenge faced by many businesses, a recent Oracle survey suggests. A recent CloudTimes article reports that the survey of 333 ...
NIMBY is an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard” and its derivative term Nimbyism usually refers to the philosophy of opposing construction projects or other new developments, which would be performed too close to your residence or your business, ...
Hadoop business intelligence (BI) training is being rolled out at the IBM Big Data University through Jaspersoft, one of the world's leading providers of BI software. Jaspersoft announced that it would offer the training for Hadoop BI platforms at no ...
I recently participated in the #ExpertSysChat Tweet Chat on “Integrated Systems & Virtualization for Midsize Businesses” which took place on ...
With businesses seeking to derive new intelligence about their businesses from the vast amounts of data they collect, IBM is ...
Measuring social media influence may be becoming more meaningful. Klout recently announced that they have updated their service to add context and substance behind a user's Klout score. According to an article by the Chicago Tribune, Klout now includes 400 ...
It’s a difficult and crowded market place out there. Customers are more and more demanding and have unprecedented access to ...
The past few years have seen remarkable growth in the amount of information that businesses can accumulate, which has directly led to the growth of the Big Data movement, a movement in the business intelligence (BI) community that can discern ...
In this video, I discuss issues to related to mobility for mid-market organizations. Feedback What say you? This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions ...
I worked on several large scale expert systems applications during the AI drive of the 1990s. One of the areas ...
It's all about behavior. New business analytic techniques don't just focus on data, but on what that data, in sum total, can predict. The behavior of customers, businesses, and even hackers can now be predicted with sophisticated analytical programming, including ...
Frost & Sullivan and IBM write about the problems with CRM data. The article contains many statistics about the problem ...
Bob Sutor recently blogged about mobile devices, noting that “the power of these gadgets isn’t in their touchscreens or their elegant design. It’s in the variety of apps and communication services we can use on them to stay connected. By ...
Data is a main artery of modern organisations. In a volatile and rapidly changing environment, it is those organisations that ...
Papa Gino’s is a restaurant chain based in Dedham, MA. It specializes in American-style pizza along with pasta, subs, salads, and a variety of appetizers. There are over 200 Papa Gino’s locations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode ...
Today, marketing programs take on various personalities. Some are based on traditional techniques that rely heavily on outbound methodologies. They ...
Microsoft Office is one of the few software suites on the "must-haves" list for midsize businesses. Whether your business is writing code or selling tomatoes, chances are good that you have managed data in Excel, crafted memos in Word, and ...
IBM has unveiled its predictive analytics application called Analytical Decision Management which automatically correlates with and analyzes big data, allowing business organizations to embed hyper-intelligence into many business decisions they make. According to a CloudTimes article, this software is capable ...
A web poll executed by Harris Interactive, in partnership with enterprise application software vendor SAP AG, shows big growth of big data adoption by small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). According to a CloudTimes article, this survey was conducted among ...
Embedded analytics provide the capability to optimize business performance and enhance data relevancy while working within the confines of a single enterprise application environment. The technology gives IT professionals and midsize business users alike the ability to execute analytical operations ...
In the current issue of Vanity Fair, Kurt Eichenwald writes about Microsoft’s Lost Decade (the naughts). In case you’re wondering, in the 2000s the company’s stock flat-lined. In an interview about the fascinating article, Eichenwald talks frankly about CEO Steve ...
I have been a long time practitioner of business analytics, the use of quantitative methods to improve business processes. Starting ...
A wide range of tools now exist for IT admins of all levels to compile, analyze, and report data. But despite an increasing amount of technological options, adoption of such data analytics tools has been slow, in part because of ...
Google has introduced Mobile App Analytics, new reports that help quantify mobile app performance and customer engagement, something that IT analysts at midsize businesses may find of interest. The reports help to gather metrics within a mobile application at key ...
Ken Oestreich on GigaOM writes about data as a platform. From the piece: And, if the data is becoming so valuable, then analyzing and mining it ought to provide incremental revenue streams beyond the traditional product-based business model. But consider ...
I have not been particularly fond of the public Tweet chat, an organized interaction between vendor experts and anyone who ...
As usual, Fred McClimans got me to thinking with this blog post in a tweet: "Are we witnessing the beginning of the profitability of Twitter AND the end of its present value? @berkson0 @nigelcameron" — FRED MCCLIMANS (@fredmcclimans) June 30, ...
The world of business intelligence (BI) is moving away from the IT-centric models of the past, according to new report from Forrester Research. The report states that enterprise BI models that rely heavily on IT for reporting are "unsustainable," as ...
One of the week’s interesting technology stories was On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels, an article by Dana ...
I just got a chance to interview N2N Global, a business intelligence and analytics provider for food supply chains...
The National Football League is nothing less than the acme of contemporary American sports. Ratings are off the charts and the league’s recent TV deal represents the standards by which other leagues are ultimately judged. (Spoiler: they wish that they ...
The United States has regained the crown for the world's most powerful supercomputer. The Top500 list, released at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, gave the title to an IBM Blue Gene/Q computer called Sequoia. It achieved a processing speed ...
Tennis viewers now take it for granted that before a match at Wimbledon or the US, French, or Australian Open that they will be treated to a slew of information about players and their chances in the tournament based on ...
Few would argue that over the past ten years the pace of change has increased significantly in business. Now more ...
The easiest way to keep a data center cool is to stop it from overheating in the first place, and this is one of the goals of the newly announced HP Gemini server platform. It will be suited to tasks ...
Midsize companies are inundated with promises about how analytics data, when properly mined, can have a transformative impact on their business. But what sounds great on paper and in e-mails often becomes much more complicated once it's put into practice, ...
The emergence of novel technologies like social networking and mobile computing have had a major impact on business intelligence (BI). "New analytics," a term consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) uses to describe the new era of BI and data analysis, is ...
Dealing with Big Data has been a top priority for businesses over the last several years; as terabytes and petabytes of information are generated, even small and midsize business IT admins must make sense of it all, of finding patterns ...
Since January 12, 2012, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has accepted about 2,100 applications for new domains. Currently, the Web is made up of 22 top-level domains that everyone is familiar with, such as .com, .net, ...
A recent blind survey conducted by HP has found that business leaders, as opposed to business "laggards," are distinguished by their investment and savvy use of IT and also by their strategically aligned key performance indicators (KPIs), with an emphasis ...
As a big data geek and a big fan of science fiction, I was intrigued by Zoe Graystone, the central ...
Have always been interested in how smaller to mid size companies can utilize large enterprise technologies and processes. Having worked ...
The latest IBM CEO study released today presents a well-rounded look at how CEOs are steering their businesses in today's global market, and the information should be studied closely by those in the mid-market where a majority of today's business ...
A researcher from the Georgia Institute of Technology has identified four Twitter behaviors that capture hyperadvocacy patterns, distinguishing propaganda from the Tweets of ordinary Twitter users. The results of the study could lead to new techniques that will aid IT ...
Businesses have long been utilizing data analysis to increase sales, improve customer retention, streamline processes, maximize performance, and minimize risks. But the dawn of supercomputing is set to revolutionize business analytics: Advancements in technology now enable organizations to extract meaningful ...
Failing to start migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 could place your midsize company behind the eight ball, costing your company thousands of dollars in support costs, according to PCWorld. Although Microsoft has campaigned for XP users to upgrade ...
In the new technology market, ROI is king. It's not enough to advance a solution that will perform well over time but which can't adapt to the raging influx of big data, nor are CEOs and managers willing to increase ...
hazard a guess that if you were to hear the phrase “IT threat”, you would immediately think of viruses, worms, ...
The quantity of financial sector data is increasing at some 70% a year, says an article in CIO. So it ...
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects copyright holders from having their works copied and distributed on the Internet. Have you ever had your content stolen online? Google devalues websites with significant amounts of duplicate content across the website. For ...
The market for business analytics is going nowhere but up, thanks to more sophisticated ways to predict customer behaviour and analyze large sets of data. But slick software isn't the only thing that's going to inform midsize business success, no ...
As big data gets bigger and companies seek to quantify every aspect of their business, the need for not only efficient analytics but the ability to quickly sort through reams of heterogeneous information is essential. Old-school computing systems, which saw ...
The big deal surrounding analytics and big data in general has always been an abstract notion of what they can do for businesses and organizations, especially for those in the mid-market who have a massive amount of stored data but ...
In a previous post about overcoming information asymmetry, I discussed one of the ways that customers are changing the balance ...
Yahoo announced this week that it will join the quickly expanding world of business analytics with its marketing- and advertising-focused Yahoo Genome project, scheduled for release in July. The company's foray into business intelligence (BI) follows other industry power players ...
One out of every three American mid-market businesses are interested in big data analytics. But there is one important thing is preventing them from moving ahead: the lack of expertise to implement the right solutions.Techaisle published a press release on ...
A new survey out of Europe raises some serious concerns about corporate networks and the people that run them. As data and bandwidth needs continue to skyrocket in the wake of cloud computing and ever more powerful applications, CIOs need ...
The growth of centralized computing has led to a massive spike in the amount of data that businesses have collected over the past few years. At EMC's annual conference, the company's leaders highlight this fact as one that has the ...
Remember the days of camping out and waiting in line for hours for concert tickets? Chances are the last time you purchased event tickets, it involved a few minutes on your smartphone or tablet, not hours on a sidewalk. You’re ...
In-memory analytics may have begun as the natural progression from disk-based analytics, but the new technology may be changing both IT and business much faster than anyone could have expected. New reports of companies shaving months off of project times ...
Information asymmetry is a term from economics describing how one party involved in a transaction typically has more or better ...
Everyone wants to talk about business intelligence (BI). Providers want to talk about it because they want you to buy their products and subscribe to services, while CEOs and project managers are certain if they don't use BI technology they'll ...
I have worked for a number of small and medium size business intelligence applications. When a business has to address these kinds of problems without a consultant it is often an issue to properly scope out the problem. or at ...
Yahoo Genome is a tool designed to help online marketers analyze large data sets, allowing them to target advertising more accurately. Yahoo's move into Big Data analytics comes just weeks after Google launched its own Big Data tool set.For Yahoo, ...
If you have a business, you need a smartphone. If you're an employee, if you're a manager, if you're an IT pro--you need a smartphone. So goes the line we're being sold by mobile communications companies across the globe, and ...
What do you think of when you hear someone described as a VIP? If you’re anything like me, the term ...
The partial verdict in the Oracle-Google trial found that Google had infringed on Oracle's copyright of 37 APIs. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the key question of whether Google's use of the APIs fell under the ...
It's no surprise that mobile technology is starting to dominate the business cloud; devices like Windows phones, iPads, and Android-based tablets have been using cloud-like structures to communicate for years. They would have advanced the cloud agenda even if platform ...
Cloud-based business intelligence (BI) software solutions are on the rise, and their popularity is now such that midsize businesses are sure they need to have at least one analytics solution in-house to maximize their ROI. Unfortunately, many companies aren't sure ...
Beyond the simple data analysis of standard business intelligence (BI) software, predictive analytics solutions give midsize IT the ability to not just crunch numbers but get a glimpse of what the future may hold--this is an invaluable asset in the ...
Vishal Sikka, head of technology at SAP, did not mince words in responding to criticism from Oracle. He described Oracle comments on SAP HANA as "falsehoods." The campaign-style rhetoric underlines the stakes for vendors of database-related technology. What started the ...
In this video, I discuss mid-market organizations that have outgrown their legacy applications–and what they should do about it. Feedback What say you? This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses ...
Let’s face it: As a group, Millennials don’t have the best of reputations, at least among many old-school cognoscenti. They’re always texting. They tweet too much and don’t read proper books. And we older folks believe that their collective dismissal ...
Product development is an important task for companies of all sizes. Carried out effectively it is an essential way to ...
Researcher Leslie Saxon recently announced everyheartbeat.org, an ambitious "Facebook of medicine" network that allows users to record their heartbeats. Eventually, Saxon hopes that the site will become a health repository of big data for researchers to study health patterns and ...
IBM recently announced their partnership with Palo Alto start-up Cloudera. Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH) as well as its Manager is meshing with IBM's Big Data platform to deliver unprecedented business intelligence solutions. This is outstanding news for midsize ...
When the family owned and operated Newark Nut Company expanded from a bricks-and-mortar dried fruit and nuts business to a Web presence, it found that the desirable domain name, Nuts.com, was already taken. The company instead went with NutsOnline.com, and ...
Radius, the newly rebranded company formerly known as Fwix, is closing the small business sales intelligence gap with a new application targeting the smaller firms. The small business market comprises approximately 65 percent of the US economy, yet it is ...
Intel has reached an agreement to buy critical technologies from supercomputer-maker Cray. The Intel-Cray alliance underlines Intel's efforts to beef up its high-end technologies. In the broader picture the deal shows the industry commitment to maximum performance. This performance is ...
As company data and systems become more and more valuable, the community of criminals interested in accessing those systems are only growing stronger and better funded. Many mid-market companies that once thought their information worthless to all but their competitors ...
IBM announced boosts for its Linux support, including expert integrated systems and Linux-specific PowerLinux servers. While the IBM-Linux relationship is long-standing (Big Blue has provided Linux support since 1999), these developments underline a growing trend toward open source support by ...
The growth of powerful computing solutions over the past few years has given businesses of all sizes the ability to capture massive amounts of information. Turning that information into actionable intelligence, a process called "big data," may seem simple on ...
Even if your business has never experienced a power outage, there's no guarantee that there's no blackout in your future. If you want to keep your company going and avoid downtime and potentially a loss of productivity and data, due ...
The open source community often calls its software "free," but it is more accurate to say that the licensing and acquisition is free. Setup, installation, and operation of the software is not free, whether companies do it themselves or hire ...
The Google Fusion Tables app has gotten new features designed to make data patterns easier to visualize. Google's efforts with Fusion Tables underlines one of the greatest and yet subtlest challenges in business analytics: making data visible to the user.We ...
The word “proactive” seems to be in increasing use within the business world, and “proactivity” is often seen as must-have ...
Intelligent speech recognition systems continue to make their way into the enterprise, as shown by a number of voice recognition software vendors' foray into voice-driven medical records systems. Nuance, best known to small and midsize businesses for its Dragon Naturally ...
IBM's update of their DB2 10 software brings automated database management to overburdened IT professionals by offering continuous data compression, analysis, and data access. In addition, the software accommodates both structured and unstructured information and promises ease of integration between ...
In this video, I talk about the importance of a data management strategy. Fancy tools are great, but is the data good? Do you know what to do with these tools? This post was written as part of the IBM ...
Businesses of all sizes are always looking for ways to increase revenue, decrease costs, and operate more efficiently. When I ...
Midsize firms, it seems, are still buying PCs, in spite of reports of their demise. That is the takeaway from reports that the PC market, expected to decline in the first quarter of 2012, instead showed a modest uptick. The ...
A new survey by research firm Market Connections Incorporated found that 35 percent of federal decision makers use LinkedIn, nearly double the number from the year before. According to an article in Federal Computer Week, the survey was based on ...
Power grids have to supply peak loads that are higher than their average loads. This means that a lot of generating capacity is idle, waiting for the occasional peak. Smart grid technology can shift the peaks so that they are ...
The growth of analytics over the past few years has already had a massive impact on general business decisions, greatly helping those who understand the benefits of business analytics and hurting those who have yet to grasp the concept. As ...
Google recently said it had abandoned its Native Client technology, marking it "won't fix" (i.e., bound for the dumpster). Then, it said oops: The project is still in development after all.So what gives? Was this a garden variety public relations ...
Big Data is something even small and midsized businesses now need to worry about--every day, companies generate staggering amounts of information detailing everything from computer and storage use to IT efficiency and consumer preferences. The challenge doesn't lie in collecting ...
Big data isn't a new concept for IT admins and management at midsize business--over the last few years, the technology space has been awash with predictions about increasing amounts of data and the difficulties companies have in managing all the ...
Data analysis typically deals with large quantities of information that data sources generate on a continuous basis. Companies can process the information as streaming data or collect it and process it in batches. If they have the data-processing capability, companies ...
IBM's Watson supercomputer, which rose to fame by besting former champions on Jeopardy, is now bringing its real-language analytics to cancer care. The hope is that a powerful analytical machine can help doctors better individualize treatments for patients. This revelation ...
It's easy to talk about "Big Data," but for many midsized businesses, it's harder to see exactly how that data can be used to increase revenue. In part, this is because of the staggering amount of information now collected by ...
IT staff today might believe they have all the knowledge they need to stay competitive, but according to a recent analysis, this isn't always the case. More than ever, IT managers are searching for something more. They are looking for ...
New research turns conventional wisdom on its head: Investing in IT delivers greater financial returns than does investments in research and development (R&D) and advertising.But the findings aren't black and white. Researchers found that the impact an IT investment had ...
The tech commentariat is abuzz with discussion of a creepy mobile app. The app Girls Around Me has in its current form been disabled and pulled from the Apple App Store. But it stuck around long enough to demonstrate, all ...
For decades, printers were a safe bet for technology manufacturers--and none so much as Hewlitt Packard (HP). Over the last 20 years, the company's print division has been a significant source of income. But with mobile devices slowly taking over ...
Verizon released its annual report on data breaches recently, and the results included some interesting reports on the nature of how data breaches occur. According to the report, 80 percent of attacks were motivated by opportunity rather than personal interest ...
In this video, I discuss the explosion of data (structured, unstructured, and semi-structured) and what organizations are doing about it. What do you think? This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize ...
All of the hype about Big Data is also causing quite the hullabaloo about hiring Data Scientists in order to ...
In my previous article, I referred to the theory of Schumpeter and described how growing organisations can become “dinosaurs” that ...
When I worked with analytical methods in the big enterprise, it was often the case that work had already been done to map out the business processes involved. In the mid 1980s we were already using methods like expert systems ...
HP's decision to merge its famed but faltering printer division with its PC division may be like one sinking ship rescuing passengers from another. Analysts are already raising questions about whether merging the divisions will produce the claimed synergies or ...
Business intelligence (BI), isn't just for large enterprises any longer. According to a recently published survey, small and midsize businesses are adopting it to be more competitive. Furthermore, they are turning to the cloud to make that happen. The survey, ...
Back in the dim and distant past, when I was at university, I remember studying the theories of Schumpeter. You ...
CIO Insights Reports reports about new Predictive Analytic Software and services from IBM. I have thirty years of experience with the use of analytical methods to improve company decision making. Analytical methods are fundamental to improving business operations. First ...
IT admins in business of all sizes have heard the buzz about data analytics, and many are crying out for the purchase of software powerful enough to handle the deluge of Big Data coming their way. While this need has ...
Tools for managing big data are now common even for small and midsized businesses, and IT admins are often on the hook for making sure this data is used effectively. Recent moves by software developers and industry giants, however, show ...
Recent Super Tuesday election results demonstrated that Twitter-based data alone was not enough to forecast winners. It also showed what kinds of information are still lacking in the field of social predictive analytics. Attensity, a Palo Alto-based social analytics company, ...
Location-based cloud services are expected to grow into a $12.7 billion dollar industry by 2014 and it appears that IT managers at small and midsize busineses ought to start paying attention to the opportunities available within this sector, reports TechCrunch. ...
In the mid- to late 1990s, many organizations undertook large business intelligence (BI) projects at considerable expense. The vast majority of these companies deployed BI applications via a sequential or Waterfall methodology, often taking a year or more to implement. ...
As businesses grow, decision making can become more and more difficult. In today’s complex business environment, knowing how your business ...
IBM has made some critical advancements in quantum computing recently. So much so they state it is time for them to start making systems. They plan to display their advancements at the Annual Physical Society meeting. Their goal is to ...
With the buzz stirring about Windows 8 and Windows Live, Microsoft has released the latest information for Windows Live users and IT managers who plan to implement the new Windows 8 operating system on the network. IT managers and users ...
Most viral videos are about silly cats, cute kids, or outrageous stunts. However, the latest must-see video on the Internet has a different message. Entitled Kony 2012, the 30-minute video purports to shine a light on the cruel leader of ...
Big data is now a reality for businesses of every size--even small and midsize IT admins have to deal with the constant input of data sets that are too large to manage using typical database tools. Effectively analyzing this data ...
Several weeks ago, the news broke that security firm Imperva had been tracking "hacktivist" group Anonymous over a period of 25 days and had witnessed the launch and failure of so-called "Operation Pharisee," which was supposed to bring down the ...
Quick response codes or "QR codes" are doing more than ever. They're being used in a transactional image recognition and mobile payment system called Simply Tap, as part of an interactive experience through Valiant's talking comics, and as clues in ...
Pulse 2012 is officially underway, and the four central focuses of the conference can provide some powerful insights into the short-term future of IT. While the cloud, mobility, and data security may already be on most IT managers' radar, the ...
Android Market is dead. Long live Google Play! Though the new moniker might sound a little juvenile, the newly re-imagined mobile service has already rolled out on the PC platform and will be coming to all Android phones in the ...
Some data analysts are looking at political sentiment in social media data to make predictions around the presidential campaigns. Attensity looked at 800,000 Tweets from February 25 through March 2 and measured "positive sentiment and share of voice for each ...
The old joke goes that "military intelligence" is an oxymoron, and the same is sometimes said of business intelligence (BI). Simply put, businesses of all sizes have trouble making sure their right hand knows what their left is doing, especially ...
Ever since the public was introduced to the Watson supercomputer, which is really more of a computing system, they have been fascinated by the possibilities of a computer that can think like a human. Now, banking giant Citi has teamed ...
When the iPhone launched in late June of 2007, naysayers abound. Many alleged technology experts doubted whether an expensive phone lacking a keyboard would be a hit with consumers, never mind the enterprise. After all, 2007 was arguably the acme ...
In a world of decreasing disposable income and increasing entertainment choices, companies have to continue to stand on the bleeding edge of technology in order to have a chance of success. This can be especially difficult for companies whose core ...
Big data is getting big buzz, but when most of us hear about big data, we probably think in terms of sheer number crunching: machine horsepower rather than brainpower. But getting the most out of big data is a big ...
In emergency rooms and other critical care environments, speed and accuracy matter. Timely and correct identification of symptoms, treatment options, and other factors impacting critical care is literally a matter of life and death. Responding to this most urgent of ...
Microsoft is previewing Windows 8, which radically redefines the familiar Windows interface. In fact, windows, as such, are being phased out. The familiar interface will still be available, at least on desktop and laptop systems, but it is headed for ...
Back in August 2011, Anonymous announced an op known as Operation Pharisee, which was aimed squarely at bringing down several of the Vatican's websites and disrupting a planned papal visit to Spain. Though much of the hacktivist group's tactics are ...
The IBM PartnerWorld 2012 Leadership Conference got underway on Monday this week, and while much of the conference was devoted to helping business leaders use IBM solutions to grow their business, a major theme was certainly the future of big ...
Cloud computing has opened a new world of discovery for data storage and sharing. Its ability to share both data and computing resources has caused the world to look upon it as the first major information technology of the 21st ...
Online privacy has become a huge issue, in part thanks to recent breaches of consumer information stored from iPhones and other mobile devices. Though consumers haven't exactly pushed for this type of legislation, a digital privacy-focused consumer bill of rights ...
Oracle Exalytics, a specialized appliance that stores memory data in RAM, has been launched into the marketplace. It is pitted against SAP's HANA, which uses similar technology. The two firms are already engaging in a furious war of words.The verbal ...
Mathematicians with a Ph.D. are what employers are hiring, and IBM is leading the pack. Math majors used to look forward to statistical analysis with insurance or pharmaceutical companies, but now they are finding their way into the world of ...
A sentiment analysis tool called the Senti-meter, developed by The Los Angeles Times, IBM, and the University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab, predicted Midnight in Paris as an Oscar winner, according to an article in Technorati. The tool examines ...
The White House has announced plans for an online "privacy bill of rights," saying that it will work with Congress to protect Internet users' privacy. The plan calls for voluntary cooperation by firms: For this reason, some critics might call ...
"Predictive analytics," the art of knowing what consumers want before they do, is one midsized businesses are rapidly getting to know, as it represents a way to not only find new customers but retain those that are already brand-loyal. What's ...
The European Union is planning to boost funding for exascale computing technology, even amid austerity. Meanwhile, US funding support for exascale technology is stagnating. Will the US end up falling behind the cutting edge of technology?No matter who develops it, ...
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is changing the way it purchases software. Instead of entering into licensing agreements with vendors, it will purchase its software on a pay-as-you-go basis. This action will not please major vendors such as Oracle and ...
IT departments at midsized businesses find their plates continually filled by upper management, and one of the biggest meals those in charge want their IT pros to chow down on is analytics data. With cloud-based analytics software now easily within ...
Many media outlets have characterized Google+ as Google's answer to Facebook. While true on the level of social media functionality, Google is positioning the platform to run in ways that are quite different. The recent emphasis has been on real ...
Nevada recently became the first state to approve self-driving cars by creating and approving regulations to both test and operate autonomous vehicles in the state. According to an article in USA Today, to test their vehicles, companies must carry a ...
The European Court of Justice ruled on February 16, 2012, that music copyright holders could not force the operators of online social networking sites to prevent illegal file sharing by installing filters. The court ruled that such filters would violate ...
A statistician for Target has figured out how to identify which customers are likely to be pregnant, allowing the chain to send specific advertising to the pregnant women in hopes of capturing their shopping loyalty for years. According to an ...
Launched in June 2011, Google+ is the search giant's attempt to cash in on the now massive force of social media contacts. The company first invited rather than letting consumers join as they pleased, but quickly stopped after what they ...
Graphics-card maker Nvidia has seen success in the tablet market with its line of Tegra 2 dual-core processors, quoting over $360 million in sales for Q4 of 2011. Now, the company hopes to make both the Tegra 2 and new ...
When it comes to advances in technology, the major jumps usually come from either innovative start-ups or the R&D divisions of the major players. In an event scheduled for April 11, 2012, IBM is banking on the latter when it ...
Enterprise business iPad adoption has been steadily rising since last year. Managers seem to be big fans of these tablets, especially in the medical and pharmaceutical industry (though many businesses in general are also opting in at breakneck speed). However, ...
Halliburton will phase out Blackberry phones and transfer their employees to the iPhone company wide. This is yet another blow to Research in Motion (RIM), which is struggling as more people replace their Blackberry phones with iPhones or Android-based phones. ...
What exactly is big data? By the most basic definition, it is a massive amount of data that has outgrown standard analysis tools. IBM defines it with three characteristics--that is, it's large; it requires real-time analysis to reach its full ...
Facebook is moving fast to monetize its vast storehouse of user data, and it is not the only one. Along with Facebook, privacy issues are stirring growing worries about Google and other major data mining firms.The underlying concern is that ...
IBM is rolling out a "Ready for Watson" program to help companies use subsets of Watson's analytics tools and other existing products. The company also has plans to make Watson available as a cloud-based service for such industries as healthcare, ...
Both Google and Apple are doing well in the Web browser market--especially when it comes to mobile devices. Desktops are still dominated by Internet Explorer, despite its somewhat lacking interface and feature set. Chrome is fighting for second spot with ...
The "bring your own device" (BYOD) movement is in full swing. Though many IT professionals are resistant to the concept, it presents benefits as well as challenges. Ultimately, this is more of a revitalized idea than a new one, as ...
The idea of iPads in business is not a new concept, but now politicians in the United Kingdom are claiming they are a better option than conventional computers or laptops. In fact, they are so adamant that iPads are a ...
Intellectual property (IP) rights are a key part of growth for any business, regardless of size. While enterprise-level industry works tirelessly to ensure its IPs are not used without permission, midsize organizations must be just as diligent in making sure ...
Last fall, system administrators started reporting huge spikes in malicious activity across VoIP protocols, and unfortunately that trend has continued into the new year. These attacks have occurring in increasing numbers recently and have targeted everything from user passwords to ...
Super Bowl XLVI has come and gone. It featured a close game and a halftime show that may draw an FCC fine. What it didn't have were many ads from tech firms, a staple of the game in recent years. ...
As of January 31, 2012, tech giant IBM announced their purchase of Israeli start-up company Worklight, a mobile app development and infrastructure software provider. The start-up has raised over $18 million in funding and partnered with Big Blue in the ...
When tablet computers and smartphones were first introduced, one of their most touted features was fast and simple web browsing. When the original iPhone launched more than five years ago, it was lauded for its "real web" display capabilities. However, ...
Aryng, an analytics training company, is addressing the worsening dearth of qualified talent in the analytics field by holding a workshop designed to give business professionals a crash course in how to use the data they already have to further ...
Mobile devices aren't simply for talking, texting, and surfing the Web any longer. Companies like Square are adding the ability to take credit card payments anywhere an Internet connection exists with the use of a simple, plug-in payment reader. Now, ...
Business analytics is rapidly becoming a priority for companies of all sizes. While enterprise-level business intelligence (BI) software has seen a great deal of investment in recent years, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are also well served by robust BI ...
The scope of small and midsize business (SMB) ventures are diverse, but many get their start the same way: pitching ideas to venture capital (VC) companies and searching out cofounders with the right mix of technical knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm. ...
A recent report compiled by Check Point Software and Dimensional Research shows that iOS is the most popular mobile operating system in the enterprise. This report comes along with several others: one talking about the increase of IT spending on ...
With Windows 8 beta on the way, scheduled for release in late February, there's been a lot of talk about when to expect the final release. Based on previous schedules and reactions from Microsoft, there's some evidence to suggest that ...
While not overtly using Twitter and Facebook messages to make predictions on the GOP campaign, a number of media outlets are investigating the use of sentiment analysis to gain insight on the public pulse. James Rainey's article in the Los ...
Business intelligence (BI) is back in the forefront for 2012, but a new Gartner report states, "By 2014, fewer than 30 percent of BI initiatives will align analytic metrics completely with enterprise business drivers," according to an article in 4-Traders. ...
Just as President Obama calls for less offshoring of jobs, at least in IT, he may be getting his wish. Firms are starting to have second thoughts about IT offshoring. Costs are rising, and the effectiveness of offshore IT work ...
Nanotechnology researchers at IBM have made a breakthrough in data storage. It's similar to the work of P.h.D. candidate Brent Weber, who, with the help of other researchers, developed a silicon wire only four atoms wide and one atom tall. ...
Small and midsize business (SMB) IT managers are not only facing challenges when it comes to analyzing data gathered about customer website use and purchasing habits, but are also on the hook to generate content-rich pages that draw in users ...
It's no secret that business analytics (BA) is morphing into one of the cornerstones of a successful business IT strategy, but a new software tracker from International Data Corporation (IDC) shows just how big this market has already grown. BA ...
The new trend in personal computing is everywhere at CES 2012, and with the line diminishing between the corporate and public consumer, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) can certainly benefit from some of the newest innovations.Companies from Acer to Toshiba ...
A recent Forrester report shows that IT spending is, in part, getting redirected to Apple, mainly for the purchase of Macs and iPads. The numbers are still low in comparison to what businesses spend on Windows PCs, but the increase ...
As virtualized and cloud technologies become a reality for even small and midsize businesses (SBMs) and electronic data recording quickly replaces pen-and-paper filing, IT managers are finding themselves on the hook for the administration of great business intelligence (BI) tools ...
Several months ago, researchers were testing microwaves in quantum computers to make it a more practical option commercially. Now, one Ph.D. candidate named Brent Weber has developed a silicon wire with the help of his supervisor Professor Michelle Simmons and ...
A few months ago, Mozilla announced an extended support release (ESR), Firefox ESR, because before that, they had decided to release major version upgrades every six weeks. To no surprise, IT at businesses weren't happy with this, mainly because it ...
At a recent Windows Store announcement, Microsoft stated that Windows 8 beta would be here in late February. However, if you look at previous time lines for software release, you can deduce that there will be no Windows 8 tablets ...
New Gartner predictions for 2012 paints a picture of a changing landscape for IT organizations in business due to a convergence of "four IT forces" that will bring changes to the way IT manages its infrastructure. The analysis from Gartner ...
As the realities of the 2012 world come into focus with the beginning of the year, some of the optimistic IT spending forecasts are starting to get reigned in. Research firm Gartner, for one, has further lowered expectations that were ...
InfoWorld recently tested the latest mobile operating systems (OS) to find the best for business. They decided iOS 5 was the winner, though surprisingly Android 2.3 was a close second. However, the test reporter Galen Gruman admits that iOS is ...
The NPD Group recently found that many small and midsize businesses (SMBs), specifically those with less than 1,000 employees, plan to invest in tablets. Most have already made up their minds to buy iPads in 2012. This is interesting, considering ...