Big Names Ramping up the Analytics Field
Posted: 22 Jul 2013 11:41 AM PDT
The world of analytics is getting much more competitive. We’ve been seeing some impressive names belly up to the bar or revamp their already available platforms. One such case we discovered in a recent Daily Finance article, “Actuate’s Newest Release of BIRT Analytics Add Key Advanced Predictive Analytics for Business Analysis.”
According to the story:
“Adding to its already rich set of capabilities for business analyst-driven predictive analytics, BIRT Analytics 4.2 sports three new advanced features: Association Rules for detecting purchase patterns over time (for instance in grocery receipts by and across customer segments); Decision Tree, which allows prediction of outcomes based on decision paths; and Campaign Workflow to enable you to effectively execute campaigns based on the analysis, and set up a process to improve them based on analyzing the results.”
While we have extremely high hopes for this new edition of BIRT, we are aware that it’s a long, hard climb to the top of the analytics mountain. Personally, we think organizations like Oracle and Sinequa do a better job. We are patiently waiting to watch BIRT burst to the top of the charts, but know that it might never happen. Such is the world of analytics, be warned.
Patrick Roland, July 23, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
ROBERT STEELE: Analytics is hosed. Technology is not a substitute for thinking, nor is it a substitute for lacking collection, lacking integrated toolkits rather than one arrow at a time in a jumbled quiver, lacking an analytic model, or lacking an end-user that actually cares about ethical evidence-based decision support. I share with Brother Stephen a huge disdain for “big data” analytics. While there are certainly fortunes being made with unethical stock trading and currency transactions, and there are insights to be gained from tracking consumer habits, all of this is disconnected from both reality (true cost economics) and righteous purpose (creating a prosperous world at peace).
The four quadrants here, a graphic I created over fifteen years ago, represent what should be possible today if anyone were seriously interested in getting to integrated analytics (which can only be achieved with Open Source Everything (OSE)). Knowledge Management aka Business Intelligence aka Data Mining is elementary school. Collaborative Work is high school. External Information (“just enough just in time”) is college. The real professionals — all three of them — are in Organizational Intelligence.
