Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

Datawatch Enables Business Analytics through Data Discovery and Virtualization

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 30, 2012 1:34:00 PM

Thanks to Datawatch, businesses may find themselves buying and deploying fewer new business analytics and business intelligence tools. As I noted in my analysis last year, the company’s new management has begun to transition it to a more appealing market position in which it helps enterprises use analytics to improve operational efficiency and decision-making. The Datawatch products focus on data virtualization – that is, accessing data from multiple sources not usually seen as accessible for analysis, such as reports and documents in Adobe Acrobat format, production systems, streams coming from cloud computing or print output, or even legacy systems. The value of this lies in reducing the time it takes to access such data and integrate it with other data to create enriched information and analytics.

Read More

Topics: Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Datawatch, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM)

Splunk: Big Data Machine for Operational Intelligence

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 27, 2012 11:37:29 AM

Splunk recently entered the financial markets as a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: SPLK) and also entered a new phase in its corporate growth. Splunk combines the power of search and discovery with analytics on data generated by IT systems, that they call machine data, and provide insight for a new generation of operational intelligence that helps everyone in IT including the CIO determine the efficiency of its systems that support business. The company has built a platform that can index data on a large scale (“big data”) for rapid analysis and search. They also through its analytics provide the ability to perform visual and data discovery which is critical to reduce the time to determining unknown issues in existing IT systems. This helps IT staff ascertain not just the performance but the efficiency of systems that operate on a 24-by-7 basis. Splunk’s software operates in real time, surpassing the traditional methods of applying business intelligence against a data warehouse – a practice that’s ineffective for use in IT, where time is not the CIO’s friend when it comes to understanding issues or opportunities for improvement. Splunk has grown rapidly, partly because it’s simple to download and try, and then to license for use in production. It has more than 3,300 licensed customers in 75 countries. The management team is led by CEO Godfrey Sullivan, who has experience and a track record at companies such as Hyperion.

Read More

Topics: Big Data, Social Media, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Splunk, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Management, Information Technology, IT Analytics, Location Intelligence, Machine data, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Strata+Hadoop

IBM Makes Big Data Deal for Vivisimo and Supports Cloudera Hadoop

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 26, 2012 12:29:13 PM

Through a series of acquisitions and organic development over the last five years, IBM has established itself as a leader in enterprise big data for business analytics. I recently wrote about IBM Smarter Analytics, which brings together the company’s portfolio of software, systems and services from analytics to big data. But supporting big data requires the ability to access many sources of information; our benchmark research on big data found that more than half of organizations require information from external sources, and that requires some software flexibility.

Read More

Topics: Big Data, Social Media, Sustainability, Vivisimo, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), IBM, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM), Strata+Hadoop

Datameer Advances Big-Data Analytics on Hadoop

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 26, 2012 10:25:31 AM

The increasing pressure to store, retrieve and process data on an unprecedented scale in the enterprise has created a market for processes and tools to support it. Big data, as it’s widely known, is one of the six business technology innovations of the decade outlined in our research agenda, and it has created a renaissance in data management. Our benchmark research on big data finds the top benefits of it to be the ability to retain and analyze more data (74%) and to increase the speed of analysis (70%). In this context a vendor named Datameer comes in.

Read More

Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Social Media, Sustainability, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM), Strata+Hadoop

TALX Provides New Elements in Workforce Analytics

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 26, 2012 9:58:05 AM

The workforce analytics market continues to evolve as organizations seek to improve the time it takes to find insights and employer metrics in order to meet compliance requirements, mitigate risk and enforce governance policies. TALX, a subsidiary of Equifax, provides a range of data-oriented services that help HR, payroll and tax professionals. Its integration with eVerify service assists the hiring process with I-9 compliance, and capabilities to examine workforce compensation and financial liabilities and reduce false unemployment claim costs. TALX, which has the credit files of tens of millions of employees in the U.S. through its parent Equifax, that with employee salary data provided by the employer can determine the financial health and risks of a workforce.

Read More

Topics: Social Media, Sustainability, eThority, Human Capital Management, LMS, Performance, Recruiting, Research, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Mobility, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, HRMS, Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Talent Management, TALX, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

IBM Will Take Varicent for Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 13, 2012 12:11:00 PM

In an unexpected announcement this morning, IBM announced its intent to acquire Varicent to enter the sales performance management market. For IBM this is a strategic acquisition, since it did not have any significant or dedicated applications for sales. IBM intends to acquire and place Varicent within the IBM Business Analytics group, which develops similar analytics and performance management application for other line of business and IT organizations.

Read More

Topics: Operational Performance Management (OPM), Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Location Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Cambridge Semantics Makes Intelligent Use of Information

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 12, 2012 8:58:11 AM

The increasing volume of information within enterprises and on the Internet requires businesses to be smarter and more efficient in how they use it. One large challenge is navigating through information and access to the data underlying key business documents in a way that people actually think and operate. The traditional technology approach is defining a data model with a database and then mapping the data to it and is not capable of dealing with data from diverse unstructured information sources and do not provide navigation or discovery on the information. Fortunately, information technology has advanced to provide ways to build a semantic information framework over a company’s unstructured information assets in the enterprise and on the Internet.

Read More

Topics: Social Media, Sustainability, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Cambridge Semantics, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Data Virtualization, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Informatics, Information Applications (IA), Information Discovery, Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

SumTotal Systems Sums Up Human Capital Management

Posted by Mark Smith on Apr 9, 2012 11:53:20 AM

Businesses’ strategic imperative to optimize human capital is creating significant energy in the market for applications used to attract, optimize and retain talent. Amid all the recent acquisitions and changes that I have been writing about in this field, SumTotal Systems seems to get less attention than its size and the reach of its business merit. The company has more than 45 million users, with more than 15 million of them operating in a cloud computing environment spanning more than 3,500 customer companies worldwide. Its investments in 2011 in mobile, social learning and workforce analytics software have become part of its HCM portfolio, as have its acquisitions of CyberShift to expand into workforce management and Accero for payroll, benefits and analytic content. The company has done a good job of extending its portfolio while improving the user experience for its customers.

Read More

Topics: Social Media, Sustainability, Human Capital Management, LMS, Performance, Recruiting, Research, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Mobility, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, HRMS, Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)