So what exactly is Business Intelligence 3.0? Is it a mass of meaningless marketing messages, a collection of multiple BI advancements, or does it represent a single technological shift that many have misconstrued?Read More
Multidimensional modeling, introduced with SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services and continuing through SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services, enables BI professionals to create sophisticated multidimensional cubes using traditional online analytical processing (OLAP).Read More
Tabular modeling, introduced with PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010, provides self-service data modelling capabilities to business and data analysts. The tabular modeling experience is more accessible to these users, many who have spent years working with data in desktop productivity tools like Excel and Microsoft Access. In SQL Server 2012, tabular modeling has been extended to enable BI professionals to create tabular models in Analysis Services or to import a tabular model from PowerPivot into Analysis Services. Note that a PowerPivot model cannot be imported into an Analysis Services multidimensional model.
Big data is opening the door to the executive suite for a more hybrid analytical-creative method. The questions big data raises... have an answer.... The answer is big testing.... Big testing is about making a big deal about testing from the top down, fostering a culture of experimentation.... This last point will probably be the most challenging, as culture is not something that changes quickly. Executives need to make a conscious effort to encourage real testing — starting with the acknowledgement that good experiments prove or disprove hypotheses.... Big data is like fuel. Big testing will be the engine that turns it into forward momentum.Read More
Knime, pronounced [naim], is a modern data analytics platform that allows you to perform sophisticated statistics and data mining on your data to analyze trends and predict potential results. Its visual workbench combines data access, data transformation, initial investigation, powerful predictive analytics and visualization. Knime also provides the ability to develop reports based on your information or automate the application of new insight back into production systems.Knime is supported by an expanding number of third-party extensions that enable interfacing with Excel (Microsoft), R (Project R), BIRT (Eclipse), WEKA (University of Waikato), and more. Expand the graphic below to see how Knime integrates various functions and processes via its discrete process simulation features.
Business intelligence (BI) platforms enable all types of users — from IT staff to consultants to business users — to build applications that help organizations learn about and understand their business. Gartner defines a BI platform as a software platform that delivers the 14 capabilities listed below. These capabilities are organized into three categories of functionality: integration, information delivery and analysis. Information delivery is the core focus of most BI projects today, but we are seeing an increased interest in deployments of analysis to discover new insights, and in integration to implement those insights.Read More
Knime (Konstanz Information Miner) is a user-friendly and comprehensive open-source data integration, processing, analysis, and exploration platform. From day one, Knime has been developed using rigorous software engineering practices and is used by professionals in both industry and academia in over 60 countries.Knime delivers robust features that encompass the full spectrum of business intelligence production requirements, including tools for: a) integrating multi-source data via open database connectivity (ODBC) and real-time processes; b) diverse analytic tools for data mining such as clustering, decision trees, rule induction, neural networks, association rules, scoring, meta-analysis, and more; and c) state-of-the-art presentation tools that easily integrate with existing ad-hoc reporting, automated dashboard, and systems actuation platforms. Knime is also actively supported by third-party extensions that integate Knime with R (Project R), Excel (Microsoft), and other widely-used integration, analytics, and presentation platforms.
The current state of our economy is also impacting IT budgets. That’s a fact that nobody can deny. At the same time the need for relevant information has increased considerably. Organizations are more and more focusing on their customer and need supporting data. That is another fact. As a result IT is reconsidering its position (back to the core?) whilst the business is waiting for the much needed report or analysis. This need for faster time to information and less IT involvement has given rise to something that is often called Business or Self Service Reporting (SSR). Traditionally BI reports are created by the IT department. SSR allows business users to do this for themselves using end user oriented query and reporting tools.Read More
The real trend this year is not the technology. It’s about helping business people make better decisions, and actually change the way companies do business. Analytics has always been about transforming business, but the recent huge changes in analytic technology have created interesting new opportunities for business innovation....Read More
In particular, companies want better visibility about what’s going on in their market, and increased organizational agility in order to be able to deal with change fast. It’s like driving in the fog without a map – in order to survive, you should invest in better visibility, brakes, and steering to be able to spot and avoid fast-moving objects looming out of the fog.
Analytics provides these capabilities: business intelligence to peer into the road ahead, risk-management to provide fast alerts to new obstacles, and flexible financial planning systems to help swerve around them....
Many companies are going beyond "just" improving their existing analytic capabilities, using analytics in new ways to change the way they do business. Instead of analytics being something that is used to monitor and eventually improve a business process, analytics is becoming a more fundamental part of the business process itself.
