TIBCO Spotfire recently sponsored an event focused on analytics and visualization in the financial services industry. Spotfire is an Attivio Platinum Partner and the event delivered a day full of insights, thought leadership and innovative ideas. In addition to Attivio's presentation, which featured Julio Gomez (GM of Financial Services) and Rik Tamm-Daniels (VP of Technology), the event also included speakers from CEB TowerGroup, Ernst & Young and Teradata.
Analytics in the Financial Services IndustryThe widespread use of analytics in the financial services industry is hardly breaking news. But it is important to note that there was a recurring theme that emerged: the increasing variety of data sources now being used to power the calculations. For example, as noted multiple times throughout the day, there is a growing trend toward leveraging unstructured data & content as a key input. Firms are no longer relying solely on the information in their data warehouse and CRM, but instead incorporating email, social media, chat logs, call transcripts, news feeds, and analyst reports as they create advanced analytics about their customers and business.
Additionally, the scope of where analytics are being applied is expanding exponentially. And why wouldn't it? With multiple units within financial services firms capturing an enormous amount of data on a daily basis, it only makes sense to use this content as a mechanism to glean insight into all aspects of the enterprise. Functions such as market risk, credit risk and portfolio management have always relied heavily upon analytics, but the next generation of data analysis includes calculations around customer sentiment, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and much more.
Spotfire showcased a robust data visualization platform with a full range of analytical tools. Attivio enhances the Spotfire application by enabling access to a diverse set of structured data and unstructured content — both inside and outside of the firewall. Furthermore, Attivio's schema-less approach offers the agility required to quickly add new sources of information. This is a key benefit given the rapidly growing number of sources that firms are employing. To quote my colleague Julio Gomez:
"Building an advanced analytics capability that fails to stress agility is LOA - Legacy on Arrival."
Amen.
Spotfire Application Powered by Attivio AIE
Data-driven decision making in the financial services industry is undeniable. What's less certain are the specific types of analytics that firms will create, along with the underlying sources they'll use to produce the calculations. But regardless of what the future holds, Attivio is excited to partner with Spotfire as we strive to help financial services firms find new ways to leverage analytics throughout their organization.
Thanks for having us Spotfire! We'll see you at our next client engagement.
Author Bio
Randy McLaughlin is a Director of Business Development with Attivio and brings over 12 years of experience in the financial services and software industries. Prior to joining Attivio, Randy was a lead analyst at Cutter Associates, a research and consulting firm focused on asset management technology.
Learn more about Attivio & TIBCO Spotfire!TIBCO Spotfire® is the company's in-memory analytics software for next generation business intelligence. By offering a visual, interactive experience, Spotfire® helps professionals quickly discover new and actionable insights in information.
Through their partnership with Attivio, TIBCO Spotfire can now enable their customers to seamlessly incorporate all of the rich content and data from all of their internal systems, both structured and unstructured, into the Spotfire visualization and analytics tool.
Download the Attivio & TIBCO Spotfire Partner Overivew to learn more.
Everyone has a story or two of an experience with a helpful sales rep or sadly, too often a poor one ending in frustration for both parties. As a marketing manager for a leading software company specializing in unified information access, I constantly receive calls and emails from quota-based representatives claiming to want to know more about my key business goals.
The reality is they just want to tell me about their product or service which they promise will dramatically improve results because they've seen similar improvements working with companies "just like mine." What they fail to appreciate is that I believe my company is unlike any other business out there today.
I know this because the professionals I work with have invested great time and effort in building something unprecedented in the information management space – joining structured data and unstructured information together to provide better insight and actionable intelligence. If sales reps aren't going to educate themselves on what's important to me or, at a minimum, be somewhat familiar with my company's strategic initiatives, then why on earth should I spend time familiarizing myself with them?
For B2B companies, the typical sales model is a frontal attack on prospects where there's an expectation that a swarm of rep activity will generate enough pipeline to meet quarterly/annual goals. No doubt sales managers will argue there is a range of important differences in how reps execute that will generate better collective activity, in turn driving more qualified opportunities and increased revenues in shorter periods of time. However, the activity itself – regardless of the underlying sales methodology – will always be flawed when reps lack critical information relevant to the customer. This point is reinforced every time a new rep or one I've been working with struggles to answer a question, provides a poor recommendation, or lacks real understanding of my business and core objectives.
Rather than adjust my expectations down to accept mediocrity, I'm encouraged that sales rep behavior and execution will dramatically improve as companies implement next-generation sales enablement solutions like the ones Attivio is delivering today. During a recent sales enablement webcast showcasing what's possible for financial services institutions, 64% of attendees agreed the next-generation client-facing desktop would be a key differentiator and critical for their ongoing success. For the nearly two-thirds of companies that move to incorporate these types of solutions ahead of the ones who don't, not only will they be rewarded with better than industry average growth at the cost of their lacking competitors, but customers will realize a higher level of service, evidenced in short term satisfaction and long term loyalty.
What does next-gen sales enablement look like?
It's optimizing businesses' sales enablement function for:
It's providing customer sentiment, along with relevant data from all information sources, at the right time so reps have better insight and actionable intelligence for more effective client interactions. This is what's possible today. This is the solution sales managers will deploy to ensure their preferred sales methodology is executed to the highest degree possible. This is how sales reps will connect with new and existing clients, discussing unique business needs and the relevant products and services that address those needs.
As more businesses embrace the necessity of using the latest technology to create competitive advantage or risk falling behind those who do, both reps and customers will benefit from time spent interacting with one another.
The swarm of activity will evolve from a numbers game where people, titles and verticals are segmented with canned If-this-say-that responses into one of true one-on-one consultation and collaboration. Reps will execute at a higher level, build stronger forecasts, convert more opportunities and reduce wasted time chasing bad deals.
More customers will enjoy superior service and longer engagements with trusted advisors. And for the sales managers who love to tinker with their sales methodology for ever-increasing efficiency, they can take credit for enabling rep performance for maximum success, with the confidence that a lack of critical information didn't undermine execution.
Author Bio
Jack Cooney has been in sales and marketing throughout his career and joined Attivio as a Field Marketing Manager. Previously, Jack held sales positions which included direct and channel software sales at Oracle as well as National Sales Director for Engineering and Computer Science at Pearson Education where he was responsible for business development for online learning products and associated sales training. Along with his passion for sales and marketing, he also enjoys taking his family to car shows and racing events in his "slightly modified" Mustang.
On-demand Webcast Next Generation Sales Enablement: Do you have what it takes to build the sales agent desktop of the future?Industry experts Julio Gomez and Jim Dickie highlight the evolution of sales enablement and unveil the next generation approach that will quickly become a requirement in today’s fiercely competitive landscape.
Watch this webcast and you will learn how leading financial institutions are leveraging technology to drive sales enablement and create competitive advantage. In addition, the co-presenters will answer the following questions:
My colleagues and I had the opportunity to represent Attivio at the recent Tableau 8 Roadshow as a partner vendor. Unlike some BI events I have experienced over a number of years, the Tableau 8 Roadshow attendees were very much user-based rather than IT-focused. Attendees were interested in finding out how participating vendors add value to Tableau and help solve business problems, as opposed to being fixated on various technical aspects.
This business solutions focus suited my colleagues and me quite well: while my colleagues and I are very well-versed in Attivio's unique capabilities as an "Analyze Everything" platform, we are heavily focused on how AIE solves specific business problems and helps organizations get the more out of next-generation data visualization tools than they ever imagined possible.
For example, while some vendors might have talked about their products in the abstract with a lot of techno-speak, we demonstrated an actual healthcare data viz, developed by our partner Hitachi Consulting, that uses Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) as the information backend. The data viz also addresses a serious real-world problem: healthcare providers not getting paid for all services provided – an issue the attendees readily understood, even if they did not work within the healthcare industry.
One major cause of uncompensated care pertains to missing diagnosis codes, which determine what a healthcare provider is paid for, and how much. Our data viz demonstrates a solution to this issue, presenting existing diagnostic codes assigned by patient, plus missing diagnosis codes that also should have been assigned! How is this possible?
The answer is that Attivio AIE automatically integrates and JOINs together assigned patient diagnostic codes (from a database) together with such unstructured information sources as physician progress notes (free-flowing text) and more. This unified information is then made available for data viz tools with the same ease as accessing a simple database.
The end result: compelling visual evidence of all services provided for each patient beyond what would be visible working with databases alone. In other words, Attivio enables a truly complete business picture.
Just as data viz tools enable users to create highly impactful data pictures, Attivio AIE provides a whole new level of unified information: linking and correlating relevant structured data and unstructured content (emails, documents, case notes, social media... any text-based source) – with no data modeling in advance required.
The payoff of next-generation data visualization tools like Tableau, recently noted by BI consultant Chris Gerrard, applies equally to the payoff provided by Attivio AIE as a next-generation information backend: it's all about "the reduction in the barriers, the friction, between people and their data, just like digital photography removed the barriers between people and the pictures they take."
Attivio dramatically expands what can be "seen" and "pictured" using data viz tools. It's the difference between taking an excellent "data picture" of a tree, and gaining the ability to take complete, vast "museum quality" data pictures that rival the iconic outdoor photography of Ansel Adams.
Just as data visualization tools like Tableau have ushered in a revolution on the BI frontend, Attivio is leading a similar revolution on the information backend, freeing business users and IT professionals alike from the "barriers" that separate silos of enterprise data and content from combining together to enable a complete picture; a true 360-degree view of the business that enables a new level of insights for new business success.
That message seemed to resonate widely with the event attendees, and we welcome the opportunity to bring that new level of BI-driven business value to your organization and your next-gen data viz tool of choice.
Analyze Everything: Driving Agile and Complete BI
Attivio White Paper
Today's business environment requires leaders and managers to "analyze everything"! They need new combinations of structured data (databases) and unstructured content (documents, email, social media, etc.). Traditional BI and IT systems can't keep up, but Attivio can.
This paper will brief you on Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE©), an "Analyze Everything" platform for complete, agile BI, integrating and correlating all your data and content silos, with no advance data modeling required.
The release of Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE®) Version 3.5 introduces an important set of new functions. Besides introducing new modules like Ontologies; features such as index rollback, image thumbnailing, and document preview and many essential enhancements including SQL, we have improved built-in support for monitoring the performance and health of your AIE infrastructure.
Version 3.5 offers a new user experience for those responsible for administration of AIE, defining the steps they need to take in order to act upon the areas in need of prompt action and quick turnaround. Monitoring and diagnosing AIE now involves little more than checking a screen or two in the AIE Administrator Console.
The key new administration features in AIE 3.5 include:
Each view offers visual insights into what's happening in AIE at any given moment, simplifying system administration. As a result, the time to discover and resolve issues is shortened, and the user experience is improved.
A new System Health Banner, which appears on every screen in the Administrator Console, summarizes the holistic picture of AIE health for administrators. The banner complements the System Status view, which — as the default view in the console — breaks AIE's status down into individual areas: Node Health, Connector Status, Important Events, Index Status and System Performance.
This view allows administrators to easily connect the dots and essentially helps them answer the question "Is there a problem with my system right now that needs my attention?." They are able to consume larger sets of information quickly and target the parts that may be relevant without visiting respective detailed views in other parts of the Admin Console.
This Administrator Console presents you with unified answers rather than forcing you to sort through lengthy tables of numbers as we see in legacy management user interfaces. For instance, with the Connectors view, users can now see connectors that are not running as expected, scan the list of recent events in the adjacent Important Events view and start to compile a set of root causes behind any connector issues without ever leaving the System Status view. Events at a warning or fatal level can be investigated to quickly ascertain what specific AIE instances or connectors were affected and why. The Event Acknowledgement Dialog solves the dual purpose of providing all pertinent information on the event and letting the user mark the event as being seen and/or resolved.
Index Status not only describes a selected index's configuration, but also related statistics. Looking at this information, one can determine for instance, if the index size has doubled within a day, indicating a potential performance spike. The Performance view's graphical visualization of crucial metrics lets you pinpoint bottlenecks that may warrant immediate attention.
Consider a scenario where, as an administrator, you notice that the System Health Banner is reporting a warning event that occurred in the past 24 hours. You go over to the System Status view and find that an event occurred pointing to low disk space on a node. If unchecked, this might become a factor in creating search performance and node health related problems. You open the Event Details dialog and dig deeper into the event description to find more information about the node. At this point, you can make an informed decision on adding more disk space and taking additional measures.
On the new Performance Monitor view, we provide even deeper insight and flexibility by giving you more than 700 pre-built metrics to graph. By creating multiple graphs, grouping specific metrics together onto one graph and zooming and panning, while having system events superimposed on the timeline, you can chart out a more informed investigation. Unlike the System Status view, which is intended to push summarized, timely and relevant information to you, the Performance Monitor helps you understand specific aspects of the system.
For instance, let's say that users of an application using AIE reported issues with sluggish search functionality today around noon. One could quickly create a graph and add specific metrics like:
Looking at these metrics in parallel over a timeframe, one can zero in on the bottleneck that was causing search to be slow.
For our customers, these are game changing capabilities. As Fahim Siddiqui, Chief Product Officer, IntraLinks states, "AIE's event-driven system and performance management have set a new standard of excellence that means we are able to proactively identify and resolve issues. For us, Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine is not just a technology; it's a key piece of our overall commitment to providing the best possible experience for our customers."
As we move forward, we could not be more excited. We have some cool new features lined up that will showcase Attivio's innovative user centric approach, not only in managing AIE but also in effectively putting the power of unified information access to work in your organization.
Author Bio
KD Singh Arneja has been with Attivio as Principal Engineer for over 2 years. KD has over fifteen years of extensive experience in designing, architecting and implementing enterprise level applications in multiple domains. Before joining Attivio, he was at MRO Software (now IBM) where he was a Lead Engineer for user interface of the MAXIMO Enterprise Suite. Prior to IBM, KD helped various software vendors develop large-scale web applications in areas such as Marketing, CRM, Data Analytics, Reporting and BI. He is an early adopter of technologies related to User Interface and User Experience Design fields. KD holds an MSc in Information Technology from University of Liverpool (UK). KD is also a Certified Scrum Master and Scrum Professional and loves building UI intensive applications using agile methodologies. He is also an accomplished Table Tennis and Cricket player.
Learn more! Download the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine datasheet!Attivio AIE enables organizations to rapidly acquire, integrate and correlate enterprise information - structured data and unstructured content alike - in ways other solutions simply cannot match.
AIE was built from the ground up as a unified information access platform with unmatched agility. By easily combining related data and content without being constrained by a static data model, AIE enables quick iteration and deployment of new solutions, for rapid time-to-value while reducing risk.
Loraine Lawson recently wrote an interesting article in IT Business Edge exploring “one of the ultimate goals of information management”: integrating unstructured data with structured data.
Lawson noted that most IT departments do not have the know-how (or technology) in-house to take on this initiative; however, that will have to change quickly: Lawson cites Gartner's prediction that data will grow by 800% over the next five years, with 80% of that growth coming from unstructured sources, such as emails, texts, pictures, log data, social media data, and XML files.
Lawson observed that Gartner’s prediction might be a little intimidating given the problems companies already have working with unstructured data. However, organizations meeting the challenge of unifying structured and unstructured data will have an undeniable advantage over competitors with a more tentative technology approach. This conclusion is supported by a recent TDWI report Lawson cited: Integrating Structured and Unstructured Data, by business intelligence thought leader and author David Loshin.
Loshin is quoted in the article as saying that “the challenge of integrating structured and unstructured data will be a key factor for Big Data success.” Meeting that challenge, Loshin added, will require a new, flexible data architecture “that reduces the complexity of accessing multiple data sources and instead eases the way applications consume both structured and unstructured information.” It must be free of the “legacy data modeling constraints [that] will only continue to limit information utilization.” He goes on to outline seven steps to manage and integrate unstructured data.
We, at Attivio agree with David Loshin's assessment and his approach to managing and integrating unstructured data. Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE®) has been built from the ground up to handle the steps outlined in his report, to freely integrate, correlate and present all information — structured and unstructured, internal and external. The capabilities AIE provides in areas such as text extraction, entity extraction and normalization, key phrase extraction, sentiment analysis and content classification are vital to enrich and add structure to unstructured data and content. This maximizes findability and joinability with related data and content from other sources. All of the unstructured data can then be ingested into a universal index and JOINED with structured data. This capability allows for the correlation and joining of data and content at query-time, eliminating the need for data modeling in advance. Attivio's query-time JOIN capability is the key to this vital advance in unified information access, for which Attivio has been granted a patent!
In addition to the seven steps Loshin outlined in his report, one more should be added, namely Security.
With the expected growth in unstructured information security becomes even more important to ensure that appropriate permissions and privileges are applied to unstructured data and content. While this is a standard expectation in the structured data world, it is a breakthrough capability for unstructured data and content sources. Attivio’s Active Security framework solves this problem by providing real-time security and permissioning, regardless of what information the end user is accessing (data and/or content) or how they are accessing it, whether viewing documents, interacting with a dashboard, etc.
Attivio recognizes that managing and working with structured data and unstructured content in separate silos poses a serious threat to business success today. The result is a lack of a complete picture that will increasingly lead to misinformed decisions, failed Big Data projects and lost business opportunities. Organizations that meet the challenge of unifying structured and unstructured information will gain a lasting informational advantage over competitors clinging to a legacy “silo-centric” information technology stance.
Attivio is dedicated to ensuring every search query, every dashboard and every report has the benefit of correlating all related data and content to empower managers and leaders with a complete business picture that powers timely decisions and new insights into their business.
Unified information access platforms can address many needs. Often organizations start with one specific use, with a phased plan to expand UIA adoption more broadly. When selecting a UIA platform, it's critical to future-proof your investment by considering not just current requirements but also the capabilities you'll need as you implement additional projects and initiatives. This paper provides guidelines for selecting the right UIA platform, whether you are looking to deliver a specific application or support multiple uses across your organization.
Just how user friendly is the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine (AIE)? The short answer is, AMAZINGLY friendly! I was recently tasked with building a set of connectors to interact with Jive, a social business solution, for a prospective client. As it was just my second week on the job, I was understandably apprehensive (queue the ominous horn section).
Armed only with a high-level overview of the technology and some pointers from a colleague, I set off on my first foray into the world of AIE. I’d have to draw on my extensive experience configuring client-specific SaaS implementations and countless hours of wading through the proverbial weeds of the XML world. I rolled up my sleeves and watched intently over my co-worker’s shoulder as he configured the first connector. He fired up the web browser, logged into Attivio’s Admin UI, and, with just a couple of clicks and a cluster of keystrokes, he created a connector! Then it was on to the connector’s workflow, responsible for ingesting the Jive content in the form of JSON. “Click, click, click.” Done. Could it be that simple? Where was the XML, the schema-validation errors, and the missing or mismatched close tags?
Then, it was my turn; “It seems simple enough,” I thought, “but he’s clearly done this before.” I still wasn’t convinced that I’d fare as well as my more seasoned teammate. To my delight, I was able to duplicate his success, without the toe-stubbing agony that I’d experienced with other platforms. And sure enough, I was able to see tangible results: data extracted from Jive visible in Attivio’s Simple Search UI. The aptly named Simple Search UI was similarly easy to grasp. Of course, there is always a learning curve when working with an unfamiliar technology, and, yes, I did have a few questions here and there. But the point is, with just a brief tutorial and a touch of support, I was able to build a functional set of connectors, in just a few days.
Why does any of this matter? As a new employee, my experience was akin to that of a new customer. With some introductory training and a little coaching, I was able to get behind the wheel and drive a configuration of my own. More importantly, I experienced first-hand the culmination of teamwork into the successful implementation of a truly powerful and innovative product.
Author Bio
Mike Schiraldi joined Attivio in January of 2013 and holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Connecticut. Prior to Attivio, Mike worked as both an Integration Specialist and as a Sustaining Engineer for Andera. He worked in many capacities, ranging from customer implementation to Tier 3 support and maintenance of back-end infrastructure.
One of our favorite parts of the hilarious 1975 King Arthur parody, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is the “Bridge of Death” scene: If a knight answered the bridge keeper’s three questions, he could safely cross the bridge; if not, he would be catapulted into… the Gorge of Eternal Peril!
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to most of King Arthur’s knights, who were either stumped by a surprise trivia question like, “What is the capital of Assyria?” – or responded too indecisively when asked, “What is your favorite color?"
Fortunately when King Arthur was asked, “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” he wisely sought further details: “What do you mean – an African or European swallow?” The stunned bridge keeper said, “I don’t know… AAAGH!” Breaking his own rule, the bridge keeper was thrown over the edge, freeing King Arthur to continue his quest for the Holy Grail.
Many organizations are on “Big Data Holy Grail” quests of their own, looking to deliver game-changing business analytics, only to find themselves in a “boil-the-ocean” Big Data project that “after 24 months of building… has no real value.” Unfortunately, many CIOs and BI Directors have rushed into hasty Hadoop implementations, fueled by a need to ‘respond’ to Big Data and ‘not fall behind.’
That’s just one of the troublesome findings from a recent InformationWeek article by Doug Henschen, Vague Goals Seed Big Data Failures. Henschen’s article cited a recent Infochimps Big Data survey that revealed 55% of big data projects don't get completed and that many others fall short of their objectives. The top reason for failed Big Data projects was “inaccurate scope”:
Lots of companies are blindly building out Hadoop clusters and collecting new data based on only a vague plan to open up that data store to multiple lines of business in 12 to 24 months…
Dreamers who haven't thought through their business priorities might think that Hadoop alone will be enough to deliver big data insight, but Infochimp's study suggests that that's not the case.
You might say that such CIOs and BI Directors on such an impulsive search for the “Big Data Holy Grail” will inevitably reach the “Bridge of Big Data Reality” (so to speak). And the bridge keeper will then ask, “What business problem are you trying to solve with the help of Big Data?”
Too many IT leaders will have to truthfully answer, “I don’t know… AAAGH!” – and regretfully find themselves in… the dreaded Gartner Big Data Trough of Disillusionment!
The correct response, of course, is to first understand essential details behind the question as King Arthur did. Infochimps CEO Jim Kaskade suggested to InformationWeek a very simple yet “practical and refreshing” question to ask:
Whether it's churn, anti-money-laundering, risk analysis, lead-generation, marketing spend optimization, cross-sell, up-sell, or supply chain analysis, ask yourself, ‘how many more data elements can you add with big data that can make your analysis more statistically accurate?’ (emphasis added)
The answer to this prudent question will lead to more smart questions:
Big Data success simply cannot be realized without investing the time and effort to deeply understand your business; identify the particular business problem you are trying to solve, and understand the nature of all information your users will need. Doing so is critical to selecting the right technology for your Big Data infrastructure. Now you’re on the track to tackling the Big Data implementation infrastructure conundrum of wisely evaluating countless vendor products and making the right technology investments.
At Attivio, we help our customers cross that “Bridge of Big Data Reality” with ease. Attivio provides a highly agile, rapid time-to-value platform that offers a single point of access to discover and analyze relevant Big Data – including Hadoop – while integrating and correlating it with all other related, relevant data sources: structured data (databases), unstructured data (system logs, web click logs, sensor data, XML) and/or unstructured content (email, documents, social media, survey comments, CRM case notes) – all with no advance data modeling required.
Attivio provides this essential unified information access in conjunction with data acquisition, analysis and visualization tools such as Cloudera, Informatica, TIBCO Spotfire, Tableau and QlikView. We fully leverage these and other best-of-breed tools to get business problem-solving insight to your users in a cost-effective and timely way unlocking the massive value locked away in the variety and complexity of Big Data.
The final joke of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was that it was all a fool’s errand. Similarly, there is no one-size-fits-all Big Data “Holy Grail” technology out there… period. In reality, a successful Big Data architecture consists of multiple components to address the unique aspects of the data. Keep that in mind and show the wisdom of a king by taking pause and asking a few basic business questions to stay on the right path to business-building Big Data success.
Big Data & New Business Value Creation
This paper will explore this vital Big Data shift towards business value creation, and the new technology essential to realize that new value. You will discover why database and information management systems are not enough, and explore unified information access: a highly flexible, agile “Analyze Everything” platform well-suited to deliver new Big Data value – without ripping and replacing existing information infrastructure.
Congratulations to Attivio’s partners, QlikView, Tableau and Tibco Spotfire, who all placed in the coveted upper right leader’s section in Gartner’s newly released 2013 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms. This widely read report provides great insight into the current state of the BI market, future trends and positioning of different vendors. Organizations looking to invest in BI and analytics software definitely look to this report as an important source of information to help them make the right investments.
In reading through the report there is no question that unstructured data is becoming a hot button for business and IT leaders alike. The mention of the word "unstructured" increased 57% in this year's report over last year. This should not come as a surprise, in part due to Big Data getting lots of attention over the last twelve to eighteen months. There are a few different elements to Big Data, with variety being one of them. Unstructured information like web logs, surveys, social media sentiment, documents and call center notes among others, fall squarely within that category.
Additionally, Gartner's recent 2013 predictions report entitled Predicts 2013: Business Intelligence and Analytics Need to Scale Up to Support Explosive Growth in Data Sources, predicted that by 2015, more than 30% of analytics projects will deliver insights based on structured and unstructured data. Rita Sallam, research vice president at Gartner, spoke to the growing business imperative to harness the value of unstructured information alongside structured information:
Correlating, analyzing, presenting and embedding insights from structured and unstructured information together enables organizations to better personalize the customer experience and exploit new opportunities for growth, efficiencies, differentiation, innovation and even new business models.
It's no wonder, then, that the 2013 BI and Analytics Magic Quadrant has more mentions of the word "unstructured" than ever before!
Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine® has been built from the ground up to unify the worlds of structured and unstructured information for a new level of insight beyond what is possible using structured data alone. Knowledge workers can use tools such as Tableau, TIBCO Spotfire or QlikView or a Google® like search interface to explore and understand trends and find answers to their most pressing business questions. Attivio is excited to partner with these leading data visualization vendors to expand their capabilities and deliver on the promise of analytics on structured and unstructured information that informs you not only what is taking place, but also why.
GigaOm's Jon Bruner has written extensively about the Industrial Internet, describing it as installing intelligence above the level of individual machines — enabling remote control, optimization at the level of the entire system and sophisticated machine-learning algorithms that can work extremely accurately because they take into account vast quantities of data generated by large systems of machines as well as the external context of every individual machine.
GE is at the forefront of the discussion about the potential of the Industrial Internet revolution, which, according to GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, will add about $15 trillion to global GDP by 2030, the equivalent of adding another U.S. economy to the world.
This Industrial Internet is not about a world run by robots, it is about combining the world's best technologies to solve our biggest challenges. It's about economically and environmentally sustainable energy, curing the incurable diseases, and preparing our infrastructure and cities for the next 100 years.
Jeff Immelt, Nov. 28, 2012, GigaOm
As the head of a growing company that is very fortunate to work with GE (having them as both an investor and a customer on multiple engagements), I am thrilled to see them take such a visionary role in this important topic.
Early in my career working in the life sciences market, there was a lot of talk about shifting the focus of patient care from reactively prescribing medications to advancing the field of proactive advanced diagnostics. While the benefits of doing this are obvious, the challenges were significant, not the least of which was the need for a cultural shift to get people to be more proactive about their health. I view the Industrial Internet as a huge enabler in driving this change forward, as it shifts the point of access to information to the moment of action versus a later time of reflection.
We are just now entering the era when the right technologies are available that allow us to align analytics with those critical moments of action. Business intelligence (BI), for example, has undergone an exciting transition to more agile and real-time BI, driven by innovative companies like our partners QlikView, Tableau and TIBCO Spotfire. They provide easy access to analytics and data visualization as things are actually taking place.
While an actionable flow of data from sensor-laden machines and instruments holds great potential for revealing new insights and supporting better decisions across many industries, integrating and correlating that data with the context of human-generated content and intelligence completes the vision and potential for the Industrial Internet. Just imagine the power of combining diagnostic data with the observations found in patient examination notes generated by medical practitioners and specialists.
Or let's take a look at one of Attivio's customers — a global manufacturer in the Fortune 10. The company knows everything there is to know about the equipment they sell, such as its age, where it was manufactured, utilization rates, and what component parts are included. A wide spectrum of climates, performance and environmental factors are also closely monitored and combined, as well as mountains of sensor data. And finally, there is a wealth of human-generated content captured in notes from their CRM systems, customer service logs, field technician notes and much more.
Working with Spotfire, Attivio brings all of this information together so the company can proactively monitor performance, identify trends, understand why those trends are taking place, improve responsiveness and increase customer satisfaction at levels well beyond what is possible working with sensor data alone.
The ability to gain a single unified view into the performance of millions of pieces of equipment and leverage the context and intelligence of a global network of expert commentary enables a new level of business success, from the level of an individual piece of equipment to an entire product line. One major goal Mr. Immelt shared in his GigaOm article is to attack the $284 billion in annual waste in the airline industry that is caused by fuel inefficiency, unscheduled aircraft maintenance and delayed flights.
As a young company, we at Attivio look forward to doing some very big things and we see our mission closely aligned with the tremendous vision of many outstanding companies like GE.
Completing the Big Data Picture with Unified Information AccessThe whitepaper explores the business value of Extreme Information, a significantly wider enterprise issue above and beyond Big Data alone. Readers will discover how unified information access (UIA) technology uniquely completes the Big Data picture by integrating Big Data (typically structured or semi-structured data) directly with unstructured content for the discovery of brand new business insights that might otherwise go undetected.
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Do you know where the big data is in your own life? Or even the life of your ancestors? They are gone, but not forgotten, at Ancestry.com, which serves as an example of what big data really is, and how important concepts like accurate data enter the picture and our world.
