In the first part of this blog, I mentioned that sentiment analysis measures the polarity of opinion—positive, negative, or neutral—regarding a subject, a product, a service, etc.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to Wikipedia, “social media is online content created for people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.” These days, networking is very different than it was in the past. A lot of social media services like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, personal blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other types of media content generate big volumes of data. But more importantly, people contribute to the creation of this data by chatting, expressing ideas, or making personal and business relations online. They also contribute to the way social media information is organized and published on the Web. Today, these massive volumes of data are the objects of study and analysis. In a sense, there is already an effort to measure the quantitative and qualitative aspects of this kind of data.
Read the rest of this entry »

Many midsized companies have to deal with a very particular problem: the need of a true business intelligence (BI) solution, while having to select and deploy one within a tight budget. On September 29, 2009, IBM Cognos announced the launch of Cognos Express, a new product specially designed to meet the needs of the midsized market. Of course, here at TEC, we took the time to give it a try. We downloaded the trial, and got our hands on this brand new BI tool.
Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, IBM gave me a sneak peek of its new business analytics software tool for midsized clients. The name of the new product is Cognos Express, and IBM’s press release says it’s an “all-in-one business intelligence and planning solution designed specifically for midsized clients.”
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always good to remember that science and technology follow general laws, and that those laws are inviolable. This is especially true when it comes to Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post, Give BI to the Masses, I wrote about the strategies that have been implemented in some companies to empower more and more users to use business intelligence (BI) tools as part of their regular daily tasks.

This extends not only to decision makers and to those in charge of knowledge management,  but also to company-wide use. This has the potential to generate very different types of strategies; and thus (as with all innovations) will create the need to address other issues. Inevitably, it will also mean there are new requirements to be managed, including new data sources, and new or modified business processes and strategies. There will certainly be more people involved in the BI/business process management (BPM) processes of the organization. From a business perspective, this represents a great change. Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s business intelligence (BI) industry—despite the search for better, more suitable, and more advanced technology for BI applications—there is a special interest in finding the “true usability” of BI applications. This is to say, users want BI to be not only faster and better, but also easier. And finally, they want its use to be extended to a wide number of people: the search is on for a real mass use.
Read the rest of this entry »