Vox populi is Latin for “voice of the people”– in broadcasting and television, they use the “vox pop interview” to get spontaneous opinions on a subject, from different, randomly selected people. My idea is to apply the concept to our blog—whenever you see a blog post starting with “Vox Populi,” it means we’re seeking your opinion.

In broadcasting, only a few people are interviewed, and the answers are edited. On our blog, everyone can leave a comment—we will not change or edit what you say (although our moderators will remove comments that are abusive). That being said, here’s your first assignment: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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 »

Part 1 of this blog series outlined Epicor 9 (aka Epicor ERP [evaluate this product]), Epicor Software’s next-generation converged product suite. A similar feat has yet to be accomplished even by mighty Oracle within Oracle Fusion Applications.

The article also discussed Epicor’s accompanying “Protect, Extend, and Converge” strategy for providing customers with  a migration path choice on their own timetable and convenience. The article then continued on by digging deeper and explaining a number of enabling technologies and concepts within Epicor 9, starting with Epicor BPM (Business Process Management).

Part 2 of this blog series analyzes the major enabling concepts and technologies within the product, such as Epicor ICE 2.0, which is based on Epicor True SOA™, and includes the Epicor Everywhere Framework™. The article also digs deeper into the suite’s built-in business intelligence (BI) and enterprise performance management (EPM) capabilities. 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 »

We recently had a question from one of our readers (through our Ask the Experts page) discussing QlikView’s approach to data collection.

Reader’s Question
“QlikView says its innovative way of collecting data and not needing a physical data warehouse (DW) structure is the right thing to do in DW/business intelligence (BI) solutions. Can one expect to build a sustainable / scalable corporate data warehouse through such an approach?” 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 »

Part 1 of this blog series outlined the trend of enterprise applications vendors’ attempts to win their users’ hearts and minds (as well as wallets) via more intuitive and appealing user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. What that means is that users can now more quickly obtain all of the relevant information they need in a personalized way, with drill-downs and other slick navigational Web 2.0 gadgets.

For users, personalized screens and forms provide immediate access to issues that require immediate action or reassurance that situations are under control. Such intuitive UI allows users to diagnose the most critical business situations they face and immediately drill into the source transactional systems to get the data they need and decide on appropriate actions.

The analysis then focused on Infor and its Open SOA framework, which is the enabling linchpin for the vendor’s delivery of next-generation interoperable value-adding solutions. About two years ago, Infor espoused its so-called “Three E’s” strategy (“Enrich, Extend & Evolve”) to deliver agile and adaptive software components on top of the Infor Open SOA platform. Read the rest of this entry »

The IT industry is constructed of three-letter acronyms (TLAs). However, the total number of possible three-letter abbreviations using the 26 letters of the alphabet is only 17,576. This explains the stars-wearing-the-same-dress types of incidents in the IT world. When Sherry Fox discussed ECM and EIM, the acronyms represented enterprise compensation management and enterprise incentive management respectively. In this blog, the two “dresses” are worn by two different stars—enterprise content management and enterprise information management. Read the rest of this entry »

If you search for business performance management (BPM) on Google, you’ll get around 700,000 results. Out of this huge number of results, you will presumably refer to a popular source—Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, BPM is “a set of processes that help organizations optimize their business performance.” The same source affirms that some people see it as the next generation of business intelligence (BI). Both of these explanations—unfortunately—lack clarity.
Read the rest of this entry »

Nowadays a company should not even question whether it needs business intelligence (BI) or not. Those who do not have it yet should include it in their future strategies, while those who do have it should search for ways to make BI work at its full potential.

You Don’t Have It Yet?
Let’s first analyze and understand why a company may not have BI:

Read the rest of this entry »

While attending a number of vendors’ annual user conferences and/or by being briefed by vendors about their future directions, I’ve lately discerned this trend: virtually every vendor is attempting to win its users’ hearts and minds (as well as wallets) via a more intuitive and appealing user interface (UI). But it would be a real understatement to attribute everything to improved screens without talking about improved (i.e., “rich” and targeted) user experience (UX) design as a whole.

Namely, a UI is a means to an improved UX end, and the recipe for success is to deliver forms and screens designed for a particular user’s role in the organization. In other words, employees can now log into their own role-tailored user profile and personal place in the business management system. The role-personalized UI displays only the selected tasks, metrics, alerts, and activities they need to perform, providing the users with an overview of what they’ve done and what’s next in line. Read the rest of this entry »

The worn-out saying about how we learn new things every day applies to this blog topic too. Namely, my interest in Progress Software Corporation has long been due to its renowned OpenEdge development platform. Indeed, many enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other applications providers leverage (embed) OpenEdge as Progress Software partners. Sure, I also follow and have recently written about the company’s forays in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) space with its two respective offerings: Actional for web services management and Sonic for enterprise service bus (ESB) and messaging.

But in late 2007, out of mere courtesy, I accepted a briefing about Progress Apama, the company’s platform for complex event processing (CEP), algorithmic trading, and whatnot. Given the overwhelming nature (“rocket science” of a sort) of the offering’s concept, I now admit that I could not wait for the briefing to end.

Actually, I felt bamboozled like those ordinary mortal FBI agents in CBS’ primetime hit show “Numb3rs.” In that show, time and again the whiz kid math genius (the brother of the FBI team leader) tries to explain to these action-rather-than-theory agents how some complex and arcane math theory can be applied to make sense out of seemingly chaotic and unrelated events. Eventually, complex math solves some important crimes, often by detecting patterns that are not obvious to the naked eye.

Well, fast forward to early 2009, where at Progress’ Analyst Summit (a traditional Boston winter fixture event) we could all find out that Progress Apama is possibly the best performing and growing part of the company. OpenEdge, while still contributing to over 60 percent to Progress’ total revenues, is a mature business that is now sold mostly to independent software vendors (ISVs). In addition, the recent financial markets (and consequently the overall economic) crisis and related cases of high-profile frauds (”white-collar crimes”) have made me conduct my own study of Apama and become familiar with its underlying concept. Read the rest of this entry »