Seeking Simplicity’s Sweet Spot
Albert Einstein, you may have heard, was a clever man. He scribbled equations on blackboards, thought big thoughts, and all of that. But, allegedly, he also said Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. These words have resonated with me recently, as I’ve heard pitches from one company after another, all [...]
Doing the DataBeat
For the past two years, Ben Kepes and I have helped the team at VentureBeat assemble the programme for their annual Cloud Computing event, CloudBeat. It looks as though we may end up doing something similar with them this year, as CloudBeat moves from Redwood City to downtown San Francisco, and from November to September. [...]
The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2013
It has been an extremely eventful year for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors since a group of us collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM Consulting and SuccessFactors and a lot of people continue to reach out to me trying to understand what lies ahead in the overall consulting market. My thoughts are we are in the early [...]
Conference Report: Workday Rising
Last week I attended the analyst event organized along with Workday Rising 2012 conference. Workday Rising is Workday’s (previous CloudAve coverage)(Disclosure: Workday is the sponsor of CloudAve and this is my own personal opinion but they paid for my travel and stay) user conference and it was their attempt to interact closely with their customers [...]
Analytics-first Enterprise Applications
This is the story of Tim Zimmer who has been working as a technician for one of the large appliance store chains. His job is to attend service calls for washers and dryers. He has seen a lot in his life; a lot has changed but a few things have stayed t…
Cloud’s Secret Sauce–Zendesk Delivers Best Practice Analytics and Customer Satisfaction Data
I’ve long said that one of the key benefits of cloud applications is the ability of vendors to aggregate and anonymize data from their users, and to offer this anonymized aggregated data back to users who can then derive insights from comparisons between themselves and other vendors. It’s an area fraught with concerns about commercial [...]
The New New Metrics for Advertising: The SuperBowl Versus the Academy Awards (infographic)
For big brands acquiring customers it used to be a simple formula. Create a great ad + advertise in media with a large audience of potential customers + have a call to action = sales. Brands that follow the old formula can still advertise to millions of people and have plenty of traditional brand impressions. [...]
Loving What I Do For Living
A few months back, I was helping a very large customer of ours to help simplify as well as automate their process of trading financial instruments. During one of my many visits to their office, I met a person who was trying to explain to me his job in supporting the people that are involved [...]
Platfora Closes Series A Funding To Help Make Sense Out Of Your (Big) Data
Platfora, the company with a mission to bring clarity to your data, today announced series A funding worth $5.7 Million to expand their rich analytics tool for Hadoop. After the cloud euphoria, it is the turn of big data to get the mindshare of pundits and public. This space is crowded and competitive. Platfora is [...]
Modern Day Enterprise Software: Workday Example
Even before cloud computing became the household name, enterprise software industry has started seeing disruption. Even though legacy software still holds enterprise market to ransom, companies like Salesforce.com, Workday, Netsuite, Google, etc. are carving out a path towards the modern day enterprise software. From my point of view, any modern enterprise software should offer social [...]
Data Value vs. Data Puke (In Social Web)
Data has value, right? Well, be careful! Social web offers many data points that are nothing but “puke”. Basing decisions on data puke can only cause nausea for your business. Tune in, and let me know what you think.
Jaspersoft Ramps Up Their Offering To Meet Embeded BI Market Needs
Jaspersoft, the San Francisco based Business Intelligence vendor, yesterday announced the newer version of their product, Jaspersoft 4, with embedded BI market in mind. Jaspersoft 4 leverages a new modular UI architecture which makes it easy to customize and embed, thereby making the BI tool more attractive to users. This version has a new GUI [...]
Business Analytics on the Samsung Galaxy Tab
Earlier this week, I had a quick chance to use the new Samsung Galaxy Tab — the first serious tablet rival to the iPad — and check out its analytic / business intelligence capabilities. The device runs Android 2.2, which supports Adobe Flash, so the first thing I tried was a couple of dashboards suitable [...]
Why Are Business Analytics Important? Because You Think You’re a Better Than Average Driver
Why are analytics important? Because 93% of us think we’re better than average drivers. This cognitive bias means that we’re overconfident in our decisions — and hence under-invest in the business analytics systems, processes, and culture that can lead to fact-based decision making.
Challenging Stonebraker’s Assertions On Data Warehouses – Part 2
Check out the Part 1 if you haven’t already read it to better understand the context and my disclaimer. This is the Part 2 covering the assertions from 6 to 10.Assertion 6: Appliances should be “software only.”“In my 40 years of experience as a com…
