Lyza and Tableau according to Mako
Back in February when I heard about Lyza, I thought right away of Tableau. Despite each one’s different strengths in data discovery and analysis, each appeals to the same broad group. It’s an old group that’s getting new attention: creative analysts, or “cowboy analysts” to some. The like their data raw, not aggregated. They ask [...]
Storage goes node to node
The bad guys do it. Malware and terrorists distribute themselves, hide, and wait for a call from Mother. Now one company is doing the same with backup storage. As the bad guys have known for a long time, the strategy is cheap and reliable. “It’s disruptive as hell” for the data storage industry, says up-to-now [...]
Another night on Earth
In the film “Night on Earth,” Italian comic Roberto Benigni plays a taxi driver tooling around Rome one August morning at four. His flag’s up, he’s bored, and the streets are empty. “Dove sono i romani?” he asks himself, “Where are all the Romans?” Where were all the BI people last week? Did they all [...]
Recession reactions: hunkerers and builders
There are the hunkerers and the builders. Those are the two basic reactions to the recession that Jill Dychè observes. She’s a principal down at Baseline Consulting, and she reports seeing more builders. The hunkerers “are using the economy as an excuse for a fair bit of inertia,” she emails. But the builders are using [...]
Mark Madsen’s three indications of uselessness
If you dropped into an organization, how could you tell who did real work? Mark Madsen has developed clues. Most people probably know him as the insightful and entertaining creator of “Clues to the Future of Business Intelligence” and more recently of “Using Open Source BI in the Real World.” But when he’s not on [...]
Recession: value of alert messaging resonates
KnowledgeSync automates the kind of routine tasks that skilled staff disdain: issuing simple invoices, inquiry followups, low-inventory alerts, etc. It’s a BI specialty that cuts cost fast. VP of sales and marketing Don Farber says that, considering the economy, he’s pleased with just a five- to seven-percent dip in sales this year. The benefits are [...]
Recession: Government workers say one thing’s for sure
Members of the “large government organization” my secret source addressed on Thursday are sure of one thing: One day, someone with authority is going to walk in and demand records, complete records, on where how they used the Troubled Asset Relief Program money. These visitors will ask to see where money went and how it [...]
Why data analysis is so hard to do
One part of data analysis is deciding which data to look at and which to ignore. Now “America’s finest news source” illustrates the task in “Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics to Find Cause of Dorm Fire” in its usual, thoughtful manner. Yes, I mean The Onion.
