E-Guide

Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

Business analytics technologies and techniques are constantly evolving, as organizations look for novel ways to gain a competitive advantage from their data and business intelligence vendors develop new tools to help in those efforts. This E-Guide looks at new and emerging business analytics trends and technologies that have the potential to make winners out of the companies that adopt them and relegate those that dont to the competitive sidelines. IT and business readers will: Learn about key developments in business analytics that are providing new capabilities for analyzing data, including their maturity levels and what to consider before adopting them Read about emerging concepts, such as unstructured data analysis and visual analysis, that have the potential to broaden the type of analytics available to end users

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Guide Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

E-Guide

Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

Table of Contents
Business analytics trends yield tools with potential if youre ready Data visualization, social media analytics could be keys to pervasive BI Resources from IBM

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Guide Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

Business analytics trends yield tools with potential if youre ready

By Todd Morrison, News and Features Editor Advanced business analytics technologies such as in-memory analytics, in-database analytics and complex event processing (CEP) tools enable organizations to analyze increasingly massive amounts of data from a diverse number of sources, faster and more efficiently than ever before. But does that mean you should spend the required time and resources to implement them? The technologies are mature enough to consider for enterprise adoption, according to industry analysts. The biggest question may be whether your organization is ready for them. In fact, the first thing that any business needs to consider when thinking about buying advanced analytics software is whether its sufficiently prepared to deploy and use tools that are more complex than mainstream business intelligence (BI) products are, said Forrester Research Inc. analyst Boris Evelson. The first advice is really, Are you ready? You need to learn to walk before you can learn how to fly, Evelson said. There a lot of things that have to be done and done correctly just to support basic BI and analytics technologies, he noted. Data governance policies and processes need to be put in place. Basic data management issues also have to be taken care of for example, BI data must be cleansed and properly integrated to ensure that key corporate information is both accurate and accessible. Only when those steps have been taken should an organization look at aligning itself with the latest business analytics trends, technologies and techniques, Evelson cautioned. Otherwise, he said, its like the proverb: garbage in, garbage out.

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Guide Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

But Evelson and other analysts said theres no reason to avoid emerging analytics technologies once youre in a position to succeed with them. Until recently, that might not have been the case. For example, in-memory analytics, in which queries and calculations are run against data stored in a computers memory instead of requiring information to be pulled from disk drives, has been around for years but it was limited by 32-bit architectures and high memory costs. Now, thanks to 64-bit architectures and reductions in memory prices, the technology finally appears to be hitting its stride. As a result, all of the major BI vendors are committed to providing some kind of in-memory analytics capabilities, if they dont already, according to Rick Sherman, founder of Stow, Mass.-based consulting firm Athena IT Solutions. Its a proven technology, he said. Business analytics trends at work: more user-friendly tools, faster performance The increasing allure of in-memory analytics is being aided and abetted by several factors, industry watchers said. For one thing, many business users have grown frustrated with having to go to the IT department every time they need to create a report. At the same time, organizations are looking for tools that are more flexible and more intuitive to use, as part of so-called pervasive BI efforts aimed at broadening the adoption of BI and analytics software within companies. Were seeing a trend toward technologies that are easier to use for people who arent necessarily very technical or capable of writing their own reports but still want to do their own analysis, said Rita Sallam, an analyst at Gartner Inc. The biggest reason in-memory analytics has taken off, she added, is that vendors have combined the technology with user interface tools that are highly interactive and simple to grasp. Also working to the benefit of in-memory analytics are growing demands from business users for faster data analysis performance, Sallam said. Sherman agreed, saying that the amount of time it takes to do more complex analytics is a constant source of frustration for end users. Looking at data through the lens of various metrics is where analytics gets slowed down considerably, he said, while pointing to inmemory analytics as a potential way to reduce processing times.

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Guide Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

However, giving business users more analytical flexibility and freedom via in-memory analytics also carries with it some risks, Evelson warned. Its a double-edged sword, he said. On one hand, its great to empower your end users, and it frees up the IT department. On the other hand, you start losing control. So, all of a sudden, end users that maybe dont have the proper training start creating their own reports. How do you know theyre creating the right calculations? End-user training programs at organizations that are deploying in-memory analytics tools should include sections designed to give workers a good understanding of corporate data and data models, so they wont go astray in using the information and produce faulty findings, Evelson said. Setting the stage for scaling up advanced business analytics In-database analytics, in which analytical processing is done directly within a data warehouse, is also being supported by more vendors and seeing broader enterprise adoption. Forrester analyst James Kobielus said in-database analytics tools have the potential to help organizations scale up their data mining activities and other advanced analytics efforts. For example, as data mining models become increasingly complex, analytic applications have to pull together more data, on a more continuous basis, and from a greater number of data sources than in the past, according to Kobielus. You need some heavy-hitting horsepower to do that in an efficient way, he said, adding that in-database analytics can help speed up the process. CEP software, which is designed to enable organizations to monitor and react to business events in near real time, is another example of how business analytics trends are evolving. While CEP technology typically is used to look for patterns and trends in large amounts of financial or supply-chain data, Kobielus said new uses are emerging for example,

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monitoring Twitter and other social media networks for mentions of a company or a product. Kobielus described CEP, in-database analytics and in-memory analytics as hot technologies that have the ability to provide significant benefits to companies ready to handle them. This is not bleeding edge, he said. This is really happening.

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Guide Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

Data visualization, social media analytics could be keys to pervasive BI

By Jeff Kelly, News Editor Business intelligence (BI) vendors and industry analysts have been talking about pervasive BI "BI for the masses" for years now. But, by most accounts, BI has yet to break through to the desktops or BlackBerrys of marketing managers, salespeople, shop floor directors and other business users. A recent survey of BI end users and managers by the U.K.-based Business Application Research Center revealed that only 11% of respondents have BI deployed to more than 50% of employees in their companies. Many factors contribute to the lack of business user adoption, but an important one is the technology itself. BI vendors are constantly touting innovations that will bring BI to the masses, but so far to no effect. There is hope, however. Here are three technologies that could play critical roles in spreading BI to more business users: Data visualization. Perhaps the most sure-fire way to spur business user adoption of BI is to improve data visualization technology. The easier it is for non-analysts to view and make sense of dashboards and other data visualizations, the more likely they are to use BI technology. A handful of vendors, both large enterprise software companies and smaller data visualization specialists, have come up with enhancements to existing data visualization techniques to do just that. Among them is the ability to easily overlay multiple data sets on a bar graph or chart via drag-and-drop tools. Other improvements include improved usability of heat maps, geographic mapping analysis and time-series analysis charts, according to analysts.

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The amount of data that data visualization tools can analyze is also on the increase, thanks in part to in-memory technology. In-memory analytics engines load data into random access memory rather than disk, increasing query speed and lessening the amount of data modeling needed with traditional BI platforms. And one open source predictive analytics language is enabling the creation of new types of data visualizations that make previous visualizations look kind of tacky in comparison, according to Marick Sinay, a financial analyst with a large multinational bank, who uses the technology on a daily basis. Called R, the free software language was designed for statistical computing and graphics. Social media analytics. Social media analytics is an emerging discipline, and so are the tools that enable it. Currently, most social media analytics technologies require significant expertise to use and are far from perfected. But Forrester Research Inc. analyst James Kobielus thinks that social media analytics tools as they become easier to use will be integrated into traditional BI platforms. That makes it more likely that non-power users will get their hands on the technology and understand what the blogosphere is saying about their companies. Facebook, the worlds largest and most influential social networking site, is doing its part to bring BI to the masses. The site offers page owners a number of analytics tools to monitor and measure referral traffic, demographic data and click-through rates, according to Alex Himel, a Facebook software engineer. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, [Facebook] page owners and platform developers are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook, Himel said. Unstructured data analysis. A related technology that could make BI more appealing to business users is unstructured data analysis. More than 80% of corporate data sits in Word documents, emails and other unstructured forms, according to analysts. Much of the data business users interact with each day is

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Guide Game-changing business analytics trends for 2011 and beyond

unstructured. Improving the ability to access and analyze that data would probably prompt more business users to adopt BI technology. Most current BI platforms are not well suited to unstructured data analysis, according to Forresters Boris Evelson. And text analytics tools have yet to reach a level of maturity that would be inviting for non-power users. But a couple of vendors are experimenting with integrating enterprise search technology with more traditional BI platforms in hopes of solving both problems, Evelson said. If successful, the new tools could prove particularly useful for marketing analytics, such as parsing user comments and reviews from online forums. There are other things that need to happen including better end-user training before BI truly comes to the masses. But improvements in data visualization, social media analytics and unstructured data analytics technologies would go a long way to making pervasive BI a reality.

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Resources from IBM

7 Reasons You Need Predictive Analytics Today Decisions that Drive Success Analytics: The New Path to Value

About IBM
At IBM, we strive to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions and services businesses worldwide.

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