Month: September 2009

Interview Evan Levy Baseline Consulting

Here is an interview with Evan Levy, founder of one of the best and most practical business consultancy Baseline Consulting. The lower the bull-shit the better the consultant ( forgive my ….) Read here why Baseline’s frank and fast technology acumen have made it a rising star in the this fast growing field.

Businesses realize that there’s more to information delivery than just distributing reports; companies rely on data analysis to support operational decision making.- Evan Levy

Ajay- Describe your career in science and technology.

Evan Levy- My formal “science and technology career” started during college. I received degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University. While in school, I had several programming jobs both on and off campus: a systems integration team within a large government contractor; a research study within the Psychology Department; and the university Computation Center. After graduation, I worked at a database computer startup (Teradata) for several years beforeco-founding Baseline Consulting. I’ve been here 18 years.

Ajay- How would help solve the problem of chronic technology worker shortage in the United States?.

Evan- I think the “technology worker shortage” in the US is a problem with multiple facets. I don’t think it can be addressed simply by “throwing bodies” at the problem. I tend to view IT as two distinct areas: processing operations and information delivery. Processing operations includes the development and maintenance of all of the operational computing platforms (applications, mainframes, servers, desktop systems, processing infrastructure, etc.) Information delivery focuses on a company’s data and the associated integration and analytical infrastructure (data integration, analysis tools, processing platforms, etc.)

There’s been a fundamental shift in operational systems development over the past 15 years. The belief that most companies had unique, specialized business processes requiring custom developed applications proved unrealistic. The costs, resources, and long timelines associated with these activities weren’t practical in today’s business environment. Most companies have been willing to shift to “packaged applications” that allowed them to evaluate and trade business process customization for time. This has caused skills within development teams to change dramatically; the need for business process and data analysis skills has exploded.

The growth and adoption of business analysis as a core business capability has also changed the approach to technology development. The time of distributing standard reports across the company in the weekly or monthly format simply isn’t sufficient any more. Businesses realize that there’s more to information delivery than just distributing reports; companies rely on data analysis to support operational decision making. Detailed data analysis and exception reporting isn’t a luxury, it’s become part of the core business functions required by most companies. This has caused business users to become much more sophisticated in data analysis – and it has caused a need for IT to expand their focus from simply providing applications to having to provide detailed data to business users.

I think these two changes have caused a significant shift in the “technology worker shortage”. I don’t think we’re living in the time where the application is the key business asset for companies. I think folk are beginning to realize that the key asset is data. The only way to address the backlog in applications is to fundamentally shift how we approach the problem. Our users are learning to solve their problems with desktop tools; we need to be able to deliver detailed data to them in a more efficient manner.

The only way to address this challenge is for the technology worker to become educated on their users’ business practices and methods. I don’t think throwing thousands of programmers at the issue will solve the current problem. I think we need to capitalize on the skills that already exist within our user communities and position IT resources to make them more self sufficient. I don’t think there’s any short cut to building and maintaining operational applications; programmers will always be needed for that. However, in the growth area of business and data analysis, I think we need to take an entirely different tact. We need to make users more self-sufficient with data.

Ajay- Unemployment in the United States is now touching 10 % yet millions of jobs that went overseas remain there. How good or bad has the technology sector been affected by offshoring compared to other sectors.

Evan- I’m no economist, so I’m afraid I can’t offer much of an opinion regarding the impact of offshoring technology jobs. I do know that in business, there will always be a desire to build and deliver products in as cost-efficient a manner as possible. We’ve seen numerous industries expand through offshoring and outsourcing. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the technology industry is maturing in much the same manner as every other industry. We all expect companies to stay competitive through managing costs; offshoring and outsourcing is an accepted practice.

I think the impact to offshoring and outsourcing will continue to impact the technology sector. We continue to see companies reevaluate their technology investments. As some technologies mature, evolve, and become commodities, I suspect we’ll continue to see jobs associated with those technologies to be outsourcd.

I think the challenge to those of us that work within the technology industry is to continually invest and grow our skills. As any industry matures, the products transition from being specialized to commodities. Look at the internet and web applications and tools. Prior to 2000, building even a simple website proved expensive and resource intensive. Today, most anyone with fundamental pc skills can build their own website. This industry has collapsed in size – but many continue in that space because they’ve grown and expanded their skills. A look at the sophistication of today’s websites reflects this shift.

Ajay- What data solutions would you recommend for the United States government to better channel its stimulus spending.

Evan- I actually think the government has taken an interesting approach with some aspects of the current stimulus spending. I can’t remember when it was possible for any of us to quickly determine where and how federal money was distributed. Today, there are several websites that provide detailed information identifying individual projects and their related funding levels. I wish this type of detailed data was made available for federal spending related to Hurricane Katrina, or the activities in Iraq or Afghanistan. It would provide clarity to where our tax dollars go and raise visibility to the inappropriate distribution of funds.

It think it would be valuable that any and all government spending to be made available to the public in a simple online manner.

Ajay- Do you think Business Intelligence is a male dominated sector. If so, why?

Evan- I’m not sure BI is any more male-dominated than any other IT area. But I’ll say one thing: we need more women in IT. It’s not about gender-specific skills or even about unique talents. It’s just about balance and perspective. Some of my best friends are women! Seriously, I think women do bring some cultural and knowledge assets to the table that just make the overall environment better for everyone. The women who work for me are so exceptional that I should probably be working for them.

When it comes to BI, Cindi Howson—a BI thought leader in her own right and someone who knows a LOT about the vendor space—wrote a great blog post about women in BI. It mentions my partner Jill, whom you interviewed a few months ago. Jill and Cindi are only two of a stellar group of women in BI. (I’d call them “BI babes” but I’d be seriously hurt if I did that.) But I think Cindi’s blog says it all.

Ajay- What do you for relaxing? How important are hobbies and family life for busy career professionals.

Evan- I’m a strong believer in the balance of work and play. My colleagues and staff at Baseline work hard with our clients. Many of our client projects require time and travel flexibility that doesn’t align with the traditional 9—5 world. It’s important for individuals to spend time with their friends and families – to enjoy the things that are outside of their jobs. Personally I spend my time volunteering with the YMCA. It’s a life-long cause for me, and the source of many of my best friendships.

Ajay-  What are your views on mis-selling in consulting- selling something which you are not really an expert of. Does this happen in your opinion in BI.

Evan- That’s a pretty interesting question. I’m sure we all know about situations where an aggressive sales person made impractical promises to address business challenges and established unrealistic expectations. Individuals are driven by their company’s incentive system. I find that when a company rewards its team members on client satisfaction and project success (instead of simply the numbers), mis-selling rarely occurs. I often recommend that our clients ask their suppliers how their sales people and client teams are rewarded. We often see those questions in RFPs.

Most of the consulting problems we see aren’t related to aggressive selling, but simply a gap between the requirements and the solution. While this sounds trite – we often find that the solution providers don’t fully understand the problem they are solving. Whether it’s because the problem wasn’t well understood (by the solution provider) or well analyzed and described (by the prospect) is sometimes impossible to determine; it’s usually a combination of both.

Preventing (or limiting) these surprises is very doable; short-term and small deliverables, frequent and thorough project reviews, and measureable acceptance criteria is a good place to start.

I’ll be the first to admit that at Baseline, we’re much better at delivery than we are at sales. This means that we don’t chase deals, but when we get them we deliver. We like to delight our clients. And our consultants really know their stuff. Because of that we have great client references, for which we’re grateful.

Biography

Evan Levy is a partner and co-founder of Baseline Consulting. Evan has spent his career leading both practitioners and executives in delivering a range of IT solutions. In addition to his executive management responsibilities at Baseline, he regularly oversees high-profile systems integration projects for key clients such as Charles Schwab, Verizon, State of Michigan, and CheckFree.

Evan also advises software vendors in the areas of product planning, and continues to counsel the executive and investment communities in applying advanced technologies to key business initiatives. Evan has been known to shave off his beard on a bet. He can whistle most of the songs in the Sesame Street oeuvre, has a thing for silicone kitchen implements, and helped design the data warehouse at one of those superstores that is inevitably coming to a neighborhood near you.

Author

Evan writes frequently for leading industry publications, focusing on the financial payback of IT investments, architectural best practices, and data integration alternatives. He is a regular online contributor to DMReview.com and SearchDataManagement.com.

Evan is also co-author of the book, Customer Data Integration (John Wiley and Sons, 2006), which describes the business breakthroughs achieved with integrated customer data, and explains how to make CDI work. Evan also writes a regular blog for Baseline http://www.evanjlevy.com/

Industry Leader

Evan has been a thought leader at major industry and vendor conferences, including the American Marketing Association, DAMA International, MDM Summit, MDM Insight, and TechTarget conferences. He is a faculty member of TDWI and delivers regular presentations on data integration alternatives. Recent seminars have focused on the application of emerging technologies and use cases for master data management and data integration solutions.

Baseline Consulting, an acknowledged leader in information design and deployment, helps companies enhance the value of their enterprise data, improve business performance, and achieve self-sufficiency in managing data as a corporate asset. Baseline provides business consulting and technical implementation services in four practice areas: Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Business Analytics, and Data Governance. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Baseline changes how companies leverage information. To learn more, visit Baseline’s website at www.baseline-consulting.com.

Oracle Open World

 Interesting to see Oracle creating easy technology for .NET techies to switch over. Cross platform interfaces are the flavor of the season.

.NET at Oracle Develop
Join the Oracle Develop conference at Oracle OpenWorld (October 11-15, 2009, San Francisco). It will again feature a .NET developer track that includes comprehensive coverage of Oracle’s .NET technologies and will be presented by the Oracle team that develops many of the key features. Oracle Develop is perfect for all levels of .NET developers, from beginner to advanced. It covers introductory Oracle .NET material, new .NET features for Oracle database, deep dive content, and a hands-on lab.
To register, go to Oracle Develop registration site. Seats are filling up fast for Oracle Develop .NET sessions, so use Schedule Builder and reserve a seat for yourself today!

Develop Sessions
Getting Started with Oracle and .NET
ASP.NET Web Development with Oracle Databases
PL/SQL Programming for .NET Developers: Tips, Tricks, and Debugging
Database Development Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio: SQL, PL/SQL and .NET Stored Procedure Development, Source Control, and Deployment
Optimize Oracle Data Access Performance with Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET
Messaging and Event-Driven .NET Applications with Oracle Database
Main OpenWorld Session
Allstate Insurance’s Mission-Critical Use of Oracle .NET Technologies
Hands-on Lab
Building .NET Applications with Oracle: Part 1
Building .NET Applications with Oracle: Part 2
Building .NET Applications with Oracle: Part 3

Premier Developer Conference for Oracle Technologists
Don’t miss Oracle Develop, the premier developer program, at Oracle OpenWorld 2009! World-leading experts will be on hand leading sessions about the latest development trends and technologies for service-oriented architecture (SOA), Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP), virtualization, and Web 2.0. Advance your skills and expand your knowledge in scores of expert-led, in-depth technical sessions and advanced how-tos on Java, .NET, XML, SCA, PL/SQL, Ajax, PHP, Groovy on Rails, and more. And roll up your sleeves for in-depth, hands-on labs covering the very latest development technologies including database, SOA, Complex Event Processing (CEP), Java, and .NET.

When: Sunday, October 11, 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
Monday, October 12, 10:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Tuesday, October 13, 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Where: Hilton San Francisco
Oracle Develop Schedule at a Glance
Oracle Develop Keynotes
Oracle Develop Tracks

 

How to use Oracle for Data Mining

Oracle for Data Mining!!!! Thats right I am talking of the same Database company that made waves with acquiring Sun ( and the beloved Java) and has been stealing market share left and right.

Here are some techie specific help- if you know SQL ( or Even Proc SQL) you can learn Oracle Data Mining in less than an hour- good enough to clear that job shortlist.

Check out the attached sample code examples.  They are designed to run on the ODM demo data, but you could change that easily.  They are posted on OTN here

Sample Code Demonstrating Oracle 11.1 Data Mining (230KB)
These files include sample programs in PL/SQL and Java illustrating each of the algorithms supported by Oracle Data Mining 11.1. There are examples of automatic data preparation and data transformations appropriate for each algorithm. Several programs illustrate the text transformation and text mining process.

Oracle Data Mining PL/SQL Sample Programs

The PL/SQL sample programs illustrate each algorithm supported by Oracle Data Mining as well as text transformation and text mining using NMF and SVM classification. Transformations that prepare the data for mining are included in the programs.Execute the PL/SQL sample programs.

Mining Function Algorithm Sample Program
Anomaly Detection One-Class Support Vector Machine dmsvodem.sql
Association Rules Apriori dmardemo.sql
Attribute Importance Minimum Descriptor Length dmaidemo.sql
Classification Adaptive Bayes Network (deprecated) dmabdemo.sql
Classification Decision Tree dmdtdemo.sql
Classification Decision Tree (cross validation) dmdtxvlddemo.sql
Classification Logistic Regression dmglcdem.sql
Classification Naive Bayes dmnbdemo.sql
Classification Support Vector Machine dmsvcdem.sql
Clustering k-Means dmkmdemo.sql
Clustering O-Cluster dmocdemo.sql
Feature Extraction Non-Negative Matrix Factorization dmnmdemo.sql
Regression Linear Regression dmglrdem.sql
Regression Support Vector Machine dmsvrdem.sql
Text Mining Text transformation using Oracle Text dmtxtfe.sql
Text Mining Non-Negative Matrix Factorization dmtxtnmf.sql
Text Mining Support Vector Machine (Classification) dmtxtsvm.sql

And

a particularly cute and nifty example of Fraud ( as in Fraud Detection 😉

drop table CLAIMS_SET;
exec dbms_data_mining.drop_model(‘CLAIMSMODEL’);
create table CLAIMS_SET (setting_name varchar2(30), setting_value varchar2(4000));
insert into CLAIMS_SET values (‘ALGO_NAME’,’ALGO_SUPPORT_VECTOR_MACHINES’);
insert into CLAIMS_SET values (‘PREP_AUTO’,’ON’);
commit;
begin
dbms_data_mining.create_model(‘CLAIMSMODEL’, ‘CLASSIFICATION’,
‘CLAIMS’, ‘POLICYNUMBER’, null, ‘CLAIMS_SET’);
end;
/
— accuracy (per-class and overall)
col actual format a6
select actual, round(corr*100/total,2) percent, corr, total-corr incorr, total from
(select actual, sum(decode(actual,predicted,1,0)) corr, count(*) total from
(select CLAIMS actual, prediction(CLAIMSMODEL using *) predicted
from CLAIMS_APPLY)
group by rollup(actual));
— top 5 most suspicious claims where the number of previous claims is 2 or more:
select * from
(select POLICYNUMBER, round(prob_fraud*100,2) percent_fraud,
rank() over (order by prob_fraud desc) rnk from
(select POLICYNUMBER, prediction_probability(CLAIMSMODEL, ‘0’ using *) prob_fraud
from CLAIMS_APPLY
where PASTNUMBEROFCLAIMS in (‘2 to 4’, ‘more than 4’)
where rnk <= 5
order by percent_fraud desc;

Coming up- a series of tutorials on learning the skills by just sitting in your home.

Hat Tip- Karl Rexer , Rexer Analytics and Charlie Berger, Oracle.

My Stupid Poetry

Every week I write a poem,

Thinking how cool I could be.

A 21 st Century Lord Byron,

Writing poetry could do the trick for me.

Party Invitations and Fame Galore,

Lord Byron used to have this and all more.

But poetry died, and Byron died much earlier in disgrace.

His aristocratic funeral attended by an empty caravan.

Harry Potter may have rejuvenated the novel,

Bringing back poetry is too much for One man.

So turn your head, and swipe your card.

Modern age civilization aint no place for ahh bard.

Let you drink and have soda water,

Pre Packed Hangover remedies the morning after.

Caught up in a material world.

Dead artists are worth their weight in gold.

Stupid poetry, are all ahh I can offer you for today.

Click F5 to refresh, or Control Tab to go away.

(photo credit-Lord Byron at age 25 (1813 portrait by Richard Westall)

http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/byron.jpg

Interview James Taylor Decision Management Expert (Updated)

Quick update

James is hosting a webinar series on decision manaement, predictive analytics and business rules this fall. You can check out the webinars and register for some or all at https://decisionmanagement.omnovia.com/registration

Here is an interview with James Taylor, a leading consultant and evangelist in the emerging field of converging decision management.

Ajay- Describe your career in science. What fascinates you with reporting on this segment. How would you interest freshmen students in taking up statistics and math courses.

James- I took Geological Geophysics and Mathematics in college but graduated in a year when the oil price was in free fall and never worked in geophysics. Since then I have worked in computers, mostly focused on how they can be applied rather than on how they work. I am not sure I would say that this represents a career in science so much a career enabled by science and, increasingly, watching science.

As far as math goes I actually think the problem is at the other end of the spectrum. Far too many people leave school without a feel for math – it is taught in a very narrow way and leaves far too many feeling that math is something that other people do. In a world with more and more data, and more and more statistics/data-driven decisions this is not ok. We need everyone in business to be able to consume math intelligently, even if they can’t develop mathematical models themselves. Continuing with traditional math teaching in high school and college is just excluding most people and that has to end.

Ajay- What are the various stages of evolution that you have seen in the Decision Management Industry, including the prevailing jargon name.

James- Decision Management applications have been around for years, albeit primarily in the financial services industry. They used to all have their own categories – fraud systems, origination systems, account management systems – and this was the beginning of the category. One of the first things I did at FICO was describe all these applications as a set – recognizing that the same approach and the same cluster of technologies was being used in each case. Back in 2002 I and some colleagues started calling this approach Enterprise Decision Management. Back then most decision management was enabled by these packaged applications and the tools that could be used to build custom applications were talked about separately – business rules, optimization, predictive analytics.

Over the last 6 years the focus on decisions in each of these areas has increased – more rules people talk about managing decisions with rules and there’s more talk of improving operational decisions in predictive analytics and optimization circles. There’s more talk of using the tools/technologies together and a growing range of integrated suites/platforms.

Where most companies stand today is wanting the kind of capabilities that can only be delivered by applying decision management techniques and technologies but they are not yet asking for decision management. They want, for instance, consistent personalized offers across channels but they are not asking for centralized decision management. Based on previous experience I think this will change steadily over the next year or two with the number of companies asking explicitly for decision management capabilities rising.

From a name perspective we have evolved too. Over time it has become clear that the “Enterprise” was misinterpreted as a call for Enterprise-wide implementation of decision management when it was meant as a call from enterprise ownership of decisions. As a result some folks talk about Business Decision Management and I just like to talk about Decision Management.

Ajay- Why is Decision Management more important than say performance management, business intelligence, predictive analytics.

James- I am not sure it is more important. Most organizations need business intelligence to understand what happened in their business and they need performance management to monitor what is happening now. This kind of understanding is important in successful decision management implementations. And decision management is a management discipline designed, in part, to put predictive analytics to work in operational systems.

I do think a focus on decision is vital to all of them, however. If you don’t understand the decisions you are making it is hard for me to see how you can judge the effectiveness of either business intelligence or performance management. And predictive analytics should be even more decision-centric if it is to be effective. So a focus on decisions is a necessary prerequisite and the management of those decisions, using rules and analytics, is a great way to maximize their value in operational systems.

Ajay- What are your views on offshoring 1) High quality research 2) Labor Arbitrage technical work 3) Cost cutting driven

James- Well I think offshoring is an inevitable consequence of an interconnected world. I also think that companies that offshore simply to reduce cost deserve the employee and customer loyalty they will get as a consequence!

I do think that companies should make thoughtful decisions about what to do where, when something must be handled centrally and when it can be pushed to different localities etc. I think that smarter systems – systems that manage decisions explicitly – can help in this and help companies have a real DNA when it comes to decision making.

Ajay- What are the top 5 principles of Decision Management , as you would explain to a class of business graduates and CEO’s

James-

1. Little decisions add up

The day to day decisions that drive operational behavior, customer interactions, transactional systems are more important than the big, strategic decisions beloved of management consultants. Each one seems unimportant but they happen so often that their total value swamps anything else you do. If you get these decisions wrong it won’t matter what you get right.

2. The purpose of information is to decide

Deming has a famous quote that “The ultimate purpose of collecting the data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation”. The reason you collect data, report on data, analyze data is to make better decisions. Otherwise it’s just a cost. And unless you know which decision you are making, and what will make it a good or a bad one, then all the data in the world (and all the data management or data analysis) will not help you.

3. You cannot afford to lock up your logic

Decision making logic- the policies, regulations, best practices and customer preferences that drive decision making – cannot be locked up in code you cannot read, systems you do not understand. No matter what else might be handled by your IT people, business decision making logic must not be. You must at least be able to collaborate with your IT folks and manage it with them. You must be responsible for this logic.

4. No answer, no matter how good, is static

Organizations must realize that they have to constantly analyze, reassess and challenge their decision making process. The effectiveness of a decision can often not be determined for some time and even a good decision can be degraded by a change in the behavior of a competitor or a change in the market. As such constant challenging of the decision making approach, constant A/B testing or adaptive control is essential if decisions are to remain effective.

5. Decision making is a process to be managed

The way you make decisions is something you must understand, document, automate and analyze. Good managers, good staff, have a good decision making process. Good outcomes might result from luck or circumstance but you don’t want to rely on that. Instead you want to focus on quality decision making processes. And like many repeatable processes, automating decision making makes it easier to analyze and improve it over time.

UPDATE-

James has agreed to schedule a free webinar to explain it more fully. Anyone who wants can register at https://decisionmanagement.omnovia.com/registration/pid=74151252469530

Ajay- What does James Taylor do when not in front of a computer, a podium or an airport. How important do you think is work life balance particularly for young people

James- Well I am a parent, a partner and an avid reader and between them those use up most of my non-work time. I really enjoy my work which makes it hard to stop sometimes. I think life/work balance is important but so is enthusiasm for what one does. Perhaps I am kidding myself but I think there is a difference between putting a lot of hours into something about which you are passionate and putting a lot of work into something just to get ahead or to avoid the rest of your life.

Ajay- Do you think BI world is male dominated. What could be the reasons.

James- Yes. The usual sexism of business combined with the average age of BI people (younger groups seem more mixed in general).

Ajay- Green economy and stimulus macro economics. How can both these fields benefit from Decision Management

James- From a macro stimulus point of view I think the key thing is that governments around the world throw money at companies specializing in decision management. <smile>

The green economy, however, is more interesting. Personally I don’t see how smart grids can be made to work without a solid core of powerful decisioning. Green marketing requires personalization and targeting to avoid waste (more decisioning) while helping consumers make better decisions about products based on green criteria needs to be built into shopping engines like Amazon’s if it is to make a real difference. Being green is all about making greener decisions and making systems make greener decisions takes decision management and decisioning technology.

Biography-

James Taylor is a leading expert in Decision Management and an independent consultant specializing in helping companies automate and improve critical decisions. Previously James was a Vice President at Fair Isaac Corporation where he developed and refined the concept of enterprise decision management or EDM. Widely credited with the invention of the term and the best known proponent of the approach, James helped create the Decision Management market and is its most passionate advocate.

James has 20 years experience in all aspects of the design, development, marketing and use of advanced technology including CASE tools, project planning and methodology tools as well as platform development in PeopleSoft’s R&D team and consulting with Ernst and Young. He has consistently worked to develop approaches, tools and platforms that others can use to build more effective information systems.

James is an active consultant, speaker and author. He is a prolific blogger, with regular posts at jtonedm.com and ebizq.net/blogs/decision_management. He also has an Expert Channel – Decision Management – on the BI Network.

His articles appear in industry magazines, he has contributed chapters to “The Business Rules Revolution:Doing Business The Right Way” (Happy About, 2006) and “Business Intelligence Implementation : Issues and Perspectives” (ICFAI University Press, 2006), and is the co-author of “Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions ” (Prentice Hall, 2007) with Neil Raden .

James is a highly sought speaker, appearing frequently at industry conferences, events and seminars. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

James has an M.S. in Business Systems Analysis and Design from City University, London; a B.S. in Geological Geophysics and Mathematics from the University of Reading, England; and a “Mini-MBA” certificate from the Silicon Valley Executive Business Program at San Jose State University.

You can contact James at james@jtonedm.com

Turning the Internet into a Super Computer (Uodated)

If you are a fan of distributed computing or parallel computation- you may notice a strange thing

All parallel computation basically involves tieing a lot of desktops and servers together- which is very profitable for the companies that make them.

However the biggest and most idle source of processing power is the Internet- millions of web servers.


So is it possible to create a parallel computer which ties in the web servers. Imagine if we take the R Web package , add it to R- Hadoop Streaming package AND SNOW Phase 3 and create a wordpress plugin for the web.

Eye%20of%20the%20Storm
Would it work? Could it work? or is this a craxy thought

TO add some more fun- add in bit torrenting BUT on web servers through the wordpress or a javascript plugin. OR a cloud operating system ( call it K.U.S.H)

Are you having fun yet?

So if we have this resource, then it basically helps reduce the digital divide a bit.

Think about it——————————————————————————–
Ajay- Note I am working on this project in my spare time and I call it K.U.S.H

Kinematically User Shared Hosts ( KUSH is also my son). Thus if you pursue it, prior ..*.art is claimed.

pps I was kidding on the prior *art , some people didnt get the *.

3 Billion Asian and Africans stay without a computer because someone has a patent to each and everything that goes with it.

Art Credit- “http://www.sgeier.net/fractals/fractals/02/Eye%20of%20the%20Storm.jpg&#8221;

Interview Timo Elliott SAP

Here is an interview with Timo Elliott, Senior Product Director SAP Business Objects.

Ajay- Describe your career in science from school to Senior Director in SAP to blogger/speaker. How do you think we can convince students of the benefits of learning science and maths.

Timo- I studied economics with statistics in the UK, but I had always been a closet geek and had dabbled with computers ever since I was a kid, starting with Z80 assembler code. I started my career doing low-level computer consulting in Hong Kong, and worked on a series of basic business intelligence projects at Shell in New Zealand, cobbling together a solution based on a mainframe HR system, floppy-disk transfers, and Lotus 1-2-3 macros. When I returned to Europe, I stumbled across a small French startup that provided exactly the “decision support systems” that I had been looking for, and enthusiastically joined the company.

Over the last eighteen years, I’ve worked with hundreds of companies around the world on their BI strategy and my job today is to help evangelize what works and what doesn’t, to help organizations avoid the mistakes that others have made.

When it comes to BI initiatives, I see the results of one fundamental problem almost on a daily basis: 75% of project success depends on people, process, organization, culture, and leadership, but we typically spend 92% of our time on data and technology.

BI is NOT about technology – it’s about helping people do their jobs. So when it comes to education, we need to teach our technologists more about people, not science!

Ajay- You were the 8th employee of SAP Business Objects. What are the key turning points or transition stages in the BI industry that you remember seeing in the past 18 years, and how has SAP Business objects responded to them.

Timo- Executive information systems and multidimensional databases have been around since at least the 1970s, but modern business intelligence dates from the early 1990s, driven by the widespread use of relational databases, graphical user interfaces, and the invention of the “semantic layer”, pioneered by BusinessObjects, that separated business terms from technical logic. For the first time, non-expert business people had self-service access to data.

This was followed by a period of rapid expansion, as leading vendors combined reporting, multidimensional, and dashboard approaches into fully-fledged suites. During this period, BusinessObjects acquired a series of related technology companies to complete the existing offer (such as the leader in operational reporting, Crystal Reports) and extend into enterprise information management and financial performance management.

Finally, the theme of the last few years has clearly been consolidation – according to Gartner, the top four “megavendors” (SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle) now make up almost two-thirds of the market, and accounted for fully 83% of the growth since last year. Perhaps as a result, user deployments are accelerating, with usage growth rates doubling last year.

Ajay- How do you think Business Intelligence would be affected by the following

a) Predictive Analytics.

Timo- Predictive analytics has been the “next big thing in BI” for at least a decade. It has been extremely important in some key areas, such as fraud detection, but the dream of “no longer managing by looking out of the rear-view mirror” has proved hard to achieve, notably because business conditions are forever changing.

We offer predictive analytics with our Predictive Workbench product – but I think the real opportunity for this technology in the future is “power analytics”, rather than “prediction”. For example, helping business people automatically cluster similar values, spot outliers, determine causal factors, and detect trend inflection points, using the data that they already have access to with traditional BI.

b) Cloud Computing.

Timo- In terms of architecture, it’s clearly not about on-demand OR on-premise: it’s about having a flexible approach that combines both approaches. You can compare information to money: today, we tend to keep our money in the bank rather than under our own mattress, because it’s safer, more convenient, and more cost-efficient. At the same time, there are situations where the convenience of cash is still essential.

Companies should be able to choose a BI strategy, and decide how to deploy it later. This is what we offer with our BI on-demand solutions, which use the same technology as on-premise. You can start to build on-premise and move it to on-demand, or vice-versa, or have a mix of both.

In terms of data, “cloud intelligence” is still a work in progress. As with modern financial instruments, we can expect to see the growth of new information services, such as our “information on-demand” product that provide data feeds from Reuters, Thompson Financial, and other providers to augment internal information systems. Looking further into the future, we can imagine new information marketplaces that would pay us “interest” to store our data in the cloud, where it can be adapted, aggregated and sold to others.

c) Social Media.

Timo- Conversations and collaboration are an essential part of effective business intelligence. We often talk about the notion of a “single view of the truth” in this industry, but that’s like saying we can have “a single view of politics” – while it’s vital to try to give everybody access to the same data, there will always be plenty of room for interpretation and discussion. BI platforms need to support this collaborative decision-making.

In particular, there are many, many studies that show up our all-too-human limitations when it comes to analyzing data. For example, did you know that children with bigger feet have better handwriting?

It’s absolutely true — because the children are older! Mixing up correlation and causality is a common issue in business intelligence, and one answer to the problem is to add more people: the more reviewers there are of the decision-making process, the better the decisions will be.

Analysis is also critical to the development of social media, such as analyzing sentiment trends in Twitter — a functionality we offer with SAP CRM — or tracking social communities. For example, Jive, the leader in Enterprise 2.0 platforms, offers our BI products as part of their solution, to help their customers analyze and optimize use of the system. Administrators can track if usage is trailing off in a particular department, for example.

d) Social Network Analysis.

Timo- Over the last twenty years, partly as a result of extensive automation of operational tasks with systems such as SAP, there’s has been a huge shift from “routine” to “non-routine” work. Today, fully 90% of business users say that their work involves decision making, problem solving, and the creation of new analysis and insight.

To help support this new creativity, organizations are becoming more porous as we work closer with our ecosystem of customers, partners, and suppliers, and we work in ever-more matrixed environments and cross-functional teams.

We’ve developed a Social Network Analyzer prototype that combines BI and social networking to create a “single view of relationships”. It can gather information from multiple different systems, such as HR, CRM, email distribution lists, project teams, Twitter, etc., to create a multi-layered view of how people are connected, across and beyond the enterprise. For more information, see the SAP Web 2.0 blog post, and you can try it yourself on our ondemand.com web site.

Ajay- What is the area that SAP BusinessObjects is very good at (strength). What are the key areas that you are currently seeking to improve ( opportunities)

Timo- Companies evaluating BI solutions should look at four things: product functionality for their users’ needs, fit with the overall IT architecture, the vendor’s reputation and ecosystem, and (of course) price. SAP BusinessObjects is the clear leader in the BI industry, and I’d say that SAP BusinessObjects has the best overall solution if you’re a large organization (or looking to become one) with a variety of user needs, multiple data sources, and a heterogeneous IT infrastructure.

In terms of opportunities, we have high expectations for new interfaces for casual users, and in-memory processing, which we have combined in our SAP BusinessObjects Explorer product. Initial customer feedback has been excellent, with quotes such as “finding information is as easy as using the internet” and “if you can use a computer, you can use Explorer”.

In terms of future directions, we’re taking a very transparent, Web 2.0 approach. The SAP Business Objects innovation center is modeled on Google Labs and we share our prototypes (including the Social Network Analyzer mentioned above) with anybody who’s interested, and let our customers give us early feedback on what directions we should go.

Ajay- What does Timo Elliott do for work life balance when not writing, talking, and evangelizing about Business Intelligence?

Timo- I’m a keen amateur photographer – see www.timoelliott.com/personal for more!

Biography- http://timoelliott.com/blog/about

Timo Elliott is Senior Director of Strategic Marketing for SAP BusinessObjects. For the last twenty years he has been a thought leader and conference speaker in business intelligence and performance management.

A popular and engaging speaker, Elliott presents regularly to IT and business audiences at international conferences, drawing on his experience working with enterprise customers around the globe. Topics include the latest developments in BI/PM technology, how best to suceed with BI/PM projects, and future trends in the industry. 

Prior to Business Objects, Elliott was a computer consultant in Hong Kong and led analytics projects for Shell in New Zealand. He holds a first-class honors degree in Economics with Statistics from Bristol University, England.

Additional websites: http://www.sapweb20.com —  web 2.0 technology by, with, and at SAP

Email: telliott@timoelliott.com or timo.elliott@sap.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/timoelliott

Twitter: http://twitter.com/timoelliott

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timoelliott/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Timo-Elliott/544744135

For an earlier interview with Oracle Data Mining Product Management, Charlie Berger see https://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/oracle/