Optimization

Register for the first Decision Management Systems Platform Report webinar

February 3, 2012

The first webinar from my ongoing research into Decision Management Systems Platforms is coming up on February 16th at 10am PT – register here  for Four platform capabilities for Decision Management Systems.
This webinar kicks off what will be a continuing series of webinars as our definitive report on Decision Management Systems Technology Platforms comes to fruition [...]

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Are your systems just interfaces to a data structure?

December 29, 2011

Tad Anderson just wrote a great review of Decision Management Systems, my new book, over on his blog on the SOA World Magazine site. Two of his comments struck me particularly. The first summarized what I consider to be the biggest limiting factor in information systems today:
There are not too many systems being created today [...]

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Definitive Report on Decision Management Systems Platforms coming in 2012

December 15, 2011

2011 has been a great year for market awareness of Decision Management as an approach and of the value of Decision Management Systems. Product, partnership, acquisition and funding announcements have enhanced the available technology. As vendors continue to improve and enhance their product offerings to fully support Decision Management this is only going to reinforce and further [...]

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Business Analytics Optimization Keynote #iod11

October 24, 2011

Fred Balboni gave the Business Analytics and Optimization keynote. You can get a “faster planet” without analytics, just by automating processes, but you need analytics for a “smarter planet”. Fred began by introducing the results from the IBM Institute for Business Value study. The new survey had three interesting results:

The gap between analytic leaders and [...]

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Buy my new book – Decision Management Systems

October 7, 2011

My new book - Decision Management Systems: A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Predictive Analytics – is officially shipping – you can now order it (rather than pre-order it) at IBMPressbooks.com, at amazon.com or at InformIT.
Build Systems That Work Actively to Help You Maximize Growth and Profits
Most companies rely on operational systems that are [...]

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Ready to pre-order my new book? How about a 35% discount

September 21, 2011

Well my new book has shipped to the printers and it should be available in mid-October. The nice folks at IBM Press have set up a 35% discount code TAYLOR4389 and the book is ready for pre-order here on IBM Press. Just go to their site, order the book and enter the code. You can also [...]

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Speaking at IBM’s Information on Demand: Driving Better Business Results with Decision Management Systems

September 1, 2011

[ October 26, 2011; 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. ] I am speaking on “Driving Better Business Results with Decision Management Systems” on October 26th at 11:30am at IBM’s Information on Demand event.
Decision Management Systems are an exciting class of information systems. They help organizations manage risk, reduce fraud and maximize the value of every customer interaction. Decision Management Systems enhance existing business processes and [...]

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Decision Management Product News Recap Q2 2011

June 29, 2011

Here is a recap of Decision Management product news for Q2 2011
Business Rules

First Look Corticon 5
A long established vendor in the business rules management space, Corticon describe themselves as focused on delivering better, faster decisions by automating business rules.
First Look – OpenRules Decision Management System
OpenRules allows business users to manage rules directly in Excel, OpenOffice [...]

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First Look – OpenRules Rule Solver and Rule Learner

May 12, 2011

I recently published a First Look on the open source OpenRules Decision Management System. Along with traditional Business Rules components, OpenRules includes two other important decision management components:

Rules Solver for solving optimization problems
Rule Learner for predictive analytics.

OpenRules Rule Solver is based on Constraint Programming (CP) [...]

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First Look – Drools Planner

April 13, 2011

Drools Planner is a sub project of the Drools project that started 4 years ago as Drools Solver. Drools Planner is focused on “NP complete” planning problems where a solution is hard to find, but easy to prove feasible once found. Examples include scheduling, bin packing and timetabling for instance. Drools Planner is particularly good [...]

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Decision Management Product News Recap Q1 2011

April 6, 2011

Here is a recap of product news for Q1 2011
Analytics

First Look- Eagle Eye Analytics

Advanced predictive modeling for the Property and Casualty insurance market

First Look – SAS High Performance Computing

Distributed grid environment providing parallel job execution across multiple servers with shared physical storage

First Look – Opera Solutions

Analytics service provider that aims to improve machine intelligence and [...]

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First Look – SAS/OR

March 31, 2011

I have been doing more thinking about optimization recently and thought I should get caught up with the OR (Operations Research) folks at SAS to see what they are doing. They see OR technologies as part of the overall analytics spectrum and feel that anything that improves the rigor of decision making without unduly constraining [...]

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First Look – Portrait Software

October 19, 2010

Portrait Software, now part of Pitney Bowes Business Insight – has a tag line of “Make every interaction count” so, with my focus on micro decisions, I wanted to get an update. Since the early days of Quadstone (acquired by Portrait some years ago) the focus of this team has been to help people get [...]

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IBM Business Analytics and Optimization #bas2010

September 28, 2010

Rob Ashe and Fred Balboni kicked off the IBM Business Analytics Analyst Summit with a presentation on IBM’s overall strategy for analytics – product and consulting in an integrated view. Of course this is IBM so everything starts with Smarter Planet – and Smarter Planet begins with how to get insight to drive better performance, [...]

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Guest intelligence at Target

April 12, 2010

Guest intelligence is something Target use to drive marketing and merchandising decisions. Target, of course, is a large US retailer that does business in 49 states and has a major web presence. Target has guest data from panel surveys,  store surveys and operational data and regards these all as valid sources of guest data, without [...]

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Analytics and Innovation #PBLS

October 29, 2009

Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, and Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm among other books, had a discussion on the use of analytics in innovation. Several areas were touched on from the global economy to innovation approaches to education.
The growth of low cost competitors in the global economy has commoditized that which can be [...]

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SAS customers and optimization

October 27, 2009

Next up in my SAS day was a panel on optimization. Bobby Hull of BGF Industries and Bill Nowicki of the Carolina Hurricanes were joined by Larry Mosiman of SAS on a panel hosted by Tammi Kay George. BGF is a leader in high-end composites and textiles. The Carolina Hurricanes, of course, are an NHL [...]

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An analytic minute (or two)

October 20, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
A little while back I got to spend a few minutes talking about analytics and optimization with Jack Mason of IBM. He posted the resulting video over on the Smarter Planet blog. Enjoy.
I am at Predictive Analytics World today so this is nice and timely. Look for some posts today on analytics.

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Advanced decisioning for process excellence

October 6, 2009

I presented this morning on Advanced decisioning for process excellence and Sandy Kemsley wrote a nice summary over on her blog Column 2 : Advanced decisioning #GartnerBPM.
I gave the session again as a webinar and the recording is available here.
I am going to give the session as a webinar on Thursday of this week (details [...]

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BPM Optimization and Simulation

October 5, 2009

Jim Sinur is up next on optimization and simulation. The world is changing fast so he sees the use of optimization and simulation becoming broader than its traditional role of improving existing process. Optimization and simulation allows:

Try new processes in a safe environment
Give business people power to try changes before they go live
Help in scenario [...]

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