Analytics

Live Event: International Institute for Analytics Executive Symposium

May 24, 2012

[ June 27, 2012; ] I will be participating in the Analytics Executive Symposium being run on June 26th in Chicago by the International Institute for Analytics of which I am a faculty member.
The Analytics Executive Symposium is a unique and professional gathering of analytics champions who come together to hear and discuss the latest findings and research in analytics. The Symposium [...]

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New article on predictive analytics in the cloud

May 23, 2012

I recently participated in an article in the Teradata magazine - A Beautiful, Cloudy Forecast – based on our research on predictive analytics in the cloud. As the article says:
The basic value proposition of predictive analytics in the cloud is clear: Organizations can make predictive analytics more scalable, more pervasive and easier to deploy. For many [...]

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Live Event: Business Friendly Data Mining at PAW Chicago

May 23, 2012

[ June 26, 2012; 7:40 am to 8:00 am. ] I am speaking on Business Friendly Data Mining on Day 2 (June 26) of Predictive Analytics World Chicago at 10:40am CT.
Organizations that are more sophisticated with analytics are more likely to be top business performers. But too often there are gaps in understanding between business, IT and analytics teams. Gaps in building business understanding lead [...]

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Live Event: Introduction to Decision Management (Dresden)

May 22, 2012

[ June 7, 2012; 8:00 am to 10:00 am. ] I am speaking at an event in Dresden, Germany on Decision Management (details here) on June 7 17:00 – 19:00 CET. I will be giving an introduction to Decision Management.
Business processes and business logic are two sides of same coin. Without an explicit consideration of business rules, process models can be incomplete and topics such as [...]

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Webinar: A New Approach to Business Design at Apple Vacations

May 9, 2012

[ May 22, 2012; 10:00 am to 11:00 am. ] I am giving a webinar with Gagan Saxena (@Gagan_S), CIO of Apple Vacations on A New Approach to Business Design at Apple Vacations on May 22, 2012 at 10:00 am PT, 1:00 pm ET.

Gagan and I will present how how Apple Vacations applied Decision Management to redesign the consumer experience and create a “smart system” that [...]

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Still time to register for our European Decision Management Training

May 3, 2012

There’s still time to register for the 2-day workshop in Europe next month. This covers the essentials of Decision Management, the effective use of business rules and Business Rules Management Systems and the role of analytics:

Berlin – June 4/5 – Register here.

The class covers:

An introduction to Decisions and Decision Management
Categorizing and identifying decisions
Characteristics and design of [...]

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Tips for Big Decision Management

April 28, 2012

The TIBCO Spotfire blog had a nice post – Tips to Get Your Organization Ready for Big Data – and it struck me that these tips were all good advice for someone trying to do “Big Decision Management” – that is Decision Management with Big Data. I would add a few comments though:
Collaboration is always [...]

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Decision Management, IBM IMPACT and becoming an IBM Champion

April 25, 2012

I have been going to IBM IMPACT for a couple of years now. This year’s event is just around the corner – it starts on Sunday – and I am particularly excited about this one. While it’s not the first at which I have spoken, nor the first where there have been sessions on Decision [...]

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Early bird pricing on European training expiring

April 23, 2012

The early bird pricing on our 2-day workshop in Europe expires this week. This workshop cover the essentials of Decision Management, the effective use of business rules and Business Rules Management Systems and the role of analytics:

Berlin – June 4/5 – Register here.

The class covers:

An introduction to Decisions and Decision Management
Categorizing and identifying decisions
Characteristics and design [...]

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Real-time Infrastructure for Decision Management

April 18, 2012

It used to be that analytics were applied in batch, updating the database with a score or customer segment based on yesterday’s data.
It used to be that these models could take months to implement, so that the models themselves were based on data that might be months out of date.
It used to be that analytic [...]

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First Look – Skytree Server

April 17, 2012

Skytree is singularly focused on advanced analytics, machine learning on massive datasets. They have been in development for several years and are based in Silicon Valley (with engineering teams there and in Atlanta) and the product was officially launched in 2012. They believe that machine learning will be at the core of solutions for big [...]

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Decision Management Training in Europe this June

April 11, 2012

I am giving a 2-day workshop on the essentials of Decision Management, the effective use of business rules and Business Rules Management Systems and the role of analytics in Europe this June:

Berlin – June 4/5 – Register here.

Organizations must understand how to identify and classify decisions and how to assess the potential for business rules [...]

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Decision Management and the 4Ds

April 10, 2012

A recent new twitter follower had an interesting post on his blog back in 2010 - The 4Ds “Detect, Derive, Decide and Do. I liked the description of this pattern and as it is a common one for Decision Management Systems I thought I would make a couple of quick comments:

The Derive piece of this pattern [...]

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First Look – BigML

April 10, 2012

While there are many machine learning packages out there, BigML is trying to make them usable by people with just a little experience – to improve the learning curve of machine learning techniques. At the same time they also address the scale challenge as Gigabytes of data override the traditional algorithms. Their product is therefore [...]

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Target variables matter but so do decisions

April 8, 2012

Dean Abbot wrote a great post recently “Why Defining the Target Variable in Predictive Analytics is Critical” in which he referenced the CRISP-DM approach to building predictive analytic models and talked about the importance of target variable selection in building an effective model. The thrust of Dean’s post was the crucial point that because
The target [...]

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Is Machine Learning v Domain expertise the wrong question?

April 5, 2012

KDNuggets had an interesting poll this week in which readers expressed themselves as Skeptical of Machine Learning replacing Domain Expertise. This struck me not because I disagree but because I think it is in some ways the wrong question:

Any given decision is made based on a combination of information, know-how and pre-cursor decisions.
The know-how can be [...]

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Webinar: Predictive Analytics at the Speed of Business

April 4, 2012

[ May 3, 2012; 10:00 am to 11:00 am. ] I am giving a webinar with Dr Alex Guazelli of Zementis on Predictive Analytics at the Speed of Business: How decision management and a real-time infrastructure get predictive analytics where and when you need them.

Organizations are looking to maximize the value of their analytics investment. They need to accelerate the deployment process, reduce costs and get [...]

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Decision Management boosts AP performance

April 3, 2012

There was an interesting little article on the Institute of Financial Operations site last week – In relentless pursuit of productivity: Index tracks traits of best-in-breed AP operations. This reported on some results from the Accounts Payable Productivity Index study. What struck me about this was the role of automated decision-making (using business rules) among [...]

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First Look – SAS High-Performance Analytics appliances

April 2, 2012

High-Performance Analytics from SAS consists of SAS Grid Computing, SAS In-Database Analytics and SAS In-Memory Analytics. The latter component has a new addition in the form of SAS High-Performance Analytics (SAS HPA), which was announced in Dec. 2011. SAS HPA is appliance-ready software that uses hardware from database partners (Teradata or EMC Greenplum) for high [...]

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First Look – Pervasive RushAnalyzer

March 29, 2012

Pervasive is best known for its data integration products but has recently been developing and releasing a series of products focused on analytics. RushAnalyzer is a combination of the KNIME data mining workbench (reviewed here) and Pervasive DataRush, a platform for parallelization and automatic scaling of data manipulation and analysis (reviewed here).
In the combined product, [...]

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