Baking and Computers, a Surprising History of Analytics Pioneers

Perhaps surprisingly, bakers have a history of being analytics pioneers, from the first business application ever to the latest in-memory technology. In 1951, the J. Lyons company, famous for their tea-shops throughout the UK, built and used the LEO “Lyons Electronic Organizer” computer they had built to run the very first business application ever: bakery valuations. LEO was a massive, valve-powered computer that occupied 5000 sq.ft. of space.... [Read More...]

BI and The Limitations of Human Cognition in Den Bosch

I presented at my first conference of the year last week, the Heliview Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing 2012 conference in ‘s Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The first keynote, by Erasmus scholar Dr. Roeland Dietvorst, was about “Performance Management in the Brain”, and a subject close to my heart: the (severe) limitations we evolved apes have when trying to make rational decisions. He illustrated his point with examples of great research... [Read More...]

Sybase: Big Data Crisis is a Big Lie

Sybase (“an SAP Company”) recently published an analytics guide called “Intelligence for Everyone”. The first section called “The Big Lie about Big Data” includes the following: Why “big lie?” Because, as the article points with lots of historical examples, there’s always been a “crisis” in data storage, but as data volumes have risen technology has always evolved to deal with it, and that’s as true today as it has been in... [Read More...]

Why In-Memory Analytics is Like Digital Photography: An Industry Transformation

When was the last time you had a roll of film developed? If you’re reading this, you’re no technology luddite, so it was probably already many years ago. Film – a technology that had been slowly improved and perfected over 200 years  – was replaced in less than a decade by a much faster, cheaper, and more convenient technology approach. In an earlier post, I outlined why I think we’re on the brink of a real revolution in business analytics... [Read More...]

Why The Last Decade of BI Best-Practice Architecture is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

Business analytics, or solving business problems through better use of data, is absolutely nothing new. But every decade or so new technology takes a big leap forward (client/server, web, etc.) and makes previous architectures obsolete. The next big wave of business analytics infrastructure is poised to start arriving this year. Let’s take a look at an analogy from the history of computing. The first ever computer used for commercial business applications... [Read More...]

Here Comes HANA: SAP In-Memory Processing in Action

SAP’s “HANA” (High-performance ANalytic Appliance) was a big hit at last week’s TechEd in Las Vegas. Here’s a video that shows in-memory processing in action, with real-time simulation and taking action on the results. Share and Enjoy  Read More →