A rising tide lifts all ships

We’re sure you’ve seen the news about IBM buying Netezza. Not only is the news a good thing for the business intelligence industry, but for Kognitio as well.

If you agree with the old adage that “a rising tide lifts all ships,” then Netezza’s good fortune means good news for other BI vendors as well. As an industry leader, IBM is in position to strongly influence trends: the technologies that people can and should use to make their companies more effective. Its purchase of Netezza indicates that IBM believes business intelligence will continue to grow in strategic importance at more firms, and that there’s a significant market to be served.

We believe they’re right. Moreover, we believe that companies like Kognitio and Netezza have made it possible for more mid-tier companies than ever before to realize and take advantages of the benefits that BI has traditionally offered far larger firms.

At Kognitio, of course, we’ve pioneered concepts such as commodity hardware-based data warehousing appliances and BI delivered on a SaaS basis. Both concepts are accepted as the norm today; in fact, more than half of our total business is trending toward implementations based on a SaaS delivery model.

So, what do we expect as the result of IBM’s purchase? Well, nothing but good things. IBM has validated the market for companies that may have been sitting on the fence about adopting BI technology, or deploying it at an organization through an appliance. Moreover, we believe the pace of innovation will actually accelerate, as companies like Kognitio deliver new ideas to the market…so that we can stay ahead of the behemoths. (We’re already working on a new concept that we plan to deliver soon.)

Overall, we’re pleased with this week’s news. We believe the greater awareness that the purchase of Netezza has generated means greater understanding of what we and other BI vendors are telling the market. Which is good news for everyone.

Bringing data analytics to the world of football

There are a number of solid reasons to utilize data analytics. It can be used to better understand and predict your customers’ future behavior based on prior purchases; it can be used to prevent fraud by seeking trends and patterns that may indicate abnormal activity; it can do a deep dive on huge amounts of data to help your company develop a better pricing strategy.

Or it can be used to pick the best players for your fantasy football team.

Computerworld ran this article, about a product manager who’s a fantasy football fanatic. She applies the same type of analytical thinking to creating her team that she does in her work. That is, she takes the available data, runs it through an analytic application, and figures out which players to choose: which are most likely to gain her points based on touchdowns or field goals, and which quarterback is probably going to have the best game on any given Sunday.

In doing so, she’s doing far more than the other team “owners” in her league. They basically rely on their gut feelings to choose their rosters. In that respect, they’re not that far removed from a number of business executives; a 2008 survey from Accenture revealed that 40 percent of business executives made important business decisions without using analytics.

Obviously, we think that’s not a wise move on the part of those executives. The more you can make solid decisions with the right data in front of you, the better your chances are of making the right decision.

The product manager says the other member in her league are aware that she’s using analytic software to help her draft her roster; “not that they like it very much, because it gives me an edge,” she says. It helps her make better decisions, which helps…regardless of whether you’re a fantasy team owner, or the owner of a very real business.

And the analytic approach works. The woman says in the last five years she’s been crunching the numbers before choosing her fantasy football rosters, she’s won her league three times. Let’s see: that’s a 60 percent winning percentage; finishing first in a league where finishing second counts for nothing.

That gets her the results she wants for another year. In the business world, the effective use of data analytics can deliver far more.