WEBINAR: Discover the WHY behind your Customer Scores - June 10th 2015

On Wednesday June 10th, MeaningCloud welcomes special guest and Text Analytics thought leader Seth Grimes for a 1-hour webinar on ensuring you are getting the most from your customer feedback.

Seth will explain the importance of text analytics in new Customer Experience / Voice of the Customer scenarios, enabling you to understand massive amounts of unsolicited, unstructured customer feedback, in real time.

And the MeaningCloud Team will show how you can efficiently put these ideas into practice using our easy-to-use, customizable and affordable Meaning-as-a-Service tools.

Whether you are in the market research or customer experience management business or you are an end customer willing to take your customer insights to the next level, this webinar is for you.

• Text analytics in Customer Experience (CX) management. Why is it important?
• How text analytics complements/amplifies “traditional” CX? What specific benefits does it bring: understanding the reason behind the scores, extending to new, untapped feedback sources, analyzing CX in big data contexts… What new applications does it enable?
• What text analytics techniques are applicable: text classification, information extraction, sentiment analysis, user profiling…
• Analysis of some real scenarios/projects: survey analysis, contact center interaction, market research, social media analysis.
• How to implement this easily with MeaningCloud: APIs, personalization tools, add-in for Excel.
• Conclusions and Q&A.

Speakers

Seth Grimes
Alta Plana
 .
Antonio Matarranz
MeaningCloud

Jarred McGinnis
MeaningCloud

Register here

5 Freemium Cloud Business Intelligence Solutions

Freemium Cloud Business Intelligence Solutions provides limited capabilities for free use. IBM Watson Analytics, Microsoft Power BI, SAP Lumira Cloud, MicroStrategy Analytics Express and Birst Express are some of the cloud based fermium business intelligence solutions in no particular order…

Read it here

Top 37 software for Text Analysis, Text Mining, Text Analytics

Text Analytics uses statistical pattern learning to find patterns and trends from text data. SAS Text Analytics, IBM Text Analytics, SAP Text Analytics, Lexalytics Text Analytics, Smartlogic, ai-one, Autonomy, OpenText, Pingar, AlchemyAPI, Attensity, Clarabridge, Content Analyst, Oracle Social Cloud – Collective Intellect, Expert System, LingPipe, Provalis Research, Rapid Miner, Saplo, Angoss Text Analytics, AeroText, DiscoverText, NetOwl, Language Computer Corporation, Basis Technology, Oracle Endeca, MeaningCloud, StatSoft, Temis, Verint Systems, Ascribe, Forest Rim’s Textual ETL, muText Mu Sigma, Text2data, LinguaSys, Taste Analytics, and Megaputer..

Read about it here

Top 20 Free Software for Text Analysis, Text Mining, Text Analytics

Text Analytics is the process of converting unstructured text data into meaningful data. List of some of the Top 20+ Free Software for Text Analysis, Text Mining, and Text Analytics. QDA Miner Lite, KH Coder, TAMS Analyzer, Carrot2, CAT, GATE, tm, Gensim, Natural Language Toolkit, RapidMiner, Unstructured Information Management Architecture, OpenNLP, KNIME, Orange-Textable, LPU, Apache Mahout, Pattern, LingPipe, S-EM and LibShortText are some of the key vendors …

Read it here

ASF announces Apache Drill 1.0

The Apache Software Foundation has announced the release of Apache Drill 1.0.

Drill is a schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and cloud storage that uses columnar execution, data-driven query compilation, and the JSON document model to store data in various formats for Big Data analytics and BI.

Re-engineer Existing BI to Bolster Manufacturing

Instead of ripping and replacing your business intelligence systems, here's how to re-engineer your BI efforts to bolster manufacturing performance.

5 Signs It’s Time to Outsource Your Data Management Now

Take note of these tell-tale signs that point out the need to utilize outsourcing services for your organization

Redefine Big Data For Your Business

As with most initially disruptive concepts, lofty theories and abstract promises for big data’s many uses are rampant. Because of the cache that big data has gained, it is difficult to hone in on how it can be utilized to achieve specific business goals.

SLIDESHOW: Data Lakes Guide: 10 Requirements for Success

Data Lakes are gaining popularity as a way to store massive amounts of information for big data and analytics applications. But how are data lakes built? Here are 10 requirements for success.

9 popular ways to perform Data Visualization in Python

These are the  9 amazing ways to perform data visualization in Python from this great blog

WEBINAR: Advanced Analytics at Scale: because business outcomes matter - June 17, 2015

As the volume, variety and velocity of information increases, a larger burden is placed on organizations to distribute the right information, at the right time, to the people, processes and applications that rely on it to make better business decisions. But organizations are often challenged by a disjointed data environment and steep ramp-up periods that delay their ability to get to the outcomes they need.

Join us for this informative webinar, where you’ll learn how IBM BigInsights, IBM InfoSphere Streams and IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics can work together to help you:

• Tap into new data sources, such as streaming and machine generated data. 
• Enjoy rapid response times without sacrificing analytical depth. 
• Extend the value of your existing systems and applications. 
• Get deeper insights and better outcomes from very large, highly variable data sets.

Speakers
Andrew Popp, Portfolio Marketing for Hadoop, IBM
Mike McRoberts IBM Predictive Analytics Chief Architect

Register here

EMC acquires Virtustream for $1.2 billion to bolster hybrid cloud services

EMC said it will use Virtustream's portfolio as part of its new managed cloud services business.

ASF announces Apache Drill 1.0

The Apache Software Foundation has announced the release of Apache Drill 1.0

Drill is a schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and cloud storage that uses columnar execution, data-driven query compilation, and the JSON document model to store data in various formats for Big Data analytics and BI.

WEBINAR: Demystifying Macros with ER/Studio - June 9, 2015

Many data professionals want to simplify their routine or repetitive tasks in a data modeling tool but may not know quite how to do it. ER/Studio Data Architect includes a large selection of macros that can automate and simplify specific tasks and provides the ability to create and save custom macros for repeated use. In this session, Stanley Chan will show you all about macros in ER/Studio, including:

• What macros are and how to use them
• How to use the integrated editing tools in ER/Studio to create macros and event handlers
• A demonstration of built-in and commonly requested macros
• This will be a detailed technical session for those who want to understand and implement macros in their ER/Studio data modeling environment.

About the presenter:
Stanley Chan is a software consultant for Embarcadero specializing in ER/Studio. He has been supporting database tools at Embarcadero for over 10 years, serving as a software consultant, a technical account manager and a technical support representative. He is responsible for communicating and demonstrating the value of Embarcadero tools to current and prospective customers.

Register here

25 Data preparation tools and platforms

The purpose of data preparation is to transform data sets in a way that the information contained is best exposed to the tool.

43 Bigdata Platforms and Bigdata Analytics Software

Bigdata Platforms and Bigdata Analytics Software focuses on providing efficient analytics for extremely large datasets.

How to Secure Data in Hadoop

Many data security solutions leave data in Hadoop  vulnerable. Sudeep Venkatesh discusses a data-centric strategy to ensure that data in Hadoop are secure.

How to Address Common Big Data Pain Points

With any big data initiative come big challenges. Kaushik Pal discusses several pain points companies frequently face when launching big data programs.

SLIDESHOW: Gartner’s Cool Vendors In Big Data 2015

Gartner recently published its Cool Vendors In Big Data for 2015 list. To qualify, vendors must meaningfully and synergistically combine multiple types of functionality, the research firm says. Potential examples include big data storage in the cloud or big data analytics and privacy, Gartner added.

Now, let’s look at vendors that made the list – along with selected anecdotes from the Gartner report.

The Internet of Things: Is too Much Technology a Security Risk?

I recently read an interesting article on CIO.com about the Internet of Things compromising business security. The article brought up some interesting points with regard to the “devices” that manage our lives and the new concern that each device brings up.

We Have Metrics. Now What?

Three ways to measure and improve customer experience (CX). Interesting blog from Daniel Brousseau.

Choosing R or Python for data analysis? An infographic

Great infographic from datacamp discussing whether R or Python are better.  For my own part I'm starting to think you really need to know both as they are both good in certain circumstances. Read the blog here

WEBINAR: Building a Predictive Analytics Solution with Azure ML - June 16, 2015

Summary

Please join us on June 16, 2015 at 9:00am PDT for our latest Data Science Central Webinar Series: Building a Predictive Analytics Solution with Azure ML sponsored by Microsoft

In this webinar we will provide a detailed introduction to Azure ML.  Learn how to build and operationalize a predictive analytics model. We will also discuss:

• Typical steps involved in building a predictive analytics solution such as data ingestion, data cleansing, data exploration, feature engineering, model selection and evaluation of model results
• How to use machine learning with big data scenarios using tools like Hadoop and SQL Server to process and work with such data.

Speakers: 
Chirag Dhull, Product Manager, Azure Machine Learning
Dr. Fidan Boylu, Senior Data Scientist, Microsoft  

Hosted by: 
Vincent Granville, Co-Founder, Data Science Central

Register here

Think factory reset wipes your data from Android phones? Think again

Researchers have found that 500 million handsets may still leave users' personal details accessible even after a full factory reset.

WEBINAR: The Offline Challenge: Delivering Mobile Apps that Always Work - June 9, 2015

As more enterprises focus on driving great user experiences for their mobile apps, it’s becoming increasingly important to actually deliver on that user experience. While app design and ease of use are key factors in UX, even more important is the ability to deliver an application that works all the time, both online and offline.


Join Wayne Carter, Chief Architect of Mobile at Couchbase and Ali LeClerc, Mobile Product Marketing Manager as they discuss why offline app functionality is a crucial consideration for mobile applications and how NoSQL can help deliver mobile apps that always work.


Other topics include:

• The business impacts of a mobile offline solution
• Why an offline solution is often the most expensive (and valuable) piece of infrastructure mobile dev teams implement
• How NoSQL can help remove the complexity and costs associated with building apps that work online and offline

FEATURED SPEAKERS:

Wayne Carter - Chief Architect of Mobile

Ali LeClerc - Product Marketing Manager, Mobile

Register here

Where Big Data Projects Fail

Great blog by Bernard Marr describing the increase of big data projects and why half of them will fail.

Interesting blog from Bernard Marr discussing the people who have built empires on their ability to collect, interpret and use data in ways no one had thought of before

SLIDESHOW: 10 Secrets to Predictive Analytics Success

Anybody can predict the future. The real trick is predicting the future correctly -- using predictive analytics.

How the Open Data Platform is driving Hadoop's maturation

Maturity is something that online platforms achieve after fits and starts. Sometimes the maturation process is slow to play out, and sometimes it is lightning-fast. Interesting blog.

The Computers Are Listening - How The NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community’s "holy grail," the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest... This isn't a technical read but is a good run-down of the progress and challenges facing the intelligence community.

The Amazing Ways Uber Is Using Big Data

Great blog from Bernard Marr looking at Uber the controversial Taxi service and how it uses Big Data.

25 Data preparation tools and platforms - Predictive Analytics Today

25 Data preparation tools and platforms: Review of 25+ Data preparation tools and platforms including Platfora, Paxata, Datawatch,Microsoft Power etc.

The Internet of Everything Will Impact Everything, Including Your Next Tech Job

The Internet of Everything (IoE) is having an enormous impact on business. This phenomenon is completely reinventing the way businesses operate.

How Not to Drown in Numbers

There is a special sauce necessary to making big data work: surveys and the judgment of humans — two seemingly old-fashioned approaches that we will call small data... This is an insightful article by two data scientists, one from Facebook and one from Google, about how to find meaning in the never-ending deluge of big data. This is short and very worthwhile.

100+ Python utilities

Here is a well-documented collection of Python utilities that are not in the standard library. It's worth a look.

More tools for managing and reproducing complex data projects

A survey by Ben Lorica of the landscape shows the types of tools remain the same, but interfaces continue to improve.

The Best Big Data And Business Analytics Companies To Work For In 2015

InsightSquared, Paxata, Trifacta, Cloudera, Birst, Sumo Logic, Gainsight, Google, Ayasdi and Visier are the most recommended big data and business analytics companies by employees to friends.

WEBINAR: Responsive AppSec: Maintaining Development Agility with Application Security Testing - June 11, 2015

Your development team needs to integrate an Application Security Testing program—probably because of a compliance requirement. Testing takes time and resources, and your team already works hard to stay agile in order to be responsive to your customers. The process of implementing Security can be slow. So how can you possibly maintain agility when you add Application Security Testing into your daily workflow?

In this webinar, Darren P. Meyer, Senior Security Researcher for Veracode, focuses on practical ways for development teams to help build and improve their organization’s application security program. The goals is to achieve a continuous, responsive quality assurance process that integrates well with delivery, especially with Agile and DevOps methodologies.

Development and security teams gain practical tips on how to:

• Work together to preserve development and delivery agility
• Leverage automation to build Application Security Testing into daily work
• Integrate security requirements into your quality program with minimal disruption

FEATURED SPEAKER:

Darren P. Meyer, Senior Security Researcher, Veracode

Register here

Tap Into Customer Insight Ecosystems

Three major trends reveal the future of customer insights -- and their potential business implications.

Expand Your Big Data Capabilities With Unstructured Text Analytics

Finding structures, patterns and meaning in unstructured data is not a simple process. Here's how to start.

Can New Patient Care Systems Knock Down Data Silos?

The need to better track and manage patients across acute, ambulatory and home care settings is a key driver of the rapid adoption of new digital health systems, new research suggests.

Intel Pursuing Altera (Again) for IoT and More?

Intel is in discussions again to buy Altera, which specializes in solutions that could bolster Intel's embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives, according to reports.

Courts docs show how Google slices users into “millions of buckets”

Google watches most everything you do and say online. It reads your email, peers over your shoulder while you browse, knows what you watch on YouTube, and — by tracking your devices — even knows where you are at this very moment. And that's just the beginning. By using advanced statistics and data mining techniques, Google knows far more about you than you likely ever imagined. Fascinating read.

Open source threatens to eat the database market

The database market has largely been impervious to open source pricing pressure. That may be about to change.

Building a Top-Performing Analytics Team: Unicorns Wanted

Gartner research director Lisa Kart discusses a recent INFORMS panel session that she recently participated in about managing a top analytics team.

WEBINAR: Allrecipes: Growing the World's Largest Digital Food Brand Through Data Visualization - June 09, 2015

Please join us on June 9th, 2015 at 9am PDT for our latest Data Science Central Webinar Event: 
Allrecipes: Growing the World's Largest Digital Food Brand Through Data Visualization sponsored by Tableau Software.

Allrecipes, the world's largest digital food brand, received more than a billion visits annually from home cooks around the world, across PCs, smartphones and tablets. Find out how Allrecipes is leveraging data visualization to bring real-time digital food behavior insights to their internal teams, the media, technology partners and the world's largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands in actionable, timely, and meaningful ways. The Allrecipes team will discuss their Tableau deployment, growing adoption, and uses for marketing, public relations, sales and improved customer experience.

Speaker: Grace Preyapongpisan, Vice President, Business Intelligence, Allrecipes

Hosted by: Tim Matteson, Co-founder, Data Science Central

Register here

Big Data Professionals: Next Career Steps

With exponentially expanding volumes of data and new applications, staying informed and ahead of the next headline is the “edge” many professionals need to succeed in the workplace.

IBM Expands Watson Analytics Partnerships to Help Fight Cancer

 IBM is furthering the expansion of its Watson data-analytics technology into health care through partnerships around human gene analysis and cancer treatment

Intelligent People but Bad Choices? Try Using Analytics

Interesting blog in +Information Management using horse racing as an example of where analytics could be used.

Why Healthcare Big Data Analytics Needs the Internet of Things

There are many ways to define the concept of healthcare big data analytics.  At its core, “big data analytics” is simply the joining of two or more previously disparate sources of information, structured in such a way that insights can be drawn from the comparison or examination of the new, expanded data set.

SLIDESHOW: 10 NoSQL Enterprise Use Cases

NoSQL databases are increasingly popular for a range of data-intensive applications that require horizontal scaling. In fact, the NoSQL market will enjoy a 35.1 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2020, reaching $4.2 billion by that year, according to Allied Market Research. Here are 10 potential uses cases for NoSQL in your business, care of Couchbase.

From SQL to DAX: Joining Tables

by Angela Guess

Jack Vaughan recently wrote for Search Data Management, “Typically built for speed and designed for specific purposes, NoSQL databases forgo the rigid database schemas of SQL-based relational software.

WEBINAR: Using electronic health records for better care - June 18 2015

Join Stanford Assistant Professor Nigam Shah as he shows you methods that transform unstructured patient notes into a de-identified, temporally ordered, patient-feature matrix. Four use-cases will be examined, which use the resulting de-identified data matrix to illustrate the learning of practice-based evidence from unstructured data in electronic medical records.

Register here

Hadoop adoption limps along - so perhaps big data isn't such a big deal?

New research from analyst firm Gartner paints a picture of tentative take-up of Hadoop big-data technology, with two causes emerging as the culprits.

Two recent Watson Analytics stories

Tow recent stories about Watson Analytics:

Watson Analytics Pro rolls out with added database, collaboration support

Watson Analytics Professional also comes with connectors to cloud storage providers Box and Dropbox.

IBM Bolsters Watson Analytics, Big Data Tools

IBM continues to bolster its business analytics and big data initiatives across Watson Analytics in the cloud; Bluemix developer tools; and Power Systems hardware.

How individualism and personalisation are redefining self-service BI

Gartner has recently predicted that by 2017, most business users in addition to analysts in organizations will have access to self-service business intelligence (BI) tools to prepare data for analysis. But how has this shift happened?

Less Noise but More Money in Data Science

A report this week from Forrester Research described the challenge ahead. “Businesses are drowning in data but starving for insights,” the report began. “Worse, they have no systematic way to turn data into action.”  Read it here on +The New York Times

Data mining against terror

Fascinated by the idea of using data for counter-terrorism applications, Wassim Zoghiami explains how he mined data about the frequency of hashtags and particular groups of the words in tweets from more than 50,000+ ISIS-connected Twitter accounts to determine how often ISIS attacks occur, what different types of terror strikes are used in which geopolitical situations, and many other phenomena.

Investigating Spark’s performance

A deep dive into performance bottlenecks with Spark PMC member Kay Ousterhout on +O'Reilly

WEBINAR: 7 Reasons to combine SPSS Statistics and R - May 26, 2015

According to the Rexer survey,* R is the analytic software of choice for data scientists, business analysts, and data miners in the corporate world. Despite R's popularity, adoption of R has lagged due to a few limitations like:

• Collaboration & Deployment - R makes sharing work among an analyst team difficult, especially when team members do not have the same level of R knowledge.  Also, using R to integrate predictive outputs into an operational environment can be difficult.
• User Interface - R does not have a modern graphical user interface, which makes it difficult for those who are not R programmers to use it.
• Learning curve - R is not easy to learn for everyone. Not everyone is a programmer.
• Data Complexity - R does not easily connect to databases natively.
• Output - Production of publish-ready output is difficult.
• Performance & Scalability - R can very quickly consume all available memory.
• Enterprise security - The security of the packages that you download is not assured.

So if some of these challenges or limitations resonate with you, then join this webinar to really understand how you can overcome all these limitations by integrating R with IBM SPSS Statistics.

Speakers:
Jon K Peck, Senior Software Engineer, IBM SPSS
Murali Prakash, Product Marketing Manager, IBM

Hosted by:
Tim Matteson, Co-founder, Data Science Central

Sponsored by IBM - register here

WEBINAR: Managing Big Data Workloads in Hybrid Environments Across SaaS, PaaS, and On-Premise - May 20, 2015

Historically, business processes were located only in private data centers with all the servers behind firewalls.

That traditional model is evolving.

Today, organizations appreciate the cost savings that cloud solutions can provide, and application developers are looking to a variety of hosting platforms, including SaaS, PaaS, and hybrid models.

But along with this new model come new challenges, including security, data privacy, regulatory compliance, access management, and auditing that prevent companies from moving everything to the cloud.

A hybrid cloud solution can address these challenges while delivering the cost savings that cloud provides. Attend this webcast to learn how to optimize and control business process execution across hybrid environments. Hear IT industry analyst and consulting firm Enterprise Management Associates describe how it addresses its workload automation needs in a cloud environment.

Attend to understand:

• How big data and analytics is changing approaches, roles, and skills in the cloud era 
• Business drivers for cloud solutions 
• How to develop an effective hybrid cloud strategy 
• Ways that automation enables the decoupling of workloads from physical resources 
• How to smoothly transition from on-premise to cloud with ITSM tooling that helps manage end-to-end the applications, regardless of where they are hosted. 

Register today to learn how to capitalize on the advantages that hybrid cloud offers for managing big data workloads.

Awesome R

Here's a resource that's well-suited for the Awesome moniker. This collection is for R frameworks, packages, and software and is gaining fans quickly. There's a lot here to like and it's very well organized. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Open Source Business Intelligence: Then and Now

We've come a long way since the early days of open source BI. Here's a look at the evolution and the true value-add.  Read the blog here on +Information Management

Systems of Insight Will Power Digital Businesses

Big data, advanced analytics and agile BI are all about turning data into insight. But that is only part of the solution. Read this blog on +Information Management

WEBINAR: Putting Your Predictive Analytics to Work – 5 Lessons from a Decision Management Guru - May 21, 2015

When it comes to getting the most from your analytics, your ROI is only as good as your implementation. So join Angoss software and the foremost expert in Decision Management, James Taylor, to learn some key lessons that will help you get from making predictions to taking action. Then, Angoss Software’s Tom Zougas will discuss some ways that organizations are turning their predictive analytics into prescriptive analytics.

Register here.

IBM, Facebook team up on targeting digital ads, THINKLab initiative

Facebook has the channel (not to mention billions of eyeballs) for the ads, while IBM has the big data crunching power to determine (and potentially sway) the results.

WEBINAR: From Insight to Action: Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics - June 2, 2015

Predictive analytics has become an imperative for organizations as they strive to incorporate data-driven decision making into their processes by understanding potential future outcomes. Prescriptive analytics can then build on this foundation by answering the eternal question "What should we do about this?"

Join us for this latest DSC webinar to learn how IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics can help you uncover patterns and trends in your data and how IBM Decision Optimization can be leveraged to incorporate those insights into optimal decisions. See how IBM analytics lets your understand your data with ease and speed and translate that understanding into value.

Speakers:
Mikhail Lakirovich, Product Marketing Manager, IBM

Register here

Statistics: Is This Big Data’s Biggest Hurdle?

Big Data is less about the data itself and more about what you do with the data. The application of statistics and statistical principles on the data helps you extract the information it contains.

Take a SMART Approach to Big Data Analytics

Bernard Marr discusses how taking a focused approach, based on specific business objectives, can alleviate the stress of tackling a business challenge as daunting as big data analytics.

WEBINAR: Creating Actionable Insights from Life Sciences and Healthcare Data May 14, 2015

Life sciences and healthcare organizations sit on mountains of structured and unstructured information. Understanding this data can be the key to faster diagnoses, new and better therapies, as well as more efficient and effective treatments. Data is often spread out across the enterprise and must be integrated in order to analyze it and discover hidden actionable insights. Results must be contextualized in order to quickly identify and locate relevant information.

In this live webinar, join Vassil Momtchev, head of Ontotext Insights Platform as he discusses the application of semantic technology and text analysis in life sciences and healthcare data. Vassil will cover three use cases which are commonly applied in this domain:

• Data Modeling - Utilizing ontologies when creating text mining algorithms for better results.
• Data Mining - Processing complex business documents to extract knowledge from unstructured data.
• Data Fusion - Semantic integration of internal life sciences, health care and clinical data along with publicly available data sources.

This webinar will last approximately one hour and attendees will have the opportunity to ask Vassil questions.

Register here

WEBINAR: Get Smart About NoSQL

If you have rapidly changing schemas, or lots of unstructured or semi-structured data, you know how painful it is to consolidate your information in a relational database. But what if you could avoid much of that pain with a NoSQL database?

In this free, 60-minute webinar, join MarkLogic in a discussion of how NoSQL simplifies modeling multi-structured data, and why organizations of all sizes are using Enterprise NoSQL to…

• Reduce cycles associated with data modeling
• Eliminate the need to know everything up front
• Unify all data types – virtual or otherwise

To show how easy it is, we’ll ingest multi-structured data from two different sources and build an application on the fly! We’ll even point you to the ingredients –the database and the dataset– so you can do the same

Go here to read summary and register.

WEBINAR: Demystify your Data Flows for Better Regulatory Compliance May 19 2015

There’s never been more business data, more data sources – and more data regulation. As a result, financial services firms are forced to divert resources from initiatives that move the business forward to those that keep it compliant.

This one-hour webinar will highlight:

• best practices for balancing data regulation with business growth

• how your company can efficiently provide the increased transparency demanded by regulation

• which new technologies can eliminate the manual, costly, and often error-filled adjustments that result when using spreadsheets and legacy systems.

Presenter:
Chris Pereira, Senior Sales Engineer, Lavastorm Analytics

Register here

WEBINAR: Model Confidence for Master Data May 14, 2015

Although master data management (MDM) systems have been deployed in numerous industries and organizations, the vision of creating an overall “single source of truth” is beginning to yield to a more pragmatic perspective of providing visibility to shared information about uniquely-identifiable entities within the enterprise. This more mature approach sheds light on some of the potential gaps associated with the typical out-of-the-box data models for customer or product.

In this webinar, David Loshin will address data modeling for MDM systems, and share insights about:

• Some of the complexities emerging from reliance on canned master data models
• Alternatives for revising how master data entities are viewed and consumed within the enterprise
• How a consumption-oriented engagement process will help the master data modeler devise thoughtful conceptual and logical representations of shared master data

He will also discuss how these different ways of looking at master data modeling will help reduce complexity for master data adoption, system interoperability, and legacy migration.

Register here

Hadoop and beyond: A primer on Big Data for the little guy

Not every byte in your pipeline deserves to fly first class, but it also shouldn't be left to molder in tape storage.

Two recent SAS news iems

Free SAS Software Arrives Via Amazon Cloud

To help close the analytics skills gap, SAS is offering a free version of its software via Amazon Web Services (AWS) for students, educators, researchers and anyone who wants to learn about SAS's offerings.

SAS Pushes Big Data, Analytics for Cybersecurity

SAS is connecting the dots between cybersecurity, big data and analytics at this week's SAS Global Forum Conference in Dallas.

4 Steps to Building Data Science & Analytics Teams

Companies that have “data scientist” roles in their organizations are far more likely to succeed with analytics and data-driven decisions. Here are four ways to build that talent base, according to new research.

The Rise Of The Chief Data Officer

Sometimes change has to be accompanied by numbers. That is the foundation on which the Big Data revolution is built.  Read about it here on +BusinessIntelligence.com

Also read this separate post here on +Datafloq

Reducing big data using ideas from quantum theory makes it easier to interpret

A new technique of visualizing the complicated relationships between anything and anything using quantum theory - sounds spectacular if it works.  Head about it here.

Top 50 open source web crawlers for data mining

A web crawler (also known in other terms like ants, automatic indexers, bots, web spiders, web robots or web scutters) is an automated program, or script, that methodically scans or "crawls" through web pages to create an index of the data it is set to look for. This process is called Web crawling or spidering.  Read the article here.

What Is The Profession Of Data Science Really About Now And In The Future?

We’ve all read about the shortage of data scientists from McKinsey, heard about the salaries, and know about the volume of recruiter emails.   Here's the perspective of a practicing Data Scientist.

Is Data Becoming the New Middle Manager?

Startups are keeping head counts low, and even eliminating management positions, by replacing decision-makers with data. Here's how that's going.

The Only Probability Cheatsheet You'll Ever Need

This 8-page PDF includes a comprehensive suite of notes summarizing important probability concepts, formulas, and distributions, with examples, stories, and solved problems.

MapR declines Open Data Platform invitation

MapR declines Open Data Platform invitation, trades barbs with Hortonworks over its relevance to Hadoop and relationship with the ASF

WEBINAR: Best Practices for Deploying Pervasive, Self-Service Analytics May 13th 2015

Featuring Dan Vesset, IDC
Senior Market Analyst and Program VP, Business Analytics and Big Data

Although buzzwords within the analytics industry frequently change, one constant thread unifies the market: demand for self-service data access and analysis. Data scientists expect it, business analysts need it, business managers hunger for it. Yet, because top performing companies need more than just data visualization, addressing the full spectrum of self-service requirements, from data access and governance to ad-hoc analytics, requires tremendous collaboration between business, IT, and analytics functions.

In this webinar, IDC's lead market analyst and program VP of Business Analytics and Big Data, Dan Vesset, will share the benefits, pitfalls, lessons learned, and recommendations for deploying pervasive, self-service analytics throughout your business.

Register here.

WEBINAR: How to start with Shiny May 20th 2015

Learning to use Shiny is easier than you may think. Many R users have already learned to use Shiny to create attractive, interactive data products. This webinar will help you do the same.

In this talk, Garrett Grolemund will show you how to start building your own Shiny apps. You'll learn how to create the basic ingredients of an app---a set of inputs, a set of outputs, an attractive layout, and a set of instructions that describe how your app will react. He will also demonstrate several helpful patterns that you can use in your apps.

Sponsored by RStudio.  Register and more details here.

Two Nepal related data stories

Two Nepal related data stories:

How The Candy Crush Of Data Is Saving Lives In Nepal

The UN and Frog have teamed up on a platform that's unifying data and first responders alike. It looks like a great tool the only bad thing I can see is why no one thought of it and implemented it sooner.

How Nepal's earthquake was mapped in 48 hours

One of the most important challenges facing rescuers is knowing which roads are still open. This article from Wired describes how detailed, post-earthquake maps were created by combining data from satellites, social media, and news outlets. Surprisingly, there's not much automation.

Top ways to use Big Data in projects

Do you know what are the ways to use Big Data in projects? What is the role of data strategies in Big Data? Today, data is multiplying at a rapid speed. It is expected that data created by us will reach 44 trillion gigabytes or 44 zettabytes by 2020. Here’s the top ways to use Big Data in projects.

Can big data be your big ticket to stock market success?

Big data could be used to predict how the stock of a certain company will fluctuate over time given the right information. Here’s how.

WEBINAR: Data Governance – Best Practices & Land Mines May 21, 2015

While the ability to access and analyze Big Data gives your company a competitive advantage, it also introduces significant new risks and challenges.

Relevant issues include tracing data sources and lineage; auditing changes made to data and data management policy; and ensuring users see only the data for which they are authorized.

Most organizations already struggle with implementing these concepts, making data governance a significant challenge.

In this webcast, you will learn from industry thought leaders -- Stefan Groschupf, CEO of Datameer, and Andrew Brust, Datameer’s Senior Director of Product Marketing and ZDNet’s Big Data blogger – some best practices and land mines in Big Data governance, including:

Being regulation-compliant without locking users out of their data
Tracing data visualizations back to their source
Enabling self-service data discovery while keeping IT in the loop

Register for this webinar now to learn how to secure your Big Data environment.

Hosted by Datameer

EVENT: Achieve new insights with Self-Service BI

Join a panel of expert presenters starting this June for a complimentary one day event, Rediscover your business: Achieve new insights with self-service BI, — and learn the latest insights and techniques that companies use to get timely and accurate information to their users, securely and confidently.

Attend and learn:
Capabilities and requirements for fluid, self-service BI
The right analytics strategy based on what your business needs to get from its data
Guidelines to turn unstructured data into actionable intelligence
Insight into security models, governance, and data sovereignty needs
What hybrid cloud offers to strengthen your self-service analytics capabilities
This limited-time engagement features case-studies of successful analytics hybrid-cloud implementations, demos, and opportunities for you to network with peers and subject-matter experts. You’ll get personalized answers to challenges that could be holding your company back from smarter business intelligence.

View the agenda and reserve your complimentary seat.

We hope to see you at one of our upcoming 15 North American and European cities, including,
Phoenix, AZ - June 9
Portland, OR - June 10
Denver, CO - June 11
Washington, DC - June 16
Philadelphia, PA - June 18
Miami, FL - October 13

Sponsored by IBM

Subscribe to Data Informed Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics: Which Are You Measuring?

The massive amount of data collected by companies raises the issue of determining which data is relevant to which business goal. Sreeram Sreenivasan of Ubiq offers tips for identifying actionable metrics and avoiding interesting-but-noisy data.

The 7 Best Data Science and Machine Learning Podcasts

Learn the basics and keep up with the latest news in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence by listening to these great podcasts

The Third Phase of Big Data

Sneakernet is making a comeback with the advent of Big Data. There's gotta be a better way.

WEBCAST:Free Training on SQL Server Indexes, Clusters, Availability Groups, and Database Mirroring

Want to brush up your skills on SQL Server over the next few months? Brent Ozar Unlimited have got free webcasts coming your way from May to August! Don’t miss out, register today and get these free events on your calendar right away.

Who's Hot In Analytics & Business Intelligence

Business intelligence software has pushed beyond standard query, reporting, analysis and publishing capabilities. Here's a look at the BI market leaders and trends.

Analytics and the Internet of Things: The Big Disconnect

The Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics software for the most part remain separate islands. But over time, more IoT systems will connect with analytics workloads that are distributed over networks, new research suggests.

WEBINAR: Performance Tuning and Optimisation of MongoDB

Determining the root cause of performance issues is a critical task for Operations. In this webinar, we'll show you the tools and techniques for diagnosing and tuning the performance of your MongoDB deployment. Whether you're running into problems or just want to optimize your performance, these skills will be useful.

How Amazon Swooped in to Own Cloud Services

Amazon’s cloud business may be the fastest-growing corporate technology business of all time and executives contend that it can grow to be bigger than the company’s $83 billion-per-year retail operation.

Exact maximum clique algorithm for Large or Maximum Real Graphs

Here's an explanation of how BBMCSP (an exact maximum clique algorithm tailored for massive real networks) works.

Hexagon is the new circle

The Zeta Architecture is an enterprise architecture that enables simplified business processes and defines a scalable way for increasing the speed of integrating data into the business. Using Google as an example, Jim Scott explains the Zeta Architecture.

WEBINAR: Move Your Enterprise from a Table Centric View to an Entity Centric View - May 07, 2015

This event is presented by O’Reilly and sponsored by Novetta.

You have successfully stored large amounts of raw data into Hadoop for advanced analytics.  But now what?  How do you analyze this data from a perspective that makes the data meaningful to provide actionable insight? Why is it so important for enterprises to think about their data from the perspective of entities and not tables?  Our discussion will focus on the following topics:

How much guesswork is involved in trying to analyze data?
Importance of unifying data without changing the source data
Why it's difficult to combine data from multiple sources and the problems that occur
Why not just use Pig or Java to write rules for combining data?

Register here.

WEBINAR: Managing Big Data Workloads in Hybrid Environments Across SaaS, PaaS, and On-Premise - May 20, 2015

Hosted by Data Informed, sponsored by IBM

Historically, business processes were located only in private data centers where all the servers are behind firewalls. This traditional model is evolving. As organizations come to appreciate the cost savings that cloud solutions can provide, application developers are looking to a variety of hosting platforms, including SaaS, PaaS, and hybrid models.

But along with these cost advantages come challenges including security, data privacy, regulatory compliance, access management, and auditing that prevent companies from moving everything to the cloud. A hybrid cloud solution can address these challenges while delivering the cost savings that cloud provides.

Attend this webcast to learn how to optimize and control business process execution across hybrid environments. Hear IT industry analyst and consulting firm Enterprise Management Associates describe how it addresses its workload automation needs in a cloud environment.

Attend to understand:

• How big data and analytics is changing approaches, roles, and skills in the cloud era

• Business drivers for cloud solutions

• How to develop an effective hybrid cloud strategy

• Ways that automation enables the decoupling of workloads from physical resources

• How to smoothly transition from on-premise to cloud with ITSM tooling that helps manage end-to-end the applications, regardless of where they are hosted.

Register today here to learn how to capitalize on the advantages that hybrid cloud offers for managing big data workloads.

WEBINAR: Designing Applications in the era of IoT May 12 2015

The demand for smarter data-driven apps, powered by embedded “intelligence” continues to grow as organizations look to better understand and engage the new mobile and social consumer and create competitive advantage. In fact, Forrester predicts smart computing software will become a $48 billion market, while Gartner projects that 25% of analytic capabilities will be embedded in business applications this year.  From personalized portals, to wearables, to connected devices that have been wired up to the Internet of Things (IoT), the data that will feed – and be consumed by a new generation of information apps – is all around us. Yet, just as moving to a mobile-first design mindset required some new skills and tools, designing information apps in the era of IoT is very much an art and a science.

Starting with an understanding of the key roles of analytics, we can look at the best ways to attach data to experiences, and how to embed insights that boost user adoption and engagement. We’ll review these approaches, as well as how and why analytical tools are becoming more mobile, more predictive, and more embeddable in nearly any app or device.

During this webcast you will learn:

The top use cases for embedded analytics, and how an “analytic process” can guide the transformation of big (and small) data into useful insights and interactions
How our integrated design approach – based on open source foundations and rich APIs – shorten the time to connect to new data sources, deploy apps securely, and display interactive data visualization at scale, in any app, on any device (even a smartwatch!)
Why good information design and emerging best practices for embedding analytics are key to delivering more personalized information, driving user adoption, and delighting end-customers

Register here.

Demand for Data Scientists, Math Experts Continues Surge

Strong math skills are a key to landing some of the best U.S. job opportunities -- particularly data scientist positions, according to job search portal CareerCast's 2015 Jobs Rated report. Four of the 10 best jobs focus on mathematics, the study says.  Read here on +Information Management

Don't Let Your SaaS Solutions Become Tomorrow's Data Silos in the Cloud

Can your SaaS platforms support data and workflow integration or are they data silos in the cloud? Interesting blog from +Isaac Sacolick