Category Archives: Business Intelligence

GoodData unveils major update to FlexQuery, the revolutionary analytics engine

Cloud-based data and analytics platform, GoodData, has released FlexQuery, a foundational component of its business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform. Forming a major cornerstone of its transformative vision for the future of augmented analytics and BI, FlexQuery builds upon GoodData’s commitment to providing open, powerful tools for data developers. FlexQuery, a composable data service layer,… Read more »

The post GoodData unveils major update to FlexQuery, the revolutionary analytics engine appeared first on Cloud Computing News.

Amazon enhances AWS with new analytics tools

AWSOn the eve of its AWS re:Invent 2015 event internet giant Amazon is positioning itself for a run at the business intelligence market.

Already announced is the Amazon Elasticsearch Service, is a managed service designed to make it easier to deploy and operate Elasticsearch in the AWS cloud, on which more later.

In addition the WSJ is reporting the likely launch of a new analytics service, codenamed SpaceNeedle, which is set to augment AWS with business intelligence tools. The reported strategic aim of this new service is to both strengthen Amazon’s relationship with AWS customers and allow it to broaden its total available market.

Back to the Elasticsearch service, BCN spoke to Ian Massingham, UK Technical Evangelist at AWS, to find out what the thinking behind it is. “This service is intended for developers running applications that use Elasticsearch today, or developers that are considering incorporating Elasticsearch into future applications,” he said “Elasticsearch is a popular open-source search and analytics engine for use cases such as log analytics, real-time application monitoring, and click stream analytics.”

Apparently Wikipedia uses Elasticsearch to provide full-text search with highlighted search snippets, as well as search-as-you-type and did-you-mean suggestions, while The Guardian uses Elasticsearch to combine visitor logs with social network data to provide real-time feedback to its editors about the public’s response to new articles.

Expect more AWS news as the re:Invent event gets underway. Already Avere Systems has unveiled Avere CloudFusion, a file storage application for AWS, that aims to provides a cloud file system to leverage Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) with the cost efficiencies of Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), all with the simplicity of network-attached storage.

NetDNA, YC’s Leftronic Partner on Real-Time CDN Monitoring

Content delivery network provider NetDNA today announced its partnership with Y-Combinator-funded Leftronic, to develop high-performance, secure and real-time data visualization dashboards for its CDN services.

Now, NetDNA or MaxCDN customers can get a bird’s-eye view of their traffic, including daily, weekly or monthly statistics on popular files, popular file types, status codes, cache hit percentage, statistics by location and more.  All of which are presented in a Web browser using Leftronic’s real-time, large screen metric dashboard platform.

The companies also worked together to provide dashboards measuring traffic on NetDNA’s Bootstrap CDN project, samples of which are available online.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Leftronic because monitoring traffic is a critical step to receiving the full benefits of our CDN service.  Now they can do that in a big and beautiful way using only a browser,” said Justin Dorfman, NetDNA’s Developer Advocate.

“We could see an immediate synergy between our two companies when NetDNA shared with us the demand for better CDN reporting it saw in its customer base,” said Rajiv Ghanta, CEO of Leftronic. “The company is truly developer friendly with its well-supported API and fast customer support.  We’re looking forward to a lasting relationship with the company.”

Leftronic has created a data visualization platform that helps companies monitor and track their business metrics. The platform has no software to download, instead everything is shown in a Web browser for easy accessibility and organization. The technology is combined with a simple-to-use front-end interface for visualizing the data and has an API for integrating custom company data.

With more than 10,000 customers trusting its content delivery services, NetDNA provides simple, efficient and affordable web performance optimization solutions that help customers to increase and improve their website speed. Most recently, NetDNA’s MaxCDN service has been its leading, popular solution among businesses because of its easy sign up system and versatile web performance acceleration.

 

Webalo Adds Mobile Analytics to Support Real Time Operational Intelligence

Webalo, Inc. announced today the general availability of a new version of its cloud-based enterprise mobility service. The product upgrade delivers Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to any smartphone or tablet so that mobile users can monitor, analyze, and act on real-time operational intelligence (RtOI) – the type of information that reflects how well the business is running.

This upgrade builds on Webalo`s ability to simultaneously monitor multiple backend applications and data sources from numerous vendors, including a range of BI platforms and ERP systems from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, in-house custom-built applications, or any other enterprise application vendor. With Webalo, users can receive sophisticated analytics on their smartphones or tablets, that provide real-time panoramic views of the enterprise, allowing them to determine what`s happening and, if anything needs to be done, take action directly from their device.”

Webalo can be easily configured to display dashboards on users` home screens so they can view KPIs in real time and, when there are deviations from normal, click on an icon to drilldown for more detail about the cause of particular problems so they can take immediate action – from their smartphone or tablet – to correct it.

“As the sole plant supplier to more than 150 Home Depot Inc. garden centers across seven states, we rely on Webalo to equip hundreds of our employees with the tools they need to optimize daily replenishment in all of our store locations,” said Joe Perret, Vice President, Systems and Technology of Bell Nursery, one of the nation’s largest greenhouse growers with growing operations in Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio. “Webalo`s mobility solution not only helps us track inventory levels and trends, but also enables our store employees to perform real-time transactions, ensuring accurate replenishment that meets customer demand. A comprehensive mobility solution is critical to the success of our business, and we are delighted to partner with Webalo.”

FOSE 2013: Cloud, Virtualization, Cybersecurity, Mobile Government, Big Data Featured

Cloud and Virtualization; Cybersecurity; Mobile Government; Big Data and Business Intelligence; and Project Management will be the featured tracks at FOSE 2013, each providing cutting-edge technology insights, policy updates, case studies and expert guidance to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs. FOSE 2013, the largest and most comprehensive event serving the government technology community, will take place May 14-16 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

“Late last year we surveyed our government and industry attendees to gauge the topics that are of most interest,” said Mike Eason, Vice President, Public Sector Events, 1105 Media, Inc. “Not surprisingly, cloud, mobile, big data/analytics and cyber came in at the top. It’s our job to ensure we are offering the education that supports the government’s needs around these issues. We are once again structuring our program to highlight these key trends, and will be drawing on the expertise of agency executives that have real past performance in the five areas to serve as speakers.”

Each track provides an in-depth look into the given topic, including:

  • Cloud and Virtualization will feature best practices and insights on technology trends, case studies and leading practices on planning, implementation and benefits realization.
  • Cybersecurity will examine the business of cyber, including detecting complicated malware and adversaries – insider and outsider, determining what data left the organization, developing defensive and preemptive measures to keep attacks from happening and managing risk-based compliance.
  • Mobile Government will offer tools, strategies and insights into hot issues such as BYOD, security, APIs and mobilizing enterprise systems, as well as achieving the goals of the Digital Government Strategy.
  • Big Data and Business Intelligence will focus on how to extract meaning from bits and bytes to reach business objectives, featuring case studies from federal agencies that have found useful intelligence from data, examine toolkits being used and highlight the management and policy challenges that come up in the process.
  • Project Management, developed in conjunction with the Project Management Institute, will provide best practices and trade secrets of agile project management to help the government professional advance their career.

A selection of confirmed session topics includes:

For more information and to keep up-to-date on the full program agenda, visit www.fose.com. To see how FOSE addresses the technology road ahead, view the FOSE 2013 infographic at www.fose.com/techtrends.

FreshBooks Launches Automatic Expense Import, Connecting Customer Accounts Directly to Their Bank

FreshBooks today rolled out Automatic Expense Import which automatically draws expenses in from bank accounts and gives users an easy way to track spending and to see their profit and loss at a glance.

This latest addition to the FreshBooks cloud allows small business owners to connect their financial institutions (including bank accounts and credit cards) directly to FreshBooks and have their expenses imported automatically into their account every day.

“Small business owners want to focus on serving their customers and on doing what they love, not on accounting,” said Mike McDerment, FreshBooks co-founder and CEO. “The ability to automatically import expenses from your bank enables small business owners to effortlessly manage their expenses, which helps them know exactly how much they’re spending and frees up times to work on more important things than paperwork. This is the promise of the cloud – a better way to work.”

Automatic Expense Import includes:

  • Quick one-time setup to connect financial institutions to your FreshBooks account
  • Automatically brings in new expenses daily, on an ongoing basis until disconnected
  • Accommodates multiple accounts including checking, credit card and PayPal
  • Imports the last 30-90 days of expenses data (depending on the bank)
  • Flags duplications and makes editing painless

FreshBooks Automatic Expense Import, which has been in use with over 3000 customers since October 2012, is now broadly available in North America with support for more than 9,000 US financial institutions and 61 Canadian financial institutions. Customers outside of the US and Canada can identify which banks they would like supported by completing a form request found on the FreshBooks blog. Going forward, Automatic Expense Import is included with all FreshBooks paid packages, and for a limited time it is also available to existing, free FreshBooks accounts as well.

FreshBooks supports a wide range of service-based small business types: designers, lawyers, marketing and IT professionals, plumbers, interior decorators – any business with 1-10 employees that serves clients with their time and expertise. Whether logging expenses at the coffee shop, on the way from a client meeting or at the airport lounge, FreshBooks Automatic Expense Imports will help small business owners to save even more time managing the money they spend.

New AWS Pipeline Tool Aims to Make Effective Use of Your Business Data

AWS Pipeline Diagram

Amazon’s new AWS Data Pipeline product “will help you move, sort, filter, reformat, analyze, and report on  data in order to make use of it in a scalable fashion. ” You can now automate the movement and processing of any amount of data using data-driven workflows and built-in dependency checking.

A Pipeline is composed of a set of data sources, preconditions, destinations, processing steps, and an operational schedule, all definied in a Pipeline Definition.

The definition specifies where the data comes from, what to do with it, and where to store it. You can create a Pipeline Definition in the AWS Management Console or externally, in text form.

Read more.


ClickFuel Gets $4 Million for Fuel Station Expansion

ClickFuel recently closed a $4 million Series B Round with Baird Venture Partners among the participants. The investment will be used to develop new products and services to expand the use of Fuel Station in data and business intelligence applications.

Fuel Station is a SaaS-based marketing analytics and performance management solution tailored for small to medium-sized businesses, providing more than 200,000 activated dashboards for SMBs to access, track and monitor marketing initiatives and results. Through more than two dozen partners, Fuel Station addresses the challenge SMBs face in maximizing online marketing spending, tracking campaign effectiveness and reducing the time necessary to analyze campaign data.

With Fuel Station, ClickFuel partners such as The E.W. Scripps Company, DudaMobile and Propel Marketing, a GateHouse Media company, provide their SMB customers with comprehensive marketing dashboards that address the complexity of marketing and advertising campaign performance. This dashboard delivers data on a single platform to empower decision-making and improve campaign productivity and presence. ClickFuel partners also leverage Fuel Station’s back-end business intelligence platform to improve account managers’ efficiency, differentiate their businesses in the crowded media industry, increase customer lifetime value and reduce customer churn.

“The Fuel Station dashboard has quickly become an invaluable tool for our account executives from coast to coast,” said Adam Symson, chief digital officer of Scripps, a leading media enterprise. “Our television stations and newspapers are focused on providing the market’s most-effective solutions for our advertisers, and Fuel Station makes it possible to measure and track our success so customers have actionable evidence that we’re helping them build their businesses.”

“Providing our customers with transparency into their marketing investments across all mediums helps us build trust and lasting relationships with them. As a convergent resource that fully integrates all components of a marketing campaign from pay-per-click to behavioral analytics to call tracking, Fuel Station makes it easy for our clients to visualize their campaigns and returns on investment, and helps our account managers better serve our customers,” said Dave Myer, director of advertising operations at DudaMobile, anonline platform that converts websites into mobile friendly websites.


Actuate Offers ActuateOne for Customer Communications Management

 

Image representing Actuate as depicted in Crun...

Actuate Corporation today announced ActuateOne® for Customer Communications Management (CCM), an integrated solution for top-tier organizations to design, process, store and deliver high-volume customer communications, including account statements, policies, and bills. ActuateOne for CCM is the first in a series of solutions based on the BIRT iHub, a next generation solution deployment framework for delivering applications that keep end-users up to date on the insights they need – where and when they are needed.

“ActuateOne for CCM is designed to give organizations ultimate flexibility to integrate individual components within their existing infrastructures, or to deploy the complete solution to manage their enterprise customer communications,” said Steve Jones, Vice President and General Manager, Actuate Xenos Group. “With the solution, organizations are now able to aggregate customer data for campaign analysis, create targeted customer communications and deliver them to customers through their desired channels, via print and mail or digital channels on desktop or mobile devices.”

“In Customer Communications Management, as with other information management environments, awareness of the entire CCM process tends to be fragmented and limited to an individual’s specific area of focus,” said John Mancini, President at AIIM International. “When information managers don’t have a sense of how the entire Customer Communications process fits together, it limits their ability to make optimal decisions, plus they waste an inordinate amount of resources trying to integrate technologies and processes. What are needed are end-to-end technologies that enable CCM to be understood across data acquisition, content composition, processing, archiving and delivery.”

Within an integrated ActuateOne for CCM environment, organizations can:

  • Build market-driven and customer targeted strategies: With
    sophisticated data acquisition, data mining and analytics,
    organizations can freely analyze customer data. Marketers can identify
    market-specific insights and create targeted communications.
    Communications can be defined to insert directed trans-promo, next
    best offers and targeted marketing messages tailored to each targeted
    customer segment.
  • Compose and create targeted customer communications: With
    end-to-end document composition using BIRT, ActuateOne for CCM
    simplifies the creation of customer communications. Taking raw data
    from varying data sources, the solution creates targeted and
    personalized customer communications for both modern-interactive and
    traditional-print delivery. Through the use of definable templates
    organizations can quickly create customer communications with
    organizational branding, customer data and personalized marketing
    messages.
  • Automate and manage customer communications: With leading
    document processing and transformation capabilities, ActuateOne for
    CCM easily stays on top of data deluge and the process complexity that
    accompanies it. The solution simplifies the processes involved in
    managing disparate systems and applications by managing the end-to-end
    communications process, from data acquisition to analysis,
    composition, archive and delivery to end consumers for print and
    electronic consumption. With the ability to define and automate
    business processes, ActuateOne for CCM enables administrators to
    control, log and audit the entire communications process.
  • Securely Store Customer Communications: Using state-of-the-art
    electronic archiving, ActuateOne for CCM addresses a key challenge
    faced by today’s IT personnel – to efficiently store and retrieve
    documents for numerous business purposes, ranging from business
    analytics to online presentment to regulatory compliance. The solution
    provides efficient search and retrieval and enables the retention and
    disposition to satisfy industry-specific regulatory requirements. With
    a built-in audit, logging and reports, ActuateOne for CCM provides a
    360° system view, letting administrators identify potential concerns
    before they become performance bottlenecks.
  • Delivering content where it’s needed, when it’s needed: With
    its electronic, multi-channel delivery architecture, ActuateOne for
    CCM facilitates secure internal and external access of customer
    communications, enabling organizations to efficiently deliver content
    to internal users and external customers. By using ActuateOne for
    CCM’s ability to leverage a single composition design, only a single
    format is required to enable delivery for print, web, mobile and touch
    enabled devices.
  • Enrich customer-facing applications: With the ability to build
    or integrate with application portals and dashboards, ActuateOne for
    CCM enables organizations to share useful information such as
    insurance policies, service specifications and billing details to
    enrich the individual customer experience. The solution connects
    customer-facing applications with relevant content to increase
    application functionality by delivering communications in traditional
    static formats like PDF for simple statement review, as well as
    interactive formats that allow users to analyze, aggregate, manipulate
    and graph data within the customer-facing application.


iQor Acquires HardMetrics

iQor, a provider of intelligent customer interaction and outsourcing solutions, today announced that it has acquired HardMetrics, a provider of cloud-based visual business intelligence, business analytics and reporting solutions. HardMetrics enables organizations to integrate disparate data from any part of the enterprise, then structures and translates that data into actionable insight, including user-friendly info-graphics, scorecards, charts, and dashboards.

With its customer and transactional databases, iQor’s industry-leading Big Data analytics engine QuantuMatch® helps clients uncover insights into their customer base. This agreement extends iQor’s analytics and self-service reporting capabilities by enabling on-demand, interactive drill-down reporting for more targeted customer interaction campaigns and faster recognition of, and response to, emerging trends.

“We are excited about the acquisition for our customers,” said Brian Turley, outgoing CEO of HardMetrics, Inc. “iQor brings resources, technology prowess, and market muscle that we simply could not match on our own.”

HardMetrics will continue to serve its existing customer base and operate as a standalone company. In addition, iQor will incorporate and market the HardMetrics Performance Manager product in a new offering called QeyMetricsSM for its broad base of customers.

“With iQor, HardMetrics clients now have the weight and ambition of an acknowledged technology and analytics innovator driving the product and the business,” said Bryce Engelbrecht, iQor Vice President and General Manager of HardMetrics. “We look forward to expanding HardMetrics’ proven, innovative platform for delivering operational metrics to business end users.”

“iQor has led the way in developing the digital network, tools and processes to capture, analyze, and act upon the Big Data generated with every customer interaction,” said Norm Merritt, President and CEO, iQor. “iQor’s analytics engine, coupled with HardMetrics’ leading data visualization tools, provides an unparalleled analytics toolset for both existing and new clients to help them generate value adding insight.”