Summary Bullets:
Though the new year dawns with monumental uncertainties for smart cities, a few flickering trends of yet-unknown strength and relevance seem to appear now on the horizon. Continue reading “Nascent Post-COVID Trends for Smart Cities”
Summary Bullets:
When the pandemic fades and conditions improve, the focus on COVID-19 will loosen and leave behind greater data literacy among the public. That’s good for data-driven smart cities — and it provides a more fertile environment for technology providers. Continue reading “Smart Cities: COVID-19’s Vaguely Silver Lining Is the Public’s New Comfort Level with Data”
Summary Bullets:
Take data analytics, predictive analytics, data visualization, AI, virtual reality, and gaming. Toss. The result could be a mess, but if developers skilled in each of these capabilities perform the ‘toss’ – either in a lavishly equipped lab or a garage – that mix might result in the game of the decade for decision makers. Continue reading “Prediction for the 2020s: AI, Analytics, VR, and Gaming Make a Decision Simulator”
Ask almost anyone to describe a smart city and you hear about technology. IoT, AI, and assorted other tech orchestrate lights, power and water, and buses for optimal performance. One thing you almost never hear about, however, is the people who would benefit. Continue reading “Listen First: The Smarter Way to Build a Smart City”
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics
Summary Bullets:
The Tableau brand will survive longer than feared only a month ago. The recent Tableau Conference brought welcome news from Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky: Einstein Analytics will become part of Tableau and become known as Tableau CRM, making the Tableau brand a principal part of Salesforce.
So begins a new chapter in the Salesforce-Tableau epic. Tableau, the once mighty asteroid, the analytics universe’s dinosaur annihilator, has been tamed. Continue reading “One Chapter Ends in the Tableau-Salesforce Epic”
Summary Bullets:
• The bulk of the oil and gas industry came late to data analytics, which is so important now as the industry endures a long decline and competes with alternative energy
• Oil and gas companies should recruit for analytics skills and leadership, such as from alternative energy competitors
The oil and gas industry has been discovering a bounty of something perhaps more valuable than new reserves: new sources of data, much of it from new 5G and IoT installations. The big question is whether they can exploit data with the same level of skill they exploit new deposits.
Exploiting data has become especially important now as the energy industry begins to exploit solar, wind, and other types of renewable energy. This new energy could be a new game for them, and it likely entails new metrics. Traditional energy companies will be poring over those metrics hoping to find guidance. Continue reading “Oil and Gas Producers Discover Major New Reserves — In Data”
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics
Summary Bullets:
• Oracle found the right time to market its scenario planning capabilities. Specialized vendors can also give good support, though few market for this planning method.
• The market for scenario planning support is ripe for new entries in a year of wildly discontinuous change.
Oracle has come out of the gate early with capabilities explicitly aimed at scenario planning — which in Oracle’s rendition of the classic method is at best a lightweight version that gets lost within the vendor’s rich planning ecosystem.
Whatever support Oracle offers for the venerable method is unclear. But at least it picked the right year to revive the name. True scenario planning would be useful to a business world that struggles to see its way past the pandemic. How does any business leader know which path offers the quickest, safest path? What if they bet on the wrong one? Continue reading “Oracle’s Scenario Planning is Early Out of the Gate, but Leaves Ample Room for Competition”
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics
Summary Bullets:
Underneath all the buzz of technology marketing is the steady hum of stuff just working. Part of that hum seems to have always been Teradata, which has been around so long that the name even goes back to when a terabyte of data was impressive.
It’s been humming for so long that it carries a stale stereotype — propagated even by some people who should know better. They still say it offers only data storage. Never mind its strong, nimble analytics wares. Continue reading “Teradata Tries to Shake Off Its ‘Just a Storage Vendor’ Stereotype”
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics
Summary Bullets:
• The new tool’s story-first approach may succeed in winning over the vast numbers of business users who never use data.
• The software maker, Toucan, should consider new messaging and take more seriously the threat from other vendors to imitate its approach.
How do you present data to those who would rather run away at the first sight of a dashboard? Multiple surveys over the years all come to a similar conclusion: roughly three quarters of business people feel this way. They could use data but never do. Now a product out of Paris, France works on a radical idea: message first, data second to deliver only what people “need to know.”
That data-second concept bucks the conventional assumption, that users want data to make their own observations and conclusions. And they want to drill down as far as questions may lead them.
Toucan Toco’s top down approach is absolutely not self-service. Presentations are created by authors, who are forced to simplify and focus data in a lockstep path with very few choices. Authors can’t even change fonts. Toucan Toco enforces simplicity.
Messages have such primacy that creators can actually sketch out a presentation with fake data to create placeholders for real data. That’s easy to do because Toco ignores an old assumption, that those engaged in data like to drill down. Toco gives them, as the product literature puts it, only what they “need to know.”
Toucan’s bold rejection of analytics industry dogma — self-service, data’s primacy, and almost infinite accommodation to a user’s inquiries — naturally inspires a question. What market is there? Continue reading “Story-First Data App Lands in North America, Tells ‘Only What You Need To Know’”
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics
Summary Bullets:
Back at Tableau’s first release in 2004, many data analysts felt their hearts stir. Some had already dreamed of data analysis that went as deep and as fast as the mind could go, but now Tableau made it possible. All they needed then was access to the data inside IT’s vaults. But that access to data was a problem for many IT departments, and there began a long insurgency. Continue reading “Tableau Still Helps People See and Understand Data, but Which People?”
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