ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
IBM'S MARK DAMICO TALKS ABOUT DM CHALLENGES
by Alan Beck, editor in chief
Mark Damico is Industry Solution Manager for the IBM Global Business Intelligence Solutions Unit. Damico is a GBIS team leader who focuses on developing and marketing the DecisionEdge series of industry specific data mart and data warehouse solutions. Before joining the GBIS unit, Damico held solution manager positions with IBM's RS/6000 and Power Parallel divisions. Prior to joining IBM in 1995, he held management positions with Eastman Kodak and the Bell & Howell Corporation. Damico earned a Bachelor of Science degree and Masters in Business Administration degree from California Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, where he graduated with honors.
In this candid interview, Damico noted the following with respect to businesses that are considering whether or not to invest in current data mining technologies: "I think there isn't even cause for an issue or debate. They will have to embrace these technologies to at least achieve parity with their competitors, let alone exceed the marketing ability of their competitors. However, when considering the options available, they'll find that there are basically only two types: The traditional "roll-your-own" version of warehouse where all the different components are developed specifically for them and their own unique requirements, and the newer generation of verticalized warehouse systems that have a number of preintegrated components."
DECISION TECHNOLOGIES IN DATABASE MARKETING: PART II
by Gene M. Ferruzza, Senior VP, Decision Technologies
For 14 years, Gene Ferruzza has provided integrated business solutions for clients in telecommunications, electric utilities, financial services, aerospace, manufacturing, and retail. He is an internationally recognized expert in strategic database marketing planning and implementation, as well as development and application of data marts, statistical and A.I. modeling, and decision systems for understanding and predicting human behavior. In addition, he directs research in statistical, neural, evolutionary, and hybrid modeling techniques, and the implementation of decision technologies for marketing programs and software productization. He has also developed and marketed his own database management and segmentation software and is currently advising in on-line market research services and products. Prior to CMS, he worked as a consultant and instructor for two leading neural network hardware and software providers (HNC and NeuralWare). Gene graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics.
In this second installment of an extensive multi-part series, Ferruzza writes: "Conceptually, decision processing in database marketing consists of three components that operate with the data: the data mart, data mining, and the decision system. It is useful to refer to these components of decision processing as 'decision technologies.' To be used successfully, each of these decision technologies requires not only hardware and software systems, but also processes, methodologies, and expertise." Part I of this series is available as D S * article 100073.
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF DATA MINING SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS: PART II
by Kurt Thearling
Kurt Thearling is Director of Advanced Analytics at Exchange Applications, a Boston based database marketing company, where he directs the use of data mining and visualization technology in EA's database marketing software and consulting practice. Over the past decade he has developed a number of data mining software products, including Thinking Machines' Darwin and Pilot Software's Discovery Server. He also an independent consultant in areas related to data mining and decision support technologies. His data mining web page can be found at http://www.santafe.edu/~kurt
In this final installment of a two-part series, Thearling observes: "Users do not necessarily understand the relationship between complex algorithm parameters and the performance that they will see. As a result, the user might naively change a tuning parameter in order to improve modeling accuracy, increasing processing time by an order of magnitude. This is not a relationship that the user can (or should) understand." Part I is available as D S * article 100074.
HBS International Moves Healthcare DW to Red Brick
Red Brick Systems has announced that HBS International, Inc. (HBSI), a
provider of comparative healthcare outcomes information, replaced an existing
data warehouse database with Red Brick to help improve business and increase
growth.
Vision Solutions Offers Enabling Software That Couples Mirrored
Databases of Distributed Systems With Workload Balancing
Global marketing, Internet commerce and data warehousing applications are
creating a new urgency among customers for unprecedented high system
scalability and availability, according to Vision Solutions Inc., developers
of the enabling software for IBM AS/400 clusters.
Oracle Bulks Up Application Server for Middle Tier
Oracle Corp. has new features in store for the forthcoming Application
Server Version 4.0 that will enable corporate users to more efficiently fill
the middle tier between legacy systems and thin clients.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Unfortunately, most data mining applications do not
differentiate between the model that is used to score a database
and the model representation that is presented to users."
-- Kurt Thearling, Dir. of Advanced Analytics,
Exchange Applications
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