Data mining, data warehousing, decision support and knowledge discovery
make up the universe of D S * ( dsstar ), the only executive business newsletter
supporting strategic employment of these technologies.
The On-Line Executive Journal for Data-Intensive Decision Support
*** September 1, 1998: Vol. 2, No. 35 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:
CAN DATA MINING RESOLVE POLITICAL ISSUES?
BY INDERPAL BHANDARI
BY LOOKING BACKWARD WE CAN SEE THE FUTURE
BY JOHN THOMPSON
PALO ALTO MANAGEMENT GROUP LOOKS AT THE FORCES BEHIND DW/DS BIZ
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
CAN DATA MINING HELP IN RESOLVING POLITICAL ISSUES?
by Inderpal Bhandari, executive editor at large
Inderpal Bhandari is widely recognized as a leading researcher in data
mining and computer science. He is one of the few experts who have
successfully demonstrated how the emerging technology of data mining can be
translated into useful applications that offer a competitive advantage.
Recently, he formed Virtual Gold, Inc. to implement his technical vision.
Virtual Gold also offers a consulting service to help clients differentiate
themselves from their competitors via the use of data mining technology.
From 1990-1997, Dr. Bhandari was a member of the research staff at the IBM
T.J. Watson Research Center, where he received several awards for his
pioneering work in data mining and in software engineering. He was the
creator and project director of IBM's Advanced Scout, a data mining program
used extensively by coaches of the National Basketball Association to devise
new strategies based on the automatic identification of hidden patterns in
game data and video.
He was educated at Carnegie Mellon University (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer
Engineering, 1990), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (M.S.) and the
Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India (B.Engg). He has
published extensively in leading computer-related journals and conferences
and has deployed several cutting-edge technological solutions to business
problems.
Dr. Bhandari writes: "Too often, we see only the profit-making
justification for investing in data mining and related technologies while
losing sight of the fact that they can also help resolve issues of global or
national importance. In this column, I recount two such issues that have
been making the news in the last few weeks."
BY LOOKING BACKWARD WE CAN SEE THE FUTURE
by John K. Thompson
John K. Thompson is the Vice President of Marketing for Magnify, Inc.
Thompson has over 15 years experience spanning all major technology
management functions for software organizations. In his current role, as Vice
President of Marketing, Thompson formulates and executes the strategic
direction for Magnify, Inc. and the PATTERN product line. His technology
expertise includes knowledge discovery, decision support, data warehousing,
and database systems. Prior to joining Magnify, Inc., he held a number of
senior technology and marketing positions at PLATINUM technology, IBM, and
Metaphor Computer Systems. Thompson has consulted in Latin America, Europe,
and Asia regarding the issues around building world class data warehouses and
decision support systems. Thompson holds a Bachelor of Science degree from
Ferris State University and a MBA in Marketing from DePaul University.
Thompson writes: "To paraphrase one of the more frequently quoted
futurists, Watts Wacker of First Matter, to be a good futurist you must be a
better historian. I don't claim to be a futurist, but I do an excellent job
of watching the current landscape and researching the historical events that
are precursors of today's events. What are today's events? In the data mining
market, in my opinion, the weakest players out of the 100 odd firms in the
market are already dead and don't know it. How many does that knock out of
the race? Slightly over 50%."
INTEGRATED SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS DRIVE DATA
WAREHOUSE & DECISION SUPPORT BUSINESS
According to a recently released market research study from Palo Alto
Management Group (PAMG), SAS Institute Inc. is the leading independent
software vendor in the integrated data warehouse/decision support market. In
all, the eight companies identified together accounted for 46 percent of user
expenditures for data warehousing/decision support solutions in 1997. Today's
top players include SAS Institute, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Compaq
Computer, Sun Microsystems, NCR and Andersen Consulting.
EUROPEAN ENTERPRISE DECISION SUPPORT AND
INFORMATION ACCESS TOOLS MARKET AT $2.14 BILLION IN 1997
A new International Data Corporation (IDC) report valued the European
Enterprise Decision Support and Information Access Tools market at $2.14
billion in 1997. This was mostly due to relatively high growth in the
supposedly maturing spreadsheets market, although significant growth in
OLAP and query & reporting tools as well as data mining IDC found also
contributing to some extent.
WALLACE & WASHBURN RESEARCH REVEALS
IMPORTANT DATA MIGRATION ISSUES
The 1998 Data Migration Survey conducted by Wallace & Washburn, and
undertaken on behalf of Reliant Data Systems, reveals that data migration is
one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks when deploying new
applications and integrating existing applications.
ACTION ITEMS
Dollond & Aitchison Focuses on
Red Brick for First Data Warehouse
Dollond & Aitchison, one of the UK's leading opticians with over 400
branches nationwide, has succeeded in implementing a high-performance data
warehouse which will hold details of 24 million transactions on an
NT server which cost less than GBP 9,000.
Anubis Adopts Informatica's Next-Generation
Metadata Exchange (MX2) Architecture
Informatica Corp., a leading provider of software for deploying enterprise
business intelligence and analytic applications, has announced that Anubis,
a provider of next-generation data warehouse design technology, will support
Informatica's next generation Metadata Exchange (MX2) API (application
programming interface). The two companies will work together to enable their
respective software products to dynamically exchange technical metadata, with
the goal of helping customers reduce the time and cost associated with
designing and deploying robust data mart applications.
Sequent Customer NASD Regulation Wins Leadership Award
from The Data Warehouse Institute with Fraud Detection System
Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. has announced that its customer, NASD
Regulation, Inc., has won The Data Warehouse Institute's (TDWI) highest
distinction, the 1998 Leadership in Data Warehousing Award, for successfully
implementing one of the world's most sophisticated surveillance systems.
The NASD Regulation/Sequent solution was recognized as the best data
warehousing implementation among the 12 Best Practice Award winners, named by
TDWI earlier this year.
X-Set Technology Speeds Data Storage, Mining
Startup Digital Archaeology Corp. is looking to fill in one of the pieces
of the knowledge management puzzle with a new technology for storing and
mining data. The architecture, dubbed X-Set, will enable developers to design
structures for storing and analyzing data from a variety of sources and in a
fraction of the time that traditional architectures allow.
HP, Red Brick Scale to More Than a Terabyte
with 600 Concurrent Users in Real-World Retail Benchmark
Hewlett-Packard Company and Red Brick Systems, Inc. have announced their
strongest benchmark results ever in a proof-of-performance and scalability
(POPS) test. In a benchmark designed to simulate a real-world retail
environment, Red Brick Warehouse 5.1 and an HP 9000 V2200 Enterprise Server
running the HP-UX 11 operating environment successfully loaded, queried
and scaled a data warehouse to more than 1 terabyte of raw data with 600
concurrent users.
Informix Creates Data Warehouse, E-Commerce Divisions
As part of an internal reorganization announced previously, Informix has
created two new divisions aimed at boosting sales of its database software to
customers building data warehousing and electronic-commerce environments.
Informix also integrated its strategic alliance and developer relations
initiatives into a single business group.
MathSoft Introduces Next Generation of S-PLUS for Unix on Solaris
Upgrade Includes New Core Technology for Analyzing Large Data
Sets, Enhanced Financial Time Series Functionality
MathSoft, Inc., provider of a broad line of technical calculation and
analytical software for business and academia, has introduced S-PLUS 5.0 for
Solaris, a key new enhancement to MathSoft's statistical data mining product
family. S-PLUS 5.0 enables companies across a variety of industries to
leverage the powerful, multi-tasking environment of the Unix platform for
high-end statistical data analysis.
StorageTek Adds More Verticals to Warehouse Plans
After entering the data warehousing market with a combined tape and disk
storage product for telecom providers plus an initial data warehousing
service, StorageTek plans to unveil new partnerships, and to integrate new
World Wide Web-enabled information delivery and knowledge management for
markets that will encompass health care, finance, retail, and government.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"(T)he majority of data mining vendors, from the executive staff
to administration and all levels in between, have never seen or
operated a live application in a client environment."
CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 09.1.98
D S * INFORMATION
D S * welcomes bylined comments for publication.
All comments regarding editorial content should be sent to:
dseditor@tgc.com
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