For some odd reason, the open-source Apache Hadoop ecosystem consists of cleverly named components that seem to have escaped from the Central Park Zoo. You may be aware that the little yellow elephant named Hadoop was actually a stuffed toy that Doug Cutting’s son owned. (Doug is the co-creator of
From figuring out the optimal price a company should charge for soup to forecasting an organization's financial outcomes, each day brings a new business challenge for Wendy McHenry, systems engineer at SAS. Her "How can we help?" attitude is only part of the equation for successful customer relationships. Find out how math
Collecting data quickly and efficiently is a focus for businesses regardless of their size. For small and mid-sized businesses, successfully managing data without being a burden on an understaffed and overworked IT department can be an added challenge. Plus, there is the added responsibility of making sure ACCURATE data is
Ever since the term "big data" has popped up as a hot topic, you may have also heard about this "new" role called the data scientist. This is an important role that helps derive insight out of any sized data by applying knowledge about analytics to help solve business problems. I would argue that
Here’s the thing, if you are a small or midsize business, you realize (better than anyone) how there is really nothing small or midsize about what you do. It is simply business ... and just like with all the Fortune 500 monster companies out there, you face the same dilemmas
Thanks to Illumino, the citizens of Datapolis are still able to get their medicine and Frackture is being kept at bay; however we both have our hands full and a new crisis is on the horizon. Our data scientists and engineers have informed me that a new evil force is
SAS customers are both bright and generous. Recently, I met several who gathered to discuss SAS Enterprise Miner and SAS Model Manager predictive analytics and data mining software. Hiring the best I loved listening to their discussion on what they look for and how they find the people who will
There's recently been a lot of discussion and release of products around high-performance analytic architectures and in-memory computing. It seems like every vendor in the BI and analytics realm has jumped on this bandwagon. Is it all the same stuff? Or are there signficant differences? No question in our minds, the
Retail is one of the most time-sensitive industries. Find out how mega-chain Family Dollar Stores Inc., which operates more than 7,400 stores in 45 states, relies on high-performance analytics to shrink data processing windows from days to less than an hour and speed decision making. Scott Zucker, Vice President of
In my role at SAS I have the great fortune to meet with business intelligence and analytic (BI&A) teams all across the United States to share and discuss best practices and pain points, particularly around the ability to execute and operationalize insight internally and externally throughout the organization. In these
There have been a lot of retrospectives marking the 10th anniversary of the USA PATRIOT Act, but I think what is most compelling is how dissatisfied the industry is with the status quo . KPMG’s ‘Global Anti-Money Laundering Survey 2011’ confirmed a number of trends: cost of compliance increased 45
Managing the deluge of smart grid data. Responding to the increased demand for customer intelligence. Implementing analytics for grid optimization. These were just a few of the topics covered at this week’s inaugural “Utility Analytics Summit.” Utilities have been grappling with implementation of smart grid devices for several years and
Bank Systems & Technology just published a special issue focused on "big data" - and how high-performance analytics helps solve the big data problem. Clicking on the cover image will take you to the ebook, so you can flip through 24 pages full of information about the benefits of big data for banking.
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s that wonderful time of the year when people start anew and we all start making promises to ourselves about the things we want to accomplish in the year ahead. If you’re looking for some ways to ramp up your personal and professional expertise this year,
I my past blog posts I have written mostly about K-12 education. This is mainly because I think K-12 is over-ripe for reform in so many ways. School districts could learn a great deal from other industries and higher education in terms of data usage, reporting and analysis of students, programs and
For all of you who have ever been to Heidelberg, location of the headquarters of SAS Germany and the place where I live, you might know that a town called Mannheim is nearby. Some might even know that Mannheim is the place where a genius German engineer called Carl Benz
I just returned from the largest annual gathering of upstream oil and gas technology professionals. Some of the brightest minds in resource exploration – from graduate students to 50-year professionals – enjoyed the masquerade carnival that filled the exhibit hall on Halloween night. But the real entertainment was in the sessions.
Imagine you are standing on the corner of a very busy intersection in the middle of downtown New York City. It's the peak of rush hour and you need to get across the street in a hurry. And, oh yeah, you're blindfolded. This was one of the various scenarios discussed
Before a group of reporters representing countries from as far away as Mexico, Brazil and Japan, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight touted the company’s continued growth, innovation and unmatched culture during its annual Media Day event at SAS world headquarters in Cary, Tuesday. “In 2011, SAS has continued to grow as
When you Google “big data,” you get big data about big data. We are living in the age of information overload, which creates many challenges, including big data, information silos and integration issues. It was my great pleasure to introduce a panel of experts at The Premier Business Leadership Series
The Premier Business Leadership Series in Orlando was the backdrop for a number of news announcements from SAS. Here's a rundown: 1. Big Data research A new survey has found that organizations with formal data management strategies derive more value from data assets and outperform competitors. The survey, Big Data:
At our latest Power Series event in Manhattan, one of the teams took a futuristic approach to addressing data challenges. They described the need for a “compliance box” that front ends the data management process that integrates, cleanses and ensure data integrity across a number of different, typically silo’d data
We’ve talked a lot lately about the overwhelming tide of data – velocity, volume and complexity – that organizations are dealing with. SAS wanted to know how organizations are currently managing "big data," what resources would be required in the future and how to plan for those needs. The Economist
A women’s specialty retailer operating more than 1,000 boutiques, Chico’s FAS, Inc. was faced with a significant challenge: reducing the number of markdowns while more effectively targeting its middle- to high-income clientele. To achieve these goals, the company needed to optimize its prices and more effectively target its most valuable customers,
The Platform Development team in SAS R&D has a vision for how SAS applications will be built and deployed in the future. It’s a vision that accounts for recent trends in cloud computing, high performance computing, open APIs and smart phone app stores. It’s also a vision that promises to
Rome was not built in a day. Similarly, high-performance analytics is a product of many cumulative architectural, computational and analytical advances. The ability to solve complex business problems by applying algorithms from multiple disciplines to increasingly large volumes of data of all types - both structured and unstructured - is
In preparation for TDWI San Diego, I was finalizing my schedule and checking out what some of my favorite TDWI instructors are up to for San Diego. I'll be blogging about my fave classes from these instructors all next week. This evening I caught up on Cindi Howson 's blog
SIFMA held its Dodd-Frank Impact Analysis Summit in New York City on July 13, bringing together almost 500 industry participants for a day-long discussion just prior to the first anniversary of the Act’s passage. In addition to Tim Ryan (SIFMA CEO), the summit included guest speakers Larry Kudlow, Evan Thomas
A popular custom among the diminutive hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth was giving away presents on their birthdays instead of receiving them. This week, SAS toasted its birthday, celebrating 35 years as an analytic innovator, by giving its customers a gift: the latest version of SAS analytics and data management
The SIFMA Financial Services Technology Leaders Forum and Expo came to Midtown New York City in mid-June to more fanfare than in the past few years with speakers including Jim Cramer, Art Cashin, Gillian Tett, senior executives from capital markets firms including NYSE Euronext and DTCC, and regulators from the
