Infer CEO Vik Singh talks about predictive analytics and lead scoring
As data volumes increase and marketing channels proliferate, corporate sales teams struggle to efficiently identify the real prospects worth an investment of their time. At Infer, a team experienced in applying predictive analytics to the web-scale problems faced by companies like Google and Yahoo! thinks they have a solution. By combining data from internal customer...
MapR CEO John Schroeder discusses the market for Hadoop
Big Data is undeniably hot right now, and to many Hadoop is inextricably linked to the broader Big Data conversation. And yet, Hadoop has a reputation for being complex, and unpolished, and difficult, and ‘technical,’ and a host of other less-than-glowing attributes which might cause potential users to pause and take stock. Some of that reputation...
KPMG Capital CEO Mark Toon discusses corporate perspectives on big data
That global accountancy giant KPMG should be interested in data is not, perhaps, surprising. That KPMG would use its own money to “invest in, partner with and acquire organisations that specialise in data and analytics tools and assets” was less immediately obvious to me. But that, according to KPMG global lead for data and analytics Mark...
orchestrate.io CEO Antony Falco dissects the database industry
Portland-based Orchestrate (orchestrate.io) rolls out its commercial NoSQL offering today, claiming to significantly decrease the time, cost and complexity of putting cloud-based data to work. I took the chance to speak with co-founder and CEO (and former Basho co-founder) Antony Falco, to learn more about the company and the problems it’s seeking to address. Our...
Conflict of Interest: common sense or witch-hunt?
People in this business get quite worked up about the conflicts of interest faced by ‘influencers’; analysts, prominent bloggers, and the rest. That concern is understandable and reasonable. We do need to know when the advice, guidance and opinion we’re being given is influenced by external factors (both positive and negative). But the vehemence with which a very...
Podcasting again… with StorSimple’s Marc Farley
I used to podcast pretty regularly, on this site and elsewhere. Then other things got in the way and, before I knew it, almost two years had passed since my last podcast here. Well, it’s time to put that right. I’m podcasting again, and I’ve got a nice pipeline of guests lined up over the...
Can the cloud do ‘in perpetuity’ ?
Cloud computing is great, right? As a way to get something up and running quickly, affordably, and with a minimum of fuss, it can rarely be beaten. But some of the most compelling attributes of the public cloud are best suited to ephemeral or (relatively!) short-term use cases. You can spin up a cloud server...
Is PaaS dying?
The ‘platform’ tier in the middle of cloud computing’s architecture is being squeezed, folded and reshaped beyond recognition. Even with continued investment, can it survive the transformative pressures forcing down upon it from the software/application layer above, or the apparently inexorable upward movement from the infrastructure layer upon which it rests? To look at recent...
Is data-powered personalisation creepier when it happens offline?
Survey results, like infographics, make up a depressingly large part of the delay email deluge. And, like almost every infographic ever made, most of these surveys are a complete waste of time. They’re blatantly self-serving, and based upon laughably small sample sizes. Every now and then, though, one that’s a little more interesting will arrive....
Three days in Yorkshire
Unusually for me, I’ve found myself at reasonably local events over the past few days. Leeds last Wednesday to hear people discuss big data, York last Friday to talk about open data, and Hull today to check out the city’s impressive new work space. It’s easy to look beyond the local environment, and to assume...
A prism bends light. #PRISM reporting bends truth
I wasn’t going to talk about the current fuss around PRISM, but the speed with which conjecture, rumour and some (good) newspaper investigative work has turned into ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ online makes this worth addressing. The conjecture may be correct. The NSA, the FBI, TLA and ETLA might be plugged right into the data centres of the...
This is the news… today
I recently set up a new Tumblr site, in addition to my main blog here at cloudofdata.com. It’s been running for a few days now, and I’m deliberately posting just one entry each day to explore a topical news item, issue, or trend. We are all inundated by a constant stream of press releases, tweets,...
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