Tag Archive: 2010


TYTW- Smart Phones

Filed Under: Analytics by Team_ATI — Leave a comment
December 30, 2010

First there was web analytics

Then there was Mobile Analytics

And now, for those who are noticing, there is mobile web analytics.

If you have been following our Facebook or Twitter feeds you will notice that this is one trend we are closely tracking.   Smart Phones – be they the ubiquitous Blackberry, I Phone or an Android- completely change the ways human consume information. Whether it is in simple steps such as checking the price of a products on a price comparator while at the grocery store, or creating detailed personal data diaries of different activities – such as how long a person walks per day, or how many calories she consume, Smart Phones has made the most ordinary of people data fiends.

For an analysts this means a much greater ability to capture personal and web data and build predictive models that -literally- help people lead better lives.

-Simple apps that ping the moment you have crossed your recommended daily allowance of calories based on a back-end analytical engine

- A predictive model that correlates time spent outdoors with overall health and well being

- Association rules that help retailers aggregate data and tell them what kinds of stores people visit together helping mall owners with more efficient and profitable layouts

- A data visualization app that helps you compare your necessary expenditure against frivolous spends

All of these become a distinct possibility at the cross roads of mobile and web analytics, and this is why smart phones are No.2 in our list of analytical trends for the year

For more from the series read here:

3. Open Source

4. Cloud Computing

5. Man vs Machine

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TYTW- Open Source

Filed Under: Analytics by analytic_atiblog — 1 Comment
December 28, 2010

While the big brothers in analytics like SAS and IBM-SPSS made huge inroads in the year, this was not a bad year for the smaller players as well.
On the web analytics front a viable open source alternative to Google Analytics emerged in the form of Piwik -that continued to gain significant traction even in its beta stage. The most exciting feature of Piwik is the customizability of its dashboards- which means that for a new business, you choose the web metrics that matter most to you and track those at a periodicity defined by you

In the rest of the statistical world,  R continued to gain wider acceptance outside just the ‘quants’ and the ‘nerds’ community, managing to add a brilliant profile in the Forbes magazine to the excellent NY Times piece signifying its wide spread acceptability in 2009. Companies using R now include Motorola, Pfizer and the Bank of America. Pretty neat for an open source-once-small player!

To read more from our ongoing countdown to the year that was, read our previous instalments

Man vs Machine

Cloud Computing

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TYTW- Cloud Computing

Filed Under: Analytics by analytic_atiblog — Leave a comment
December 24, 2010

Our countdown to the end of the year continues with what we think is a trend that has carried over from the past year- and is only more likely to gain momentum in the next year

4. Cloud Computing- By now, nearly everyone understands what cloud computing is- and the software and hardware world is seeing its benefits even as we speak. Smaller companies are investing lower sums than ever before on software- opting instead to use SaaS (or Software as a Service) , paying by usage rather than annual licensing costs. Security in the cloud is continuously improving, increasing customer satisfaction and increasing RoI from these services. In fact, customer satisfaction with SaaS has been steadily increasing since 2008, based on industry surveys

The next generation of Cloud Computing is likely to be all about analytics. A big driver of companies’ hesitance to adopt BI and analytical frameworks is the cost of data storage and servers from Day 1. No one wants to spend for growth today- or put differently, if I have 10 customers today why should I buy servers which store transactional details for thousands? And by the time I have 1000s of customers,is it too late for me to invest in a database structure?  But with cloud computing, you ‘Pay-as-you-go’ meaning for 1 customer record today, and (hopefully) a million a few months from now! This also puts the imperative on companies to invest in smarter database structures that save them money from Day One instead of ungainly table structures.

How does this help analytics? As we all know Analytics is 8 parts data and just 2 parts inspiration and statistics- and with it becoming easier than ever before for even the smallest of companies to maintain and preserve data, the possibilities for BI and analytics are endless.

Expect more unorganized and smaller companies to start using analytics in 2011!

To find out more about cloud computing, watch this excellent primer

What is Cloud Computing

Visit earlier instalments in our annual countdown here

No 5: Man vs Machine

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The Year That Was.. The Year That Will Be..

Filed Under: Analytics by analytic_atiblog — Leave a comment
December 23, 2010

Another year goes by , another year begins. As we begin the countdown to a new year and new resolutions, now is as good a time as any to look back at some of the most exciting trends in Analytics of the past year and use our crystal ball to look into the future…. here are some of the stories that have got me most excited in the past year from the world of analytics.

What were some of your highlights?

5. Man Vs Machine: Can machine intelligence built on predictive algorithms overtake man one day? The answer might just be available to all of us in February 2011, when IBM’s Watson takes on all-time Jeopardy winners in the ultimate trivia throwdown. And no – this is no ordinary computer with limitless memory for limitless trivia. This is a machine which takes the semantics of the question into account, uses associations to identify patterns and might ultimately signal the rise of the machines!  Watch a sample here, and keep visiting this place- as we continue this countdown all the way to December 31st..

Coming up tomorrow: looking at clouds to predict more than just the weather…

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