Big Data and the Goldilocks Principle

I was inspired to write this post (I can hear all of you sighing ‘Yet Another on Big Data’) due to another ‘Big’ reason. I listened to a TED (www.ted.com) talk by David Christian titled ‘The History of the World in 18 minutes’ in which he narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is “Big History”: an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline. Check out his website – www.bighistoryproject.com , and I promise you that this ‘Big’ has nothing to do with Big Data, as we know it. But what got me interested...

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Business Focused Analytics – The Starting Point

Having been a Business Intelligence practitioner for the last 13 years, there has never been a more exciting time to practice this art, as organizations increasingly realize that a well implemented BI & Analytics system can provide great competitive advantage for them. This leads us to the question of – ‘What is a well implemented BI system?’ Let us follow the Q&A below. Q: What is a well implemented BI system? A: A well implemented BI system is one that is completely business focused. Q: Well, that doesn’t make it any easier. How can we have BI that is completely business focused? A: BI & Analytics becomes completely business focused when they have ‘business decisions’ as the cornerstone of their implementation. The starting point to build / re-engineer a BI system...

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