IBM Taking a Smarter Look at BI, Big Data and Data Integration

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28th March

Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the simulcast of IBM’s unveiling of its latest Smarter Analytics offerings aimed at helping organizations contend with their escalating ‘Big Data’ needs. I was particularly interested in this event because of THINKstrategies’ upcoming Cloud Analytics Summit which will examine this same topic.

IDC estimates enterprises will invest more than $120 billion to capture the business implications of their burgeoning internal and external data sources by acquiring a combination of analytics software, systems and services by 2015.

To say that IBM has made a ‘big bet’ on business intelligence (BI), big data and analytics would be an understatement. The company has acquired 28 companies focused on these areas since 2005, including Algorithmics, Coremetrics, DemandTec, Emptoris, i2, and Netezza. It has combined these assets with its internal staff to now boast over 9,000 business analytics and optimization … Read More »


More Executives Sign Up to Speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit on April 25 in Mountain View, CA

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28th March

A growing number of executives from industry leading companies in the Business Intelligence (BI), ‘Big Data’ and Data Integration arenas are signing up to speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mtn. View, CA, hosted by THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media.

The Cloud Analytics Summit will provide a forum for CIOs and other corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest innovations and share best practices regarding Cloud BI, Big Data and Data Integration to satisfy their escalating business requirements.

Kognitio has become a Marquee Sponsor of the Summit. Kognitio’s Vice President of Cloud Solutions, Ian Bird, will present a keynote talk entitled, “Measuring the Success of Today’s Cloud Analytics, BI and Big Data Solutions.”

Alteryx and CloudTrigger have also become Title Sponsors of the Summit. Alteryx’s CEO, George Mathew, will be participating in the “Redefining BI and Analytics in the … Read More »


IBM's Big Data Products VP to Speak at Cloud Analytics Summit

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22nd March

I’m pleased to announce that IBM’s Vice President of Big Data Products, Anjul Bhambhri, has agreed to be a keynote speaker at the Cloud Analytics Summit on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The purpose of the Cloud Analytics Summit is to provide a forum for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Cloud solutions aimed at addressing their business intelligence (BI) and analytics needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their systems and applications into a more productive enterprise-wide resource to satisfy their business requirements.

Anjul recently provided her perspective in Forbes about the growing importance of the Data Scientist in the business environment. At the Cloud Analytics Summit, she will discuss, “Smarter Decision-Making: Leverage Big Data to Gain New Actionable Insights”.

Prior to assuming her current responsibilities, Anjul was the Director of IBM Optim application and data life … Read More »


SalesFUSION Wins THINKstrategies' Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award

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21st March

THINKstrategies announced today that SalesFUSION has been named the winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards. This program is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.  

The BoSS Awards are part of an ongoing program in THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace and recognize SaaS companies producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

SalesFUSION offers an integrated, Cloud-based SaaS marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) solution designed to automate the entire lead to sales process. SalesFUSION 360 is specifically designed to help clients improve their top-line revenue by providing the tools marketers need in today’s competitive environment and helping customers integrate their marketing campaigns with their CRM systems.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits SalesFUSION is delivering to … Read More »


CIOs Wanted at the Cloud Innovators Summits

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21st March

Recognizing that many CIOs in mid-size and large-scale enterprises are facing severe budgetary constraints, but are increasingly interested in today’s rapidly evolving Cloud analytics and management alternatives, THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media are offering complimentary guest passes to our 2012 Cloud Analytics and Cloud Management Summits.

The complimentary Summit registrations are available on a first-come, first-served basis to qualified CIOs, IT managers, and other corporate decision-makers who apply for the special admission to the Cloud Analytics and Management Summit executive forums. Others who do not qualify for the complimenary quest passes can take advantage of early bird registration discounts.

The Cloud Analytics Summit, on Wednesday, April 25, will provide a unique opportunity for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions aimed at addressing their business intelligence (BI) needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their … Read More »


Executives from Google, Deloitte, Splunk, Zynga & Other Key Companies Coming to the Cloud Analytics Summit

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14th March

A growing number of innovative CIOs and other influential corporate executives have agreed to speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit, hosted by THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The corporate executives who have agreed to speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit to date include:

Jane Griffin, Americas Leader of Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Analytics Practice
Ju-kay Kwek, Product Manager of Google’s Big Data Initiative
Ken Rudin, VP Analytics & Platform Technologies, Zynga
Doug Harr, CIO, Splunk
David Roth, CEO/Co-Founder, AppFirst
Lonnie Wills, CEO/Co-Founder, CloudTrigger
Joseph Szmadzinski, CEO, IT Management Resources
Chor-Ching Fan, Senior Director of Analytics Product Management, LogiXML
Russell Hertzberg, VP SaaS and ISV Solutions, SoftServe
Chuck DeVita, Founder, Growth Process Group

The Summit is also attracting a diverse set of sponsors and partners supporting the event. The Summit sponsors include AppFirst, CloudTrigger, Host Analytics, LogiXML and SoftServe, with many more expected to sign up as … Read More »


Attendance On Demand Wins THINKstrategies' Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award

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12th March

THINKstrategies announced today that Attendance On Demand has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

Attendance on Demand is a Cloud-based employee time and attendance service which supports the labor management needs of thousands of companies and over a quarter million employees across North America. Launched in 2006, Attendance on Demand minimizes a company’s risk and technology investment while providing advanced features for … Read More »


Zynga's Vice President of Analytics & Platform Technologies to Speak at Cloud Analytics Summit

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7th March

Zynga’s Vice President of Analytics and Platform Technologies, Ken Rudin, has agreed to be a presenter at the Cloud Analytics Summit hosted by THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The purpose of the Cloud Analytics Summit is to provide a forum for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Cloud solutions aimed at addressing their business intelligence (BI) and analytics needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their systems and applications into a more productive enterprise-wide resource to satisfy their business requirements.

Ken will participate in a panel session entitled, “Redefining BI & Analytics in the Cloud”, with Doug Harr, the CIO at Splunk.

Ken is responsible for managing Zynga’s massive analytics platform and generating key insights that drive Zynga’s strategy, and delivering key social, communication, and personalization technologies which act as the foundation … Read More »


Cloud Sherpas/GlobalOne Merger Illustrates Growing Opportunity for New Generation of Cloud Service Providers

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5th March

Today’s news of the merger of Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne not only adds a major new player to the rapidly growing Cloud consulting world, but also shows that there are plenty of new business opportunities for consulting and other value-added service providers in the Cloud.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Cloud Sherpas, it is one the largest consultancies focused exclusively on helping organizations adopt Google Apps and was recently named the Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year. (Disclosure: I did a webinar in 2011 on behalf of Exoprise in conjunction with Cloud Sherpas.) GlobalOne has been quietly building a multinational consulting practice focused on salesforce.com, and is a salesforce.com platinum consulting partner.

The newly merged companies will adopt the Cloud Sherpas name, and will boast nearly 300 employees in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific (APAC) region working out of … Read More »


Microsoft Service Outage Raises New Cloud Reliability Concerns

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3rd March

The recent outage of Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has reopened a persistent question about the reliability of Cloud services.

Microsoft’s most recent service disruption is just the latest evidence that Cloud alternatives are not immune to problems. Last year’s Amazon Web Services debacle was far worse and lasted much longer.

Yet, overall the uptime record of all the major Cloud service providers is far greater than most enterprise data centers. And, the leading Cloud vendors are generally better at keeping their customers informed about the status of their services than inhouse IT departments have been.

But, no service provider can achieve 100% uptime. Therefore, it is important for IT and corporate decision-makers to fully understand the potential pitfalls and put in place a series of back-up and recovery capabilities to minimize the short-term and long-term impact on their business.

The vulnerabilities associated with … Read More »





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