Cloud Based API Management - IronCloud

StrikeIron has overhauled its IronCloud solution and relaunched it this week. The solution is a fully hosted Cloud API Management platform. The solution had previously only been available to StrikeIron clients and partners is now open to any company seeking a better smarter way to manage their API based offerings. StrikeIron earned its stripes in this space by hosting its own API's for contact record validation and verification, mobile messaging and data enrichment. StrikeIron developed enterprise class security and infrastructure to host and deliver its service and has been in the API space for over 10 years.

IronCloud provides a simple yet powerful platform designed for business users and IT who are responsible for managing and delivering API powered assets. As enterprise application and data requirements evolve and become more diverse. API's are playing a significant roll in adding agility and flexibility to enterprise environments. Being able to leverage API's through common interfaces that are simple and manageable will be a key component of any smart business strategy. 

StrikeIron solutions are pre-integrated into Eloqua, Informatica, Oracle CRM On-Demand, Marketo and more.

Top Trends in Business Intelligence

One of the great things about the TDWI World Conference series is that you get to see your friends every 90 days and for the last year or two Vickie Farrell, Strategic Marketing Manager for HP’s BI Solutions business and I have had a chance to visit and discuss the trends in BI. Vickie and her team do an excellent job surveying business intelligence end users to compile the annual whitepaper titled HP’s Top 10 Trends in Business Intelligence a comprehensive look at the industry.

I'll list a couple here but you should follow the link to get the full document.

Trend #10: Growing interest in cloud computing for business intelligence.
Trend #9: Social computing and the next frontier for business intelligence.
Trend #8: Growing importance of integrating and analyzing unstructured/semi-structured data.
Trend #7: Growing impact and opportunity of Complex Event Processing.
Trend #6: Data warehousing and business intelligence: A new generation drives new priorities.

To get the rest follow the link!

Analyzing the voice of the customer (VOC)

First off this isn't an easy task, the amount of unstructured data available in client driven communities is huge not to mention the standard enterprise data we already have that needs to be integrated with this highly valuable source of insight. Attensity Group's suite of applications focus on leveraging actionable data from emails, web forums, surveys, CRM systems, online communities and other sources. Attensity just launched Analyze for VoC Community Advantage. Attensity's VoC solutions convert the text of conversations and feedback into intelligence with dash boarding capabilities that reveal sentiments and trends of your customer or prospect communities.

The Analyze for VOC Community Advantage product is a SaaS hosted solution offering quick setup and fixed monthly costs for the service. Providing insight into customer sentiment, loyalty and satisfaction. The combination of a semantic engine and text analytics allow Attensity to find valuable data where others just see unstructured chatter. Companies in this sector are getting the attention of the front end business intelligence companies as many of them see the addition of this type of market intelligence as critical to their business intelligence offering.

The addition of this type of data to enterprise intelligence can be invaluable and allow companies the insight needed to become less reactive and more right-time in their approach to trends within client communities.

I don't see this type of analysis being adopted by every company that gets value from their BI infrastructure.....just the smart ones.

Interactive Olympic Dashboard - very cool

iDashboards is tracking the Vancouver Olympics with its interactive dashboard software. Its updated daily with the days results and the ability to click into details ranging from country medal counts to comparative information from the Torino games in 2006. The dashboard highlights information using speedometers, gauges, interactive country flags, world map overlays, bar charts etc. It free so check it out if your looking to add more details to your Olympic experience. 

A quick welcome

This blog is my new home for sharing information on the topics of Analytics, business intelligence, Software as a service(SaaS), open source and social analytics. I believe all of these technologies are going to play a critical role in the enterprise as well as our personal lives. I'm passionate about all of these topics and look forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with you moving forward.

For those of you who have followed my blogging at BeyeNETWORK.com these past 4+ years I would like to extend a special welcome and thanks for dropping by.