Analytics: Still Guided by the Stars
I was reading a blog by Steve Miller this week, and was struck by what he said in his opening paragraph:
“I’ve assembled my BI-Searchers toolkit. It consists of an open source technology stack that includes the MySQL database for storage, either Pentaho’s Kettle or one of the Python/Ruby agile languages with database connectivity for ETL/programming, one of the Pentaho or Jaspersoft dialects of Mondrian OLAP server for slice and dice/drilling, the “other” Mondrian for for interactive statistical visualization of large data sets, and the R Project for Statistical Computing for advanced graphics and predictive analytics. Tying together the data delivered from all this wonderful technology are designs that provide context for analytic interpretation.”
From his image, he’s got as much gray hair as I have, so he really must remember the days of Lotus 1-2-3, Harvard Graphics and WordPerfect - the core desktop tools of the late 80’s. Each had a very different user interface, unique terminology, and special focus. They were very good at what they did individually, but they were never intended to work together. Users could become proficient at one with a bit of effort, but knowing one did nothing to prepare you for the others. Finding someone that could handle them all was a treat - they were the stars of the organization.
Somehow Steve’s proposition makes him look like one of those stars stuck in the old days. There aren’t too many people that can actually handle the mental gymnastics needed to cobble together all the pieces he’s identified. Big BI vendors know that - they’ve lived through the life lessons of failed deployments and dwindling support renewals. Analysts know it - that why they say BI ’suites’ are in demand. The sad state of the industry is that the tools still require the technical stars to make them all work.
Analytics is a services business (has anyone actually wondered why IBM is pushing an analytics agenda?). People use Excel spreadsheets for everything because it is a tool they know. They rely on the stars to do some preparation so they can load it into Excel and play.
It’s time to change that model…
