Hot New BI Vendors Keep Things Cool

Tuesday, May 26, 2009, DestinationCRM

"The demand from business users for information processing is growing faster than [information technology] resources can address," the report states, "especially with traditional BI platforms." A number of Gartner's Cool Vendors target that growing demand, but another big trend involves real-time data analysis to proactively serve and sell to customers.

Attivio
The Newton, Mass.–based provider of "active intelligence" connects the "quantitative world of BI and the semi-structured world beyond its scope," writes analyst James Richardson. Attivio's search-oriented data-discovery tools allow access to SQL-like queries as well as fuzzy searches. The vendor's Active Intelligence Engine permits entity action and then automatically forms tables to create records of data.

The Cool Factor: Some users are understandably intimidated by an ad-hoc query tool, but might be quite comfortable with a search engine. Attivio, Richardson writes, enables these users to find the information they need in a structured database. This allows users to access both the "what" and the "why" within a single query. As an example of this complex natural-language request, the report cites the ability for users to say, "Show my 20 worst-performing products by revenue associated with ratings and reviews."

The report also notes the effect Attivio is having on the overall marketplace, with its active intelligence highlighting a trend that megavendors are now paying attention to. (The report cites SAP's Business Objects Polestar as an example of the unification of search and text mining.) Richardson notes that organizations wanting to move beyond traditional analysis and reporting should consider Attivio for its search product.

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