Andy Sheldon | July 1, 2019
What’s just as bad, or even worse, than not having access to BI and analytic technology? Having access to too much BI and analytics technology. This is the situation most businesses are in. The ugly truth is that the average business plays host to a plethora of BI and analytics tools. Maybe they’re lucky and […]
Andy Sheldon | May 23, 2019
Information siloing used to be a problem, but that was a long time ago. Right? Today, the silo lives on mostly as a minotaur of the imagination, a bogeyman we invoke when we want to tease the young folk about just how good they have it. When I was your age we didn’t have ubiquitous […]
Andy Sheldon | May 16, 2019
In a previous blog, I wrote that natural language processing (NLP) technology “permits an interactive question-driven experience that mimics in a sense, the human experience of discovery.” I argued that the process of interacting with NLP mimics the process of analysis itself, whereby one interrogates oneself, one’s peers, and the surrounding world. The benefit as […]
Andy Sheldon | May 9, 2019
This is not a blog about visual data discovery, although (roughly) its first half is consumed with that topic. It’s actually about natural language processing, or NLP and its close cousin, Natural Language Queries – which is what we do to use the underlying NLP. I want to make the case that NLP is a […]
Andy Sheldon | April 24, 2019
In a previous blog, I introduced a different frame to discuss data lineage, distinguishing between first-party, second-party, and third-party lineage. These aren’t just arbitrary distinctions. In data management, we’re used to distinguishing between what we call “technical lineage” and “business lineage.” The former describes a highly granular record of data lineage, the (technical) details of which […]
In the last blog post we talked about data’s trustworthiness and using data lineage as one control to help establish the accuracy and veracity of data. Being able to track and ‘show’ a dataset’s origin and any transformations it has undergone helps to authenticate its accuracy for use in analytics. In that same vein, deciphering […]
When we say we “trust” the data in a dataset, what do we really mean? This is actually a surprisingly complicated question. In data and analytic discovery, we think of “trust” as a function of the authenticity and veracity of a dataset. If by utilizing certain processes and controls we can “show” that the data […]
Andy Sheldon | April 9, 2019
On April 16, Unifi Sponsored a webinar with host Eric Kavanagh, Bloor Group, and presenter David Wells, Eckerson. There was significant audience interest and many more questions than we could answer during the allotted time. If we did not answer your question live we apologize. We have provided written responses to all of the questions […]
Andy Sheldon | February 27, 2019
The Unstoppable Rise Of The Data Catalog A recent report published by McKinsey Global Institute states that when data is made easily accessible to the person closest to the business challenge, data-driven organizations are: 23 times more likely to acquire customers 6 times as likely to retain those customers 19 times as likely to […]
Andy Sheldon | January 16, 2019
We know it’s “all about the data” these days, organizations of all sizes and verticals are recognizing that the data industry is also changing: New tools, platforms and ways to govern data users are required to support data discovery and use through all skill levels and departments. Meanwhile, the volume, velocity, types, structure and sources of the […]
