Business analytics has become an all-important factor in the present ecosystem as industries strive to gain competitive advantage, enhance profitability and reduce costs. The criticality of accurate, timely and requirement specific quantitative analysis of data cannot be overstated. Effective and timely business intelligence has the power to turnaround business profits overnight – by harnessing market opportunities.

Data trends have changed considerably since business analytics gained prominence in the 1980s. Then, quantitative analysis of mostly structured data was done to improve operations, forecast product demand, optimize supply chains, identify customer segmentations and predict customer lifetime value. Now, Business Intelligence (BI) plays a critical role in decisions related to various operations such as category management, risk analysis, sales trend analysis, policy development, employee initiatives, market campaigns, customer engagement and support, statistical process control, cash flow forecasting, and market analysis among other things.

Today, data coming into organizations and enterprises via a range of media – social media, web forms, online or paper surveys, polls, customer interviews, feedback, and more. Incoming data can be compartmentalized into real-time, near-time, structured and unstructured forms. Then there’s the volume of data. Today’s organizations have gargantuan proportions of data coming in every day – Big Data – and the better they mine the data to reveal analytical data – greater are the chances of success.

A number of BI tools, techniques and technologies are available to enterprises for data mining and business analytics. Some organizations choose custom app development over off-the-shelf solutions that generate pre-defined reports. With custom apps, businesses can get a BI tool that’s in sync with their specific requirements, and caters to their products, services, processes or customer segment. However, developing a BI strategy and executing it is far from simple.

A successful BI initiative demands the involvement of all users in the organization. Business users may not have much understanding of technology but they can give you a deep understanding of requirements and highlight the priority of the BI project. Business heads and the BI solution vendor/developer have to together define the current state of BI and map it to the future based on latest analytics architecture. The technicalities of the process have to be documented in a project plan – SLAs, integration points, required changes in business processes, future requirements, etc. – so businesses are saved the cost and effort of redefining, redesigning or refining the BI platform in the foreseeable future.

For BI to be used effectively, its importance has to be brought home to top level executives. For that purpose, the solution provider has to demonstrably justify the value of upfront investment. BI tools are expensive so buy-in has will be hard won. At the same time, the provider should focus on business requirements and limitations rather than the sophistication and capabilities of technology. If the leaders get it, they will provide the push for organization members to make changes, learn, train, and make the BI initiative a success.

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MOJITO! Not the nice Cuban cocktail but Yahoo’s, supposedly equally nice, MVC framework for building high-performing device independent web apps. Mojito applications are written in JavaScript and run on both client and server (via Node.js). Yahoo has published the Mojito code under a permissive BSD open source license that allows you to use the code to build your own applications, even for commercial use.

What Yahoo is trying to do here is build a developer community to contribute to the growth of Mojito apps and other Cocktails applications. Yahoo Cocktails is a JavaScript-based online as well as offline, multi-device, cloud-ready, Web application platform that offers features such as internationalization, bucket testing, command-line tools, and scaling. It allows you have a common codebase for multiple device implementations.

What does Yahoo offer with Mojito?

For Node.js supporters, Mojito will help in higher adoption of the technology (read more about Node.js here). The framework offers the following features:

• Local development environment and tools
• Easier and faster development with the use of one language for client server and server database interactions
• Library for simplifying internationalization & localization (based on YUI 3)
• Integrated unit testing
• Device specific views based on user-agent
• One codebase for client or server execution
• Ability to write HTML and CSS so pages function even if JavaScript is disabled on the client
• As a module of Node.js, Mojito lets you leverage the scalability and speed of Node.js, its core modules and npm modules
• Extensive API with modules for executing code, making REST calls, handling cookies and assets, accessing parameters and configuration, and more
• Command line tool to run unit tests, create documentation, sanitize code with JSLint, and build projects for iOS and Android applications

Mojito applications contain JSON configuration files and directories for storing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. The configuration files are used to define relationships between code components, assets, routing paths, and defaults. They are available at the application and ‘mojit’ level. Mojits are the basic unit of composition and are reused in a Mojito application. They include JavaScript and markup, and follow the MVC pattern. The directory structure of a Mojito application reflects the MVC architecture and separates resources, assets, libraries, middleware, etc.

Mojito has already been used to develop applications. Yahoo’s Livestand, a magazine reader application for the iPad, and the Fantasy Premier League Football game application are some examples. By open-sourcing the MVC framework, Yahoo hopes to develop improved standards for the development of optimized Web applications and mitigate partial connectivity issues.

Want to give it a try? Download Mojito from GitHub.

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• Review: Yahoo Mojito gives server-side JavaScript a lift (techworld.com.au)
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It is impossible for enterprises to ignore strides in technology and the impact of new trends on corporate culture, IT infrastructure, and market demands. At the same time, see-sawing business markets are compelling companies to rework their business models for greater agility. C-level heads have their work cut out, trying to build robust and cost-effective businesses while keeping the growth graph steady if not on the way up.

With enterprise focus turning towards cloud computing, Big Data management, custom apps on private clouds, SaaS, ITaaS, PaaS, and the consumerization of IT, various organizations have found disparate ways to optimize profits and productivity.

Let’s look at what some C-level executives say about evolving technologies and resulting changes in their business:

John Dick, CIO, Western Union

Mobile computing and social technologies are being harnessed by Western Union to expand its presence and enrich users’ experience. IT infrastructure has been re-architected, legacy applications integrated with services, and storage systems replaced or optimized. Advanced security and anti-fraud measures, and improved business intelligence analytics has helped WU make its services more customer-centric.

“A lot of that has been self-funded through reduced labor cost, lower maintenance, better contract terms and other cost saving initiatives. We’ve self-funded so the company could put [resources] into expanding the products, expanding channels, into the business side investment that’s been required.” WU is now looking at building billion points of presence through mobile access.

Andrew Miller, CEO, Polycom

Polycom, a unified communications and collaboration service provider, has recently moved from premise-based technology to the cloud. They are enabling Video as a Service with small companies powering video clouds for corporate or personal use. Polycom provides an enterprise-ready (“meaning that it’s [based on] interoperable, open standards, it’s secure and it allows the user to traverse a firewall to participate in enterprise applications”) tele-presence solution on iOS and Android devices.

Tom Georgens, CEO, NetApp

NetApp is on “an unstoppable growth vector” and the key to that, according to Georgens, is “bridging the gap between available technologies, software innovation, and customer need.” The virtualization trend transcends beyond infrastructure to storage (for disparate media) but the way to win customers is to make it flexible, economical, secure, scalable, and highly capable. “What the private cloud is enabling is what virtualization has done, allowed applications to become mobile and therefore decoupled from the infrastructure.”

Georgens breaks Big Data into ABC aspects – A is analytics, B is big bandwidth, and C is content. NetApp has solutions to manage all of that. Look forward to NetApp’s Ontap operating system that offers the largest portfolio of software management products with clustering.

These are just a few snippets from the IDGE CEO Interview Series but what comes out strongly across the board is transition of infrastructure and customer services towards the cloud and the impact of mobility. Mobile consumers and social networks are turning into big markets and virtualization is becoming a compelling factor for small and big businesses to look at off-premise solutions.

Related articles

• It’s all about the Cloud. But can Enterprises Take It? (boston-technology.com)
• Counting on a Rush to the Cloud (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)