Deloitte: me DV too (it wishes...)

Last week Deloitte suddenly declared that 2011 will be a year of Data Visualization (DV for short, at least on this site) and main technology trend in 2011 will be a Data Visualization as "Emerging Enabler". It took Deloitte many years to see the trend (I advise to them to re-read posts by observers and analysts like Stephen Few, David Raab, Boris Evelson, Curt Monash, Mark Smith, Fern Halper and other known experts). Yes, I am welcoming Deloitte  to DV Party anyway: better late then never. You can download their "full" report here, in which they allocated first(!) 6 pages to Data Visualization. I cannot resist to notice that "DV Specialists" at Deloitte just recycling (using own words!) some stuff (even from this blog) known for ages and from multiple places on Web and I am glad that Deloitte knows how to use the Internet and how to read.

However, some details in Deloitte's report amazed me of how they are out of touch with reality and made me wondering in what Cave or Cage (or Ivory Tower?)

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these guys are wasting their well-paid time? On a sidebar of their "Visualization" Pages/Post they published a poll: "What type of visualization platform is most effective in supporting your organization’s business decision making?". Among most laughable options to choose/vote you can find "Lotus" (hello, people, are you there? 20th century ended many years ago!), Access (what are you smoking people?), Excel (it cannot even have interactive charts and proper drilldown functionality, but yes, everybody has it), Crystal Reports (static reports are among main reasons why people looking for interactive Data Visualization alternatives), "Many Eyes" (I love enthusiasts, but it will not help me to produce actionable data views) and some "standalone options" like SAS and ILOG which are 2 generations behind of leading DV tools. What is more amazing that "BI and Reporting option" (Crystal, BO etc.) collected 30% of voters and other vote getters are "standalone option" (Deloitte thinks SAS and ILOG are  there) - 19% and "None of the Above" option got 22%!

In the second part of their 2011 Tech Trends report Deloitte declares the "Real Analytics" as a main trend among "Disruptive Deployments". Use of word "Real Analytics" made me laugh again and reminds me some other funny usage of the word "real": "Real Man", Real Woman" etc. I just want to see what it will be as an "unreal analytics" or "not real analytics" or whatever real antonym for "real analytics" is.

Update: Deloitte and Qliktech form alliance in last week of April of 2011, see it here.

More updates: In August 2011 Deloitte opened ""The Real Analytics website"" here: http://realanalyticsinsights.com/ and on 9/13/11 they "Joined forces in US with Qliktech: http://investor.qlikview.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=604843

Permalink: http://apandre.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/deloitte-too/

Win $3M (if you have nothing better to do)

Heritage Provider Network is offering a cool $3 millions in prize money for the development of an algorithm that can best predict how often people are likely to be sent to the hospital. Jonathan Gluck -- senior executive at Heritage -- said the goal of the competition is to create a model that can "identify people who can benefit from additional services," such as nurse visits and preventive care. Such additional services could reduce health care spending and cut back on excessive hospitalizations, Gluck said.

The algorithm contest, the largest of its kind so far, is an attempt (also see Slate article here) to help find the best answers to complicated data-analysis questions. Previous known was the $1 million Netflix Inc. prize awarded in 2009 for a model to better predict what movies people would like. In 2009, a global team of seven members consisting of statisticians, machine-learning experts and computer engineers was awarded the $1 Million contest prize and Netflix replaced its legacy recommendation system with the team’s new algorithm (2nd Netflix's competition was stopped by FTC and lawyers). I personally think that this time Data Visualization will be a large part of winning solution.

The competition -- which will be run by Australian startup firm Kaggle -- begins on April 4 and will be open for about two years. Contestants will have access to de-identified insurance claims data to help them develop a system for predicting the number of days an individual is likely to spend in a hospital in one year. Kaggle spent months streamlining claims data and removing potentially identifying information, such as names, addresses, treatment dates and diagnostic codes. Teams will have access to three years of non-identifiable healthcare data for thousands of patients.

The data will include outpatient visits, hospitalizations, medication claims and outpatient laboratory visits, including some test results. The data for each de-identified patient will be organized into two sections: "Historical Data" and "Admission Data." Historical Data will represent three years of past claims data. This section of the dataset will be used to predict if that patient is going to be admitted during the Admission Data period. Admission Data represents previous claims data and will contain whether or not a hospital admission occurred for that patient; it will be a binary flag.

The training dataset includes several thousand anonymized patients and will be made available, securely and in full, to any registered team for the purpose of developing effective screening algorithms. The quiz/test dataset is a smaller set of anonymized patients. Teams will only receive the Historical Data section of these datasets and the two datasets will be mixed together so that teams will not be aware of which de-identified patients are in which set.

Teams will make predictions based on these data sets and submit their predictions to HPN through the official Heritage Health Prize web site. HPN will use the Quiz Dataset for the initial assessment of the Team's algorithms. HPN will evaluate and report back scores to the teams through the prize website's leader board.

Scores from the final Test Dataset will not be made available to teams until the accuracy thresholds are passed. The test dataset will be used in the final judging and results will be kept hidden. These scores are used to preserve the integrity of scoring and to help validate the predictive algorithms. You can find more about Online Testing and Judging here.

The American Hospital Association estimates that more than 71 million people are admitted to the hospital each year, and that $30 Billion is spent on unnecessary admissions.

Pagos Released SpreadsheetWEB 3.2

Pagos released this week SpreadsheetWEB 3.2 (PSW for short) with new Data Visualization features (Pagos Data Visualizer or PDV for short). Among those features is an ability to drill-down any Visible Data through synchronized filters, which immediately made the SpreadsheetWEB a player in Data Visualization Market.



Tools like Tableau, Qlikview or Spotfire allow people to visualize data, but have very limited ability to collect and update data. PSW (Pagos SpreadsheetWEB), on other hand, since versions 1.X was able to convert any Excel Spreadsheet into Web Application and Web-based Data Collector, to save collected data into SQL Server (including latest SQL Server 2008 R2) Database, and to Report or Visualize the Data online through SaaS web-based spreadsheet, which looks and behaves as Excel Spreadsheet! SpreadsheetWEB has unique ability to collect data in a Batch Process and run large datasets against SpreadsheetWEB application. This video demonstrates data collection and data management and collaborations utilizing workflow capabilities and SpreadsheetWEB Control Panel interface. SpreadsheetWEB can use Web-Service as Data Source (like Excel does) and allows web-based spreadsheets to function as Web Service too:



One of the reasons why most people still use and like Excel as a BI tool is that they can use many of the built-in worksheet formulas to process data in real-time while filtering the dashboard. SpreadsheetWEB converts those formulas and can execute them on the server. Database-driven SpreadsheetWEB applications support most features in Excel, including worksheet formulas, 333+ Excel functions, formatting, 33+ types of Excel charts as well as Sparklines,



also see video here:



as well as pivot tables, validation, comments, filters and hyperlinks, while almost completely eliminating the need for application and database developers, as well as need for IT services. Basically if person knows Excel, than he knows how to use SpreadsheetWEB. SpreadsheetWEB (both 64-bit and 32-bit) has HTML Editor and Scripting Support (JavaScript), similar to what macros do for Excel (be aware that it is not port of VBA):



Among 3 DV Leaders only Tableau is able to read Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) data sources, which is a must for long-term success in Visual Analytics market. SpreadhseetWEB has this functionality the same way as Excel does and therefore ahead of Qlikview and Spotfire in this extremely important department. Among other advanced Data Visualization Features SpreadsheetWEB supports Maps in Dashboards



and multi-page Dashboard reports. I like Version Control for applications and Server Monitoring features - they can be very attractive for enterprise users. SpreadsheetWEB does not require SharePoint Server to execute Excel workbooks on the server. Pagos developed proprietary spreadsheet technology to achieve that independence from SharePoint Server (I personally consider SharePoint as a Virus). This makes Pagos very attractive to cost conscious small to medium size organizations. Installing SpreadsheetWEB only requires Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server. In addition, SpreadsheetWEB works with free SQL Express Edition, which is an additional savings for Customers with small datasets.

For advanced Data Visualization functionality, Pagos established the OEM partnership with TIBCO and integrates SpreadsheetWEB with TIBCO Spotfire Analytic Platform. For advanced SaaS features, including strictest security and hosting requirements and SAS70 Compliance, Pagos partners with Rackspace.

SpreadsheetWEB is one of the few players in the market that offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) licensing along with traditional server licensing. Pagos has very attractive SaaS fees and extremely competitive pricing for those who want to buy own SpreadsheetWEB server: $4900 per SpreadsheetWEB server for 50 named users and 25 web applications and dashboards; that price at least 10 times better than prices from Qlikview, Spotfire and Tableau. Pagos provides 44+ Video Tutorials, 53+ online Demos, free non-expiring trial and Wiki-based full Documentation for SpreadsheetWEB, so people can review, browse and evaluate SpreadsheetWEB way before they will buy it.

Pagos is in BI business since 2002, profitable and fully self-funded since inception, with hundreds of customers. Pagos has other advanced BI-related products, like SpreadsheetLIVE (it offers a fully featured spreadsheet application environment within a web browser) and Pagos Spreadsheet Component (allows software developers to create web and desktop applications that can read, execute, and create Excel spreadsheets without requring Microsoft Excel). If you will compare SpreadsheetWEB with Microsoft's own attempt to webify Excel and Microsoft's own Long List of Unsupported Excel features, you can easily appreciate the significance of what Pagos achieved!

Permalink: http://apandre.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/spreadsheetweb/