Analytics exposes poor performers

Companies' increased use of data analytics will democratise access to data by allowing consumers to see which companies are performing well, revolutionising the way shoppers buy goods and services, according to chief technology officers from Teradata and MicroStrategy.

Steph Brobst, CTO of Teradata and Jeff Bedell, CTO of MicroStrategy, said that increased use of mobile devices in targeting consumers is not only changing the way businesses market goods and services, but allowing consumers to better track company performance.

Using the example of healthcare and airline performance as examples of how consumers will be better able to monitor and select their providers of choice, neither CTO had much sympathy for failing companies that will lose out because of improve data availability.

Brobst said by way of example that if a particular hospital had to shut its maternity ward because it data showed that it failed to provide robust services then that was only a positive outcome for consumers.

Bedell found that analysing airlines' performance on flights between Washington and San Diego – where Teradata is hosting its conference this week – the most effective airline was not always the cheapest, which was typically late 25 percent of the time.

Brobst said Gartner's most recent prediction that 33 percent of business intelligence would be consumed by mobile devices by 2013 was woefully underestimated, arguing that it would be at least 66 percent by 2013.

He however urged companies to be cautious when targeting consumers by using location in mobile technologies. "If this isn't managed properly then there will be a backlash."

Meanwhile Teradata announced on Monday the release of its new faster, greener product - Data Warehouse Appliance 2690 - that will deliver double the performance and triple the data capacity than its predecessor as well as using up to 60 percent less energy.

According to MIT research the world's top performing companies use data analytics five times more than lower performing companies.

Sophisticated data analytics works differently from traditional database technologies, which say Teradata, can cause bottlenecks in data processing. Modern data analytics mines data in differents ways by extracting specific data in a row or column, instead of by reading row upon row or column upon column.

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