Bruce Weed's Blog

Latest Version Of IBM InfoSphere BigInsights V1.3

bruceweed — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:16:18 +0000

The latest version of InfoSphere BigInsights is V1.3, click on PDF file below for more details.

ENUS211-501

“Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin

IBM Big Data Success Stories – Client References and Big Data Business Partners

bruceweed — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:51:35 +0000

Click on the link below to access the Success Stories (PDF)

ibm-big-data-success

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down, mandatory” – Ed Viesturs, Mountain Climber

See you at the IBM Information OnDemand (IOD) Conference in Las Vegas this week – And yes, Big Data will be a hot topic!

bruceweed — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:06:58 +0000

It is that time of year again; our IBM IOD conference is upon us. I hope to see many of you there in attendance. With over 10,000 people attending and some great sessions planned, it should be a valuable experience for everyone (Business Partners, Customers and IBMers).

What is my predicted buzz at the conference this year? What else, Big Data. I mean what else could be bigger then Big Data, since it already has Big in its name.

I will be kicking off the Big Data sessions with my talk on Sunday for Business Partners, from 2:15pm to 3:15pm. Below I have included other key Big Data sessions you may want to attend while you are at IOD.

Big Data Sessions at IOD

I would encourage Business Partners and Customers to raise your hands and ask questions about our Big Data Platform and strategy. Talk to one another and get views on this exciting area.

Safe travels and see you in Las Vegas!

BTW it is never too late to attend the conference it runs from October 23 – 27. See the link below for more info.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/2011-conference/

“I am easily satisfied with the very best.” – Winston Churchill

IBM big data Business Partners

bruceweed — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:55:42 +0000

Many of the Business Partners you see here listed below will be out at our Information On Demand (IOD) Conference in Las Vegas starting on Oct. 23 – Oct. 27.

Please take the time to meet with them if you are out there. Watch for my next post for more details on the conference.

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.” – Winston Churchill

IBM Big Data Training – InfoSphere BigInsights

bruceweed — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:00:07 +0000

Open the PDF below and click on the training you would like to take in order to find out more:

Big Data Training

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” - William Butler Yeats

Learn Hadoop and Go to Las Vegas All Expenses Paid!

bruceweed — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:27:40 +0000

IBM is sponsoring 3 Big Data enthusiasts for an expenses paid trip to Las Vegas to attend the Information on Demand conference taking place during October 24-28, 2011. To qualify all you need to do is complete free Hadoop Fundamentals course online at Big Data University and fill out the course evaluation form. Who knew learning Big Data could be so rewarding.

Learn Hadoop for Free and Go to Las Vegas All Expenses Paid: http://freedb2.com/2011/09/09/learn-hadoop-for-free-and-go-to-las-vegas-all-expenses-paid/

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” - Kahlil Gibran

Leadership

bruceweed — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:20:01 +0000

I thought I would ease into the Leadership discussion.

The first two areas around leadership to layout are around the following two facts:

1) Leaders need to make difficult decisions in a well thought out and timely manner.

In the picture below, Washington’s decision to cross the Delaware River in a surprise attack changed the course of the war.

2) Leaders need to lead. The statement sounds obvious, but in order for a leader to effectively lead they need to be in a position to do that job.

As you can see in the picture below there is a lot going on. People paddling, someone holding the flag, someone steering the boat, someone pushing away from ice chunks, etc. If Washington had to do all of these jobs, not only would he not have time to lead (direct the boat, think through the impending battle on the other side, etc.), the over all mission would not be very effective.

They say a picture speaks a 1000 words, the picture below speaks volumes on leadership.

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” - George Washington

9/11 Remembered

bruceweed — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:30:35 +0000

I would like to remember those lost on September 11, 2001.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” - Abraham Lincoln

New Verision of InfoSphere BigInsights: IBM InfoSphere BigInsights Enterprise Edition V1.2

bruceweed — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:07:13 +0000

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights Enterprise Edition V1.2 continues to offer rapid exploration of big data by creating distributed jobs capable of running on clusters of computers. This infrastructure can be used to tackle very large data sets by breaking the data into chunks and coordinating the processing of the data across a massively parallel environment, with inherent resilience and fault tolerance.

Once the raw data has been stored across the nodes of a distributed cluster, follow-up queries and analysis of the data can be handled efficiently, with dynamic interpretation of the data format at read time.

New enhancements in IBM Infosphere BigInsights Enterprise Edition V1.2:

Text analytics development tooling – A development environment for developing text analytics rules. Key features include rule editor and configurations for syntax highlighting, result viewers to visualize extractor results, and provenance viewer to trace the lineage of extractor results, and assists in identifying imprecise rules.
Spreadsheet style data discovery, exploration, and prototyping – A data discovery tool that can be used to discover insights into your business intelligence data. Key features include web-based visualization and analytics of massive amounts of data with a familiar spreadsheet-like environment, and an interactive editing environment for creating, extracting, transforming and visualizing data.
Integration capabilities - IBM InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM DB2®, and Netezza integration to allow data transfer that leverages.

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights can be used with other IBM products for advanced analytics and a more comprehensive information strategy. It lets you combine traditional data warehouse analysis with dynamic insights from unstructured and semi-structured data, enabling a more complete view of the business not possible before. Combined with IBM InfoSphere Streams and IBM InfoSphere Warehouse, it can extend analysis to encompass information-in-motion and information accumulated over a long period of time.

For additional information on IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, refer to

: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/biginsights; ENUS211-339

“Everything flows, nothing stays still.” - Heraclitus

1 to 40 Trillion, those are large numbers!

bruceweed — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:40:41 +0000

Somewhere over a trillion gallons of water fell from Hurricane Irene. I even heard numbers quoted as large as 40 trillion. So, how are we doing in the aftermath of Irene, and how did we do leading up to the storm? Let’s start with SCM (supply chain management), since it was non-existent. I went looking for D-cell batteries one night several days before the storm, none in stock.

Two weeks before the storm hit, they knew it would hit somewhere on the east coast. Battery companies at that point should have been sending stock to mid-eastern seaboard warehouses. A week before the storm those batteries should have been shipped to retailers from NC to Maine.

I would like to say we need a Big Data solution to solve this issue, but we really do not. We need improved SCM and common sense. It is very easy to figure out what people need before and after a storm, here is the short list: Batteries (D-cell in particular), bottled water, first aid kits, generators and chain saws. Secondary items: ice, MRE’s, sump pumps, wet vacs, inflatable rubber rafts, etc.

I was speaking with Billy Bosworth the CEO of DataStax yesterday and we both agreed companies need to study the military to really understand provisioning/SCM. Having lived through Hurricane Andrew back in 1992, where wind speed was recorded at 220 miles per hour at Turkey Point, I was able to see what the military can do and how fast. Tent cities set up over night, roads cleared in a blink of an eye, looting stopped on a dime (army rangers with M-16s never had to say a word), food and water distributed to those in need.

With the right IT solutions, common sense, and help from the National Guard/Army we should be able to do a much better job pre/post hurricanes in the future.

Now, where does Big Data come in? The storm itself, although we had good warning and it was tracked fairly well, there were two areas that fell short. First, the areas they thought would get the most damage did not. Many of the coastal areas had minimal damage, ditto with places like Manhattan (NYC). However many places in land got hammered,Vermont, rural NY, Connecticut, etc.

The second area they missed was the wind tail of the storm. The storm was supposedly gone from my area (CT) by late afternoon; however we had high winds on Sunday from 5pm to 11pm, even though the storm was “gone”. These winds cause a lot of extra damage. Big Data can help in predictive modeling, with more data points analyzed; maybe those two misses above would not have happened.

In the mean time I am in the dark both at home and figuratively. Still no power at the house and still wondering why we can not handle these hurricanes in a more effective manner.

“Everybody lives for something better to come.” - Anonymous