Continuing its commitment to developing and delivering industry-leading storage technologies, IBM® is introducing the IBM Real-time Compression Appliances for NAS, an innovative new storage offering that delivers essential storage efficiency technologies, combined with exceptional ease of use and performance. In an era when the amount of information, particularly in unstructured files, is exploding, but budgets for storing that information are stagnant, IBM Real-time Compression technology offers a powerful tool for better information management, protection, and access. IBM Real-time Compression can help slow the growth of storage acquisition, reducing storage costs while simplifying both operations and management. It also enables organizations to keep more data available for use rather than storing it offsite or on harder-to-access tape, so they can support improved analytics and decision making. IBM Real-time Compression Appliances provide on-line storage optimization through real-time data compression, delivering dramatic cost reduction without performance degradation. This IBM Redbooks® publication is an easy-to-follow guide that describes how to design solutions successfully using IBM Real-time Compression Appliances (IBM RTCAs). It provides practical installation examples, ease of use, remote management, high availability, and administration techniques. Furthermore, it explains best practices for RTCA solution design, application integration, and practical RTCA use cases.

NEWER EDITION AVAILABLE MongoDB in Action, Second Edition is now available. An eBook of this older edition is included at no additional cost when you buy the revised edition! A limited number of pBook copies of this edition are still available. Please contact Manning Support to inquire about purchasing previous edition copies. MongoDB in Action is a comprehensive guide to MongoDB for application developers. The book begins by explaining what makes MongoDB unique and describing its ideal use cases. A series of tutorials designed for MongoDB mastery then leads into detailed examples for leveraging MongoDB in e-commerce, social networking, analytics, and other common applications. About the Technology Big data can mean big headaches. MongoDB is a document-oriented database designed to be flexible, scalable, and very fast, even with big data loads. It's built for high availability, supports rich, dynamic schemas, and lets you easily distribute data across multiple servers. About the Book MongoDB in Action introduces you to MongoDB and the document-oriented database model. This perfectly paced book provides both the big picture you'll need as a developer and enough low-level detail to satisfy a system engineer. Numerous examples will help you develop confidence in the crucial area of data modeling. You'll also love the deep explanations of each feature, including replication, auto-sharding, and deployment. What's Inside Indexes, queries, and standard DB operations Map-reduce for custom aggregations and reporting Schema design patterns Deploying for scale and high availability About the Reader Written for developers. No MongoDB or NoSQL experience required. About the Author Kyle Banker is a software engineer at 10gen where he maintains the official MongoDB drivers for Ruby and C. Quotes Awesome! MongoDB in a nutshell. - Hardy Ferentschik, Red Hat Excellent. Many practical examples. - Curtis Miller, Flatterline Not only the how, but also the why. - Philip Hallstrom, PJKH, LLC Has a developer-centric flavor--an excellent reference. - Rick Wagner, Red Hat A must-read. - Daniel Bretoi, Advanced Energy

Companies need more than just web analysts and data-savvy marketers to be successful–they need action heroes! While most of us never battle evil scientists or defuse nuclear warheads, successful web analysts benefit from the same attributes that fictional action heroes embody. As a web analyst, your main goal is to improve your organization’s online performance. You can become an “action hero” by translating analysis insights into action that generates significant returns for your company. How you approach analysis is critical to your overall success. In this book, web analytics expert Brent Dykes addresses the unique challenges facing analysts and online marketers working within small and large companies, teaching you how to move beyond reporting and toward analysis to drive action and change. Taking a principle-based rather than a tool-specific approach, Brent introduces you to the Action Hero Framework that breaks down the analysis process into three key stages: Prioritize (what to analyze), Analyze (how to analyze), and Mobilize (how to drive action). And he reinforces these topics with real-world examples and practical tips from seasoned analysts at leading companies. Defines the type of environment in which action heroes thrive–not just survive–as well as how to defeat the villains of web analytics that stand in the way Arms web professionals with a strategic framework for executing online analysis, as well as an arsenal of analysis techniques Reveals how companies need to be both data-driven and action-agile to drive business value from web analytics For more action hero resources and information, check out the book’s companion site at www.Analyticshero.com. "The ideas in this book will take you days (or even weeks) to work your way through, and they fly in the face of the emotional approach to marketing. The question is: would you rather have your competition lead the way with data and science when it comes to reaching your market, or are you going to go first? That's how it is with action heroes--no guts, no glory." - Seth Godin Author We Are All Weird "Don't let the jaunty, breezy style of this book throw you off. Brent successfully - and entertainingly - packs years of experience into these pages along with case studies and insightful help on getting the most out of web analytics, adding value to your company and boosting your career trajectory." - Jim Sterne Founder of eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, author of "Social Media Metrics" and Chairman of the Digital Analytics Association

Implement a Robust BI Solution with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Equip your organization for informed, timely decision making using the expert tips and best practices in this practical guide. Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Third Edition explains how to effectively develop, customize, and distribute meaningful information to users enterprise-wide. Learn how to build data marts and create BI Semantic Models, work with the MDX and DAX languages, and share insights using Microsoft client tools. Data mining and forecasting are also covered in this comprehensive resource. Understand the goals and components of successful BI Design, deploy, and manage data marts and OLAP cubes Load and cleanse data with SQL Server Integration Services Manipulate and analyze data using MDX and DAX scripts and queries Work with SQL Server Analysis Services and the BI Semantic Model Author interactive reports using SQL Server Data Tools Create KPIs and digital dashboards Use data mining to identify patterns, correlations, and clusters Implement time-based analytics Embed BI reports in custom applications using ADOMD.NET

In Customer Segmentation and Clustering Using SAS Enterprise Miner, Second Edition, Randy Collica employs SAS Enterprise Miner and the most commonly available techniques for customer relationship management (CRM). You will learn how to segment customers more intelligently and to achieve, or at least get closer to, the one-to-one customer relationship that today's businesses want. Step-by-step examples and exercises clearly illustrate the concepts of segmentation and clustering in the context of CRM. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 reviews the basics of segmentation and clustering at an introductory level, providing examples from a variety of industries. Part 2 offers an in-depth treatment of segmentation with practical topics such as when and how to update your models and clustering with many attributes. Part 3 goes beyond traditional segmentation practices to introduce recommended strategies for clustering product affinities, handling missing data, and incorporating textual records into your predictive model with SAS Text Miner software. Part 4 takes segmentation to a new level with advanced techniques such as clustering of product associations, developing segmentation scoring models from customer survey data, combining segmentations using ensemble segmentation, and segmentation of customer transactions.

Updates to the second edition include four new chapters in Part 4, Chapters 13-16, that introduce new and advanced analytic techniques that can be valuable in many customer segmentation applications. In addition, Chapter 9 has a new section on using the Imputation node in SAS Enterprise Miner to accomplish missing data imputation, compared to PROC MI used in earlier sections of Chapter 9. Also included are business insights and motivations for selection settings and analytical decisions on many of the examples included in this second edition.

This straightforward guide will appeal to anyone who seeks to better understand customers or prospective customers. Additionally, professors and students will find the book well suited for a business data mining analytics course in an MBA program or related course of study. You should understand basic statistics, but no prior knowledge of data mining or SAS Enterprise Miner is required.

This book is part of the SAS Press program.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we discuss and describe the positioning, functions, capabilities, and advanced programming techniques for IBM InfoSphere™ Streams (V2), a new paradigm and key component of IBM Big Data platform. Data has traditionally been stored in files or databases, and then analyzed by queries and applications. With stream computing, analysis is performed moment by moment as the data is in motion. In fact, the data might never be stored (perhaps only the analytic results). The ability to analyze data in motion is called real-time analytic processing (RTAP). IBM InfoSphere Streams takes a fundamentally different approach to Big Data analytics and differentiates itself with its distributed runtime platform, programming model, and tools for developing and debugging analytic applications that have a high volume and variety of data types. Using in-memory techniques and analyzing record by record enables high velocity. Volume, variety and velocity are the key attributes of Big Data. The data streams that are consumable by IBM InfoSphere Streams can originate from sensors, cameras, news feeds, stock tickers, and a variety of other sources, including traditional databases. It provides an execution platform and services for applications that ingest, filter, analyze, and correlate potentially massive volumes of continuous data streams. This book is intended for professionals that require an understanding of how to process high volumes of streaming data or need information about how to implement systems to satisfy those requirements. See: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247865.html for the IBM InfoSphere Streams (V1) release.

Using Agile methods, you can bring far greater innovation, value, and quality to any data warehouse, business intelligence, or analytics project. However, conventional Agile methodologies must be carefully adapted to address the unique characteristics of DW/BI projects. In , Agile pioneer Ken Collier shows how to do just that. Agile Analytics Collier introduces platform-agnostic Agile solutions for integrating infrastructures consisting of diverse operational, legacy, and specialty systems that mix commercial and custom code. Using working examples, he shows how to manage analytics development teams with widely diverse skill sets; support enormous and fast-growing data volumes; and more. Collier's techniques offer equal value whether your projects involve "back-end" data management, "front-end" business analysis, or both. Part I focuses on Agile project management techniques and delivery team coordination, introducing core practices that shape the way your agile DW/BI project community works together towards success Part II presents technical methods for enabling continuous delivery of business value at production-quality levels, including evolving superior designs; test-driven DW development; version control; and project automation Collier brings together proven solutions you can apply right now--whether you're an IT decision-maker, data warehouse professional, DBA, business intelligence specialist, or database developer. With his help, you can mitigate project risk, improve business alignment, achieve better results--and have fun along the way.

Continuing its commitment to developing and delivering industry-leading storage technologies, IBM® is introducing the IBM Real-time Compression Appliances for NAS, an innovative new storage offering that delivers essential storage efficiency technologies, combined with exceptional ease of use and performance. In an era when the amount of information, particularly in unstructured files, is exploding, but budgets for storing that information are stagnant, IBM Real-time Compression technology offers a powerful tool for better information management, protection, and access. IBM Real-time Compression can help slow the growth of storage acquisition, reducing storage costs while simplifying both operations and management. It also enables organizations to keep more data available for use rather than storing it offsite or on harder-to-access tape, so they can support improved analytics and decision making. IBM Real-time Compression Appliances provide on-line storage optimization through real-time data compression, delivering dramatic cost reduction without performance degradation. This IBM Redbooks® publication is an easy-to-follow guide that describes how to design solutions successfully using IBM Real-time Compression Appliances. It provides practical installation examples, ease of use, remote management, high availability, and administration techniques.

With IBM® Content Analytics Version 2.2, you can unlock the value of unstructured content and gain new business insight. IBM Content Analytics Version 2.2 provides a robust interface for exploratory analytics of unstructured content. It empowers a new class of analytical applications that use this content. Through content analysis, IBM Content Analytics provides enterprises with tools to better identify new revenue opportunities, improve customer satisfaction, and provide early problem detection. To help you achieve the most from your unstructured content, this IBM Redbooks® publication provides in-depth information about Content Analytics. This book examines the power and capabilities of Content Analytics, explores how it works, and explains how to design, prepare, install, configure, and use it to discover actionable business insights. This book explains how to use the automatic text classification capability, from the IBM Classification Module, with Content Analytics. It explains how to use the LanguageWare® Resource Workbench to create custom annotators. It also explains how to work with the IBM Content Assessment offering to timely decommission obsolete and unnecessary content while preserving and using content that has business value. The target audience of this book is decision makers, business users, and IT architects and specialists who want to understand and use their enterprise content to improve and enhance their business operations. It is also intended as a technical guide for use with the online information center to configure and perform content analysis with Content Analytics.

Pro SharePoint 2010 Search gives you expert advice on planning, deploying and customizing searches in SharePoint 2010. Drawing on the authors' extensive experience of working with real-world SharePoint deployments, this book teaches everything you'll need to know to create well-designed SharePoint solutions that always keep the end-user's experience in mind. Increase your search efficiency with SharePoint 2010's search functionality: extend the search user interface using third-party tools, and utilize analytics to improve relevancy. This practical hands-on book is a must-have resource for anyone looking to unlock the full potential of their SharePoint server's search capabilities. Pro SharePoint 2010 Search empowers you to customize a SharePoint 2010 search deployment and maximize the platform's potential for your organization. What you'll learn Design and implement effective search crawls and indexing Create intuitive user interfaces, and improve search findability Understand how to configure core SharePoint components Customize SharePoint's existing search functionality Who this book is for This book is aimed at intermediate to advanced SharePoint administrators who want to incorporate well-designed search functionality into their sites.

This unique book-and-video package introduces SharePoint® 2010 Business Intelligence Learn to build and deliver SharePoint BI applications Written by a team of leading SharePoint and Business Intelligence (BI) experts, this unique book-and-video package shows you how to successfully build and deliver BI applications using SharePoint 2010. Assuming no previous SharePoint experience, the authors deliver a clear explanation of what SharePoint will do for your BI and information management capabilities. Each lesson in the book is reinforced with a helpful tutorial on the video and cover topics such as interactive reporting with Excel, document sharing for collaborative reporting, and controlling data sources. As you learn best practices for configuring and securing SharePoint 2010 BI applications and planning and implementing your SharePoint BI project plan, you'll be well on your way to gaining a solid foundation of understanding and working with SharePoint 2010 and BI. Provides an invaluable training book-and-video package that takes you through building and delivering BI applications using SharePoint 2010 Features an accompanying video tutorial for each lesson covered in the book, along with a "Try It" section at the end of each lesson Covers interactive reporting with excel Covers Power Pivot advanced analytics Details report and document sharing for collaborative reportingShows how to use SharePoint lists and libraries for data sources repositories in your BI projects Explains how to control data sources, reports and business intelligence content with permissions and workflow approvals. With this unique book-and-video combo, you'll be well on your way to successfully building and delivering BI applications using SharePoint 2010.

The IBM® Smart Analytics System 9600 is a single, end-to-end business analytics solution to accelerate data warehousing and business intelligence initiatives. It provides integrated hardware, software, and services that enable enterprise customers to quickly and cost-effectively deploy business-changing analytics across their organizations. As a workload-optimized system for business analytics, it leverages the strengths of the System z® platform to drive: Significant savings in hardware, software, operating, and people costs to deliver a complete range of data warehouse and BI capabilities Faster time to value with a reduction in the time and speed associated with deploying Business Intelligence Industry-leading scalability, reliability, availability, and security Simplified and faster access to the data on System z

PowerPivot comprises a set of technologies for easy access to data mining and business intelligence analysis from Microsoft Excel and SharePoint. Power users and developers alike can create sophisticated, online analytic processing (OLAP) solutions using PowerPivot for Excel, and then share those solutions with other users via PowerPivot for SharePoint. Data can be pulled in from any of the leading database platforms, as well as from spreadsheets and flat files. PowerPivot for Business Intelligence Using Excel and SharePoint is your key to mastering PowerPivot. The book takes a scenario-based approach to showing you how to collect data, to mine that data through insightful analysis, and to draw conclusions that drive business performance. Each chapter in the book is focused on a specific challenge that you'll encounter when using PowerPivot. Each chapter takes you through a solution technique that's been proven in the real world. Covers the leading technology for bringing data analytics to the desktop Presents real-world solutions to real-world scenarios Written by a Microsoft Virtual Technical Specialist (VTS) for Business Intelligence What you'll learn Install and verify the PowerPivot software Integrated existing, available data to deliver business intelligence Leverage Time Intelligence to report change over time Write Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) to create custom measures Identify and implement solutions for role-playing dimensions Recognize and work-around PowerPivot's missing features Who this book is for PowerPivot Solutions for Excel and SharePoint is aimed at information workers and data analysts who typically use Excel to drive business decisions. The book shows how you can apply PowerPivot to problems typically addressed through complicated and arcane spreadsheet techniques. Business people without the time and interest in learning Excel arcane will especially appreciate how PowerPivot enables them to easily create models and perform analysis far in advance of anything they could do using Excel alone.

This book is about using business intelligence as a management information system for supporting managerial decision making. It concentrates primarily on practical business issues and demonstrates how to apply data warehousing and data analytics to support business decision making. This book progresses through a logical sequence, starting with data model infrastructure, then data preparation, followed by data analysis, integration, knowledge discovery, and finally the actual use of discovered knowledge. All examples are based on the most recent achievements in business intelligence. Finally this book outlines an overview of a methodology that takes into account the complexity of developing applications in an integrated business intelligence environment. This book is written for managers, business consultants, and undergraduate and postgraduates students in business administration.

Practical Applications of Data Mining emphasizes both theory and applications of data mining algorithms. Various topics of data mining techniques are identified and described throughout, including clustering, association rules, rough set theory, probability theory, neural networks, classification, and fuzzy logic. Each of these techniques is explored with a theoretical introduction and its effectiveness is demonstrated with various chapter examples. This book will help any database and IT professional understand how to apply data mining techniques to real-world problems.

Following an introduction to data mining principles, Practical Applications of Data Mining introduces association rules to describe the generation of rules as the first step in data mining. It covers classification and clustering methods to show how data can be classified to retrieve information from data. Statistical functions and drough set theory are discussed to demonstrate how statistical and rough set formulas can be used for data analytics and knowlege discovery. Neural networks is an important branch in computational intelligence. It is introduced and explored in the text to investigate the role of neural network algorithms in data analytics.

Making Data Integration Work: How to Systematically Reduce Cost, Improve Quality, and Enhance Effectiveness Today’s enterprises are investing massive resources in data integration. Many possess thousands of point-to-point data integration applications that are costly, undocumented, and difficult to maintain. Data integration now accounts for a major part of the expense and risk of typical data warehousing and business intelligence projects--and, as businesses increasingly rely on analytics, the need for a blueprint for data integration is increasing now more than ever. This book presents the solution: a clear, consistent approach to defining, designing, and building data integration components to reduce cost, simplify management, enhance quality, and improve effectiveness. Leading IBM data management expert Tony Giordano brings together best practices for architecture, design, and methodology, and shows how to do the disciplined work of getting data integration right. Mr. Giordano begins with an overview of the “patterns” of data integration, showing how to build blueprints that smoothly handle both operational and analytic data integration. Next, he walks through the entire project lifecycle, explaining each phase, activity, task, and deliverable through a complete case study. Finally, he shows how to integrate data integration with other information management disciplines, from data governance to metadata. The book’s appendices bring together key principles, detailed models, and a complete data integration glossary. Coverage includes Implementing repeatable, efficient, and well-documented processes for integrating data Lowering costs and improving quality by eliminating unnecessary or duplicative data integrations Managing the high levels of complexity associated with integrating business and technical data Using intuitive graphical design techniques for more effective process and data integration modeling Building end-to-end data integration applications that bring together many complex data sources

Collecting data is relatively easy, but turning raw information into something useful requires that you know how to extract precisely what you need. With this insightful book, intermediate to experienced programmers interested in data analysis will learn techniques for working with data in a business environment. You'll learn how to look at data to discover what it contains, how to capture those ideas in conceptual models, and then feed your understanding back into the organization through business plans, metrics dashboards, and other applications. Along the way, you'll experiment with concepts through hands-on workshops at the end of each chapter. Above all, you'll learn how to think about the results you want to achieve -- rather than rely on tools to think for you. Use graphics to describe data with one, two, or dozens of variables Develop conceptual models using back-of-the-envelope calculations, as well asscaling and probability arguments Mine data with computationally intensive methods such as simulation and clustering Make your conclusions understandable through reports, dashboards, and other metrics programs Understand financial calculations, including the time-value of money Use dimensionality reduction techniques or predictive analytics to conquer challenging data analysis situations Become familiar with different open source programming environments for data analysis "Finally, a concise reference for understanding how to conquer piles of data."--Austin King, Senior Web Developer, Mozilla "An indispensable text for aspiring data scientists."--Michael E. Driscoll, CEO/Founder, Dataspora

Tips, techniques, and trends on harnessing dashboard technology to optimize business performance In Performance Dashboards, Second Edition, author Wayne Eckerson explains what dashboards are, where they can be used, and why they are important to measuring and managing performance. As Director of Research for The Data Warehousing Institute, a worldwide association of business intelligence professionals, Eckerson interviewed dozens of organizations that have built various types of performance dashboards in different industries and lines of business. Their practical insights explore how you can effectively turbo-charge performance–management initiatives with dashboard technology. Includes all-new case studies, industry research, news chapters on "Architecting Performance Dashboards" and "Launching and Managing the Project" and updated information on designing KPIs, designing dashboard displays, integrating dashboards, and types of dashboards. Provides a solid foundation for understanding performance dashboards, business intelligence, and performance management Addresses the next generation of performance dashboards, such as Mashboards and Visual Discovery tools, and including new techniques for designing dashboards and developing key performance indicators Offers guidance on how to incorporate predictive analytics, what-if modeling, collaboration, and advanced visualization techniques This updated book, which is 75% rewritten, provides a foundation for understanding performance dashboards, business intelligence, and performance management to optimize performance and accelerate results.

Business Intelligence (BI) software allows you to view different components of a business using a single visual platform, which makes comprehending mountains of data easier. BI is everywhere. Applications that include reports, analytics, statistics, and historical and predictive modeling are all examples of BI. Currently, we are in the second generation of BI software—called BI 2.0—which is focused on writing BI software that is predictive, adaptive, simple, and interactive. As computers and software have evolved, more data can be presented to end users with increasingly visually rich techniques. Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies such as Microsoft Silverlight can be used to transform traditional user-interfaces filled with boring data into fully interactive analytical applications that quickly deliver insight from large data sets. Furthermore, RIA applications now include 3D spatial-design capabilities that move beyond a simple list or grid and allow for interesting layouts of aggregated data. BI 2.0 implemented via an RIA technology can truly bring out the power of BI and deliver it to an average user on the Web. Next-Generation Business Intelligence Software with Silverlight 4 provides developers, designers, and architects with a solid foundation in BI design and architecture concepts for Microsoft Silverlight. This book covers key BI design concepts and how they can be applied without an existing BI infrastructure. Author Bart Czernicki provides you with examples of how to build small BI applications that are interactive, highly visual, statistical, predictive—and most importantly—intuitive to the end-user. BI isn't just for the executive branch of a Fortune 500 company—it is for the masses. Let Next-Generation Business Intelligence Software with Silverlight 4 show you how to unlock the rich intelligence you already have.

Do you know what people do when they visit your website or web app? Or how much the site contributes to your bottom line? Google Analytics keeps track and makes it easy for you to learn precisely what's happening. This hands-on guide shows you how to get the most out of this free and powerful tool -- whether you're new to Google Analytics or have been using it for years. Google Analytics shows you how to track different market segments and analyze conversion rates, and reveals advanced techniques such as marketing-campaign tracking, a valuable feature that most people overlook. And this practical book not only provides complete code samples for web developers, it also explains the concepts behind the code to marketers, managers, and others on your team. Discover exactly how the Google Analytics system works Learn how to configure the system to measure data most relevant to your business goals Track online marketing activities, including cost-per-click ads, email, and internal campaigns Track events -- rather than page views -- on sites with features such as maps, embedded video, and widgets Configure Google Analytics to track enterprise data, including multiple domains Use advanced techniques such as custom variables and CRM integration