Our Top 5 Articles of 2015: Data, Analytics, Advisory
Even though we’re already blazing full speed ahead into 2016, it’s always important to take a minute to look back at the past year and recognize the high points that made it special. In addition to being named a Boston Business Journal Pacesetter for the second time, making the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies for the third time, and receiving IBM’s 2015 Business Intelligence Partner of the Year award, we’ve produced several valuable and popular pieces of thought leadership to enrich the analytics community. Here are the top 5 articles 2015 saw us release. We hope you find them useful as you start your journey into the new year.
1. ETL vs. ELT: What’s the Big Difference?
Geoff Speare, one of our most accomplished information management experts, provided an insider’s view on two of the most prevalent data transformation strategies being used in the business world today. With a few simple, concrete examples, he showed how one letter can have a big impact on data management.
>> See Geoff’s thoughts on ETL and ELT
2. Cognos Analytics: Top 4 Release Features from Insight 2015
Probably the most exciting thing we heard at IBM Insight this year was that Cognos Analytics, a full redesign of the Cognos BI tool, would be released by the end of 2015. We got the opportunity to have Scott Misage, one of the top members of our business analytics practice, preview the product and give his initial thoughts.
>> Read what Scott learned about Cognos Analytics
3. Top 5 Trends in Cloud Data Warehousing and Analytics for 2015
At the beginning of the year, Crystal Meyers managed to hit the nail on the head with this quick trend analysis on cloud data warehousing. From her viewpoint as an authority on both information management and business analytics, Crystal isolated and discussed 5 concepts that have since become core talking points for this area of the data and analytics space.
>> See where Crystal thinks cloud data warehousing is headed
4. Hadoop Ecosystem Quick Start: 5 Key Components
Alongside cloud data warehousing, another major point of interest that continued to gain ground in 2015 was big data and the strategies required to manage it. Central to this, of course, is Hadoop and the many open source applications that have been created using it. Sagarr Kanoje used his deep knowledge of big data architecture to present 5 applications in the Hadoop Ecosystem that everyone starting out with big data should understand.
>> Start navigating the Hadoop Ecosystem with Sagarr
5. Ironside Case Study: Manchester PD’s Predictive Policing Success
Beyond tech trends and methodologies, we’ve had some amazing client stories emerge this year that showcase just how powerful analytics can be in real-world situations. One of the most striking of these was the work we did with the City of Manchester, NH Police Department to help them get predictive about fighting crime in their community. Thanks to the IronShield solution, they’re now seeing major reductions in crime rates citywide.
>> Hear how Manchester PD has succeeded through predictive analytics
These are of course just a few examples of the many pieces of content we produced in 2015. If you’d like to see more, check out our blog page. You can also sign up for our newsletter to get regular email updates with our latest thoughts on the ever-expanding data and analytics space. We wish you the best in 2016!
