Excel ExtraPlus is on its way!

Microsoft has unveiled its plans for PerformancePoint Server 2007, that would be the hub of its Business Intelligence capabilities. With Excel being the most common platform on which Enterprises do analytics, Microsoft plans a tight integration with Excel help its corporate users adopt this platform. However, with the delays that we have now come to associate with Vista and other initiatives, one would wait to see how well they execute on their plans.

Talent, Culture & a Headstart takes you ahead!

In this article, Tom Davenport, Author and Consultant says that intuition alone will not suffice and companies have to create a well thought-out analytics strategy to get ahead. According to him, intangibles like Talent, Culture and starting early could prove crucial in how far you can get ahead of your competition.

It's WestPoint's Turn now!

WestPoint, the US Military Academy has turned to SPSS to build models and analyze more than 20 years of personal characteristics collected from institutional survey data. Those characteristics will be used to determine the best predictors of success as a cadet and as an Army officer.

Predictive Analytics Goes Mainstream

In Predictive Analytics: Business Intelligence 's Next Step, Rick Whiting of InformationWeek highlights the trend of predictive analytics being built into mainstream applications, and being part of everyday decision making. Not just in business, but in healthcare, crime prevention and even counter terrorism - read on.....

Diamonds are Forever! At What Price, Though?

Just when you thought Analytics cannot be applied for anything more exotic than the winners of the World Cup Soccer, along come another one.

Anderson Analytics believes they can value your diamond. They took large amounts of data, such as general diamond pricing and 4 ‘C’ information for thousands of diamonds, and analyzed it. Using advanced statistical software they literally ‘mined’ all the data available on over 44,000 diamonds. The result of the multivariate analysis was a methodology for predicting the price and market value of diamonds with a very high degree of certainty.

Will SpotFire be Spot-On?

Software maker Spotfire has stuck out its neck to predict the semi-finalists for the FIFA Soccer World Cup in Germany. After analyzing results from games in the last 20 years, Spotfire reckons that Brazil, France, Germany and Mexico will reach the semifinals. So far, there have been very few upsets in this World Cup, but we will know in a few weeks if SpotFire was Spot-On