Cloud Computing: Designing Big Data That Works
March 27, 2013
Grazed from The New York Times. Author: Quentin Hardy.
Whether the move is from mainframes to minicomputers, or from there to personal computers and servers, and now to mobile devices and cloud computing, we are witnessing one grand process of moving machine intelligence closer to the people on the front lines, even as the computing at the center gets more powerful.
Fortunes change with each shift, as purveyors of tech stress technical knowledge when mainframes are the big thing, or talk about their understanding of business processes in the client-server era. What matters in the cloud and mobile era may be the critical importance of design. With all the data being collected, design and the ability to present information well may be the big strategic weapon. It certainly seems to be the way a lot of people are coming after the incumbents. Recently Infor, a collection of revamped business applications companies, unveiled a good-looking set of charts, graphics and lists that inform much of the output and future options on its mobile applications for manufacturing and sales…
On Wednesday, a start-up called Tidemark, which sells cloud-based business analytics software, introduced a series of planning features, called storylines, that are designed to speed forecasting and decision making. Areas like profitability of regions and products, or the effects on costs of changing headcount, are displayed graphically, in what feels like a consumer Web site on which you can redesign images with your browser…
Read more from the source @ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/designing-big-data-that-works/