Amazon Quicksight

Another simple and cheap business intelligence tool, this on by Amazon.  With links to other related system reviews.

Review: Amazon QuickSight covers the BI basics
A promising data analysis tool in the cloud, QuickSight is easy to use but limited in terms of visualization types         By Martin Heller

When I reviewed self-service exploratory business intelligence (BI) products in 2015, I covered the strengths and weaknesses of Tableau 9.0, Qlik Sense 2.0, and Microsoft Power BI. As I pointed out at the time, these three products offer a range of data access, discovery, and visualization capabilities at a range of prices, with Tableau the most capable and expensive, Qlik Sense in the middle, and Power BI the least capable but a very good value.

A new entry, Amazon QuickSight, runs entirely in the AWS cloud, has good access to Amazon data sources and fair access to other data sources, and offers basic analysis and data manipulation at a basic price. Of the three products I reviewed in 2015, QuickSight most closely resembles Power BI, only without the dependence on a desktop product to create data sets—or the level of analysis power provided by the Power BI Desktop/Service combination.  .... " 

MicroStrategy Desktop Now Free

Examined MicroStrategy for the enterprise some time ago, and found it to be very good.  Nice to see this added to the growing free BI viz options.  For students or the small business especially.  Worth a look.  Plan to try the R integration.

MicroStrategy Desktop BI software now free
BI vendor MicroStrategy said today that its Desktop software is now free, adding to the affordable self-service BI landscape that includes Tableau Public, Microsoft Power BI and others. MicroStrategy Desktop 10.5 is available for download at https://www.microstrategy.com/us/desktop.

Customers who currently use MicroStrategy Web "can seamlessley connect MicroStrategy Desktop to their existing projects," the company said in its announcement. "Additionally, by downloading their dashboards from the server to MicroStrategy Desktop, MicroStrategy Web users can work locally and offline." MicroStrategy Web is still a paid product.  .... "

 ... The desktop version of the software can connect to multiple types of data sources from spreadsheets to Hadoop for data visualization, including some GIS capabilities from Esri. There's also an add-on R Integration Pack. .. ." 

Gartner Quadrant Reports for Business Intelligence

Just reread the 2015 Gartner reports on Business Intelligence for BI planning purposes, provided by a vendor, " ... Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms ... "   nicely done, largely concur.  I have been involved with a number of these packages, an interesting evolution in the space.

Essentials of Business Analytics

Continue to make my way through this new text.  Which seeks to position the three kinds of analytics: Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive.  As I have preached many times in writing and talks.  It always makes sense to proceed in that order.

  First simply look at the data in alternate forms and devise new ways to describe it.  Sometimes that alone can solve your problem.  Then seek pattern in your data to find the best opportunities for improvement.  That too can often be a place to stop and immediately derive value from your exploration.  An then, take your discoveries and insert them directly into your decision process to provide ongoing value.

 Essentials of Business Analytics by 
Jeffrey D. Camm, James J. Cochran, Michael J. Fry, Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, David R. Anderson, Dennis J. Sweeney, Thomas A.Williams

I have been making my way through parts of this book, a great resource both at the overview and technical detail level.

Impressed by the book covering so much of this journey.  It looks at the descriptive and proceeds to depth.  It covers the simplest numerical methods and leads to methods learned in graduate school that we used to call 'operations research'.   It covers a wide variety of current software methods, from spreadsheet packages to advanced solvers.  And many detailed visualizations.  It addresses a wide variety of application areas. An early section describes applications, some surprising.  No matter what your area of application is, you will find inspiration here.  Useful for managers, practitioners and students at different levels.

One criticism, the topic of Big Data seems somewhat reluctantly brought in.    It has a natural connection to the topic, that could be further developed.

Still, an excellent text to browse and learn from.  I have a half dozen topics bookmarked already.

Disclosure: Some of my work is briefly mentioned in the book, starting a the bottom of page 7.   Contact me to discuss particulars.