Sharepoint Virtual Reality

We experimented with similar ideas.  How do you immerse yourself in messy data?   In information architecture.   We never thought of Sharepoint as a place to start, though we were an MS shop with lots of data of many kinds there.   But will the employee be willing to pick up the headgear, and will that add enough of an engagement to make it worth it?    Maybe if it were complex data we need to navigate?  There will be a gallery of templates to start with, lets see where that takes us.

Microsoft turns SharePoint into the simplest VR creation tool yet
SharePoint spaces is like the PowerPoint of Mixed Reality.

By Devindra Hardawar, @devindra in Engadget

Microsoft is sticking with its pragmatic approach to VR with SharePoint spaces, a new addition to its collaboration platform that lets you quickly build and view Mixed Reality experiences. It's a lot like how PowerPoint made it easy for anyone to create business presentations. Sharepoint spaces features templates for things like a gallery of 3D models or 360-degree videos, all of which are viewable in Mixed Reality headsets (or any browser that supports WebVR). While they're certainly not complex virtual environments, they're still immersive enough to be used for employee training, or as a quick virtual catalog for your customers.  .... " 

BlueSpring Visual SharePoint Search

Have previously known BlueSpring as a BPM vendor.  Have been informed of their capabilities of visual search of SharePoint data.  I remember that search process for analytics data being painful. This is built on the Zakta visual search engine, which is impressive. Worth a look.

" ... Provide an instant boost in find-ability, visual appeal and value to users of Microsoft SharePoint.  ... 
Organizations have spent millions of dollars making Microsoft SharePoint™ the de-facto standard platform for their associates to store, collaborate and share information. Sites, document libraries, lists, wiki’s, discussion boards and blogs abound housing all types of corporate IP from HR frequently asked questions to new product development ideas. Gaining access to this semi-structured or unstructured data can be daunting for a casual user looking for information to better perform their job.  ... " 

A Facility Management System

Just brought to my attention:

CINCINNATI, May 4, 2015 — Ascendum Solutions, a global information technology (IT) provider, announced today that it completed the acquisition of technology and business assets of FMS, a subsidiary of Turner Construction Company, an international construction services company.  The acquisition specifically includes two major products: construction management (c.docs) and facility management (Facilify) software both built on Microsoft’s SharePoint platform. These domain specific products extend Ascendum’s portfolio of SharePoint solutions geared towards clients to improve performance, reduce cost and drive more value/ROI from their SharePoint investments. 

To read this full press release, please visit http://ow.ly/MuQTL

Microsoft Power BI Demo

Yesterday attended the Microsoft Power BI introductory demo.  The presentation given was a bit shaky, but I did like what I saw in the simplicity of the approach for setting up data visualizations on easy to use dashboards.  This is NOT an advanced data viz tool, but looks to be an easy way to create basic dashboards.  Sign up here.    This is still an alpha version that may be changing.  

Several examples are shown of how to create dashboards.  Easy to do.  Most intriguing was the ability to use a natural language search or query about the data you are connected to,  then you can pin the query results to a dashboard.  Might be a good way to have a non-analyst iteratively create a dashboard.

Easy to connect to Excel and many other database forms.  Easy to selectively share resulting dashboards. They have also connected to a number of outside data resources.   A separate package called Power BI Designer lets you create more advanced visuals.  A Mobile App for the iPad has been created to display mobile dashboards.  (other mobile devices to come)  That App has alerting capabilities to update your data and alert you to specified data changes via notifications.  An advanced API exists as well.  Currently PowerBI is entirely free for use.  They say there will always be a free tier for experimentation, it appears a 1 GB restriction will be used.

Once this is complete it appears it will be competitive for basic visualization.

Pointer to the presentation.  Don't know how long this will be available.

Warning:  you need now to create an access ID based on an email address that is corporate or .edu, not  Gmail or other 'non business' email addresses.   I note here that other entry points to MS services do not have this restriction.  Poor, inconsistent restriction.

Microsoft PowerBI Preview

Walter Riker points me to the Microsoft PowerBI site.   Preview free trial.  Which adds data visualization and dash boards to many MS and other data sources.    "Power BI works for your role ... Reduce risk and increase rewards - unlock insights to drive more informed and confident decisions. ... ".  Also now has an IOS App:  Microsoft Power BI   Which I have installed.  Will be looking more closely.

More on Power BI from article in the MSDN blog announcement:

" ... This morning at Microsoft’s Convergence Conference, we announced new products and services that will enable organizations to create a data culture in all parts of their organizations. Adopting a data culture starts with making information easily accessible to all - our Power BI offering is helping to accelerate that adoption by changing the way people access, use, manage and share data.

First unveiled in January, the new and improved Power BI is a cloud-based (software-as-a-service) business analytics service for non-technical business users. With just a browser or a Power BI mobile app, customers can visualize and analyze their data with easy-to-use, accessible tools and innovative technology  ...... 

With Power BI our customers can keep a pulse on their business by bringing all their data together and monitor it through a single pane of glass. Live Power BI dashboards and reports show visualizations and KPIs from data that reside both on-premises and in the cloud, providing a consolidated view across the business regardless of where the data lives."  ... '

Power BI Blog.

Challenge of Cognitive Assistants

Via the Cognitive Systems Institute. Some excellent points are made in this slideshare.  Also good background and examples of the present state of these systems.  Even the definition of cognitive assistants is covered. Separately a group of us is examining how such advice links to particular tasks and jobs.   More on that will follow in this space.

 Advisory systems are probably the most important approach for using AI for typical business use. We addressed  this in much detail during the expert systems era.   Slides by Hamid R Motahari of IBM Almaden.

How Big Data is Changing New Product Development

Below is an  collaborative webinar featuring two groups I have done work with.  And includes Tom Davenport, who included our analytics efforts at Procter & Gamble in his books.   I am looking forward to attending.

WHAT: How Big Data is Changing New Product Development + FREE white paper "Product Development in the Age of Big Data: What You Need to Know"
WHO: A Live Webinar with Tom Davenport and Kobi Gershoni
WHEN: January 29, at 11:00 am Pacific Time/2:00 pm Eastern Time
HOW: Click this link to register

Signals is proud to announce a webinar in partnership with Innovation Excellence, the world’s largest crowdsourced innovation website, with over 150,000 unique visitors from 170 countries.
In this 50-minute webinar, Tom Davenport and Kobi Gershoni will answer questions around what it means to embed the intelligence from Big Data in the development of new products and services and how it will change the work and landscape of new product development. They will explain the practical challenges organizations are facing today and share the key success factors for embedding Big Data in the NPD.

WHAT will you learn:
The main decision points in every NPD process, from ideation to launch that can be supported with Big Data
The types of new product data with which companies are increasingly being faced with
The current and future role of product developers
How other companies are harnessing “product intelligence” - from better, faster decision-making to embedding better data and smarter analytics in the NPD process

New Product Development and Big Data

Below is an  collaborative webinar featuring two groups I have done work with.  And includes Tom Davenport, who included our analytics efforts at Procter & Gamble in his books.   I am looking forward to attend.

" .....

WHAT: How Big Data is Changing New Product Development + FREE white paper "Product Development in the Age of Big Data: What You Need to Know"
WHO: A Live Webinar with Tom Davenport and Kobi Gershoni
WHEN: January 29, at 11:00 am Pacific Time/2:00 pm Eastern Time
HOW: Click this link to register

Signals is proud to announce a webinar in partnership with Innovation Excellence, the world’s largest crowdsourced innovation website, with over 150,000 unique visitors from 170 countries.
In this 50-minute webinar, Tom Davenport and Kobi Gershoni will answer questions around what it means to embed the intelligence from Big Data in the development of new products and services and how it will change the work and landscape of new product development. They will explain the practical challenges organizations are facing today and share the key success factors for embedding Big Data in the NPD.

WHAT will you learn:
The main decision points in every NPD process, from ideation to launch that can be supported with Big Data
The types of new product data with which companies are increasingly being faced with
The current and future role of product developers
How other companies are harnessing “product intelligence” - from better, faster decision-making to embedding better data and smarter analytics in the NPD process   ... " 

Computing What Looks Good and Fits

Have been involved in virtual makeover projects in retail since the 80s.  And have seen attempts to take this beyond just how things look, to see if we can understand if a piece of clothing will fit via some virtual model. A look at a number of Apps and applications that do this.   At very least reducing the expensive process of returns.  And improving the level of consumer satisfaction.

In CACM:   ' ... "Creating a digital relationship with a customer ... could theoretically influence a large share of their consumer spending."  .... Technically, all of that is possible today, he says, but businesses have to figure out how to get there. "It will be a mad race to that point because there is so much to be won—or lost—in this race, creating a digital relationship with a customer that could theoretically influence a large share of their consumer spending."  ... ' 

Wrong Story, Right Story and ROI

In Innovation Excellence.  " ... From the Innovation Excellence Cities Tour: Sam Ford, Director of Audience Engagement at Peppercomm Communications shares why storytelling is so important to companies - and why stories have to be about people; not just products or services. ... " .   I much like the idea of thinking about the 'right story'.  It is important in storytelling, since there are many possible stories.  To make your point?  Or to allow you to interact with the story and understand alternative implications?  The former has dominated.  The latter can have more value.

Scratch Creation Language from MIT

Scratch. Was pointed out to me a year ago but just had a chance to take a look.   Has existed publicly since 2006. Creation environment for kids. This reminds me of other environments, like Turtle Programming of longer ago.  This adds sharing and takes the idea of creating more broadly.  " ... Create stories, games, and animations ... Share with others around the world .. ." .   Also the idea of providing help through a process of curation.

" ... With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.

Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge. ... " 

A Smart Business Notebook Network

In FastCompany:  As a long time user of Evernote, this was interesting. Pointing towards the Moleskin physical notebook.  So not paperless.  Had been unaware of the former version of this.  " ...  The two companies have partnered up to create a special notebook for Evernote users geared toward enterprise customers. .... The primary difference between the Evernote Business Notebook and the Evernote Smart Notebook introduced two years ago is that the enterprise version allows users to selectively share their notes. ... "  

McKinsey Apps for Android Now

I see that McKinsey has set up an App for access to its publications.   Here for the Android.  They often have interesting documents, which I have pointed to here.   The process of providing Apps for access to corporate information as opposed to just links to sites, is an increasing practice.   At least for now, looks like a good idea.  But I wonder about the App space becoming yet more cluttered. The expectation for Apps is also to have frequent updates of content, an expectation that is costly to maintain.   For now, worth following:

" ... Introducing the McKinsey Insights app for Android ... We want to share some exciting news: we have just released the McKinsey Insights app for Android, providing smartphone and tablet-device access to the latest perspectives from across our industry and functional practices, the McKinsey Global Institute, and McKinsey Quarterly. ... " 

Also available for the iPad.

Staying Secure in the Cloud

As the owner and operator of a consulting business I am acutely aware of the need to readily exchange information between people and multiple devices to improve communications.  For a long time we were forced to exchange information via email, but as email use has grown, keeping track of all these exchanges became difficult.  Also, we need to be able to exchange value and services in discrete quantities to clients.  This has led to more software as a service, and also to access to remote, growing and volatile  databases used to solve analytic problems.

Bottom line, the sharing of data and services in a what is now called a Cloud has become essential for getting business done.  Especially for the small to medium sized business.

But as part of this growth,  the danger of security has become crucial.  It is another means to lose data, to give up control, to not be sure of the integrity of what we share.   This is not only an issue of keeping our business working, but also has serious regulatory implications in some industries.

I was pointed to a Slideshare recently provided by Midmarket IBM that addresses this topic: Staying Secure in the Cloud: Four Tips For Midsize Businesses   A short 8 slides that is worth a look for any sized business.

The overview is simple.  Clouds DELIVER with agility and speed.  but opening your system up in this way is by its nature risky.  So what do we do?

The recommendations come down to key and very straightforward, largely common sense recommendations that help you protect your cloud environment.   I think the initial slides, addressing the basic issues, do a good of of setting the stage.  Not every mid size business will need to go further.   I like the method of positioning a problem simply first.

The slide show ends with the ability to download a white paper Integrated IT Security for Midsized Businesses.   If you need more information.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines  of a smarter planet. More here.  

Clouds, Analytics and Advanced Patient Care

Recently pointed out to me,  “Turning Healthcare Vision into Reality with the Cloud”  by Scott Megill, CEO of Coriell Life Sciences in the IBM Smarter Planet blog.   Good read.

Lately I have been more involved with cloud data syncing, sharing and analytic services, so the topic is already foremost in my head.    In addition have been in conversations about how better standards for data, both structured and unstructured, can be shared between patients, professionals and devices.  Its an Internet of things, and we are one of those things, and a prime stakeholder. Consider too that embedding analytics into these processes will also allow more efficiency and process outcome improvement in an already very expensive system.

Megill rightly points out that we are living in a changing world of devices and clients,and the need to communicate in a standard way is key:

" ... For healthcare providers, though, this means more medical records to deal with. With more patients potentially entering the system, the number of patient medical and history records will rapidly soar. These records need to be stored, organized, analyzed, and instantly accessible for medical researchers, physicians and healthcare insurance providers — all at minimum administrative costs. This is where open cloud technology – providing the needed interoperability, collaboration, transparency and most importantly, the security – comes to the rescue. ... " 

Very clear.  You need very fast means of communications among disparate and changing devices, syncing at many levels, clear and secure standards.   All linked to increasing use of analytical algorithms.  And the integration of human beings at many levels of sophistication.  Have seen this component as a player in other spaces where humans are key: marketing and behavioral interaction.  It's all that but needs to be faster and deals with more data.

This all tracks with recording results for many purposes, including the changing needs for back office accounting.  Quite a challenge, but the Cloud and Analytics must be there to even make it possible.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

VisiRule: Sharable Know-How

I am repeating part of a post from last year below, based on my reexamination of expert systems style applications:


" ... expert systems to understand and improve complex business processes.  I mentioned a package called Visirule in this blog a number of times.   Also outlined some of our enterprise experience with expert systems in the 80s. These systems were used for years to make our processes more efficient.   Visirule and other offerings of their company LPA deserves a look.  See also a detailed powerpoint presentation on how it works.  An article on the visualization of process logic.   And another related example article.

I think it is time for the use of Expert systems, combined with quantitative analytics and the availability of increasing amount of available data,  to lead to better business solutions ...

" ... VisiRule can help you build rules-based systems to model and automate decision-making processes. The business logic is identified and represented as a sequence of familiar graphical icons and links. The underlying logic-based inference engines help ensure a high degree of compliance and accuracy. This makes VisiRule ideal for building regulatory compliance systems, financial decision-making systems, and validation systems.

Shareable Know-How
The expertise and 'know-how' captured in a VisiRule chart is immediately shareable with colleagues and collaborators. VisiRule charts can be exported in industry standard formats, there is no need for internal or external reviewers to buy or install any additional software. All the relevant logic and business rules underpinning business decisions is immediately visible within a chart in a simple and coherent manner. This helps people work collaboratively and improves group productivity without increasing costs. ...  "

3D Design Delivered by Ponoko

(update)

My son pointed me to design page of Kyle A. Koch: " ...  a (former) industrial design student at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, known as DAAP. This is where I share things about design, technology, creativity, and everything else that catches my eye ... ". 

In particular see his use of Ponoko, a remote fabrication system that I have read about, but never really experienced.  More about Ponoko.   See his personal show room for Ponoko products. For example, a  device for taking pictures of pages using an IPhone.  

More about Ponoko's history.

And a recent ReadWriteWeb article on Ponoko.

Retail and Big Data

A case of retailer A&P using a big Data Portal.  " ... This cloud-based portal enables retailers to share their proprietary data – including point of sale (POS), inventory, loyalty and more – with their supplier partners. It allows a retailer's vendors to work with and analyze the same data the retailer does in order to collaborate on mutual business goals. ... " 

Data Points Mean Something

They do.  Book of interest brought to my attention: Data Points: Visualization That Means Something by Nathan Yau

"Whether it's statistical charts, geographic maps, or the snappy graphical statistics you see on your favorite news sites, the art of data graphics or visualization is fast becoming a movement of its own. In Data Points: Visualization That Means Something, author Nathan Yau presents an intriguing complement to his bestseller Visualize This, this time focusing on the graphics side of data analysis. Using examples from art, design, business, statistics, cartography, and online media, he explores both standard-and not so standard-concepts and ideas about illustrating data.

Shares intriguing ideas from Nathan Yau, author of Visualize This and creator of flowingdata.com, with over 66,000 subscribers. Focuses on visualization, data graphics that help viewers see trends and patterns they might not otherwise see in a table ... " 

How SAS Does Agile

In SASCom:   The concept of the Agile Scrum and how it is used at SAS.  " ... Walk the halls in R&D and you’ll hear people speaking about their sprints and stories, you’ll see teams having scrums, and you’ll sense that they’re engaged in both planning and implementation. Sprints? Scrums? Stories? Jargon like this comes from the Agile Scrum. In effect, it’s a new way to apply older time-tested software development principles.  Principles like laser-focus within short time-boxes (also known as sprints), collaborating together to work on plans and customer requirements (stories), holding frequent 15-minute checkpoints to share news and remove delays if issues arise (scrums), and providing internal demonstrations throughout the project life-cycle. ... "