

Analyzing IBM Analytics - smacktoward
http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/10/analyzing-ibm-analytics/

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mbesto
> _IBM does have Cognos (which is actually a suite of products) lots of data
> scientists (not just in Research but also in SWG) and most of the other bits
> they need._

Disagree. I've worked with swaths of consultants from the big IT consultancies
and I can assure that not only are data scientists few and far between, that
anyone with those skillsets usually gets frustrated and leaves when security
restrictions bog down their ability to perform.

> _– Supply chain is a long term, continuous improvement effort. IBM’s
> business model is sell, do something, get paid, leave. Under the context of
> “do something” IBM will stick to requirements that may or may not produce
> the desired results.

– If IBM’s supply chain expertise is so good — why does IBM have so many slow
and inefficient internal processes?_

This is absolutely spot on. The second point is a bit of a curse of "the
carpenter's children have no shoes", but an important point that companies
like SAP have counteracted lately (SAP does lots of dogfooding and has very
good analytics people internally)

> _Believe it or not … Most companies are still in their analytics infancy.
> Yes, there are pockets of excellence and some companies (Intel comes to
> mind, as do a few CPG companies like P &G and PepsiCo) are really, really,
> good at it._

This is _very_ true. Most people would be surprised (appalled?) at how many
large businesses still rely on Excel. Worse, the amount of manual work
required to get data clean, formatted, etc. is absolutely
incredible...especially given how much money they spend to deliver an
analytics solution.

~~~
rahimnathwani
s/carpenter/cobbler

~~~
mbesto
Doh, good call.

~~~
moonlighter
OK, I just coined "The carpenter's children have no roof above their heads".
Thanks for the inspiration ;)

------
ableal
_" Watson’s budget, if the rumors I heard are true (and I knew a couple of
people on the Jeopardy team so I didn’t doubt them) IBM spent north of $1
Billion to win that game. Marketing and Research shared the cost."_

(I don't have a point here, I just like quoting "Marketing and Research shared
the cost." \- seems to be the first time such words were published on the net
;-)

