Partly Cloudy

This week, some public documents came to light that I thought I would not see for a few years yet, which plainly show that I’m a repeat offender. Yes, it’s true: I’ve formed another startup.

The particulars of the company and its business plan I’ll share over time; suffice it to say it lies in the intersection between social media and insight as a service, and it’s a project I’m very excited about.

One of the early jobs, of course, is rounding out the initial team and I’m talking to some wonderful folks in the fields of UX, marketing, and technology. If you know someone I should meet, please drop me a line.

Ad astra per aspera

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Evangelos Simoudis continues his mission to define Insight as a Service:

Insight as a Service refers to action-oriented, analytic-driven solutions that operate on data generated by SaaS applications, proprietary corporate data, as well as syndicated and open source data and are delivered over the cloud.  This definition is meant to differentiate Insight as a Service, which I associate with action, from Analytics as a Service, which I associate with data science, and Data as a Service which I associate with the cloud-based delivery of syndicated and open source data.

It’s excellent analysis and I have been learning from his approach since he first started enunciating it a year ago. The more we go into the age of big data, the more glaring the contrast with our brains, which remain about the same size as ever.

For people to make use of the oceans of data now becoming available, our software will shift away from simply telling people what is, and move towards telling them what it means.

Don’t tell me I have an influence score of 50332.111 μFonzies with a ρ{Laren}  factor of +0.033. Tell me: “Your audience likes it when you joke about your struggles learning how to dance. And knock off the Ernest Borgnine quotes.”

Infographics and analytics are hot topics now, and will retain some luster going forward. But if you are planning to fight the next war instead of the last one, think about Insight.

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A recent study commissioned by IBM showed that 60% of CIOs are ready to move to cloud computing. That means a lot of applications which were never designed for use in the cloud are going to be moving there over the next few years.

For those who are putting an application in the cloud for the first time and wondered, perhaps, what challenges they will face, have a look at the short overview I just put together for LinkedSeattle.com.

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