Predictive Analytics in the Cloud

By Irit Eizips

The ability to do predictive analytics and data mining without being a statistician is here! Predixion Insight is a very cool public and private (on-premise) cloud service that is accessed via Predixion’s client software, which is installed into Excel (as an add-in) and lets you build sophisticated models without really needing to know all the technical stuff that would typically go into performing predictive analytics. Predixion provides powerful collaboration and reporting features, and best of all they are natively integrated to Microsoft’s new in memory BI (IMBI) tool, PowerPivot so you can perform predictive analytics on up to 100 million rows all in the client, then write results back to PowerPivot for slicing and dicing, then publishing via SharePoint. 

The service is over the cloud, so all you really need is the Predixion Insight for Excel client and an internet connection. If your company uses SAS or SPSS, Predixion Insight will soon allow you to leverage that investment by running those models in the cloud, sharing them, reporting on them, then sharing the results with anyone via SharePoint. Predictive Analytics for the masses is finally here!

Here’s a link to a bunch of video tutorials on their website which are easy to follow – and a free 7 day trial version you could download and play with.

http://www.predixionsoftware.com/spv-90.aspx

 

Here are some interesting articles about their tool:

http://axis.aberdeen.com/index.php/information-technology/89-information-technology-insights/1488-predixion-software-should-find-a-home-at-the-best-in-class

http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/myers/archives/2010/09/analytics_movin.php

http://jtonedm.com/2010/09/14/first-look-predixion/

http://www.wiseanalytics.com/blog/2010/09/14/changing-the-predictive-analytics-game/

http://powerpivotpro.com/ (See interview with JamieMac of Predixion)

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Getting Started with SQL Server Data Mining for Retail/Finance

By Rick Durham

There are two informative, technical webcasts found at this link that cover how SSAS Data Mining is used to solve general retail/marketing problems…

• “Overview of SQL Server Data Mining”
• “Applying SQL Server 2005 Data Mining to Enterprise Business Problem”

Here is the URL: http://www.sqlserverdatamining.com/ssdm/Home/Webcasts/tabid/62/Default.aspx

Types of finance/marketing problems that data mining can be used for include:

• Database marketing applications include offer response, up-sell, cross-sell, and attrition models
• Financial risk management models attempt to predict monetary events such as credit default, loan prepayment, and insurance claims
• Fraud detection methods attempt to detect or impede illegal activity involving financial transactions
• Process monitoring applications detect deviations from the norm in manufacturing, financial, and security processes
• Pattern detection models are used in applications that range from handwriting analysis to medical diagnostics
• (please note this is by no means an exhaustive list)

Another good site in terms of general tutorial is this following:

http://www.thearling.com/dmintro/dmintro_frame.htm

Hope this helps get you started!