Analytics is a hot word these days. You can hear it everywhere. It sounds and feels sweet and smart. You can think about crunching data and getting results. It sounds very Googley? Indeed, Google is spending lot of money making Google cloud platform more affordable. Google provides some interesting online services that can be used to crunch significant amount of data and draw insight. Learn more here – What is BigQuery?
Actually, Google is not alone in the goldrush for data and analytics. VentureBit article – Microsoft gives out free access to its Azure Machine Learning service. I think, it is a very good news for enterprise software developers. To have a competition between two giant companies will make service more affordable for long run. Another VentureBit article can give you more information about what is behind Azure Cloud. Here is my favorite passage:
Azure ML, which previews next month, will bring together the capabilities of new analytics tools, powerful algorithms developed for Microsoft products like Xbox and Bing, and years of machine learning experience into one simple and easy-to-use cloud service. For customers, this means virtually none of the startup costs associated with authoring, developing and scaling machine learning solutions. Visual workflows and startup templates will make common machine learning tasks simple and easy. And the ability to publish APIs and Web services in minutes and collaborate with others will quickly turn analytic assets into enterprise-grade production cloud services
The link to access Azure machine learning is here. You can try it with your real projects.
Azure ML made me return to one of my recent articles- What is potential of product lifecycle analytics? One of the scenarios I’ve been talking there was product forecasting as part of NPD (new product development) process. To launch new product is a big deal for manufacturing companies. It can lead to lot of expenses. What if you can make it by applying some analytics and get some insight on the future of new product, performance, sales, customer base, etc?
What is my conclusion? Cloud infrastructure companies are looking how to feed their platforms with data and scale to more customers. This is clearly the goal for Microsoft, Google and other companies in this domain. PLM companies are interested how to provide additional value to customers. Engineering and manufacturing companies are operating in a very dynamic businesses eco-system. For many of them, new product introduction is an essential critical part of business decisions. So, this is a note to established PLM companies. However, this is also an opportunity for engineering and manufacturing startups. Free services is a best way to check technology with real customers. It sounds like a common interest and technology to leverage. Customer will judge results. Just my thoughts…
Best,Oleg
