Refresher Course

When does real time have real value for analytics?

With "real time" becoming the latest buzzword across the BI industry, users are demanding access to data much closer to the time it was recorded or updated. But how realistic are these expectations, and in what areas can real time bring value to analytics?

SAS has a slightly different view on the topic than you might expect. Senior vice president and CTO Keith Collins says that modeling and predictive analytics, which address historical data over time, will actually become closer to near real time — that is, data warehouses will refresh more frequently. He sees the true real-time revolution occurring when companies begin closing the loop, or making their analytic results actionable.

Collins believes that putting reports on someone's desk or screen isn't nearly as valuable as providing the business rules and the information they need to act on that information. For example, SAS recently acquired a company called Verbind, a provider of real-time behavioral tracking and event-triggering technology, to round out its Interaction Management solution. Collins explains that with this technology, users can instantiate customer behavior models in order to act on a customer event as it occurs. Thus, by integrating real-time customer behavior tracking with analytics, SAS hopes to help companies make these interactions more meaningful.

"People are starting to understand that blanket CRM is not appropriate," Collins says. He stresses a more studied approach to communication.

One important challenge that Collins foresees is the volume of generated data — not just in terms of storage capacity, but rather in actual data management: Making sure that the right people see the right information in a timely manner. As Collins explains, "Data volumes and our capacity to deal with them are what drive us to new analytic techniques and solutions. The complexity of deploying these systems is what I believe all vendors have to focus on to really provide value to our customers."

To read an extended conversation with Keith Collins covering real-time BI, the future impact of open source platforms, and more, click here.

— Michelle M. Young

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