It is interesting that the Met Office in the UK has decided to go back and re-analyse their temperature data. Apparently it will take 3 years. This follows the recent implications that scientists at CRU at UEA (UK) may have engaged in some spin to enhance the results of previous analyses in order to strength the argument that something needs to be done about the man-made causes of Global Warming.  This has become known as Climategate

At this point in time it isn’t clear whether the allegations about CRU are true or not but Climate Change sceptics have seized on the news to strengthen their argument that the man-made effect is not as great as the likes of CRU would have us believe. So nothing is clear yet (hopefully the investigation into Climategate will reveal more) but as this article says, public opinion will have been affected by the allegations.    

All this comes on the eve of the Copenhagen conference, so the timing is not good if you believe that Global Warming is real and that the causes can be identified and fixed.

The Met Office explain the methodology for calculating global average temperature records here. At first glance - to my naive eye - the argument about missing data seems unusual - why not use imputation? - but i'd need to spend more time looking at the method and the data to really form an opinion. This all makes me believe that they need to make all the data available and unleash the Wisdom of Crowds. 

As we all know this could be the single most important issue facing the planet (not to mention humanity). Frankly I think we need more brain power - and certainly more openness - which I firmly believe will drive us towards a truthful  consensus. And we may even get to more accurate results in less than three years!

Whatever the eventual outcome of the proposed acquisition of SPSS for US$1.2B  (This may be less than 1% of IBM’s current market capitalisation – but it is still a tidy sum for such a niche market player) one thing is clear;  It represents a significant punt by one of the leading IT products and services players on the potential value of Predictive Analytics.

An important piece of the acquisition is that IBM have the potential to bring the kind of service delivery –particularly in consulting and implementation - to bear that we haven’t seen in this area to date. IBM Global Services is a major player in Business/IT professional services and Big Blue has already announced the creation of a number of “Analytics Solutions Centers” the latest of which is in China .

This is also part of a broader strategic move into what might be termed “Business Analytics” that started in earnest with the acquisition (for about 4 times the current offer for SPSS) of Cognos in November 2007.

For me there is some déjà vu here. Oracle scanned the market for a Data Mining tool and ended up buying Darwen from Thinking Machines back in 1999. Since then Oracle have integrated Data Mining technology into their database server in what is now known as Oracle Data Mining (ODM). The products and market have matured somewhat since ‘99 and the definition of Predictive Analytics (which is/was always a subset of Data Mining) has helped us present a clearer value proposition to that market.

ODM, however, has always been a small planet relative to the considerably larger Oracle Sun (if you can excuse the pun). Though the IBM move may prompt them to respond. SAS already responded with a very early shot across the bows (SAS warns SPSS' users... ) of their traditional rival (SPSS) and IBM, who - at least in the past - have provided a significant platform for SAS themselves.

So this really does look like a major step up for the world of Predictive Analytics. We’re waiting eagerly for more clues to the IBM strategy.

Arguably the hottest topic in computing at the moment is around the notion of Cloud Computing which typically involves the availability of Software as a Service (SaaS) . Like many “new” IT related concepts it has largely been around for a while in different forms – applications have been hosted on the Internet for some time and the idea of Analytical Service Providers (ASPs) was around in the early 2000s – but recently the ideas have crystallised into the idea of “The Cloud” as the platform. One of the numerous  benefits to the user is that true SaaS is delivered on-demand and the overall cost diminishes.

Whereas the majority of Web Analytics is delivered via a hosted service from the likes of Omniture, WebTrends and Google, Zementis  were probably the first advanced analytics vendor to offer their products in the cloud (they are using the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud – EC2). This fits with their growing reputation for innovation around predictive analytics software delivery.

 Aside from that we haven’t seen much from the more established vendors yet. Not surprisingly SAS have been the first major player to at least outline their vision - SAS builds own cloud . For reasons of data privacy it sounds like they will end up owning their own cloud infrastructure. Will this be the “SAS SaaS”? I wonder!

SPSS has had a web based framework - SPSS Web App – available for several years. Until now this seems to have been  largely used to build and deliver custom applications for specific clients but this could conceivably be used to deliver more generic applications in cloud form. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

At Analytical People we are finalising a Geo-spatial/Statistical modelling application in collaboration with the LAMP team at Liverpool City Council. For the modelling part we are currently using R. We’re still discussing the deployment but it is likely that we’ll also use Amazon EC2.

So for this reason - and as part of our broader interest - we are keenly watching how this type of delivery evolves. The clouds are forming … but we can’t really feel the rain … yet.