Big technology companies like Netflix and Facebook make clever use of the digital traces we leave online: their algorithms can make connections between data and then offer suggestions about movies to watch or people to get in touch with. Now much smaller companies—even ones that don't consider technology their specialty—might be able to do something similar. Several everyday business tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software, are gaining analytic functions that make it easier for any company to crunch the data now found everywhere—not just in customer records but also on the open Web, in contexts like tweets and online help forums.
The promise of this idea became apparent in April, when Jive Software, a company that makes collaboration software, acquired Proximal Labs, a startup founded just a year earlier. Jive wanted Proximal's computer scientists, who had proved themselves in machine-learning projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
To read the full, original article click on this link: A Business Analytics Engine that Began with the Military - Technology Review
Author: Lauren Cox
