Companies have never had access to more data. And with the latest offerings from technologists like the ones at IBM, data analytics are becoming  even more varied and powerful. But the question for most companies, large and small, remains: What do we want to learn from our data?

The data dilemma is a common one.

It’s the rare company these days that doesn’t accumulate silos full of information about its customers, operations and processes. The process of analyzing all that data can be complex and costly.

Which is why finance often gets involved in picking the tools that will be used to manage organizational data.

The star power of data analysis is currently experiencing a boost with the popularity of a movie with uber-celebrity Brad Pitt.

“Moneyball,” based on the best-selling book of the same name by Michael Lewis, explores the novel way business analytics were applied to the national past time to drive change in the way professional baseball teams are built and managed.

The movie and book are based on the innovative ways Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane analyzed data on players to craft a team that could be successful despite the As lack of capital for buying big-name athletes.

His competitors were spending four times the amount of money Beane had to hire players. But with the help of a young economist, Beane looked at patterns and anomalies in player data in new ways that prompted him to change the way he approached hiring and deploying the organization’s roster.

Beane was able to connect the dots in unique ways that identified problems and unmet needs of his organization.

The challenge for an organization is to know what data matters and what will be done with it once its collected.

Marketer Braden Kelley writes about the problem of data collection and analysis here.

The pitfall, as Kelley sees it, is whether an organization can collect the right kind of data and avoid the money drain that can come from the pursuit of vast amounts of information that you don’t necessarily need.

And remember, the late Steve Jobs was a master of data analysis but not a slave to its conventional applications. As he wisely pointed out in a speech several years ago, data analysis can only be applied to the past.

In his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, he famously said:

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
“So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

The post Data analysis: Are you asking the right questions? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

As he’s demonstrated over and over again in recent years, Steve Jobs has great timing.

His relentless string of successful product developments and releases is testimony to that.

And his decision to retire from his CEO job probably couldn’t have come at a better time. As the tech experts at Gizmodo point out, he picked the perfect moment.

Financially, the company could not be in better shape if it was Switzerland.

Apple just reported record quarterly earnings and achieved them without a major new product release.

The iPhone5 is due out this fall, and word is now that the big three carriers will all be offering it (which means Sprint gets in on the action.)

But a key to this magic moment is the fact that Apple’s competition is in shambles. The Jobs resignation announcement comes in the same week that tech giant Hewlett Packard surrendered its flag in the tablet wars — a conflict that was launched by Apple and that’s been dominated by the company since the iPad debuted.

In launching the iPad, his last major innovation as Apple chief, Jobs completely turned the computer industry on its head and introduced tablets as the undisputed wave of the future.

His company is reaping the benefits of that decision — one that couldn’t have been made without the skills of the man who’s replacing him at the company’s helm.

Tim Cook, master of logistics and supply chain management, is the man for the job (no pun intended) these days, when global supply chain management is the make-or-break activity for any tech company.

You can’t sell something you can’t build, and all the great ideas in the world won’t matter if they can’t be executed.

And execution is the name of the game in technology today.

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His presence on the stage at the San Francisco announcement heartened both stock analysts and rabid Apple fans, who believe he’s one of the keys to the company’s phenomenal success.

The second bit of good news? The new tablet computer will be available and shipping in just a little over a week in the U.S. It’ll spread worldwide by March 25, which means that Apple will have their thinner, super charged, camera-laden portable computer in users’ hands way before the competition even rolls out their versions of a tablet.

Again, good news to investors and analysts who keep an eye on tablet competition. And a good sign that the company’s biggest iPad problem — keeping retail shelves stocked with the much-demanded tablet — appear to be fixed.

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Ultimately, Chen concludes that Apple is likely the world’s most vertically integrated company.

Little — or really, nothing — is done with an Apple system or gadget that doesn’t connect to another Apple system or gadget.

Buy an iPhone, you’ll need apps from the company’s App Store, or music from iTunes. Get a laptop and you’ll likely want an iPad to link to it.

The fun never ends.

And neither, it seems, do the profits.

By tightly controlling who can sell their products and what can be charged for them, Apple has created a complete universe of which it is the cynosure. By developing software and hardware only in house, Apple controlled both the quality and technological integration that has ensured a simple symbiosis between a variety of technologies.

This wouldn’t work, of course, if the products were no good and consumers didn’t fall in love with them.

But they do. And the company has capitalized on the admiration and loyalty of its customers in an efficient and user-friendly way.

Their ultimate trick: Producing a tablet computer with the capabilities and power of the iPad and keeping the price at around $500 using their well-controlled business model.

None of the other tech giants has been able to match the iPad’s scope or pricetag.

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The recent dinner at the Woodside, CA home of venture capitalist John Doerr included a little over a dozen of tech’s movers and shakers. But the two who flanked Obama on either side were those whose companies are getting the most ink (and customers) today: Apple’s Steve Jobs and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

According to the Associated Press, White House press secretary Jay Carney said after the dinner that Obama exchanged ideas with the business leaders “so we can work as partners to promote growth and create good jobs in the United States.” Carney also said Obama discussed research and development spending proposals with the CEOs.

Noticeably absent from the gathering: Microsoft’s chief, Steve Ballmer.

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Last week’s news that the CEO of the world’s second most valuable company — and its most valuable tech company — would take a medical leave of absence of unspecified length was something of a shock. It sent company stock careening and got everyone speculating about how Apple would fare in Steve Jobs’ absence. So far, let’s see:

The day after Jobs’ unsettling announcement, the company hosted an earnings call that reported record revenues — yet again.

Then “rumors” (which most in the media know are carefully crafted Apple leaks) started surfacing about the next iPad and iPhone features. Many folks were pleased at the prospects.

In addition, the launch of the iPhone on Verizon is just around the corner and could, if the predictions of many industry observers are correct, send sales of the popular phone into the stratosphere.

Oh, and did we mention that app downloads from Apple’s App Store passed the 10 billion mark a few days ago?

All the nervousness and hand-wringing about Jobs’ leave — which many acknowledge could become permanent — focused on what happened the last time the highly charismatic and creative leader indefinitely abandoned his little computer company that couldn’t seem to compete.

It nearly perished.

But the company that Jobs willingly turns over to his right-hand man, Tim Cook, in 2011 is a very different company from the one he had stolen from him by a soft-drink peddler two decades ago. Lest anyone forget, Jobs was forced out of the company he founded by a Pepsi salesman he himself recruited to help run the company in the mid-80′s. For everyone out there who thinks only Steve Jobs can run Apple, it’s important to note that he is the one responsible for also nearly killing the company.

At Apple now are the Jobs team — who have produced and launched the extraordinarily successful line of computers and devices that have earned the company its success.

Cook, who is taking over for Jobs, has had probably the company’s toughest task in recent years: ensuring that supply can meet the wildly excited demand for Apple products.

Supply, for at least the foreseeable future, is likely to be Apple’s No. 1 job. And Cook has been the genius behind ramping up production of Apple products when no one imagined that the demand would be so huge.

In addition, the competition that Apple and Jobs faced in the 90′s from Microsoft is quickly evaporating as that tech giant continues to self-destruct with unpopular software and unusable, user-unfriendly hardware that alienates potential customers and rarely please analysts.

Steve Jobs has had nearly 20 years to rebuild the company he nearly destroyed once before. It’s hard to imagine that someone as creative and crafty as he is hasn’t laid careful and inventive plans for the future of his fantastic creation.

If he hasn’t, it’s likely the company wasn’t in such great hands after all.

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The charismatic and uber-successful leader of the world’s second most valuable company will take yet another break to contend with health problems that have been dogging him for years. The important point: If the leader of the world’s most valuable company, Exxon, was taking a similar leave, would anybody notice? Or really care?

Probably not. Because the success of a company like Exxon has more to do with its supply of the product (which would be oil) than it does the vision of its leader. For better or for worse, Jobs has been linked directly to the phenomenal success of Apple, which has catapulted from near bankruptcy in the mid 90′s to stratospheric success in the new millennium.

Under Jobs’ supervision, Apple has become a driving force in the way people use and respond to computers. It’s spread entertainment around the world in a way unmatched by even television or radio. The company has produced both products and services that fundamentally change the way humans live their lives.

Is the fundamental connection between Apple’s success and Steve Jobs so important that the company will not function in his absence, or is the focus on his leadership merely an easy way of explaining why Apple has come to dominate the tech industry in a way not even Facebook can match?

Discuss.

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At least that’s the word from veteran analysts at Gartner, who predict that tablets will likely mop the technology floor with rival desktops and laptops in the coming years.

Gartner recently cut its forecast for global PC shipments in 2011, largely because of the sweeping popularity of tablets, which are cutting into traditional PC sales.

Gartner is now projecting that 352.4 million PCs will ship this year, 14.3% more than 2009.

The firm had previously projected that 2010 PC shipments would increase by 17.9%.

“These results reflect marked reductions in expected near-term unit growth based on expectations of weaker consumer demand, due in no small part to growing user interest in media tablets such as the iPad,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. “Over the longer term, media tablets are expected to displace around 10% of PC units by 2014.”

The big reason for the shift? The surge in demand for mobile computing choices. Now that most businesses depend heavily on technology to carry the workload for employees, being able to use these technologies on the go is crucial to gaining business advantage.

In many cases, employees need information access and communication tools that don’t demand the computing power of a full-fledged PC.

Another big reason for the tablet’s popularity? Cost. Outfitting workers with tablets usually costs a fraction of the cost of a laptop or desktop.

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“APPLE-1 — Personal Computer. An Apple-1 motherboard, number 82, printed label to reverse, with a few slightly later additions including a 6502 microprocessor, labeled R6502P R6502-11 8145, printed circuit board with 4 rows A-D and columns 1-18, three capacitors, heatsink, cassette board connector, 8K bytes of RAM, keyboard interface, firmware in PROMS, low-profile sockets on all integrated circuits, video terminal, breadboard area with slightly later connector, with later soldering, wires and electrical tape to reverse, printed to obverse Apple Computer 1 Palo Alto. Ca. Copyright 1976.”

A whole 8k of RAM? What were they thinking?

Bonus items include an invoice signed by the salesman (Steven Jobs), the original shipping box and labels along with the business card of Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak.

What the sale doesn’t include is a lot.

There’s no monitor, keyboard or casing for all these electronics, because Apple didn’t make or sell them in 1976. They only made the guts.

It wasn’t until the following year that the Apple II was launched, featuring such revolutionary items as integrated keyboards, sound,  plastic cases and internal expansion slots.

The original Apple-1 sold for $666.66 (Jobs apparently had a demonic vision when he thought about price points).  About 200 of this model were made and experts guess about a quarter of those are still around.

But as one blogger put it: Does it support Flash?

The post Is $250K too much for a used Mac? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Great tech industry leaders mostly come in two flavors: One sort is popular and drives profits. The other sort is  unpopular and drives profits.

HP’s recently deposed Mark Hurd seems to have been the latter. Apple’s Steve Jobs would appear to be the former.

The similarities and the differences? Both men are undoubtedly rich. Both have driven their companies to fiscal strength and excellent profits.

But while both leaders have been able to please stockholders, it would seem that Jobs has the more secure career and the better public and corporate leadership image. Jobs — who enjoys a 98% approval rating from Apple workers — also basks in customer and peer respect primarily because of his penchant for customer service, employee benefits and obsession with creativity and innovation.

Hurd, to hear former and current HP workers tell the story, was a relentless cost cutter who drove profitability the traditional way — by slashing salaries and the workforce, minimizing customer service costs and surrounding himself with an inner circle of high-level execs who were rewarded for cutting expenses.

His employee approval rating: 34%, the lowest among the major tech firms. Another high scoring CEO — Cisco’s John Chambers — with an 81% approval rating from his subordinates, also proves that leaders can be both well-liked by workers and make money for their company.

Cisco posted enormous profits for the just ended quarter, beating analysts predictions with a 27% increase in sales.

Some are speculating that HP’s board used Hurd’s sexual harassment scandal as a convenient excuse to give their unpopular CEO the boot. If that’s true, then it seems that in the long run, a CEO in the tech world had better be both popular and profitable — for their own sake and the sake of their company.

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