TIBCO at the Olympics: The Body Shop Goes For Gold with TIBCO LogLogic

July 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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At the Olympics, before all the intense competition can lead to worldwide celebrity and glory, each athlete has to endure strenuous preparation and training. They train for years to make sure their bodies are in peak physical condition. As fans whom enthusiastically cheer on representatives of our nations, we may not have the physiques of such athletes, but we can join in by nourishing, beautifying, and protecting our bodies with the help of companies like The Body Shop.

The Body Shop International is a global manufacturer and retailer of naturally inspired, ethically produced beauty and cosmetics products. The Body Shop has almost 2,500 stores in more than 60 countries. However, in order for this international company to go for the gold as any Olympic athlete, they need a trainer and coach helping them along. TIBCO is their world-class trainer on the sidelines who brings out the very best in their contender to get perfect 10s in their industry.

You can’t just simply show up at the starting block of an Olympic race, or dive into the pool and race alongside Phelps and Lochte, but need to train hard to just qualify. Similarly, The Body Shop could not just start selling products without living up to certain standards, and one such regulation they had to achieve was Payment Credit Industry (PCI) compliance. You can imagine PCI compliance as a qualifying race where a company has to meet criteria to ensure [Read more...]

Filed Under: Retail Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Road to TUCON: Transportation

July 31, 2012 by 1 Comment
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For many travelers, baggage claim is the ninth ring of hell – the final test of your wits, your poise, and your patience. A special kind of torture.

You were able to get from your gate to the baggage claim area in a few minutes, but bags like to take their time. As your patient waiting turns into impatient waiting, and a four-dollar Snickers bar turns into a stale regret, you begin to feel frustration growing inside you, like an increasingly upset stomach. Or maybe that’s just the candy bar.

“What’s taking so long?”

As if they could sense you on the edge of hysterics, the baggage carousel finally begins its whirr to life. A fleeting sense of comfort washes over you as the very first bag crests over the conveyor belt and slides onto the interlocking aluminum plates. But it’s not your bag. It’s never your bag. Inevitably, the convenience of being the first bag out is always squandered on some oblivious passenger who is nowhere to be found. Whose bag is it? Why aren’t they here to pick it up? I mean, what else do they have to do in the airport at this point? It’s been half an hour since our plane landed. Are they getting a haircut in here or something? What kind of person buys a duffel bag in such an ugly floral pattern anyway? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tech Trends, Transportation and Logistics, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: , ,

The Power of Patterns – Part 3

July 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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Check out The Power of Patterns and The Power of Patterns – Part 2 before reading on to discover the third and final type.

Patterns of Events

Based on our experiences and skills, there are other patterns that we deal with naturally every day. As complex sequences of events unfold around us, we are able to reach conclusions about likely outcomes. For instance, this might be something as simple as when we are driving and see the lights ahead turn to green (an event), a large vehicle having difficulty accelerating up the hill (a series of events), while there are still 15 cars ahead of us and we know the green light time is usually 45 seconds (let’s call these type 3 patterns). Since we know the chances are we won’t make it through the green light, we are mentally prepared to slow down, rather than accelerate.

Now imagine the more complex situation of an electrical generation and distribution grid supplying power to millions of households and businesses. Events are being generated at every point in the network, from the household meter readings happening every 5 minutes or less; substations and transformers each recording and transmitting their current operating situations (load, temperature, etc.); power stations and wind turbine farms generating and sharing their current workloads. That’s, of course, not the end of it… numerous external factors are being monitored: current and projected weather conditions or a local sports team playing at 8pm and the #1 TV program showing at 9pm. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, CEP, Complex Event Processing (CEP), Event Processing, Loyalty, Mobility, Retail, Tech Trends, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With:

Game Changers: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen — Beeline.com and TIBCO

July 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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When we talk about game-changers in business we are relating the office to the world of professional sports, and in sports there has been no bigger game-changer than Michael Jordan. With six NBA championships, the Hall-of-Famer is a man who has changed basketball as we know it forever.  Just like Jordan, Beeline.com is a game-changer in the world of Contingent Workforce Solutions (CWS), where Beeline is the market leader. The company’s solutions are focused on reducing costs, enforcing policies, and improving the quality of contingent and project-based labor programs for Fortune 500 and Global 1,000 organizations.

As with any great innovator, success cannot be achieved alone. Michael could not have won six NBA championships by himself, and did so with the essential support of his teammate, Scottie Pippen. Just as Jordan needed Pippen, Beeline needs TIBCO Spotfire. Spotfire provides Beeline with the capability to improve their strategic planning through in-depth analytics containing key business intelligence. After using Spotfire, Beeline can now investigate trends in their reports and instantly address client questions to take their first steps toward gaining customer confidence. Spotfire is there to help make Beeline’s assists. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics and Optimization, Spotfire, Transform Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is It A Good Time To Start A Company?

July 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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Did you know that 16 of the 30 companies that make up the current Dow Jones Industrial Average started in a recession? With potential customers thinking outside the box, plenty of affordable talent, and more cost-conscious buyers focusing on value over brand, it’s actually a good time to start a business.

TIBCO founder and CEO Vivek Ranadivé weighs in on Forbes.com.

 

 

Filed Under: Real Time With Vivek, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: , , , , ,

TUCON 2012: The Prelude

July 19, 2012 by 1 Comment
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TUCON is our annual user conference, being held September 24-27, 2012 at the ARIA Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV. It’s the best way to see what we’ve been working on, and how it’s going to change your company. This year, everything is different…

It’s twenty twelve and everything has changed,
From your shopping cart to your insurance claims.
With regulations tight, and tighter still,
Budget projections can be hard to fulfill.

Consumers are picky. They hate high prices.
And they insist on buying from mobile devices.
Their feelings and frustrations you must consider,
Treat them right, or get burned on Twitter.

Yet with budgets so small, and costs still growing,
The pressure you feel shows no signs of slowing.
But just as you think it’s about to crumble,
A light turns on at the end of the tunnel.

The solutions you seek come as no surprise,
It’s the event-enabled enterprise!
So if you need information to act upon,
Come learn how to find it at TUCON!

Visit TUCON 2012 for information on keynote speakers, breakout sessions, and more about the TUCON experience. 

Filed Under: Tech Trends, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With:

Fastest Cars in the World Rely on Pirelli Tires

July 18, 2012 by 1 Comment
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A Pirelli-supported team smashed the outright circuit lap record at the Australian GT Championship at Winton. “We’re very happy with the pace of the Pirelli,” Maranello Motorsport engineer Pat Cahill commented post-event. “Jonny Reid hadn’t driven on the Pirelli before, and he was impressed with the pace and consistency of the tire.”

Let’s take it to the highest level: FORMULA ONE racing have the fastest on Earth – cars with speeds up to 220 mph with frequent hairpin turns, often on slick tracks. Milan-based Pirelli – exclusive tire supplier to FORMULA ONE racing through 2013 – uses TIBCO technology to circulate essential, real-time race data to FORMULA ONE Management (FOM) and FORMULA ONE teams.

Pirelli Decides to Speed Things Up With TIBCO Technology

With TIBCO, Pirelli became faster and more accurate in collecting, sorting, analyzing, and reporting key performance indicators (KPIs). Data processes that once consumed 90 days, now through integration, take just 30 minutes to generate the latest KPIs on business units and individual products. With these real-time indicators now readily available enterprise-wide, decision makers not only see Pirelli more clearly – they manage it more skillfully.

Pirelli’s reliance on TIBCO’s real-time data backbone doesn’t stop at the FORMULA ONE circuit; it extends to the marketplace, where competitive pressures are equally intense.  In the case of Pirelli, “21st-century efficiencies” mean integrating a global network of some 10,000 distributors and retailers. Every time Pirelli integrates a distributor into the system, the company boosts profitable growth.

TIBCO integration made Pirelli more profitable by balancing inventories to ensure that each time a customer enters a store, the right tires are in stock – no more, no less.  With TIBCO-powered integration, Pirelli gathers optimized results on the race track, generates new profit, and optimizes work processes and information flow to reduce total costs of ownership for its distributors.

“We capture practice sessions, qualifying sessions, top speeds, lap times, intermediates, flags, accidents, and the position of each car on the track and in the pit lane. The engineer of each team uses this real-time data to better understand the car, the track, and how to optimize performance. It’s an advantage enabled by Pirelli’s TIBCO integration.” 

– Fabrizio Orioli, Pirelli’s Integration Service Manager

Read the full story here.

Filed Under: Automation, CEP, Event Processing, Integration, MDM, Transform Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Data Alchemy: Turning Log Data into Gold

July 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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As your IT operations chug along, they generate mountains of log data. Within these mountains there are veins of gold, but without a way to get to them, they’ll keep sitting there. Like a lone prospector tasked with mining a mountain of precious metals, your first step is to get the right tools. Fortunately, they aren’t hard to find.

Log analytics help you filter, slice, group, and enrich log data faster and easier than before. When you can see where your network is succeeding and where it’s falling behind, you can give your network the attention it needs, exactly where it needs it.

For example, let’s say you’re sitting at your desk one day when a blog on the other end of the world writes about one of your products. Suddenly your network goes from a scene of tumbleweeds to a bustling metropolis of data as your company struggles to meet the flash flood of demand. With systems stretched to their limit, weak links in your network are making themselves known. Analytics tools like TIBCO LogLogic ensure that these cries don’t go unanswered.

Check out this e-book to learn more about the power of log analytics, and how they can help you identify and repair the weakest links in your network.

Filed Under: Analytics and Optimization, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: , ,

Decision Latency… Just Part of the Same Problem as Data & Process Latency

July 13, 2012 by 1 Comment
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Interesting read from Gartner’s Jim Sinur, talking about decision and action latency. Jim’s talks about how Big Data is meant to solve decision latency – but it’s not at all clear how or why Big Data affects the latency of either designing or making decisions. Surely Big Data is about extractable information for improving the quality of decisions? Maybe I missed something critical in the Big Data hype. If anything, running analytics on larger data sets is sure to increase latency rather than reduce it! Of course, this is why real-time analytics are increasingly important to complement the traditional data analytics…

I would, however, agree that decision, data and process latency are key weapons in the fight against the costs of Big Data; you want to respond effectively to events as they occur, despite those event rates increasing: that means efficient decision engines, high performance data access, as well as responsive process engines. [Read more...]

Filed Under: CEP, Complex Event Processing (CEP), Event Processing, Tech Trends Tagged With: , ,

How Increased Data Visibility Via Mobility Can Optimize Workforce Productivity

July 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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“Work is something people do rather than a place people go,” aptly describes the necessity of a mobile workforce in today’s business environment. You are not likely going to wait for your field executive to reach the office to analyze reports collected on-site. When you have the latest mobile devices and communication infrastructure that makes distance irrelevant, you want to work on those reports immediately and possibly make an immediate decision while your field executive is still on-site. Having the power of information in the palm of your hands gives you the edge in providing your customers what they need.

In companies with a mobile workforce, critical information is sent from field staff working with suppliers and customers to back-end office systems that are used to run the business. Capturing and making use of that field data in real time and integrating it with business-critical systems helps a company build stronger integrated business processes. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, Integration, Mobility, SOA, Transform Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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