WHAT WE'RE READING
The Investing Edge
of Enterprise IT
Mar
2013
Selling Data Insights vs. Tools? Let’s Connect
I have written a number of times about the massive potential that resides in extracting insight from data. Leveraging new database, storage, parallel processing and cloud infrastructure, we can now get to these insights at cost levels and in timeframes that can impact decision making at very regular intervals and in major ways. This was just not possible a few
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Dec
2012
Infographic: ClickFox Finds Shoppers Get Better Customer Service Online
Last week Ascent portfolio company ClickFox published the below infographic, which shows two major trends at work simultaneously: how Big Data insights can illuminate consumer behavior and how retail is evolving from bricks-and-mortar to multi-channel commerce, which Ascent calls “More clicks, less bricks.” ClickFox leveraged more than 500 million consumer behaviors across their customer base to reveal that shoppers are
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Oct
2012
Big Data Still a Tough Nut to Crack
Last week, when I was at the Xconomy Future of Big Data event moderating a panel on analytics & data infrastructure, one of the speakers essentially said the term ‘Big Data’ is somewhat meaningless. He’s right, of course; there are too many important sub-categories for one overarching term to have any real meaning. He also made the point, which I
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Oct
2012
Young Turks in the Enterprise
There was a widely circulated news item recently that tried to explain the mindset of this year’s college freshmen, noting that, for them, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Kurt Cobain have always been dead. (Message to this generation: please do yourself a favor and delete a few LMFAO and Lady Gaga tunes from your iPod in favor of selections off Nirvana’s
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Jul
2012
ClickFox Named to ‘Greatest Industry-Disrupting Startups of 2012′ List
Forbes last week listed the “10 Greatest Industry-Disrupting Startups of 2012,” citing “amazing” companies rapidly transforming industries that affect our daily lives. It was nice to see one of our portfolio companies, ClickFox, recognized in the article. Ascent has seen extraordinary innovation, both within our portfolio and the broader market, from companies that create business value from source data that
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May
2012
UNVEILING THE ASCENT INDEX
Today we’re very excited to announce the first iteration of the Ascent Index. As we pride ourselves on spotting and helping shape the latest trends in enterprise technology, the Ascent Index will provide you (and us) with a real-time snapshot into which topics are creating the most buzz in enterprise IT…