These days, few terms seem more meaningless than “analytics.” As a predicate, “analytics” gets applied to a confusing diversity of assets or resources – from banal operational reports to a machine analysis involving terabytes of information and thousands of predictive models.
The confusion is regrettable, but understandable: the truth is that there’s simply a surfeit of analytic technologies, starting with bread-and-butter multidimensional assets – i.e., reports, dashboards, scorecards, and the like. Even in an era of so-called “big da