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Quick Takes for the Week of May 18


May 20: This commentary starts with an ominous reference to the 1995 murder mystery The Seven Deadly Sins (also released as Se7en). Jorgen Heizenberg, the Principal Technology Officer for business intelligence at Capgemini Netherlands, then lists the seven deadly BI sins. They are inertia; cost; complexity; technology; deviation; ignorance and halting (or losing focus once an initial success). A brief explanation is given for each of the sins.

May 19: David Tow takes the term “business intelligence” literally. He writes that the future of enterprise intelligence actually is artificial intelligence. The most promising forms, he says, are evolutionary/genetic algorithms, Bayesian networks, fuzzy logic, swarm intelligence, neural networks and intelligent agents. These clearly aren’t around the corner, of course. But when they come, they will change the face of business intelligence as the term is defined today.

May 18: This is a cautionary tale, of sorts. CNET reports that the U.K. Association of Chief Police Officers is concerned that the amount of data being collected by surveillance cameras is overwhelming the technology in place to turn the data into useful information. Specifically, the ACPO says that the police don’t have the resources to reliably search for specific license plate numbers collected by the Automatic Number Plate Recognition System. The bottom line, of course, should have been as obvious to the folks in England as it is in the story: It is counterproductive to put a program in place until it is thoroughly thought through.