Just about every company worth its salt today uses data and analytics to better understand their customers and better meet their needs.  For some companies, such as Google, Amazon and others, data science is the very foundation of their business model - but these companies use data analytics in service of their broader core mission.  The universe of public companies that actually provide data and analytics solutions is far smaller and harder to define, but includes industry behemoths such as…

A long, long time ago (maybe 10 years) the data analytics industry was fairly easy to define and track. Back in that pre-historic era SAS was considered the gold standard of analytics companies with a comprehensive range of solutions addressing the demands of many industries.  Given the relative paucity of data, analytics tended to focus on those industries that generated usable data.  Companies that were part of the analytics universe back then would have included:

• risk…

Let’s start with the bottom line - there is no excuse for virtually any company today, regardless of size or manpower (and within reason), not to be making data analyics a part of their normal business routines. Traditional objections such as cost, resources and expertise no longer cut the mustard.  As many observers have noted, a company’s internally generated data is a key asset that needs to be leveraged in the same way as any other corporate asset if the…