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August 5, 2015

World Economic Forum Eyes Next Google

Big data technology earned a ringing endorsement this week from the World Economic Forum, which identified machine intelligence and other big data technologies as innovative business tools.

The Geneva-based forum released a list of “technology pioneers” on Wednesday (Aug. 5) that includes a handful of big data companies in its “information technology” innovation category. Could one the big data innovators emerge as the next Google, which was cited by the forum more than a decade ago?

Among them are Ayasdi, Alation, Domo, Dataminr and OpenGov.

Ayasdi, Menlo Park, Calif., is a machine intelligence developer formed in 2008. The company pitches its machine intelligence software as employing a new mathematical technique called Topological Data Analysis that is used to simplify the extraction of knowledge from complex datasets.

Also recognized by the forum is Alation of Redwood City, Calif., a developer of analytics platform designed to bridge the gap between widely available but scattered databases and the current lack of direct access to big data stores. The Alation platform also has a machine intelligence component used to improve data governance.

New York-based Dataminr has developed a tool that continuously analyzes data from Twitter and other social media sources to identify “breaking” information. The company’s data mining technology identifies, classifies and determines the significance of real-time social media feeds and then provides contextual analytics to clients that include financial, media, corporate security and crisis management clients along with public sector customers.

Founded in 2010, Domo claims to be the first IT vendor to deliver a business management platform that allows “non-technical users” to leverage big data via visualizations and other tools. Domo’s approach reflects an emerging strategy of expanding access to big data analytics beyond corporate data analysts to include decision makers.

The economic forum cited another Silicon Valley startup, OpenGov, for its cloud-based financial analysis platform designed to improve government transparency. OpenGov’s platform “transforms budget data into intuitive, interactive reports that make it easy to see how taxpayer money is collected and spent,” according to the company.

The forum said it used five criteria for selecting the 2015 “technology pioneers”: innovation; potential market impact; the availability of a working prototype or a product already on the market; viability, including a strategic plan for future development; and company leadership.

U.S.-based technology companies accounted for more than two-thirds of the award recipients, forum officials said. Along with Google (2001), past recipients include Kickstarter and Dropbox (both 2011).

The level of IT and big data innovation in the last year is reflected in recent technology investments. Venture capital spending reached nearly $87 billion in 2014, the best year since 2001, according to an Ernst & Young study. Last year’s total also represented a 60 percent increase over the previous year, with technology hubs in Silicon Valley, New York and Boston attracting the lion’s share.

Investments in Chinese and Indian tech firms also soared last year.

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