Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Closer to liftoff…

This week we officially launched our public beta, and itimage was one of those moments where you’ve pushed so hard running on adrenaline that when you’ve reached that summit you collapse because you can finally sleep a good sleep – if only for a moment.  With the beta launch we have people from around the world enjoying predictive analytics in the cloud via Predixion Insight.  It’s exciting watching from behind the scenes as customers launch asynchronous predictive tasks ranging in size from a few kilobytes to 100 megs.  The machinations of a Rube Goldberg contraption comes to mind as the pieces of the system coordinate – a user presses a button causing their data to be launched to the image cloud while simultaneously they are automatically provisioned across an array of servers.  The data shuttled seamlessly and invisibly between tasks on their behalf being dissected and analyzed before being dropped into a predictive report right back on their desktop. 

The movement from development to beta deployment is really wonderful for me personally.  If you haven’t yet seen it, go to our website and click on play video to get an overview of the company.  If there’s one word I can say about that piece of “marketing,” it is that it is sincere.   Go ahead – go watch it.  This is something I’ve been working toward a long time.  We’re releasing a version 1 product and we have a lot to do to fully reach our goals, but right now, any user, anywhere, can access powerfulimage easy-to-use predictive analytics without having to jump through hoops for procurement, acquisition, installation, management, etc. etc. etc.   By creating an Excel-native, subscription-based predictive service, we’re taking the traditional barriers barring people from even opening the door to predictive analytics and slashing them to the ground.  

So I was going to write a longer post explaining some more details about the product, but you should try it now (and anyway, Bogdan already wrote a great post with some feature details)  You can watch a demo that gives a lightning fast overview of the product here and then go download and enroll for the “free trial” beta.  I have it on good authority that there may be some interesting beta events for accomplished users, and you still have the opportunity to get in early, so don’t wait!

2 comments:

  1. Very interesting! However, as the Microsoft BI practice lead for a large NSI, I'd really like to get some hands on experience with this product, but the 7 day trial simply isn't enough time. What other options do you have for working with the software?

    Also, I'm presenting to some SharePoint groups over the next two months and would like to know if all of the PowerPivot integration with SharePoint still works with your add-in.

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  2. Of course all of the Predixion Insight for Excel integration with PowerPivot still works with SharePoint! Also many of the operations you can perform against PowerPivot in Predixion Insight are refreshable using the standard PowerPivot refresh mechanism.

    Regarding your other question, we offer a low-cost month to month subscription that you can sign up for after the 7 day trial expires that is perfect for gaining more experience or for production use.

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