Think you know English? Think again. See if you have what it takes to teach a computer how to understand humans.

Anyone who has tried to learn English as a second language is only too familiar with its many — many — challenges. In addition to idioms, sarcasm, and a wide array of meanings when combined with various prepositions (think: make up, make out, make it, and of course, makeup), there’s also pop culture, trends, products, and more to keep straight. Luckily for us, we’re human, and even those well established in their native languages will be able to speak and decipher English with enough practice and exposure. But what about machines? How do we even begin to program them in a way that they can read and understand sentiment? Answer: very carefully. The process requires machine learning data scientists to use Natural Language Process (NLP) techniques, a form of advanced analytics. They use these techniques to build models that can decipher sentiment and weed out the meaningful information among the noise. 

Opera Solutions recently hosted the New Jersey Technology Council’s FinTech Conference. This post is a reflection of our observations from that day.

A new report, featured in The New York Times, highlights the benefits of Big Data and machine learning in the airline industry and beyond.

The travel industry has always been a vast data collector. Every airline reservation, every hotel booking, every car rental ends up in a conventional database of structured data. But today Big Data — the unstructured data that includes ratings on blog sites, likes on social media, conversations with call centers, customer clickstreams, and more — is becoming increasingly important in determining how travel companies keep customers coming back.

Gartner's 2013 Cool Vendor in Analytics report is now available.

We're pretty excited about earning a cool-factor nod from Gartner with its Cool Vendors in Analytics¹, 2013 report.  Each year, Gartner identifies a select number of new Cool Vendors in key technology areas and publishes a series of research reports explaining companies that offer technologies or solutions that are innovative, impactful, and intriguing. According to the report, five vendors were chosen from a shortlist of 15 vendors nominated by analysts in Gartner's analytics research community.

Shipping costs can easily get away from managers, but help is on the way.

Have you ever shipped a package across town and accidentally paid for overnight air to get it there? Or negotiated a contract with a shipping company only to have the contract ignored or forgotten about a week later? Or paid to have something arrive by 10:00am only to find out that it didn’t arrive until 3:00pm?  

Big Data Republic has announced that Opera Solutions (@OperaSolutions), a global leader in Big Data, machine learning, and advanced analytics, has been voted one of the top 100 most influential Big Data Twitter accounts.

Opera Solutions’ Arnab Gupta explores the vast opportunities in Big Data on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

"The Big Data phenomenon is so vast, it can support 50 IBMs."

That was just one of the thought-provoking statements Opera Solutions’ CEO, Arnab Gupta, made during his appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” as he spoke with hosts Andrew Ross Sorkin, Becky Quick, and Joe Kernen on April 24^th.

The New 1:1 Marketing Approach in Four (Not-So-Easy) Steps

The concept of 1:1 marketing generated a lot of hype — ten years ago. It changed the way companies reached their customers, creating that illusion that personalized marketing was actually… well, personal. But it also raised expectations of customers. They became acutely aware that their actions — especially those online — were tracked and used for marketing purposes. Eventually, they ignored companies’ attempts to advertise based on a search term or status update. “Really? Just because I posted that I’m baking cookies with my son does not mean I want to buy Chips Ahoy right now.”

Why we should stop talking about Big Data and start talking about Big Signal.

“Big Data” seems to be the phrase on everyone’s lips these days — the new Big Bandwagon for enterprise, government, investors, and entrepreneurs. But I would respectfully submit that the term may be missing the point… and those who continue to define the phenomenon in that way may miss the first wave of the real opportunity.

Opera Solutions is proud to be ranked the #2 Pure-Play Big Data vendor by Wikibon, as cited by Forbes.

Among vendors that derive 100% of their revenue from Big Data products and services (as estimated by Wikibon), Forbes.com singles out the top 10, and Opera Solutions ranks #2, just behind Splunk. The complete “Big Data Vendor Revenue and Market Forecast 2012–2017” report is publicly available and lists over 60 Big Data vendors with total 2012 revenues of over $11 billion.