the ‘Intelligent’ Software – or is it?

A seemingly naïve post/status update on Facebook caught my eye. The image spoke in volumes for anyone who was/is listening. Apparently intelligence in softwares can be an irritation if the tool is actually not intelligent.     (I know my name and Microsoft does not. So Mr.Software SHUT UP! I know what I am doing.). We know all about it, but speak very less. The same applies to ‘business intelligence’ kind of tools that ‘claim’ to provide intelligence. What is this ‘intelligence’ really? Is it making sense out of data? In that case only predefined graphical formats that showcases ‘things’ the way we wish to see is no where near the answer. Many of BI tools (or may be the vast majority that I have seen) present “beautiful looking” data. Actually these are pre-configured dashboard-like representations, typically configured by the engineers who know how best to use the ‘data representation’ software, or ‘views’ prepared by intelligent analysts who have actually found something out by digging in the data to make sense out of it.. But is that actual intelligence from the ‘supposed-to-be-intelligent-software’? No. It is completely left on the user to make ‘sense’ out from millions and billions of data records. According to me, a truly BI solution is one that would dig data and find from it something that “You did not know was/is there”, and end of everything would help You take better business decisions. Representation of the same is just for the usability expert who would patch an amazing visual component on that. When the tool works so effectively, well I am not sure who would care for a bunch of fancy charts on the same.

Moinak Banerjee
Moinak Banerjee
Moinak works at Protiviti Kuwait, as Product Lead for their Risk Technology Services. Over the years, he has worked in product management for several leading vendors of telecom OSS/BSS software.

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1 COMMENT

  1. I have an email account where, if I send an email to myself, it will get filtered into the spam folder, even though a dozen spamverts will get through unmolested. Not only is software rarely that intelligent, human intelligence needs to be reapplied on a regular basis, in order to keep the software finely tuned to solving the actual problem.

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