Our criteria for choosing the ten companies and technologies that we briefly describe in this posting were that their technology is distinctive, innovative and relevant to major trends in the industry that we are following. Later this month we will be publishing a downloadable report entitled 10 Companies & Technologies to Watch in 2013, which more thoroughly describes each of the companies listed and their technology capabilities and direction. We list these companies here in alphabetical order to avoid the impression that we are ranking these ten companies in some order of merit. In our view they all merit attention.   

Most business opportunities are moving targets these days, rendering static analytical solutions rather ineffective. Instead, organizations need technologies that enable a much bigger picture, complete with multiple data streams that can be combined to show what's happening in real-time. And increasingly, companies need to analyze both traditional structured data as well as Big Data, including machine-generated data from all manner of enterprise systems. Register for this episode of The Briefing Room to hear veteran Analyst Robin Bloor explain how a confluence of market forces has opened the door to a new analytical paradigm.   

While Big Data continues to grab headlines, most information managers know there are many more "small" data sets that are becoming more valuable for gaining insights. That's partly because business users are getting savvier at mixing and matching all kinds of data, big and small. One key success factor is the ability create compelling visualizations that clearly show patterns in the data.
Register for this episode of The Briefing Room to hear Analyst Lindsay Wise share insights about best practices for designing data visualization mashups.