Business (Un)Intelligence

The sad truth about most of the business intelligence (BI) tools available today is that they are still stuck in the past and have not made any significant strides to keep up with new trends, technologies, and APIs. As a result, they are becoming less and less intelligent over time, leading to what is known as ‘business (un)intelligence’.

But, one company that seems to be in the sweet spot is Microsoft. Robert Janezic, the founder of the Tableau UI Kit, said how Microsoft’s host of legacy clients and pre-existing ecosystem, in addition to newer entrants in the BI market, could pull business away from Tableau to Microsoft’s Power BI. 

BI expert Adan Finer said that the problem with Tableau, perhaps you already know, is that it has not advanced or progressed, or evolved much over the past ten years. “It’s kind of stagnated,” said Finer, sharing his views for one of AIM’s recent articles – The Death Knell for Business Intelligence Tools.

He said that Microsoft Power BI was a better alternative to Tableau in terms of ease of use and also because it integrates seamlessly with Excel – a bonus.

The competition between Tableau and Microsoft BI is neck-to-neck, with a market share of 13.89% and 13.37%, respectively. While Microsoft is busy integrating the latest tech into its enterprise line of products, Tableau seems to be relatively slower at adoption. 

At the same time, it is much worse for BI tools that are at the bottom of the pyramid. This includes MicroStrategy, ConversionSweeeper, Alteryx, Pentaho, Looker, and others, who seem to be quietly fading away. It’s high time they pivoted to something else. 

Read: The Business Intelligence Market is Consolidating and Here’s Why

AIM Research >>

Data & Analytics Salary Study 2023

In line with the overall recessionary trend, the median salary of data and analytics professionals has decreased in 2023 compared to last year. In terms of years of experience, too, the salaries of data professionals across varying levels of work experience have seen a dip.

• Data and analytics professionals command a salary of 15.2 LPA in 2023. 
• Compared to last year, there has been a 10% decline in the median salary of data & analytics professionals.
• However, the increasing demand for data & analytics professionals has seen salaries jump 60% in the last eight years.

In its latest report, AIM Research has revealed the median salary distribution across multiple categories – cities, education, sector, years of experience, and key data science roles. Download the complete report here.

Top Stories of the Week >>

Can Apple Draw Better Maps Than Google?

Apple Maps, the app that once led you to a dead-end in a cornfield instead of your intended destination, is shedding its old ways and emerging as a shiny, new, and improved navigation tool. 

While Apple is trying hard to get independent of Google, there is still a long way to go. Google Maps currently dominates the mobile maps market with an 80% market share and over a billion users. Apple Maps ranks second in popularity among mobile users, with a market share of approximately 10-12%. Read more here.

M1ssion Impossible: How Linux Researchers Reverse Engineered Apple’s Chips

In a first-of-its-kind update, Linux 6.2 now supports the M1 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips. But, this was possible thanks to the team of researchers who took one of the most difficult tasks in the history of software development – i.e. reverse engineering an Apple M1 chip. 

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux spearheaded the efforts to bring Linux to M1. In late 2022, reports said he used an M2 MacBook as a daily driver. In the past as well, Torvalds has expressed his feelings regarding the new MacBooks during its launch in 2020. Read the complete story here. 

AI will Bring Alexa Back from the Dead

Not so long ago, Amazon declared the death of Alexa when it pulled the plug on the voice assistant that was succumbing to huge operating losses. But now, there seems to be a glimmer of hope as the company looks to revive the technology. Thanks to its recent partnership with Hugging Face, the company is now looking at boosting users’ everyday experience with Alexa. What’s more?

It has also been hiring for Alexa AI from candidates with a background in dialogue systems or information retrieval. Read the full story here.

People & Tech >>

Mapping a YouTube Star

Bilawal Sidhu’s expansive interests have worked in his favour. Before becoming a senior product manager of immersive view and new technology at Google Maps, Sidhu worked as a consultant at Deloitte in its digital business and strategy division. Sidhu has also been actively making creative videos using VFX and 3D animation for the past seven years and has amassed 382K subscribers on YouTube along the way. 

In a recent interview with AIM, he shares a glimpse of Google Maps' interesting new features, alongside some of his passion projections, generative AI, etc. Read the complete interview here. 

Meet the AI & Analytics Head Driving ABB’s Success

One of the common misconceptions about data science careers – besides a hefty pay cheque – is that it involves working with data and using machine learning algorithms to build predictive models. While this is just a core aspect of the job, it is important to recognise that data science is a multifaceted field that requires a diverse range of skills, which goes beyond technical nuances. 

AIM recently sat down with Rupesh Khare, global head of advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence at ABB, to gain valuable insights. Rupesh emphasised that a career in data science is both fulfilling and challenging—“rewarding, but demanding”. Read the complete story here.

AIM Shots >>

Recently, OpenAI released an AGI roadmap, revealing the short-term and long-term plans alongside steps to mitigate risks for the betterment of humanity. Read more here. 

Meta AI recently unveiled LLaMA, a set of foundation language models that range from 7B to 65B parameters, which surpasses OpenAI’s GPT-3 (175B) and is comparable to DeepMind’s Chinchilla-70B and Google’s PaLM-540B. 

At the second edition of Semicon India Future Design roadshow held in Bengaluru IISc campus, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that India plans to produce 85,000 global semiconductor talent in the next two years. 

Google researchers have developed a pre-trained model built on the CQL algorithm for scaled offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) called Scaled Q-Learning, to efficiently train RL agents for decision-making tasks such as playing games or picking up objects. 

Google’s quantum division has achieved a significant breakthrough in a recent paper that shows that increasing the number of qubits can reduce errors. Read more here. 

Spotify has released a new AI DJ, which works as your AI-backed personalised guide recommending the right song based on your music preferences. Check out the features here. 

Former Google engineer Arnaud Benard and former Facebook product designer Helen Zhou have brought Generative AI to user interface design with Galileo AI, which employs natural language to generate UI designs.

Bain & Company has collaborated with OpenAI to expand its potential business applications by combining OpenAI’s technology, especially Generative AI, with business strategy and social responsibility.

Java web framework ‘RIFE’ recently made a comeback since its popular years between 2002 and 2010. Read more here.