The return of Arthur Andersen. What’s that about?

An interesting mix of news this week, with an announcement that Arthur Anderson will, according to The Times, ‘rise from the ashes’, in the form of a new French entity; providing a "unique international business services network integrating an authentic inter-professional dimension". Wow! After the dramatic demise of Arthur Anderson through the Enron scandal that's a pretty bold move. Whats even more interesting is that there is now a dispute between this entity, and another in the US, over the use of the Anderson brand. 

Getting attention is an increasing challenge in a busy, complex, dynamic world, doing something counter intuitive is one way. Given it's high profile Apple takes a fairly mainstream approach to get attention. This week, with typical drama, they put on a slick presentation announcing a range of product updates. These included the launch of the iPad Pro, offering 'desktop PC performance' into a bigger format iPad (with a 12" screen) that is 22x faster than the original iPad, and weighs pretty much the same. Further compression of compute power. This has the potential for another step-change in the way people work, creating further enhancements to personal productivity; it was interesting to see Microsoft present on stage at the iPad Pro launch.

Adding more and more power, capability and portability to tools like the iPad further enables consumers and corporations to get wider access to information. The simplicity of tools like the iPad further enhance the spread of information access. Most people have looked in awe as they have seen how easily a toddler picks up the iPad interface, and the puzzlement when 'swiping' a flat-screen TV doesn't have the same effect.

However adding performance and capability and the ability to get easier access to more information can also create complexity, and like many information or analytics problems, trying to get to a detailed, helpful piece of information is an increasing challenge. This is probably why Gartner position 'self-service delivery of analytics' at the top of it's hype cycle for Emerging Technologies. [what Gartner calls the 'peak of inflated expectations']. There are an increasing number of vendors entering the crowded analytics market with claims to offer the new sliced-bread in allowing users to intuitively gain simplified access to information that allows them to make real decisions. There are a few good technologies out there, but there is also a lot of hype and buyers should beware of claims of magic and avoid the snake oil. There is still a massive challenge in tacking large, complex data sets and transforming them into insightful, actionable information. It's very difficult to self-serve or automate things that are so complex. It'll be interesting to see how this domain unfolds over the next few years; there's no doubt that software capability will be dramatically enhanced to make the most of the data.

And whilst you're waiting for self-service analytics on your shiny new iPad Pro, there's a raft of other things you can use it for, just don't impeded clarity of vision for others, by taking selfies next time you're 'experiencing' a music festival or gig.