First Retail Named One of Five "Cool Vendors in Analytics and Business Intelligence"

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- First Retail, a company servicing the information needs of next generation e-businesses, today announced it was named a "Cool Vendor in Analytics and Business Intelligence" by Gartner, Inc.  The report, issued on April 27, 2012, highlights five vendors selected by Gartner for their solutions in the analytics and business intelligence market.

"Selecting Cool Vendors in the analytics market this year was difficult. New providers of analytic solutions abound, especially in the popular areas of mobile, social, cloud and big data. We, as an industry, are building silos of analysis that will eventually have to be integrated, but the benefit of specialized analysis for problems that have not been addressed before outweighs most organizations' needs for a holistic view, at least for now." [Gartner "Cool Vendors in Analytics and Business Intelligence," by Bill Gassman, Douglas Laney, Andreas Bitterer, David Newman, Rita L. Sallam, James Richardson, April 27, 2012]

First Retail makes online information useful by adding structure to the vast streams of data generated on the web and through online commerce. The company pioneers automated meta-data creation and management techniques, giving context to social media content alongside other structured data. First Retail's Semantic Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) combines machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and real-time, high-volume data classification. This highly-scalable technology is designed to power tomorrow's online marketplaces and e-business analytics.

Online commerce is highly competitive, and winning customers means knowing them. Today's online consumer generates unprecedented amounts of content that indicates their preferences and intent. To truly understand customers at both a macro and a micro level, an e-business must analyze the influx of social data created outside the organization and map it to the structured product catalogs and web-analytics it owns. Companies that can acquire and analyze streaming data from multiple unstructured and volatile sources will dominate the online battleground for consumers because they are able to first understand what customers want, and then deliver it. 

"Today's online conversations can create entire markets," said Gam Dias, principal at First Retail, "We help companies tap into those conversations and understand what products customers covet versus the ones that they don't. Applying consumer 'likes' and 'tags' to behavior and desire are the new goldmines for retailers. First Retail's tagging, classification and matching technology allows organizations to dynamically build marketplaces that lend themselves to a friction-free experience through organic and semantic search.  We are honored to be recognized by Gartner as a 'cool vendor' in this space."

About the Cool Vendors

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About First Retail

With offices in Palo Alto, California and Surrey, England, First Retail is dedicated to making information useful on the Internet.  The company's solutions help companies structure and tag unstructured data in today's world of vast information.  Customers include companies such as Walmart.com, KPMG, and Cisco.  For more information, visit www.firstretail.com.

SOURCE First Retail