Data mining is especially compelling for e-commerce applications. Mining this collected data will likely cause intriguing patterns and rules to emerge, which in turn can drive business decisions such as product promotions or bundling strategies. The next step would be to apply this set of rules to customers in real time. In this way, companies can personalize and improve the customer's Web experience and at the same time increase their revenue potential. Microsoft has embodied this approach to customer interaction on the Web in an initiative called Business Internet Analytics, which relies on both SQL Server 2000 and Commerce Server 2000 for these kinds of closed-loop interactions.
Companies gain valuable understanding of the hidden patterns and relationships in their data.
These are things that only a computer can identify because of its ability to examine hundreds of thousands of variables, evaluate a staggering combination of attributes, weigh various outcomes, analyze rules and apply statistical methods. Generating this type of knowledge can help companies make better decisions, automate their decision process, identify and avoid problems, discern business opportunities and optimize their systems. The overall advantage is that companies can increase their top line by selling more, and decrease their expense line by identifying unnecessary overhead and costs. SQL Server 2000 offers two benefits in terms of data mining that are unique in the industry. Our goal is to transform data mining from a niche technology to a mainstream technology.