While the B2B arena still floats a little higher than reality, many dot-com valuations look like downright bargains.
Data mining is the elixir for which many are reaching.
Silver bullet misfires and algorithm suites from 800-pound gorillas such as SAS Institute and IBM caused most of the more than 100 tools that once existed to be acquired, discontinued, or subsumed into other solutions. Nowhere is the opportunity greater for data mining software and services than in the red-hot CRM industry. These include Unica Corp., Xchange Applications, E.piphany, and thinkAnalytics. With a few weeks to soak in knowledge from attending KDD 2000 in Boston, I hope to have more to say next time. While a little exuberant, data miners at the conference were quick to point out that this stuff does not work miracles overnight.