Predixion Enterprise Insight provides a very useful data mining environment, addressing the needs many users will have. The claim of ‘industry leader in predictive analytics’ is a bit rich, but Predixion has clearly tried very hard to make the process of building predictive models more straightforward than usual.
Predixion Enterprise Insight can be downloaded for free as a development tool, but it seems you need to pay to use the models in production. An easier to use, cloud based version is also available and can be used pretty well immediately after the installation of a thin client interface. More recently the company has offered its technology to the OEM marketplace, so third parties can embed predictive models into their applications.
In a production environment extensive use is made of web services to provide predictive capability to applications that need it, and Predixion’s Machine Learning Semantic Model (MLSM) feature is claimed to automate modeling parameters and selection of the best predictive models. Excel users will be pleased to know there is good integration and 2 analytical ribbons are added to the Excel workspace.
The methods supported by Predixion are adequate, but not particularly extensive. Logistic regression, decision trees, regression trees, neural networks, naive Bayes, k-means clustering, associative rules and trees, and ARTXP and ARIMA for time series are supported. It would appear there is no support for text mining or other techniques such as support vector machine, although there may be other ways of incorporating such capabilities.
More recently Predixion has received significant backing from a variety of investors including Accenture and GE Ventures – to the tune of $20 million.
