Interview

5) Recent dot-com crash has negatively impacted data mining and web mining companies. Which companies will survive and prosper?

I believe that the survivors will be those companies that sell data mining, personalization and eCRM solutions � as a service, rather than software. I strongly believe that is the future of AI and data mining. The technology will be embedded in the Web and wireless networks, providing a host of services, all driven by interactive, intelligent models designed to optimize e-businesses and personalize the customer experience. Deploying data mining and eCRM software is simply too difficult for most e-businesses to execute, I think the ASP model is ideal for web mining since all transactions occur on the Internet.

6) Tell us about your second book, Webmining for Profitability.

Well my first book was about how to mine web data, at the server level. Since then of course data mining technology has migrated into eCRMs, e- mail managers, ad networks, e-commerce suites, application servers, etc. So this second book talks about how these various systems work, who does what and how they do it. Data mining is all over the Web and soon it will be in the wireless environment, in this second book I talk about how to leverage the technology to drive profits, especially in light of the current highly competitive and anemic economy.

7) What is a recent non-data mining book that you read and liked?

One of my WebMiners loaned me The McKinsey Way, with so many hours on the air, the batteries in my notebook tend to max out, and so a good book like this one is a good back up.

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