Analytics Magazine Analytics Magazine, March/April 2014 | Page 24

EXE CU TIVE E D G E The benefits of moving to the cloud are widely recognized. Scalability, accessibility and expandable horsepower and storage provide resources precisely when and where they are needed. Similar issues exist for person names. Taking the United States only as a simple case, generally names are straightforward with a first and last name such as “John Smith.” However, sometimes middle names are captured such as “John James Smith” or the names are entered in an alternate format such as “Smith, John.” In a simple text comparison, “John Smith,” “John James Smith” and “Smith, John” do not match; however, they could be the same person. It gets more complex internationally where people may use up to five or six name components. To accurately identify activities associated with a particular W'6