It's back to the future for machine learning applications of big data

For Lou Carvalheira, advanced analytics manager in IT vendor Cisco Systems Inc.'s customer intelligence unit, which is also based in San Jose, machine learning has underpinned analytics for many years. That notion is so familiar that "it is not something we speak about anymore," he said. What is new in the quest to identify potential buyers, he continued, is that "we are finding ways to scale processing. Machine learning is empowered by the fact that you can now process much more data. You use a tremendous amount of computation power, not just one computer."