Tag Archives: Big Data

News, Politics, Government

Data For Dummies, What Does Your Small Business Need? (Part 1)

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By Marc Compeau, Contributor

If you are a small business owner you are aware that data is being collected about you and data is available about your customers.  In fact many small business owners don’t realize that they are collecting data that has some real value.  Generating additional profit is always a priority but figuring out how to leverage data to do it can be an overwhelming task; the following series of posts will break down data jargon for small business owners, starting with an understanding of Big Data. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

EMCVoice: The Intersection Of Big Data And Cloud

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By Edward Newman, AdVoice

One of the things we can expect to see a lot more of in the future is the concept of Big Data for Infrastructure. By that I mean the intersection of cloud infrastructure and cloud services and Big Data capability and functionality. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for environments to have over 1000 virtual machines. We are able to continue to realize the value and the benefit of cloud computing. Going forward, it’s going to be increasingly more important to having a solid understanding of the performance, functionality and capacity of the resources that are deployed in our data centers. We will need to figure out how to characterize these resources, both for data centers we own as well as those in public clouds that the business is interested in.   …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

EMCVoice: What's the Big Deal with Big Data? Collaboration

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By Michael Foley, AdVoice

At EMC we approach Big Data from every angle—how to store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize it, not to mention secure it. We also use Big Data in our own business, among other things to drive marketing programs. That gave us an idea: If we’re analyzing and directing our business with Big Data, and at the same time working with customers on Big Data solutions for their own businesses , why don’t we show our customers what we’re up to? …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

The Blockbuster Microsoft Business That Nobody Ever Seems To Talk About

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By Greg Satell, Contributor

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m a big fan of how has run their business over the past several years. If you operate an enterprise long enough, you’re bound to miss some twists and turns, such as Steve Ballmer’s embarrassing dismissal of the iPhone as a $500 subsidized item in 2007, but it takes a great organization to recognize a mistake, pivot and come out swinging. And it seems like that’s just what Microsoft has done.  Last week, they posted another strong earnings release.  Revenues were up 18% and operating earnings rose 19%, even after its $9 billion per year R&D program was accounted for. Still, Microsoft is a company that inspires a lot of passion on both sides and there is enough data around to please advocates and detractors. While the legacy Windows and Business Divisions (mostly driven by its Office software suite) continue to print money, the high profile entertainment and online divisions that are made up largely of Xbox and Bing, respectively, continue to grow, but aren’t really making any money. So it would be tempting to assume that Microsoft is really two businesses.  One, made up of former monopolies struggling to remain relevant and another made up of nascent products that haven’t proven they can deliver to the bottom line. However, what is often lost in the mix is “Servers and Tools,” Microsoft’s third largest division, which consistently achieves double digit growth and will likely rack up about $20 billion in revenues this year while operating at impressive 40% margins.  It is also where the bulk of that massive R&D budget is probably going. The Servers and Tools unit is hard to describe.  It is really a hodgepodge of different products including server software, Visual Studio, Sharepoint and consulting services.  All in all, it includes no less that six separate billion dollar businesses. Also hidden in the weeds of the Servers and Tools division is Azure, the cloud computing platform that competes with Amazon’s AWS and is likely key to Microsoft’s long term future.  If, as many critics would have us believe, Windows does not survive, it’s not hard to see how Azure could take its place. However, most likely, Azure represents a mere bridge from the present paradigm in which the operating system drives the performance of our devices to the next digital paradigm where our devices become mere conduits for Big Data and artificial intelligence platforms that are run from the cloud. So while Microsoft’s legacy businesses continue to mint cash and its nascent business continue to show potential, the company’s greatest asset may just be the one that nobody ever talks about.

From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/04/22/the-blockbuster-microsoft-business-that-nobody-ever-seems-to-talk-about/

News, Politics, Government

IT Outsourcing: Have We Reached A Tipping Point?

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By James Rubin, Contributor In the final segment of a panel discussion with senior technology executives, Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard focused again on the increased importance of risk sharing between companies and their IT vendors. Karlgaard asked if current conditions had made risk sharing a necessity in client-vendor relationships. “…We’re in this economic world where it’s very risky,” Karlgaard said. “The cost of getting it wrong is really severe. Combined with all these changes in computing – cloud-based computing, the role of Big Data and analytics, consumption economics hitting the IT space, (are) all these things coming together providing a tipping point, ‘you know we want our vendors to take the same risk we do and if we succeed, they get paid well and if we don’t success, we all suffer together?’”

From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2013/04/17/it-outsourcing-have-we-reached-a-tipping-point/

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Actuate Wins Sixth Consecutive Confirmit ACE (Achievement in Customer Excellence) Award

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Actuate Wins Sixth Consecutive Confirmit ACE (Achievement in Customer Excellence) Award


Confirmit’s prestigious awards program recognizes leaders using Voice of the Customer to increase customer satisfaction and improve business results

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Actuate Corporation (NAS: BIRT) , The BIRT Company™ – delivering more insights to more people than all BI companies combined, today announced they have been awarded a 2013 Confirmit ACE (Achievement in Customer Excellence) Award. The accolade demonstrates Actuate’s long-term commitment to its customers’ success across its entire customer base, including those using the ActuateOne® family of development and deployment products for Big Data business analytics.

The Confirmit ACE Awards program celebrates outstanding achievement in customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and/or partner satisfaction. Receiving a Confirmit ACE Award is a distinct honor that demonstrates the recipient’s rigorous application of customer feedback processes and its outstanding performance as measured by those processes.

Actuate earned the Confirmit ACE Award based on its customer satisfaction as measured quarterly via Confirmit’s Voice of the Customer.

“We are honored to win a Confirmit ACE Award for the sixth year in a row,” saidMy Nguyen, Vice President of Customer Support at Actuate Corporation. “This on-going recognition is a testament to our absolute commitment in ensuring the satisfaction of our customers, and this commitment is a large part of what makes us stand out in the Business Analytics software landscape.”

“We are delighted to recognize Actuate as a customer excellence leader,” said Henning Hansen, President and CEO of Confirmit. “The Voice of the Customer is critical in enabling businesses in competitive industries to satisfy and retain customers, and drive business change. As an ACE Award winner, Actuate clearly understands this, and we are proud that they rely on Confirmit for these vital business initiatives.”

About the Confirmit ACE Awards

The ACE (Achievement in Customer Excellence) Awards program was established in 2005 to recognize outstanding achievement in customer satisfaction. To be eligible for a 2013 Confirmit ACE Award, Confirmit Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions clients must have conducted one or more surveys to assess customer satisfaction between October 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012. Qualifying performance is determined by a combination of customer satisfaction

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/17/actuate-wins-sixth-consecutive-confirmit-ace-achie/

News, Politics, Government

When Big Data Doesn't Tell the Truth

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By John Webster, Contributor It is now clear that the Retail segment is investing in Big Data analytics sources and processes. The often cited reason is that retailers across the board are now seeing Amazon as a formidable competitor. The result is a desire among traditional “bricks and mortar” retailers to understand how online retailers, led by Amazon, are reaching their customers and to respond with a more competitive way to engage their own customers.

From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwebster/2013/04/16/when-big-data-doesnt-tell-the-truth/

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

IBM Invests $1 Billion in Flash Technology

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By Chris Neiger, The Motley Fool

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IBM just launched a $1 billion initiative to build and test Flash technology for enterprise solutions. The company said that Flash is already an integral part of consumer products, and that the technology could help companies tackle Big Data challenges.

IBM said in a press release statement that Flash could reduce transaction times for banking, trading and telecommunications by up to 90%, and batch processing times by up to 85%. The company also said its Flash technology could reduce energy consumption by up to 80% in data centers.

“Because it contains no moving parts, the technology is also more reliable, durable, and more energy efficient than spinning hard drives,” the company stated in the release.

IBM will spend the $1 billion to develop and design Flash solutions for servers, storage systems, and middleware. The company plans to set up 12 “Centers of Competency” around the world to run proof-of-concept scenarios for companies, using real-world data.

The company plans to build the centers in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, South America, U.K., and the U.S., and will be operational by the end of this year.

The article IBM Invests $1 Billion in Flash Technology originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of International Business Machines. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/11/news-ibm-invests-1-billion-in-flash-technology/

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Actian Corporation and Pervasive Software Unite to Take Action on Big Data

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Actian Corporation and Pervasive Software Unite to Take Action on Big Data


Powerful Portfolio Enables Organizations to Connect, Analyze and Act on Data at Scale

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Actian Corp. (“Actian”), a leader in next-generation big data management, today announced that it has completed the transaction to buy Pervasive Software Inc. (NAS: PVSW) , a global leader in cloud-based and on-premises data innovation. The combined organization delivers an unprecedented portfolio of innovative, highly scalable, elastic and performant products that drive positive business outcomes in the Age of Data.

“Every moment, people, businesses and machines generate explosive volumes and varieties of data leveraging their existing networks and, more increasingly, the cloud. Companies that embrace this data as their most strategic asset will thrive, while those that don’t lose their competitive advantage,” said Steve Shine, chief executive officer of Actian. “Big data can and will impact every industry as organisations struggle to take action on their data due to legacy technology too rigid or expensive to scale. Actian’s innovations make it easy for organisations large and small to connect, analyse and act on their fast-changing and fast-growing diverse data assets throughout the entire data lifecycle.”

“This is a powerful merger as the technologies of the two companies are industry leading and clearly very complementary,” said Robin Bloor, chief analyst and co-founder, The Bloor Group. “This is particularly the case in the area of highly parallelized and scale-up, scale-out data integration and database. In my view, the combination of these technologies will provide Actian with a performance capability for BI and Data Analytics which no other company can currently equal.”

“We have irrevocably passed from the Age of Software to the Age of Data, in which organizations need to adopt contemporary architectures to master data ubiquity, on premises and in the cloud,” said Mike Hoskins, chief technology officer of Actian. “Every organization wants to make faster, more accurate and better decisions. In a world of staggeringly huge and constant data flows, innovators can drive better decision making than has ever been possible – based not only on the past and present, but on predictions of future events.”

Actian is a leader in helping companies analyze big data in industries ranging from retail, ecommerce, enterprise, healthcare, manufacturing, finance and social media. Visit Actian.com/Connect-Analyze-Act to

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/11/actian-corporation-and-pervasive-software-unite-to/

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

IBM's Challenges Could End the Dow's Record Run

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By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool

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Lately, whenever stock markets have appeared on edge, the solution has involved central bank intervention. Today, it was the Bank of Japan‘s turn to add some stimulus to the global economy, with an ambitious program of asset purchases and monetary expansion in an attempt to stem the decades-long negative impact of deflation on the island nation’s economy. The greatest impact from the move came in Tokyo, where the Nikkei reversed an early slump to rise more than 2%. But even as European stocks slumped, the Dow Jones Industrials managed to take the BOJ‘s move and build on it, climbing more than 55 points.

IBM , though, fell 0.6%, which made it the biggest loser in the Dow on a percentage basis. As numerous Fool contributors have noted earlier today, Oracle scored a big win in its challenge to IBM‘s strategy of dominating the Big Data market, when a study showed that Oracle’s technology performed better than IBM‘s. As troubling as that is for Big Blue, it ordinarily wouldn’t have a big impact on the broader stock market. But because IBM‘s share price is so high, it has a disproportionately heavy weighting in the price-weighted Dow. As a result, if IBM can’t resolve its problems, a stock decline could make it very hard for the Dow to advance overall.

Alcoa also fell 0.6% as investors prepare for the aluminum company to open the official earnings season on Monday. Despite persistent weakness in aluminum prices, the company is well-positioned to take advantage of rising demand for aircraft, automobiles, and other industrial applications. As Fool analyst Taylor Muckerman noted earlier today, Alcoa’s active attempts to streamline and optimize its business should prepare it to benefit greatly from the next cyclical upturn, even if the company goes through more pain in the short run.

Finally, Greenbrier fell more than 4% after beating earnings estimates, but falling well short on overall sales. The railroad-services company said that deliveries fell 27% during the quarter, leading to a decline in revenue of nearly 8%. Perhaps, more importantly, Greenbrier shareholders seemed dissatisfied with the way the company has moved forward after rejecting a merger bid with American Railcar Industries that activist investor Carl Icahn had tried to broker. Even with expectations of better sales ahead and a cheap valuation, Greenbrier can’t seem to inspire confidence among investors.

Materials industries are traditionally known for their high barriers to entry, and the aluminum industry is no exception. Controlling about 15% of global production in this highly consolidated industry, Alcoa is in prime position to take advantage of growth that some expect will lead to total industry revenue approaching $160 billion by 2017. Based on this prospect and several other company-specific factors, Alcoa is certainly worth a closer look. For a Foolish investment perspective on this global giant, simply click here now to get started.

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Make Money in Strong-Potential Tech Stocks the Easy Way

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By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

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Exchange-traded funds offer a convenient way to invest in sectors or niches that interest you. If you’d like to add some technology-heavy stocks to your portfolio, the iShares S&P Global Technology Sector Index Fund could save you a lot of trouble. Instead of trying to figure out which companies will perform best, you can use this ETF to invest in lots of them simultaneously.

The basics
ETFs often sport lower expense ratios than their mutual fund cousins. The iShares ETF‘s expense ratio — its annual fee — is a relatively low 0.48%.

This ETF has outperformed the world markets over the past five years, but slightly underperformed them over the past decade. As with most investments, of course, we can’t expect outstanding performances in every quarter or year. Investors with conviction need to wait for their holdings to deliver.

Why technology?
Our growing world population will demand more and better high-tech products and services over time, boosting the business of successful technology-oriented companies.

More than a handful of technology-oriented companies had strong performances over the past year. Visa and MasterCard surged 42% and 25%, respectively. Both have been threatened by the growth and potential of mobile and electronic payments, but both have been investing in these areas as well. Visa is the leader in its realm, and is considering buying Visa Europe. MasterCard, meanwhile, is a stronger cash-flow generator and is enjoying strong growth in emerging markets.

Texas Instruments  up 8%, has investors bullish about its strong cash flow and its growing attention to industrial applications for its technology. The company is bullish on itself, too, recently hiking its dividend payout by a whopping 33%, so that it now yields about 3.2%. It’s also boosting its multibillion-dollar share buyback program, which isn’t necessarily good news, as its shares don’t seem that cheap right now.

Other companies didn’t do as well last year, but could see their fortunes change in the coming years. EMC , for example, shed 21%, in part due to weak near-term guidance in an environment of low IT spending. Still, many see it poised to gain from the rapidly growing cloud-computing and “Big Data” arenas. The company also holds an 80% ownership stake in virtualization specialist VMware, though VMware’s dominance in its market may mean slower growth in the future.

The big picture
Demand for technology isn’t going away anytime soon. A well-chosen ETF can grant you instant diversification across any industry or group of companies — and make investing in and profiting from it that much easier.

To learn more about a few ETFs that have great promise for delivering profits to shareholders in a recovering global economy, check out The Motley Fool’s special free report “3 ETFs Set to Soar During the Recovery.” Just click here to access it now.

The …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance