Tag Archives: Big Data

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Micron Earnings: An Early Look

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By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool

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Earnings season is winding down, with most companies already having reported their quarterly results. But there are still some companies left to report, and Micron Technology is about to release its quarterly earnings report. The key to making smart investment decisions with stocks releasing their quarter reports is to anticipate how they’ll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you’ll be less likely to make an uninformed kneejerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.

Micron makes memory chips, which has exposed the company to a rocky market for years as the industry has gone through severe gluts that pushed prices down sharply. Lately, though, investors have been hopeful that a turnaround is finally taking shape. Let’s take an early look at what’s been happening with Micron over the past quarter and what we’re likely to see in its quarterly report on Thursday.

Stats on Micron

Analyst EPS Estimate

($0.20)

Year-Ago EPS

($0.29)

Revenue Estimate

$1.91 billion

Change From Year-Ago Revenue

(4.7%)

Earnings Beats in Past 4 Quarters

0

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Will Micron help investors remember the good times this quarter?
Over the past few months, analysts have gotten a lot more worried about Micron. They’ve nearly doubled their loss estimate for the just-ended quarter, and widened their consensus for the company’s fiscal 2013 full-year loss by nearly a quarter per share. Yet the stock has rocketed higher, rising 37% since mid-December.

One big reason for the disparity between earnings expectations and Micron’s stock-price movement is that Micron got resolution in a long-standing patent dispute with Rambus . Early this year, a court ruled that Rambus’s patents were unenforceable, finally giving Micron some closure and taking away a threat that had held the stock down.

But Micron still faces a tough environment in its core DRAM and Flash memory business. Its acquisition of Japanese memory supplier Elpida will let Micron gain access to the lucrative iPhone 5, but with questions having arisen about the smartphone’s success, any shortfall in its sales could negatively affect Micron. Moreover, an analyst firm downgraded Micron earlier this month, arguing that DRAM demand is slowing.

Still, the big opportunity for Micron comes from the broader Big Data initiative that many technology companies are focusing on. Although Micron rival SanDisk has also seen its stock rise as demand for flash memory picks up, even old-style hard-drive makers Seagate Technology and Western Digital have gotten into the game, with Seagate having introduced a third-generation solid-state hybrid drive to boost speed and keep up with the level of innovation industrywide.

In Micron’s quarterly report, watch for the company’s latest calls on the health of the memory industry and its progress in moving forward with the Elpida acquisition. How the company handles its new foray into …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

PMC Disrupts 100G Economics with Industry's First OTN Processor Enabling Virtualization of Optical N

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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PMC Disrupts 100G Economics with Industry’s First OTN Processor Enabling Virtualization of Optical Network Bandwidth for Big Data


DIGI 120G Accelerates Deployment of Efficient and Dynamic OTN Networks

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– PMC® (NAS: PMCS) , the semiconductor innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store big data, announced today the introduction of PM5440 DIGI 120G, the industry’s only single-chip OTN processor supporting 10G, 40G and 100G speeds for OTN transport, aggregation and switched deployments. DIGI 120G allows for the efficient sharing and dynamic assignment of network resources, enabling OTN networks to effectively virtualize optical network bandwidth to meet the elastic traffic demands of Big Data. This unprecedented level of silicon integration facilitates the most cost effective designs, engineering efficiency, and lowest power approach to OTN system solutions.

Optical transport networks play a critical role in providing the interconnect infrastructure required to efficiently and reliably deliver cloud-based services. Continued growth in mobile data traffic and the projected 3X growth in datacenter driven WAN traffic1 are the catalysts behind industry’s need for 100G connectivity to aggregate the increasing deployment of 10G ports from the metro edge. To unlock the full value of 100G networks, service providers are architecting their transport infrastructure to enable dynamic bandwidth allocation with granularity from 100Gbps down to 1Gbps, without interruption to network traffic, in order to ‘virtualize’ the optical network bandwidth.

OTN allows for flexible aggregation and switching from 1G to 100G

With today’s networks dominated by 1G & 10G services, traditional point-to-point OTN transponders do not efficiently map these service rates to 100G due to a lack of OTN multiplexing granularity to 1Gbps. PMC‘s new DIGI 120G supports OTN Transport, OTN aggregation and OTN switching. Multiservice OTN muxponders and OTN switching cards using DIGI 120G will enable efficient aggregation and grooming of lower speed services into 100G.

As the industry’s first OTN processor to support on-demand re-sizing of ODUflex from 1G to 100G, as well as 10G, 40G and 100G speeds, DIGI 120G allows OEMs to deliver a full suite of multiservice OTN switched cards for Packet Optical Transport Platforms (P-OTP) and muxponders for ROADMs. Numerous configurations are supported, including 12 ports at 10Gbps, 3 ports at 40Gbps or 1 port at 100Gbps. DIGI 120G’s …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

The Utilization Gap: Big Data's Biggest Challenge

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By Christine Moorman, Contributor Big data’s the buzz.  It’s in the press, all over the web… heck, it even has its own hashtag—#bigdata. CMOs recently reported that the percent of their companies’ marketing budgets devoted to big data will increase from 6% to 10% over the next three years.  Multiply this 66% increase across all of the other areas Big Data is showing up in companies (e.g., supply chain management) and you have a sizable strategic expenditure.  The bigger the company, the larger this increase.  In data collected from The CMO Survey, companies with sales revenue of $10B or more will spend 13.7% of marketing budgets on marketing analytics in three years while companies with sales revenue of $25M or less will spend 9.2%. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Here's What This 1,335%-Gainer Has Been Buying and Selling

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By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

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Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they’ve bought and sold, via “13F” filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.

Today, let’s look at Appaloosa Management, founded by investing giant David Tepper, and known for investing in the debt of companies in distress. Tepper’s investing history includes debt and stock in companies such as Enron and Worldcom. He made billions on bank stocks in 2009, after they had imploded and before they recovered. More recently, he invested in many housing-related companies.

Why should you look at Appaloosa Management‘s moves? Well, according to the folks at GuruFocus.com, Appaloosa gained a whopping 1,335% in the first decade of this century, compared with just 16% for the S&P 500.

The company’s reportable stock portfolio totaled $4.6 billion in value as of December 31, 2012.

Interesting developments
So what does Appaloosa’s latest quarterly 13F filing tell us? Here are a few interesting details:

The biggest new holdings are HCA Holdings and MetLife. Other new holdings of interest include Weatherford International , which is down some 27% over the past year. The company has been plagued with accounting-related problems, as well, and remains challenged  by low gas prices and low margins related to an Iraqi contract. In a recent presentation, though, management pointed out that its land-based operations, which represent the bulk of its work, have been growing by an annual average of about 16% over the past decade. Its “unconventional” operations, including shale and oil sands, have been growing even more briskly. Still, despite robust revenue growth and plenty of fans, its bottom line is in the red, and it’s free cash flow is, as well, while debt has been growing.

Among holdings in which Appaloosa Management increased its stake was EMC . EMC is a $53 billion storage giant, poised to profit from the rapidly growing cloud-computing and “Big Data” arenas. It also holds an 80% ownership stake in virtualization specialist VMware. EMC has been held back some by softness in technology spending due to a weak global economy, but that won’t last forever. Its recent earnings report was solid, with strong operating income growth, and many were excited to hear about the company’s plans, with VMware, to launch a joint venture called Pivotal, combining the companies’ cloud and data analytics services. Pivotal is likely to be spun off as a separate company in the future.

Appaloosa Management reduced its stake in lots of companies, including Chimera Investment and Fusion-io . Mortgage REIT Chimera Investment yields 11.6%, profiting by taking on more risk than many of its brethren. My colleague John Maxfield has expressed doubts about the company, and it has not filed required reports on time, either, which is a concern. It did file its 10-K (from 2011) recently, but after the market closed on a Friday, suggesting that it wanted minimal attention. Sure enough, a read through it raises more concerns, such as its hefty management …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

The 2 Stocks Behind the Dow's Gains This Morning

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By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool

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The amazing run of record highs for the Dow Jones Industrials appears poised to continue today as the market responds favorably to data showing fewer unemployment claims and a lack of inflationary pressure at the wholesale level. As of 10:55 a.m. EDT, the Dow is up 58 points, or 0.4%, to break through the 14,500 mark. The broader market is up similarly on a percentage basis.

Given the way the Dow is calculated, high-priced stocks have the most influence, and that’s where the gains are coming from today. IBM rose a seemingly modest 1.4%, but its rise accounted for more than 20 points of the Dow’s gain. Investors appear to be increasingly optimistic about the tech giant’s move into the cloud-computing arena through its Big Data initiative, focusing on bringing more medium-sized businesses into the trend toward cloud-based enterprise software. Given the speed of the trend, IBM could use the initiative as a major part of its drive toward boosting earnings per share to $20 within the next two years.

Meanwhile, Chevron gained 1.3%, accounting for more than 10 points of the Dow’s rise. As of this morning, a fire that occurred when a tugboat struck a Chevron gas pipeline was continuing to burn. Yet the news hasn’t kept the stock from setting new record highs, with the potential of an expansion of California-based hydraulic fracturing potentially providing a much-needed boost to Chevron’s domestic resources.

Outside the Dow, earnings news dominated the gainers. Ebix soared 8.5% after the insurance support company announced better-than-expected fourth-quarter results this morning. Yet long-term investors should focus more on the huge opportunity that Obamacare offers the company as millions of new customers tax the systems that insurance companies have in place to track them, pushing more of those companies to bring on Ebix as a partner to help support their operations.

Finally, Flotek has gained 8.5%. Earnings came in better than expected, with net income nearly doubling for the full 2012 year compared to 2011. Given all the activity going on in the energy industry, Flotek is set to continue offering drilling products and production-enhancement technology well into the future.

Get the best long-term investing ideas you can find. Focus on the top stocks in the Dow by taking a look at our special report: “The 3 Dow Stocks Dividend Investors Need.” It’s absolutely free, so just click here and get your copy today.

The article The 2 Stocks Behind the Dow’s Gains This Morning originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter @DanCaplinger. The Motley Fool recommends Chevron and Ebix. The Motley Fool owns shares of Ebix and IBM. 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 <a target=_blank …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Why EMC Is Poised to Bounce Back

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By Brian Pacampara, Pacampara, The Motley Fool

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Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool’s free investing community, data-storage specialist EMC has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at EMC and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

EMC facts

Headquarters (founded)

Hopkinton, Mass. (1979)

Market Cap

$51.7 billion

Industry

Computer storage and peripherals

Trailing-12-Month Revenue

$21.7 billion

Management

Chairman/CEO Joseph Tucci

President/COO/CFO David Goulden

Return on Equity (average, past 3 years)

12.8%

Cash/Debt

$6.2 billion / $1.7 billion

Competitors

Hewlett-Packard

Hitachi Data Systems

IBM

Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 96% of the 3,827 members who have rated EMC believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward.

Just last week, one of those Fools, Maxgarcia, succinctly summed up the bull case for our community:

EMC is a $50 billion storage giant, with solid growth prospects in the rapidly growing cloud-computing and Big Data arenas. It also holds an 80% ownership stake in virtualization specialist VMware. EMC has been held back some by softness in technology spending due to a weak global economy, but that won’t last forever. In the meantime, it has struck a partnership with Lenovo, which might help it in China, and its recent earnings report was solid, with strong operating income growth.

If you want market-thumping returns, you need to put together the best portfolio you can. Of course, despite a perfect five-star rating, EMC may not be your top choice.

We’ve found another stock we are incredibly excited about — excited enough to dub it “The Motley Fool’s Top Stock for 2013.” We have compiled a special free report for investors to uncover this stock today. The report is 100% free, but it won’t be here forever, so click here to access it now.

Want to see how well (or not so well) the stocks in this series are performing? Follow the TrackPoisedTo CAPS account.

The article Why EMC Is Poised to Bounce Back originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Brian Pacampara has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends VMware. The Motley Fool owns shares of EMC, International Business Machines, and VMware. 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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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

AVG Technologies Chief Policy Officer Siobhan MacDermott to Speak as "Visiting Future-ist" for the F

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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AVG Technologies Chief Policy Officer Siobhan MacDermott to Speak as “Visiting Future-ist” for the Future of Information Alliance at the University of Maryland

–(BUSINESS WIRE)– AVG Technologies (NYS: AVG) :

WHAT: The University of Maryland’s Future of Information Alliance will host invitation-only discussions in a series entitled, “The Big Picture of Big Data.” Visiting Future-ists will give 10-minute presentations on the topic as it pertains to their respective industry or discipline.

The Future of Information Alliance was launched at the University of Maryland in 2011. It was created to serve as a catalyst for dialogue across disciplines and to promote research on issues related to the evolving role of information in our lives. By identifying shared challenges and encouraging innovative solutions, the Future of Information Alliance seeks to facilitate a future in which information in all its forms can be an effective resource for all. The founding partners include the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, the Newseum, Sesame Workshop, the U.S. National Park Service, the Barrie School, the Online Academy, WAMU 88.5 and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. The Future of Information Alliance is co-directed by Ira Chinoy, a University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism associate professor and associate dean, and Allison Druin, a professor at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies (iSchool).

WHO: Siobhan MacDermott is a respected thought leader on the future of Information Technology, consumer dynamics, cybersecurity, privacy, and business leadership. She is currently Chief Policy Officer of AVG Technologies (NYS: AVG) , having worked in senior leadership positions at many reputable U.S. and global technology companies. MacDermott is both a US and EU national, and has worked on four continents and speaks five languages. She received her MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management, is working on her second Masters degree at the Fletcher School, and serves on and advises several boards including the Internet Security Alliance and the Fund for Peace.

AVG‘s mission is to simplify, optimize and secure the Internet experience, providing peace of mind to a connected world. AVG‘s powerful yet easy-to-use software and online services put users in control of their Internet experience. By choosing AVG‘s software and services, users become part of a trusted global community that benefits from inherent network effects, mutual protection and support. AVG has grown …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Alibaba Names New CEO

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By Kevin Chen, The Motley Fool

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China’s e-commerce giant, Alibaba, has named a new CEO. Executive Vice President Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi, who has been with the company for more than a decade, will officially take over May 10.

The search for Alibaba’s new CEO began after founder and current CEO Jack Ma announced his decision to step down on Jan. 15. At 48, Ma said, he was no longer “young for the Internet business.” However, Ma will remain executive chairman and continue to shape the company’s business strategy and management development.

Ma praised Lu, saying in the company announcement: “Not only has he contributed to building our culture and organization and developed many talented people, he also possesses a unique leadership style and charisma.”

Lu, 43, has a reputation as a low-profile leader. The company blog calls him “an operations whiz with the ability to get things done.”

With 13 years with the company, Lu has led three major divisions and steered the Taobao online shopping platform. When he joined in 2000, he helped form Alibaba.com’s sales team for South China. In 2004, he led the launch of Alipay, the company’s online payments affiliate. Later, he served as Alipay’s president.

During his time as the head Taobao, since 2008, Taobao’s total sales generated by sellers using the platform increased eightfold. Since July 2012, Lu has also worked as Alibaba’s chief data officer, where he heads up the “Big Data” initiative and Aliyun, Alibaba’s mobile OS.

Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi. Source: Alibaba blog.

Before joining Alibaba, Lu worked in the hotel industry, then co-founded a network communication company. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

As CEO, Lu will oversee 24 of Alibaba’s 25 business units, with the exception of the recently formed Alibaba Small and Micro Financial Services Group, Alibaba’s financial services arm. Chief Human Resources Officer and former head of Alipay Lucy Peng was elevated to CEO of the new financial services arm last week.

link

The article Alibaba Names New CEO originally appeared on Fool.com.

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.

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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Actuate and Bernard Marr's Advanced Performance Institute Release Global Survey that Reveals Keys to

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Actuate and Bernard Marr’s Advanced Performance Institute Release Global Survey that Reveals Keys to Getting the Most from Business Performance Management


Comprehensive Study Commemorates the 20
 th Anniversary of the Balanced Scorecard

SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Actuate Corporation (NAS: BIRT) , The BIRT Company™– delivering more insights to more people than all BI companies combined – today announcedthe results of a worldwide study conducted in conjunction with the Advanced Performance Institute (API) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Balanced Scorecard. Measuring and Managing Performance – A Global Study garnered responses from over 3,000 companies across the globe, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive surveys ever conducted in the field of performance management. API Founder and CEO Bernard Marr analyzed the results in his newly released white paper20 Years of Measuring and Managing Business Performance: From KPIs and Dashboards to Performance Analytics and Big Data.

“While the results of the survey reveal that most companies measure, monitor and analyze their performance, not all companies generate the level of benefits expected from their efforts,” Marr said. “By analyzing the survey results we were able to determine the primary factors that contribute to the level of satisfaction organizations feel with their Business Performance Management (BPM) efforts. Three primary factors were found to influence the maturity of a company’s initiative, which can range from those that have little or no data to work with, to companies that are able to use comprehensive performance data to make true operational and strategic decisions.”

Three Driving Influences

While the survey revealed seven factors that contribute to BPM maturity, three main driving influences permeated the results and affected to varying degrees the initiatives of all respondents. The companies that were able to succeed in these three areas were more likely to report a successful BPM initiative:

  • Proper impetus or leadership to guide the initiative. For performance management efforts to be truly valuable, buy-in must seep through all levels of an organization and improve strategic decision making throughout. Despite that, many companies maintain a Big Brother approach to performance management: one-third of respondents were motivated to report only …read more
    Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Spring Release of ServiceSource Renew OnDemand™ Delivers Proven Analytics and Complete View of Custo

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Spring Release of ServiceSource Renew OnDemand™ Delivers Proven Analytics and Complete View of Customer Data to Increase Recurring Revenue

Renew OnDemand Helps Customers Grow their Recurring Revenue Business by Turning Mountains of Data into Actionable Information and Insights

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– ServiceSource® (NAS: SREV) , the global leader in recurring revenue management, today introduced major new enhancements to Renew OnDemand™, the only SaaS application built specifically to maximize recurring revenue.

Renew OnDemand is based on proven best practices and software that ServiceSource has used for 12 years to manage over $8B in annual recurring revenue and leverages the principals of Fast Data and Big Data to analyze large, rapidly changing data sets and provide analytics that drive business decisions. The Spring 2013 enhancements deliver Renewal Ready Data that aggregates, enriches and quality checks renewal data from multiple systems. Also included are advanced business analytics with 15 new recurring revenue-specific metrics and dashboards, and integration with Salesforce.com for an easy-to-access view of potential new and recurring revenue sales opportunities for each customer.

“Customers have relied upon our expertise in maximizing recurring revenue for over a decade. Sitting at the intersection of Fast Data and Big Data, Renew OnDemand is the only cloud application built to help companies make money from the customers they’ve already won”, said Mike Smerklo, ServiceSource Chairman and CEO. “Customers understand that recurring revenue typically accounts for 50% of their profit and traditional approaches to renewal sales leave highly profitable revenue on the table every year due to failed execution, excessive churn and missed opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell.”

Unlike information for new sales, which is typically housed in one CRM system, maximizing recurring revenue often requires extensive data from 5-7 different systems. Renewal sales teams can spend 30-40% of their time pulling this data together, rather than selling. Renew OnDemand imports needed data – including asset, customer contact, contract entitlement and offer history data – from a myriad of systems, then merges and enriches that data to create renewal-ready customer records. Renew OnDemand scores data quality, identifies questionable data and quarantines it for corrective action by the customer or by ServiceSource’s expert data analysts.

ServiceSource pairs Renew OnDemand with Data Services provided by a team of data management experts. With extensive experience managing data from the largest companies in the world, these teams specialize …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

Big Data, Plus Cloud: Call It 'Weird Data,' But in a Good Way

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By Joe McKendrick, Contributor

We have the cloud, we have big data, we have social networks and we have mobile computing. The sum total is more than the parts; it’s amounting to a big data cloud that is surrounding and defining businesses of all types and sizes, providing interesting opportunities for those who engage it. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

What's to be Done about Big Data?

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By Gil Press, Contributor

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier reacted sharply when I asked them in a brief conversation we had last week about their new book, Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, if they are cheerleaders for big data, as one reviewer implied. ”We are messengers of big data, not its evangelists,” said Cukier. Added Mayer-Schönberger: “The reviewer did not read the book.” …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

What Can Marketers Do To Manage And Leverage Big Data?

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By Kimberly Whitler, Contributor

Information. Big Data. The amount of – and access to – business transforming information is changing what it means to be a marketer.  25 years ago, the head of marketing could easily have grown up in an ad agency and been a brilliant “creative mind” who developed strong ad campaigns. Today, a great Superbowl ad isn’t sufficient. Effective marketers must understand data, know how to generate insight from, in some cases, millions of transactions, and be capable of interpreting and using statistical output to create smart strategies and plans. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Here's What This $14 Billion Hedge Fund Company Has Been Buying

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By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

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Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they’ve bought and sold, via “13F” filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.

Today, let’s look at Viking Global Investors, founded in 1999 by Andreas Halvorsen and David Ott, who had previously worked together at Julian Robertson‘s respected Tiger Management firm. Viking is known as a long-short global equity fund, meaning that it aims to maintain long positions in companies on which it’s bullish and short positions in those where it’s bearish.

The company’s reportable stock portfolio totaled $14.4 billion in value as of Dec. 31, 2012.

Interesting developments
So what does Viking’s latest quarterly 13F filing tell us? Here are a few interesting details:

The biggest new holdings are Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Las Vegas Sands. Other new holdings of interest include EMC and TIBCO Software . EMC is a $50 billion storage giant, with solid growth prospects in the rapidly growing cloud-computing and Big Data arenas. It also holds an 80% ownership stake in virtualization specialist VMware. EMC has been held back some by softness in technology spending due to a weak global economy, but that won’t last forever. In the meantime, it has struck a partnership with Lenovo, which might help it in China, and its recent earnings report was solid, with strong operating income growth

TIBCO is another Big Data operator, and one that got whacked late last year after posting disappointing earnings results. It had previously posted a long string of strong earnings and pointed to softness in orders as well as some weather interference for the miss. Still, management is upbeat, as are some of my colleagues, such as Anders Bylund, who bought shares. Some think the company may end up acquired by another.

Among holdings in which Viking Global increased its stake was BlackBerry . BlackBerry, until very recently known as Research In Motion, has been fighting strong competition from iPhones and Android devices. (Apple, for example, is expected to debut a lower-cost smartphone that might appeal to businesses that buy in bulk for employees, threatening BlackBerry’s longtime strength in the corporate market.) BlackBerry recently debuted some new devices, but some think that’s not enough to turn the company around.

Viking Global reduced its stake in lots of companies, including Sherwin-Williams , which has averaged annual growth of nearly 30% over the past five years, partly on signs of a housing market recovery. Last year, the company bought global paint giant Comex, based in Mexico, for $2.3 billion. Some don’t like that the deal will add to Sherwin-Williams’ debt, but others see it as a smart strategic move. In a sign of strength, the company recently boosted its dividend by 28%. With a forward P/E ratio of 19, it’s reasonable to see the stock as not a bargain right now.

Finally, Viking’s biggest closed positions included Apple and priceline.com. Other closed positions of …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Actuate to Present at the 25th Annual Roth Conference

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Actuate to Present at the 25 th Annual Roth Conference

SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Actuate Corporation (NAS: BIRT) , The BIRT Company™ – delivering more insights to more people than all BI companies combined, today announced that the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, Pete Cittadini and Chief Financial Officer, Dan Gaudreau will present at the 25th Annual Roth Conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel.

The presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time. One-on-one meetings with management can be arranged through Roth. A live webcast of the presentation will be available at www.actuate.com/investor. A replay of the webcast will be available for a limited time thereafter.


Actuate – The BIRT Company™

Actuate founded and co-leads the BIRT open source project, which is used by over 1.5 million developers around the globe and serves as the foundation of the ActuateOne® platform. Applications built on ActuateOne deliver more business and consumer insights to more people than all BI companies combined – ensuring organizations are ready for the exponential growth of Big Data and the proliferation of touch devices.

The ActuateOne platform empowers developers to rapidly develop custom, BIRT-based business analytics and customer communications applications. ActuateOne applications built with one BIRT design, can access and integrate any data, including unstructured sources. They provide one user experience regardless of skill level and are supported by one platform for any cloud, hybrid, on-premise, web or touch device deployment.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Actuate has over 5,000 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services,technology and the public sector. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For more information, visit www.actuate.com or engage with the BIRT community at www.birt-exchange.com.

Copyright © 2013 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate, ActuateOne, BIRT Analytics and the Actuate logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between Actuate and any other company. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

In the Battle for Big Data, IBM Drops an A-Bomb

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By Tim Beyers, The Motley Fool

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In September, IBM was downplaying expectations for its big data business. No longer. Big Blue this week showed analysts what its Watson supercomputer is capable of in a demonstration at the company’s Almaden Research Center outside of San Jose, Calif.

Big Blue believes that, by putting Watson to work on data-intensive tasks such as drug development, the company will corner at least part of the big data market opportunity before peers Teradata and Oracle can get there. Both companies sell finely honed database systems.

For IBM, Watson could help IBM unlock $16 billion in big data revenue by 2015, The New York Times reports, making its supercomputer the world’s most valuable consultant. What are the odds of success? Is now the time to bet on Big Blue? Tim Beyers of Motley Fool Rule Breakers and Motley Fool Supernova addresses these questions and more in the video below. Please watch, and then be sure to leave a comment to let us know what you think.

The amount of data we store every year is growing by a mind-boggling 60% annually! To make sense of this trend and pick out a winner, The Motley Fool has compiled a new report called “The Only Stock You Need to Profit From the NEW Technology Revolution.” The report highlights a company that has gained 300% since first recommended by Fool analysts but still has plenty of room left to run. To get instant access to the name of this company transforming the IT industry, click here — it’s free.

The article In the Battle for Big Data, IBM Drops an A-Bomb originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Tim Beyers is a member of the 
Motley Fool Rule Breakers
stock-picking team and the Motley Fool Supernova Odyssey I mission. He owned shares of IBM at the time of publication. Check out Tim’s web home and portfolio holdings or connect with him on Google+, Tumblr, or Twitter, where he goes by @milehighfool. You can also get his insights delivered directly to your RSS reader.The Motley Fool owns shares of Oracle and International Business Machines. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Teradata. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

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

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance