Big vs. Smart Data

Big data refers to the idea that large collections of data open opportunities that were not possible with smaller amounts. The term originated from massive offline astrophysics and genomics data sets and was later used for applications that employ machine-learning, such as Internet search, voice recognition and language translation. These days many products with data analysis and statistics features tend to use the term “big data” simply for the sake of marketing.

Smart data, on the other hand, is not about data per se, but rather refers to the ways to analyze and make sense of it. From business perspective, big data is what we know about consumer behavior, while smart data is how we discover the underlying rationale and predict repetition of such behavior.

Technically, it is about separating and ignoring the noise, finding relevant data points, and extracting signals of higher value. Practically, it is about providing meaningful information, change recommendations and interactive visualization – all for a particular business context.

In short, smart data is adding advanced business intelligence (BI) on top of big data, in order to provide actionable insights.

Business Challenges

There is a spectacular gap between what smart data means by definition and how it can really benefit your company.

As with any new business trend, the first problem is talent. There are not enough people who know how to ask the right questions – or query the data – let alone how to extract the answers. This requires a unique blend of mathematics, psychology and business acumen. McKinsey & Company estimates that, in the US alone, there is a shortfall of 190,000 analytics experts and 1.5 million data-savvy managers.

According to research by Tata Consultancy Services, the greatest challenges of getting business value from big data are as much cultural as they are technological. The highest-rated challenge is getting business units within a company to share information across the organizational silos, such as divisions, business functions, etc. This issue has plagued companies for decades. Business departments become protective of their data and often don’t have any incentive to share it internally.

Because of this, in large organizations inconsistent versions of the same data may be used in different parts of its operations. This problem can be solved with master data management that consistently provides a single point of reference. Data must be accessible by analysts across multiple domains in order for them to be most effective. By providing this access, analysts are empowered to ask broader and ultimately better questions.

Other possible organizational issues that concern decision-making workflow include selecting correct key performance indicators (KPIs) for various roles; trust between data scientists and functional managers; visualization usability and interactivity; and recording and implementing decisions in real life.

Technology Limitations

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for big data analytics is the sheer volume, diversity and speed with which data is now being collected and processed.

Data can be analyzed in many different forms, depending on the way it is measured and its origin. With more sources stemming from web services, networks and cloud computing, the diversity of the data is growing more complex by the day. And so is the amount of work involved in its intelligent integration.

Big data is generally unstructured and requires investment in new tools, technologies, skill sets and team members to manage it. In recent research from TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute), 88% of organizations cited structured transactional and analytical data as their primary type.

If your data sets are too large and complex to manage within traditional relational databases, then scaling of both resources and performance might be an issue. A study by Enterprise Management Associates shows that nearly half of big data projects are still based on Oracle and/or SQL servers that are incapable of managing them, and only 28% are concerned that their current systems cannot scale to meet the growing demands.

Data-Driven Marketing

The use of smart data in marketing is often called data-driven marketing. For example, if you run an ecommerce business, traffic logs represent only raw data. What you really need to know is not how many unique users visited your storefront, but rather what percentage converted to actual customers and why.

You need to ask smart questions, such as how behavior is different depending on the referral source; are there any bottleneck in the sales funnel on mobile devices; can you build up a habit of using your website; and do customers admire your product and service offering, or just cope with it? All of these questions can be answered with advanced analytics based on customers’ behavior data.

Mark Jeffery in his book, Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know, suggests 15 main metrics of data-driven marketing: brand awareness, test-drive, churn, customer satisfaction, take rate, profit, net present value, internal rate of return, payback, customer lifetime value, cost per click, transaction conversion rate, return on ad dollar spent, bounce rate, and social media reach. HubSpot mentions six in its white paper: customer acquisition cost (CAC), marketing % of CAC, ratio of customer lifetime value (LTV) to CAC, time to payback CAC, marketing originated customer % and marketing influenced customer %.

Your business case may require other insights to make informed decisions. It is the Chief Marketing Officer’s job to take ownership and responsibility for technology issues to a new degree. No longer can one rely on cloud solutions and work around IT operation.

If we want big data to become smart, new technology should meet traditional business needs and provide answers that actually improve customer lives and experiences.

This article and more information can be found at: http://blog.nxcgroup.com/2014/what-is-so-big-about-smart-data/#.VU02bemUCP8

Two patterns emerge when these characteristics are looked at closely. While the volume and velocity aspects refer to data generation process and how to capture and store the data, veracity and value aspects deal with the quality and the usefulness of the data leading to the point.

Data management is a major challenge for most enterprises – even small data is plagued by quality and management issues.

In addition, the digital world is generating new sets of data coming in from different sources (mostly from web) in structured format and unstructured format.

If businesses simply go by the volume and velocity aspects, it qualifies as a big data problem. However, in reality, a lot of this data comprises ‘noise’ (information or metadata having low or no real value for the enterprise).

The purpose of smart data (veracity and value) is to filter out the noise and hold the valuable data, which can be effectively used by the enterprise to solve business problems.

If businesses take the smart data approach, they can always argue that bigger isn't always better. For a predictive model, will a simple random sample suffice?

What's the marginal impact on a predictive model's accuracy if it runs on five million rows versus 10 billion rows? Statistically speaking, the marginal impact is negligible.

So, how does big data become smart data?

There are no formulas, but one has to better understand the clues in the questions around the data. Analysing data qualitatively enables one to not only become data-driven but also creates opportunities to become creatively-driven. And this is where big data can become smart data.

Instead of just looking at the numbers and making wild guesses about why something works or doesn’t, people who work with data have to humanise it and essentially become ‘data whisperers’.

It is the skill of further analysing the quantitative and qualitative aspects of data together. Businesses have to let the data tell their the story, removing as much of their own bias as possible.

Having lots of data is not enough. The key is to seriously question the data – is the data uniform and regular? Can it be easily extracted and analysed? Is there a significant amount of variation? Is it embedded in a mass of other irrelevant information?

Data interpretation should not be a random activity; it should increasingly point to clear solutions and actionable tasks. The benefits of interpreting data should be analysed.

The collection and exploitation of data is meaningful only when it is used to optimise and automate solutions and solve problems (data-driven decision-making).

There are numerous examples where it can be clearly seen when even changing the colour of a button on a web page leads to higher conversions.

So, the objective is to not only understand and link together the various activities happening through data, but also to improve the performance of an existing process, or develop capabilities to predict the next set of outcomes. 

This essentially means that the focus should not just be to collect a vast amount of all possible data, but also contextualise each bit of data with its own specific context.

Data needs to be understood and interpreted in a specific context. For example, what is the value of some information about a website visitor clicking on a link if the context that precedes and follows the clicking is not known? 

Does this mean big data is dead? Not really. Understanding and having a complete view of user behavior is critical, and in this case big data plays a key role.

If real-time perspective of user behavior across channels of interactions broken out by some demographic or geographic attribute is the need, then why discard useful data? You should go big.

However, if a machine-learning algorithm can give product recommendations using modest data sets, why take the big data route?

Approaching data science intelligently doesn't necessarily mean everything has to revolve around the notion of big data. It just means knowing when to pull out the Swiss army knife instead of a chainsaw.

The main objective is to move from data management organisation culture (struggling to manage all kinds of data) to learning organisation culture (leveraging all the value behind the data).

This is article was originally posted at: http://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/123458486/big-data-dead-rise-smart-data

Most software development teams have embraced the short release cycles enabled by agile/scrum software development methodology. Yet visual and interaction designers find it hard to fit into the agile development cycles, let alone user experience specialists.

The Lean UX is an attempt to combine the best of Agile, Lean, UX and design.

This article and details in his book can be found at:
http://edward-designer.com/web/ux-design-in-agile-development/

Three foundations of Lean UX

1. Design Thinking: thinks like a designer, drive the business direction by observing what people want and need, like or dislike and refine accordingly
2. Agile Software Development: Lean UX applies the four core principles of Agile development
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan
3. Lean Startup Methods: build the Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) for rapid learning of market response

Core Principles

The 15 Lean UX Principles introduced in the book are digested into the following 5 core principles for more clarity. The last principle is specifically for designers.

Build a Small, Colocated, Cross-functional Teams: build a team of <10 members, everyone is engaged in every step for team efficiency, team work is highly valued, lessons learned in a collective manner with the team as a whole, the deeper into the process, the better the team at guessing what the market actually needs

User-Centered Design Process: get feedback from real users as a way of learning, ideas and designs are tested against real users for new discovery and refinement, ideas can be proved first before scaling

Lightweight and Fast Actions: the team should try to use the shortest duration to build products (MVP) for testing, the more the testing, the faster to find the right direction

Performance is Assessed by  Outcomes: teams are assigned problems instead of output specifications, they are given the free hand to try different solutions for maximum impact, outcomes are business goals (like increased conversion rate), the team must be safe to fail which can breed a culture of experimentation

Designers should Work in Small Steps: resources are scarce, designers should laser focus on the most important tasks by creating designs that are crucial for the current MVPs and avoid presenting a large-batch polished design upfront, designers should also use sketches and wireframe to discuss their ideas early in the design process before building the design

The Process

Lean UX is a discovery process. User feedback is collected, analyzed and utilized continually throughout the whole design/development process. The following steps describes a typical cycle of formulating assumptions, building, testing and learning.

Step 0: Preparation

• Build a measurement system (e.g. digital analytics) into the current service/product to collect data for benchmarking
• Define and prioritize the personas for the service/product, personas represents the typical users (maybe up to 10 personas with 1-2 primary personas), personas must be derived from actual user profiles but given fictitious details (name, age, photo, occupation, needs and problems with the service/product)
• Create and maintain a Style Guide which contains the most updated design components and patterns ever used (e.g. buttons, graphs, navigations, forms), usually with sample code and style (e.g CodePen is a good choice for storing style guides for web applications). Updates should be communicated to all users. A very first example is the Industrial Internet Design System (IIDS) used by GE.

Step 1A: Declare Assumptions

Lean UX is concerned about testing and learning. We have to test the validity of hypotheses and make adjustments accordingly.

Who: All team members

What: Create and prioritize the problem statements (goals, a current problem and an explicit request) and test with hypotheses statements.

An example of problem statement:

[Our service/product] was designed to achieve [goals]. We have observed that the service/product isn’t meeting [these goals], which is causing [this adverse effect] to our business. How might we improve [service/product] so that our customers are more successful based on [these measurable criteria]? 

An example of hypotheses statement:

We believe [doing this] for [these personas] will achieve [this outcome]. We will know we’re [right/wrong] with [qualitative feedback/quantitative feedback/KPI changes].

Step 1B: Initial Understanding

Mutual understanding between all members, in particular designers and developers, is crucial.

Who: All team members

What: The designer leads a meeting with all team members to discuss and come to agreement with some initial ideas to the problem. The meeting can be in the form of stand-up meeting or design studios (everyone brainstorm, discuss and choose the initial solution by consensus) by using low fidelity sketches on whiteboard or paper.

Step 2: Create an MVP

MVP stands for Minimum Viable Products. They are not the finished marketable products but rather complete products ready for testing.

Who: Designers and/or developers

What: Decide what to learn and how to learn the quickest. Define the signals/metrics in advance. Since we are mostly concerned about testing and learning in this stage, the MVPs can range from low-fidelity prototypes, high-fidelity mockups to fully functional demos as long as they serve the purpose. If you are just testing for the market demands for a certain product, using google adwords and a ‘button to nowhere’ can test whether actual users are interested in it.

Step 3: Run an Experiment

It’s show time.

Who: Designated Testers and/or The Team

What: Ask people come to your place to test out the new features or bring the product/service to places with your defined personas. If your product is targeted at developers, go to developer conference and ask for feedback on the spot.

Step 4: Feedback and Research

While the primary feedback is collected from field testing of the MVPs, more feedback can be found in on-site search data, third party review sites, customer service calls, enquiry emails, and from the social media networks.

Who: The Team

What: To make sense of the feedback by i) looking for patterns, ii) finding an explanation for outliers, iii) double verify the patterns with other sources. Knowledge gained in this step is to be fed into Step 1 for another cycle of learning and discovery.

Building Lean UX into Agile/Scrum

Typically, Scrum employs a 2 week sprints model. Several related sprints may be grouped into a theme.

Declare Assumptions (Step 1A) and Initial Understanding (Step 1B) can be fitted into the beginning of each sprint (maybe longer at the beginning of a theme), just before the iteration planning meeting (IPM). IPM is used to plan and agree on what to do for the sprint that follows. Create the MVP (Step 2) is the meat of each iteration.

Run an experiment (Step 3) and Feedback and Research (Step 4) can be added to each sprint with a “3-12-1″ cycle (3 users, by 12 noon, 1 a week):

Conclusion

In an era where UX rules, Lean UX offers the best integration of UX into Agile Development Methodology. UX designers are no longer considered as outsiders or hindrance to the development team, everyone in the team is engaged in every step of the development.

• Planning and designing collaboration and video networks using Cisco Collaboration solutions
• Implementing basic configurations of Cisco Collaboration solutions
• Maintaining and optimizing collaboration solutions

The CCNA Collaboration training courses and exams represent the merging of the current CCNA Voice and CCNA Video curricula. Major updates have been made to reflect the integration of new technologies. The CCNA Collaboration Convergence Document highlights the major updates to domain topics, both hardware and software, which have been made to the following curricula:

• ICOMM curriculum, which has been updated and is  included in the new CICD course and exam
• VIVND curriculum, which has been updated and is included  in the new CIVND courses and exam

The Collaboration certification training course and exam information is as follows:

CCNA Collaboration Training Course and Exam Summary

CCNP Collaboration Training Course and Exam Summary *

*Training Courses and Exams will be available April 2015

Get started with CCNA Collaboration Certification

Get started with CCNP Collaboration Certification

Retirement of CCNA Voice, CCNP Voice, and CCNA Video Certifications

Learning@Cisco is also announcing the retirement of the following certifications:

• CCNA Voice certification
• CCNP Voice certification
• CCNA Video certification

The last day to test for the CCNA Voice and CCNA Video certifications will be August 14, 2015.  No new certifications for CCNA Voice and CCNA Video will be issued beginning August 15, 2015.

For CCNP Voice certification, a separate notification will be provided at a later date to communicate the retirement date.

“Technology professionals with datacenter, cloud, application platform, and open source software skills are in demand. Our new Red Hat Certified Architect concentrations are built to address this demand. Most importantly, they allow technology professionals to position themselves as experts on Red Hat's leading open source software solutions."

Today, enterprise architecture includes traditional datacenters, hybrid clouds, and other solutions. The new RHCA concentrations are tracks, recommended by Red Hat, that are designed to prove and verify technical professionals’ skills and knowledge on Red Hat solutions for each of these solutions.

To earn the title of RHCA, one must attain Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) status and acquire at least five of the eligible certifications, each of which cover different product and solution areas. Participants select the concentration they wish to focus on.  

The Datacenter concentration includes:

• Securing Red Hat systems against unauthorized access
• Enhancing logging, auditing, and identity management capabilities
• Deploying and managing virtualization infrastructure, hosts, and guests
• Implementing high availability services on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Using the on-premise capabilities of Red Hat Storage Server
• Deploying applications using Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP)
• Managing multiple systems using Red Hat Satellite

The Cloud concentration includes:

• Creating, configuring, and managing private clouds using Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform
• Managing virtual, private, and hybrid cloud infrastructures with Red Hat CloudForms
• Creating, configuring, and managing a cloud application platform with OpenShift Enterprise by Red Hat
• Implementing flexible storage solutions for on-premise and hybrid clouds
• Managing multiple systems using Red Hat Satellite

The Application platform concentration includes:

• Installing, configuring, and managing Red Hat JBoss EAP and the applications running on it
• Creating, configuring, and managing a cloud application platform with OpenShift Enterprise
• Federating data from multiple source using Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization
• Managing applications in hybrid cloud environments

The Red Hat certification program also offers a portal that provides online verification, the ability to search for certified individuals, and other services. Prospective employers and clients can use the portal to verify an individual’s credentials and find qualified professionals who can help them get the most out of their IT infrastructure. Only certifications and certificates that are considered current are reported, verified, or found through a search. Red Hat Certified Professionals must agree to Terms and Conditions and map their certification IDs to have their information displayed.

A Red Hat certification provides validation of knowledge and expertise that is beneficial to both individuals and their employers. The certification program gives employers and managers ways to find and develop qualified professionals. It also helps individuals prove their skills with Red Hat's solutions.

Posted from: http://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-announces-new-red-hat-certified-architect-concentrations

This environment delivers virtualized and remote desktops and applications through a single platform and supports end users with access to all of their Windows and online resources through one unified workspace. So, the new qualification validates the knowledge and skills required to implement, install and configure Horizon 6 (with View) deployed on vSphere, with the emphasis on:

• Creating and administering virtual desktops.
• Configuring and administering View, Mirage and the Workspace Portal.
• Configuring host networking and storage.
• Working with DRS, HA and other cluster-related vSphere features.

For those interested in earning the certification, there are two starting points:

1. If you’re just starting with VMware desktop technology, you must complete one of the following courses prior to taking the exam:
   • VMware Horizon (with View): Install, Configure, Manage (V6.0)
   • VMware Mirage (5.0) and Horizon View Fast track (v6.0)
2. If you already hold a valid VCP-level certification, then completion of one of the above courses prior to the exam is simply recommended rather than mandatory.

Meanwhile, VMware has also announced that the following two exams will be retired on January 31, 2015:

• VDCA510, which qualified candidates for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Data Center Administration (VCAP5-DCA) certification and was based on vSphere V5.0.
• VDCD510, which qualified candidates for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Data Center Design (VCAP5-DCD) certification and was based on vSphere V5.0.

After the January 31^st retirement date, you will not be able to schedule either of these exams, but you will still be able to earn the VCAP5-DCA or VCAP5-DCD certifications by passing the exams based on vSphere V5.5 (VDCA550 and VDCD550, respectively).

http://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/gazing-crystal-ball-red-hatters-offer-tech-predictions-2015-part-1

We’ve grouped predictions from these experts on many topics, including:

•     Big data
•     Business of tech
•     Cloud computing
•     Containers
•     Developers and application development
•     Internet of Things
•     Mobile
•     OpenStack
•     Security
•     Software-defined datacenter

In today’s post, we’ll highlight big data, business of tech, cloud comuting, and container predictions for 2015. Come back tomorrow for the remaining predictions. And, if you haven’t already, make sure you check out what Red Hat customers identified as their top tech priorities for 2015.

BIG DATA

BUSINESS OF TECH

CLOUD COMPUTING

According to the 2014 SDN and NFV Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, conducted by Infonetics Research, 93 percent of telecommunications operators interviewed plan to deploy NFV as carriers work to modernize the way telecommunications networks are built and operated. As OpenStack establishes itself as the platform of choice for NFV workloads, Huawei and Red Hat are engaging in a global partnership to cooperatively engineer carrier-grade cloud solutions for CSPs.

As part of this initiative, Huawei and Red Hat aim to combine Huawei's world class domain expertise and extensive global experience with telecommunications companies and Red Hat's leading OpenStack and open source expertise to help CSPs embrace cloud computing with a carrier-grade OpenStack solution. Huawei and Red Hat plan to integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform and Huawei’s FusionSphere Cloud OS at the management layer to offer a unified open, flexible, and production-ready cloud solution to support telecommunication carriers' NFV evolution. Working together, Huawei and Red Hat plan to align upstream contributions, engineering, product, and go-to-market efforts to drive the adoption of OpenStack for NFV implementations by CSPs.

Huawei and Red Hat will work together to contribute NFV enabling features to the upstream OpenStack community, which are required by CSP cloud deployments, and serve as the foundation of highly scalable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions. By contributing results from their collaboration to the upstream community, Red Hat and Huawei are enabling the broader OpenStack community to benefit from their collaboration, unlike approaches that favor proprietary add-ons and further vendor lock-in.

Huawei and Red Hat also plan to work together to certify the joint solutions, giving CSPs confidence that the solutions will provide consistent performance and capability.

Supporting Quotes

Ren Zhipeng, President of Huawei's Cloud Computing Product Line

“Huawei offers its customers a true carrier-grade OpenStack solution, and we are honored to expand our existing partnership with Red Hat to include collaboration on OpenStack for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). Through open collaboration with partners like Red Hat, Huawei aims to support the business reform and transformation of the telecom industry. This partnership will focus on NFV and the development of joint solutions to foster an open, interconnected, and innovative ecosystem that supports the entire OpenStack community.”

Tim Yeaton, senior vice president, Infrastructure Business, Red Hat

“Carriers and telecommunications service providers are under pressure to modernize their network infrastructure to meet demands created by new service offerings and the explosive volume of data crossing the network. As a result, many are exploring the benefits OpenStack-based clouds can bring to NFV projects. By combining Huawei’s leadership in the telecommunications industry with Red Hat’s leadership in OpenStack and, more broadly, enterprise open source, we are well positioned to deliver cloud solutions that enable carriers to meet their network modernization challenges.”

The New Stack and the Linux Foundation ranked OpenStack as the most popular open source project. And Red Hat is leading the way. Customers have aggressive OpenStack adoption plans, but they list IT skills as their #1 challenge to getting started. Red Hat training and certification is here to boost your career—and help your company—with skills that are in demand.  The hands-on OpenStack courses are conducted like guided labs. Most of your time is spent developing skills working directly on our products.

Red Hat OpenStack Training Courses

Learn how to use Pacemaker, Corosync, CMAN tools, and HAProxy to implement cluster and other high-availability tools

• High Availability with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (CL332) uses the top open source clustering and high-availability solutions on the market and provides a comprehensive plan to connect them with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. This course provides a deeper dive into high availability than our Red Hat OpenStack Administration (CL210) course.

Implement Apache Qpid as a stand-alone service or as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform

• Apache Qpid Messaging with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (CL314) is for system administrators, cloud administrators, and cloud operators and provides a thorough look at Apache Qpid messaging.

by David Goldsmith
October 01, 2013

This blog article was posted and can be found at: http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2013/10/hadoop-administrator-training-gets-hands-on/

I’ve always held a strong bias that education is most effective when the student learns by doing. As a developer of technical curricula, my goal is to have training participants engage with real and relevant problems as much as possible through hands-on exercises. The high rate at which Apache Hadoop is changing, both as a technology and as an ecosystem, makes developing Cloudera training courses not only demanding but also seriously fun and rewarding.

I recently undertook the challenge of upgrading the Cloudera Administrator Training for Apache Hadoop. I more than quadrupled the amount of hands-on exercises from the previous version, adding a full day to the course. At four days, it’s now the most thorough training for Hadoop administrators and truly the best way to start building expertise.

With more than half of 2014  behind us, it's that time of the year where we look at IT certifications standings in real world IT. The right certifications can help earn tech workers premium pay or land the job they've been aspiring to. That's why knowing what is "hot" with employers is important when considering your professional development.

Every quarter Foote Partners compiles their data in the IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report, and they speak with over 2600 employers to bridge the disconnect between job titles, job content and compensation. Read on to find out where the heat is in regards to IT certifications, salaries, and employer needs. The top certifications are:

"Generally speaking, the market is responding to anything that has to do with architecture," says David Foote, co-founder, chief analyst and research officer with Foote Partners. These items are in demand, and employers are willing to pay a premium for them. In fact, all three of these IT certifications made it into Foote Partner's highest paying IT certifications. TOGAF9, for example, has increased 25 percent in the last 6 months.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon is the heavy in the cloud wars right now, and as a result, "skills pay" for these certifications are on the rise. AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional is another new entry to Foote Partners research, and already it's made the highest paying IT certification list.

"These have just been added to our list. Amazon is hot right now. So many companies have adopted that [Amazon Cloud] solution," says Foote.

VMware

VMware cloud certifications are all pretty hot right now. Premium pay for VCDX increased 28.6 percent in the last 12 months, while VCP-Cloud also saw a premium pay increase of 12.5 percent over the last year.

While there hasn't been significant growth over the last year, recipients of the VCAP-CID certification are receiving 8-13 percent of base pay salary as a "skills pay" premium from employers.

Microsoft has a lot of muscle in the certification arena, and its flexing it on a big push for Azure. Foote says this certification is something to consider should you find your organization migrating to Hyper-V.

"This certification is being elevated by the push they're giving to Azure. There's so much Microsoft out there, and they are migrating to Hyper-V," says Foote.

The PMI-ACP tied for number three on the highest paying IT certifications. It's currently receiving an 11 to 15 percent skills premium pay, and according to Foote's predictions, that is likely to increase as demand for everything agile increases, not just agile project management. "We will introduce Certified Scrum Master next quarter, and that will be on our hot list for certain because it addresses the demand for agile skills," says Foote.

Another newcomer to the list of highest paying IT certifications, SixSigma is making its move, and it's hot according to Foote, who says, "There is no standard certification body for Six Sigma, but instead many certification services are offered by various associations. But that doesn't negate the fact that it's a not certification to have."

Master BlackBelt grew 9.1 percent in value in last 3 months, and the Black Belt gained 12.5 percent in the same period.

It's no secret as to why the next two certifications have made the list; security is on everyone's mind these days with each day bringing another news story of a major data breach.

In fact, EC-Council's Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator certification, a new entry to the highest paying IT certification list, gained an astounding 66.7 percent over the 12 months.

In 2014, any talk of hot security certifications has to include CSSLP. In the last 3 months, it's grown 17 percent, and in the last 12 months there has been a 40 percent growth in premium pay. It's also tied for number two on Foote Partner's highest paying IT certifications list.

The Professional: Data Scientist has only been recently included in Foote Partner's research. In the time they have been tracking this cert, it's hit the top of the highest paying IT certifications, coming in tied for number 5. "We just added this to our Skills Pay Index because people were asking for it. It includes a pretty tough lab/practicum where you have to really do the stuff, not simply complete a written test," says Foote.

Number six on the list of highest paying certifications is Certified Developer for Apache Hadoop. Hadoop development and big data are both areas increasing in demand as organizations use them to simplify processes, decrease time to production, and gain a competitive advantage.

Another data certification, the CCDE is hot according to Foote, but not according to the numbers. It hasn't made any significant gains over the last 12 months but there is a reason. The CCDE is hot Foote says, "...specifically for companies moving network functions to virtualization, migrating to cloud, doing SDN, etc."

We can help provide solutions from mobile app development to tackling BYOD and inherited security risks. 

SIMOS - Implementing Cisco Secure Mobility Solutions 
IUWMS - Implementing Cisco Unified Wireless Mobility Services v2.0 
SISAS - Implementing Cisco Secure Access Solutions
Android App Development (AndroidDev) 
HTML5 for Mobile Applications Development (TT4635)

• Cloud and Virtualization Essentials
• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.5]
• VMware Horizon View: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.2]
• Virtualized Data Center and Cloud Infrastructure Planning and Design
• IT-as-a-Service Planning and Design
• Red Hat OpenStack Administration with Expertise Exam (CL211)
• Implementing and Managing Microsoft Server Virtualization (M10215)

With 1.8 trillion gigabytes of structured and unstructured data in the world, and the volume doubling every two years, the need for big data analysis and business intelligence has never been greater. 

Big Data on AWS
Data Science and Big Data Analytics
Cloudera Administrator Training for Apache Hadoop
Cloudera Developer Training for Apache Hadoop
Systems Operations on AWS

Proven Impact has Subject Matter Experts in all areas pertaining to Big Data. We can deliver individual or fully customized learning events and workshops designed to help organizations harness the true potential of Big Data analytics. 

1. Web-Scale IT

2. Smart Machines

3. 3D Printing

4. The Era of Personal Cloud

5. Software-Defined Anything

6. Mobile Device Diversity and Management

7. Mobile Apps and Applications

8. The Internet of Everything

9. Hybrid Cloud & IT as a Service Broker

10. Cloud/Client Architecture

If you’ve earned a VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification, you have already demonstrated exceptional competence in employing current VMware products using best practices in operational environments. But maintaining currency in the expertise gained and proven by VCP certification is just as important as becoming a VCP in the first place. If your skills are not current, your certification loses value. The technical and business communities expect that every VCP will be current on the latest technologies and capable of implementing VMware products with the required level of skill. To ensure that all VCPs meet these expectations, VMware has instituted a recertification policy.

Recertification is widely recognized in the IT industry and beyond as an important element of continuing professional growth. It enhances your credibility and demonstrates a commitment to your career, your employer, and your customers. The new VMware recertification policy works like this:

VCP holders must recertify by taking a VCP level exam or advancing to VCAP or VCDX level certification within two years of earning their most recent VCP certification. Prerequisite course requirements are waived, but the exam and exam cost are the same as those required for initial certification. Failure to recertify by the required date will result in revocation of your certification.

In other words, your three recertification options are:

• Pass the current exam for the VCP certification you currently hold. For example, a VCP3 could recertify by passing the current VCP5-Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV) exam.
• Earn a new VCP certification in a different solution track. For example, a VCP-Cloud could recertify by earning a VCP-Desktop (VCP5-DT) certification.
• Advance to the next level by earning a VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) certification. For example, a VCP5-DCV could earn VCAP5-DCA certification.

The choice is yours. But we hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity to extend your certification resume, which will help you add more value to your projects and earn greater recognition throughout your career. For more information on the recertification policy, please contact Mike Ostoja at 831-524-0714

• Expanded Windows interoperability capabilities, including integration with Microsoft Active Directory domains;
• Significant file system enhancements, including XFS as the default, scaling to support file systems up to 500 TB;
• Improved subsystem management through OpenLMI; and
• Virtual machine (VM) migration from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 hosts to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 hosts without downtime or VM modification.

To download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 RC, please visit: https://access.redhat.com/site/products/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/Get-Beta.

The last day to test for both the Written exam v4.0 (350-001) and Lab exam v4.0 will be June 3, 2014. The CCIE R&S Written and Lab exam v5.0 will be available for testing on June 4, 2014. This announcement provides a six-month notice to candidates allowing them time to schedule and pass Written and Lab exams v4.0.

Cisco will also be releasing new training materials within the Cisco expert-level training, preparing candidates for the version 5.0 Lab exam. They will include new virtual rack rentals, videos on demand, new workbook labs, and full-scale graded assessment labs, along with new courses. The virtual rack rentals will enable candidates to perform the workbook and technology-specific labs using an efficient and scalable delivery environment. These materials will be available starting in January 2014.

New instructor-led courses are available immediately through Proven Impact:

• Cisco Expert Level Training for CCIE Routing and Switching Advanced Workshop 1(CIERS1) v5.0
• Cisco Expert Level Training for CCIE Routing and Switching Advanced Workshop 2 (CIERS2) v5.0

The exam topics and equipment lists are available now:

• CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Topic Updates v4.0 to v5.0 •
• Written Exam Topics v5.0
• Lab Exam Topics v5.0
• Equipment List v5.0

For more information on how this change will impact you, please contact us at training@pi-learning.com

Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top ten technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2014.  Analysts presented their findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held here through October 10.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives.

“We have identified the top 10 technologies that companies should factor into their strategic planning processes,” said David Cearley. “This does not necessarily mean adoption and investment in all of the listed technologies, but companies should look to make deliberate decisions about them during the next two years.”

Mr. Cearley said that the Nexus of Forces, the convergence of four powerful forces: social, mobile, cloud and information, continues to drive change and create new opportunities, creating demand for advanced programmable infrastructure that can execute at web-scale.

The top ten strategic technology trends for 2014 include:

Mobile Device Diversity and Management

Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make "everything everywhere" strategies unachievable. The unexpected consequence of bring your own device (BYOD) programs is a doubling or even tripling of the size of the mobile workforce. This is placing tremendous strain on IT and Finance organizations. Enterprise policies on employee-owned hardware usage need to be thoroughly reviewed and, where necessary, updated and extended. Most companies only have policies for employees accessing their networks through devices that the enterprise owns and manages. Set policies to define clear expectations around what they can and can't do. Balance flexibility with confidentiality and privacy requirements

Mobile Apps and Applications

Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. Gartner recommends that developers focus on creating expanded user interface models including richer voice and video that can connect people in new and different ways. Apps will continue to grow while applications will begin to shrink. Apps are smaller, and more targeted, while a larger application is more comprehensive. Devlopers should look for ways to snap together apps to create larger applications. Building application user interfaces that span a variety of devices require an understanding of fragmented building blocks and an adaptable programming structure that assembles them into optimized content for each device. The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential tools vendors. For the next few years no single tool will be optimal for all types of mobile application so expect to employ several. The next evolution in user experience will be to leverage intent, inferred from emotion and actions, to motivate changes in end-user behavior.

The Internet of Everything

The Internet is expanding beyond PCs and mobile devices into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and consumer items such as cars and televisions. The problem is that most enterprises and technology vendors have yet to explore the possibilities of an expanded internet and are not operationally or organizationally ready. Imagine digitizing the most important products, services and assets. The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models – Manage; Monetize; Operate; Extend. These four basic models can be applied to any of the four "internets” (people, things, information and places).  Enterprises should not limit themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (i.e., assets and machines) has the potential to leverage these four models. Enterprises from all industries (heavy, mixed, and weightless) can leverage these four models.

Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker

Bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises should design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible. Hybrid cloud services can be composed in many ways, varying from relatively static to very dynamic. Managing this composition will often be the responsibility of something filling the role of cloud service broker (CSB), which handles aggregation, integration and customization of services. Enterprises that are expanding into hybrid cloud computing from private cloud services are taking on the CSB role. Terms like "overdrafting" and "cloudbursting" are often used to describe what hybrid cloud computing will make possible. However, the vast majority of hybrid cloud services will initially be much less dynamic than that. Early hybrid cloud services will likely be more static, engineered compositions (such as integration between an internal private cloud and a public cloud service for certain functionality or data). More deployment compositions will emerge as CSBs evolve (for example, private infrastructure as a service [IaaS] offerings that can leverage external service providers based on policy and utilization).

Cloud/Client Architecture

Cloud/client computing models are shifting. In the cloud/client architecture, the client is a rich application running on an Internet-connected device, and the server is a set of application services hosted in an increasingly elastically scalable cloud computing platform. The cloud is the control point and system or record and applications can span multiple client devices. The client environment may be a native application or browser-based; the increasing power of the browser is available to many client devices, mobile and desktop alike. Robust capabilities in many mobile devices, the increased demand on networks, the cost of networks and the need to manage bandwidth use creates incentives, in some cases, to minimize the cloud application computing and storage footprint, and to exploit the intelligence and storage of the client device. However, the increasingly complex demands of mobile users will drive apps to demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.

The Era of Personal Cloud

The personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services. In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about, although the devices will still be necessary. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared from the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.

Software Defined Anything

Software-defined anything (SDx) is a collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning. As a collective, SDx also incorporates various initiatives like OpenStack, OpenFlow, the Open Compute Project and Open Rack, which share similar visions. As individual SDx technology silos evolve and consortiums arise, look for emerging standards and bridging capabilities to benefit portfolios, but challenge individual technology suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to true interoperability standards within their specific domains. While openness will always be a claimed vendor objective, different interpretations of SDx definitions may be anything but open. Vendors of SDN (network), SDDC (data center), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure) technologies are all trying to maintain leadership in their respective domains, while deploying SDx initiatives to aid market adjacency plays. So vendors who dominate a sector of the infrastructure may only reluctantly want to abide by standards that have the potential to lower margins and open broader competitive opportunities, even when the consumer will benefit by simplicity, cost reduction and consolidation efficiency.

Web-Scale IT

Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting by rethinking positions across several dimensions. Large cloud services providers such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc., are re-inventing the way IT in which IT services can be delivered.  Their capabilities go beyond scale in terms of sheer size to also include scale as it pertains to speed and agility. If enterprises want to keep pace, then they need to emulate the architectures, processes and practices of these exemplary cloud providers. Gartner calls the combination of all of these elements Web-scale IT. Web-scale IT looks to change the IT value chain in a systemic fashion.  Data centers are designed with an industrial engineering perspective that looks for every opportunity to reduce cost and waste.  This goes beyond re-designing facilities to be more energy efficient to also include in-house design of key hardware components such as servers, storage and networks. Web-oriented architectures allows developers to build very flexible and resilient systems that recover from failure more quickly.

Smart Machines

Through 2020, the smart machine era will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal assistants, smart advisors (such as IBM Watson), advanced global industrial systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. New systems that begin to fulfill some of the earliest visions for what information technologies might accomplish — doing what we thought only people could do and machines could not —are now finally emerging. Gartner expects individuals will invest in, control and use their own smart machines to become more successful. Enterprises will similarly invest in smart machines. Consumerization versus central control tensions will not abate in the era of smart-machine-driven disruption. If anything, smart machines will strengthen the forces of consumerization after the first surge of enterprise buying commences.

3-D Printing

Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 75 percent in 2014 followed by a near doubling of unit shipments in 2015. While very expensive “additive manufacturing” devices have been around for 20 years, the market for devices ranging from $50,000 to $500, and with commensurate material and build capabilities, is nascent yet growing rapidly. The consumer market hype has made organizations aware of the fact 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs through improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.

About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world's most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and objective content with the authority and weight of the world's leading IT research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions from key technology providers. Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of attendees' annual planning efforts. IT executives rely on Gartner Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner in over 13,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,800 associates, including 1,450 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.