Suresh Reddy Medapati Blog

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ Now Generally Available Worldwide

2015-07-03T23:12:00.001+05:30

For the first time, MicroStrategy's analytics platform combines traditional business intelligence functionality with data discovery, mobile analytics and powerful enterprise security. MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise builds on proven enterprise capabilities to make sophisticated, high-performance analytics more accessible, easier to use, and faster.

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise is a groundbreaking solution that combines analytics, mobility, and security in a single integrated platform," said Michael Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy Incorporated. "It delivers outstanding enterprise functionality through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for every user that is powerful enough for the most demanding organizations. We are confident that IT and business leaders will be impressed with MicroStrategy 10™ and its ability to create stunning new applications that deliver tremendous value to the enterprise."
MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise contains a host of new features and enhanced functionality:

Revamped data discovery offers enhanced exploration and visualization capabilities on both Mac OS and Windows. New built-in data wrangling capabilities enable users to quickly prepare data for analysis without using other tools.
New governed data discovery makes it simple to promote dashboards from the desktop to the enterprise, providing a seamless path from self-service analytics to enterprise BI.
New native Hadoop access makes analyzing petabytes of multi-structured data easy. MicroStategy 10 offers native HDFS connectivity within a complete enterprise analytics environment.
Bigger, better in-memory performance lets users put more data on parallel-partitioned in-memory cubes, so organizations can run faster queries across larger volumes of data.
Completely redesigned HTML5 interface makes self-service analytics faster, more intuitive, and easier to use, so users can quickly connect to any data and drag-and-drop their way to business insights in an instant.
New Operations Manager enables administrators to save time and drive efficiency by managing and monitoring all of their environments from a single interface.
Cutting-edge platform security, powered by biometric and multi-factor authentication, provides enhanced security for every method of analytics delivery, conveniently and seamlessly.
Convenient user verification with a smartphone app replaces the need for users to log in with a password.
Out-of-the-box employee productivity app, built on MicroStrategy's proprietary telemetry database, gives managers powerful insight into employee activity and performance.

Version 10 underscores MicroStrategy's commitment to serving the enterprise analytics needs of global organizations. Here are what some of our customers and partners have to say about MicroStrategy 10:
"The new HTML5 interface in version 10 is a game changer," said Kevin Curley, Executive Director of Business Intelligence at Catalina Marketing. "The new interface and functionality have significantly improved the self-service user experience, while at the same time, have cut the learning curve for new users. Furthermore, having the ability to easily integrate with advanced analytics and open source libraries like D3 has significantly increased our ability to visualize data exactly the way we want."
"We currently rely on the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform™ to track programming investments, analyze ad and affiliate sales trends, and review sales team performance," said Madhur Sawhney, Sr. Director Data & Analytics Technology at Discovery Communications. "After testing MicroStrategy 10 as an early adopter, our team really likes the new functionality -- in particular, the ability to easily wrangle and parse data as well as save/import wrangling scripts functionality. The enhanced data blending features and on-the-fly data manipulations made possible with version 10 and Visual Insight provide incredible speed-of-interactivity and ease of use."
"MicroStrategy 10 is a workhorse built to support a wide variety of end users," said Frank Zhou, Software Development Manager at PayPal. "In testing, we successfully loaded a cube with over two billion rows (~400GB) while supporting sub-second query execution and greater user scalability, thanks to the new high performance in-memory architecture."
"We have had the opportunity over the last several months to test the beta version of MicroStrategy 10, and I'm here to tell you that they got it right with MicroStrategy 10," said Jim Butz, Principal at Southport Services Group. "MicroStrategy 10 is packed with exceptional functionality and capabilities, including a redesigned data discovery interface for easier and better data exploration, native HDFS connectivity for faster access to Hadoop, and new in-memory architecture for faster performance. I'm excited about the upcoming release and seeing how the broader market receives the latest product offering from MicroStrategy."
"After implementing MicroStrategy 10 as an early adopter, we are delighted with the cleaner streamlined interface, the new analytical capabilities, and the ability users now have to personalize their analytics experience," said Peter Zaballos, Vice President of Marketing & Product, SPS Commerce. "In the omni-channel retail era our customers are facing, analytics is critical to understanding the ever-changing demands of the consumer. The improved accessibility and rich data visualization capabilities of MicroStrategy 10 will enable our retail and CPG customers to better track consumer buying trends and inventory availability to grow their business."
Attend a Symposium Near You MicroStrategy is presenting version 10's powerful capabilities to symposium attendees in cities around the world and providing a complimentary copy of the new data discovery and visualization product, MicroStrategy Desktop 10.0, valued at $600, to every attendee. To experience a full day of learning, live demonstrations, hands-on workshops and networking, and also receive a complimentary copy of the new MicroStrategy Desktop 10.0, register here: http://www.microstrategy.com/us/events/symposium. To learn more about MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise, watch this video or visit MicroStrategy online.

Source : www.prnewswire.co.uk

Introducing Talend Integration Cloud

2015-04-26T08:58:00.001+05:30

Talend Integration Cloud
Your job just got easier.

Connect all your data and applications in the cloud or on-premises with Talend Integration Cloud, a secure cloud integration platform. Powerful, graphical tools and prebuilt components and connectors make integration simple to connect, enrich and share data, so IT can focus on more strategic integration challenges.

Unlock the power of the cloud with Talend Studio.

Talend Integration Cloud includes the powerful Talend Studio and new web-based designer tools to maximize your productivity. Speed cloud integration using robust graphical tools and wizards inside Talend Integration Cloud. More than 800 connectors and components simplify development of cloud-to-cloud and hybrid integration flows to deploy as governed integration services. Build simple or complex integration flows inside Talend Studio that connect, cleanse, and transform data. Simply push a button to publish and go live in seconds. Easily de-duplicate and standardize data to increase information accuracy and completeness.

Manage hybrid integration with instant, elastic and secure capacity.

Respond easily to increasing volumes of data without breaking your budget using hybrid integration. Talend Integration Cloud allows you to shift workloads from on-premises to run in a secure cloud with cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-ground connectivity. Built to meet rigorous enterprise-level security requirements, add new users, jobs or connections while enforcing current security policies. As a service managed by Talend, hardware and software is automatically available to meet capacity.

Enable real-time big data insight at a fraction of the cost.

Fast analytics requires fast access to accurate data. Only Talend takes advantage of the massively parallel environment of Hadoop through native and optimized code generation. When integrating big data systems like Amazon Redshift or Amazon EMR, Talend Integration Cloud enables you to run processing when and where you need it for the best response time, lowest latency, and most cost-effective use of resources. With support for batch, real-time and big data integration, Talend meets all your integration needs.

Empower anyone to integrate data with self-service tools.

Give business users control to connect, enrich and share data in the cloud with self-service integration tools. Using a web-based designer and hundreds of pre-built components from the Talend Exchange, anyone can quickly export, cleanse, and import data between popular applications and data sources including Salesforce, Marketo, NetSuite, Redshift, and SAP. More business line autonomy means more time for IT to focus on strategic, revenue-generating projects.

The Fastest Way to Hybrid Integration

> Use visual integration tools to design, test, manage, and monitor cloud integration jobs.
> Use profiling and data matching tools to understand and cleanse cloud data more accurately.
> Easily deploy, run and manage the same job in the cloud or on the ground.
> Scale up with instant, elastic and secure capacity.
> Speed delivery with the Talend Exchange, an online community for sharing cloud templates, components and best practices.

Register today to get notified when Trail version is Avaliable

https://info.talend.com/prodevaltic_waitinglist.html

For More details visit http://www.talend.com/products/integration-cloud

Talend Teams with Hortonworks to Help Big Data Projects Deliver in Real Time

2015-01-13T19:50:00.002+05:30

Latest Talend release leverages Apache Storm to provide more options for the rapid analysis of streaming data

Talend, the global big data integration software leader, has strengthened its partnership with Hortonworks® by supporting a preview version of the latest Apache™ Hadoop® extension, Apache Storm, in Talend 5.6. Apache Storm is ideal for ingesting streaming data that is changing rapidly, such as financial transactions, machine-sensor output, and web click-streams, and enabling real-time responses that can have a massive impact on the bottom line.
“Hortonworks is dedicated to expanding and empowering the Apache Hadoop ecosystem, accelerating innovation and adoption of 100-percent open source enterprise Hadoop. By embracing the latest Hadoop-related capabilities, Talend 5.6 will enable a broad range of customers to recognize the benefits of Apache Storm,” said John Kreisa, vice president of strategic marketing, Hortonworks.
Talend, a Hortonworks Certified Technology Partner, generates native Hadoop code and runs data transformations directly inside Hadoop, offering an easy-to-use graphical development environment to dramatically improve the efficiency of data job design. With Talend users can quickly load, extract, transform and process large and diverse data sets from disparate systems.
“With faster data integration solutions such as Talend 5.6 and Apache Storm, users can run their analytics more quickly for real-time decision-making, helping them achieve competitive advantages that they just weren’t able to do before,” said Ashley Stirrup, chief marketing officer, Talend. “For many businesses such as online retailers and financial services providers, the availability of high quality data that can be immediately acted upon can be the difference between making a sale and losing a customer.”
As well as embracing Storm, Talend 5.6 also incorporates support for Apache Kafka, the fault-tolerant, publish-subscribe messaging system. Kafka can be used in combination with Apache Storm for real-time analysis and rendering of streaming data.
About Talend 5.6
Reinforcing Talend’s commitment to connecting and advancing the data-driven enterprise, Talend 5.6 sets new benchmarks for big data productivity and profiling, drives Master Data Management (MDM) innovation with cutting-edge efficiency controls, and broadens Internet of Things (IoT) device connectivity. In addition, the latest release of Talend’s acclaimed Integration Platform, adds support for the newest Hadoop extensions, Apache Spark and Apache Storm, offering significant performance advantages and enabling real-time and operational data projects.

Source : http://www.talend.com/about-us/press-releases/talend-teams-with-hortonworks-to-help-big-data-projects-deliver-in-real-time

Experience Microstrategy BI on Amazon Web Services

2015-01-12T19:24:00.001+05:30

MicroStrategy is now available on Amazon Web Services. That means you can deploy the industry’s best BI, web and mobile applications on-demand without having to host or maintain anything onsite.

With MicroStrategy on AWS you get access to all of the features of the MicroStrategy software suite including mobile, web, architect and all of the admin tools. You’ll also benefit from a free on-boarding workshop provided by
a certified MicroStrategy engineer to help you get started. Each MicroStrategy subscription includes standard technical support which includes email
and phone support as well as access to MicroStrategy knowledgebase and community forums.

Follow below links for Download & details

http://www.microstrategy.com/us/platforms/analytics/cloud#30-day
http://www.microstrategy.com/us/platforms/analytics/cloud/#aws

Download your Free Talend Big Data Sandbox

2014-11-21T20:56:00.001+05:30

Go from zero to big data without coding in under 10 minutes.

The Talend aims to quicken the adoption of large-scale analytics, promising "zero to Big Data without coding in under 10 minutes."
The ready-to-run virtual environment combines the Talend with an Apache Hadoop distribution from Cloudera Inc., Hortonworks Inc. or Map4 Technologies Inc., the data integration company.
To help developers get started quickly, Talend is including a Big Data Insights Cookbook with four ready-to-go scenarios:

clickstream analysis
social media sentiment analysis
log stream analysis of Apache weblogs
extract, transform and load (ETL) offloading with Hadoop.

The cookbook also comes with video tutorials.

"Talend enables current data integration developers to quickly connect, transform and manage diverse structured and unstructured data sources without any MapReduce programming, using graphical Eclipse-based tools to generate optimized code."

The Eclipse-based tools can generate Java, MapReduce, Pig or HiveQL code. Developers can build complex transformations and code with multiple languages, such as Pig Latin, Sqoop, MapReduce/YARN, HiveQL and Java.
The sandbox comes with built-in connectivity to more than 800 pre-built data source including Big Data systems, such as Hive, HBase and NoSQL databases. Developers also get access to online video tutorials and the open Talend online community, the company said.
Interested developers can download a 30-day trial of the sandbox.

As the Talend Platform for Big Data is included with the sandbox, users must be running Oracle VirtualBox 4.2 or higher; VMware Fusion 5.0 or higher (on Macs); or VMware Player (for Windows), along with at least 6 GB of disk space and 8 GB of RAM.

Now Lawyers Can Use the Cloud, Too

2014-01-11T23:14:00.002+05:30

"What's a Google Drive?"

I was having lunch recently with an attorney friend of mine and wanted to share a document with him. Since he already had Gmail, I suggested we just share it on Google Drive as it wasn’t sensitive data...turned out he'd never even heard of Google Drive.

Yeah, really.

This made me really think about consumers of all these mobile devices we use in our work. My friend's job is to be a really good lawyer, and that takes a lot of time and brain power. And as tech savvy as he is (he did his firm's web site), being on top of every bit of tech just isn’t his job. It's the job of IT thinkers like me.

Cloud Computing for Lawyers and the Like

It was fortuitous synchronicity that I’d just looked at the Egnyte system. So many companies have been hesitant to adopt some sort of cloud file sharing platform due to data security concerns. Egnyte is a hybrid approach that enables large companies to keep their files on premise behind their own firewall but leverage the cloud for access.

So as I was talking to my friend, he was telling me how he needs to be able to work on the same documents with paralegals and other lawyers in the firm. He explained how they are often sitting around court with their iPad, waiting to get their time before the judge, and how easy it would be to get to those files.

As I explained cloud based file sharing to him, he expressed his concern about the security of the files, as this was often very sensitive information as they were putting a case together. So I explained Egnytes concept of “Data Gravity”, and how you can actually keep those files securely in house and not on the cloud, subject to indexing and security breaches.

He was getting really excited about the possibilities for his firm to be able to securely collaborate and work on files wherever he was and with whatever device he had with him. Oftentimes he would even just be out at some social event with only his phone and something came up he wanted to get in to a document, only to have it at work and not available, so he’d make notes and then merge them up at work later.

Secure Hybrid Computing with a Toaster

Hot on the heels of the announcement of their $29.8 Million “D” round funding, Egnyte has inked a new partnership with Synology. Who is Synology and why is this important you might ask? I wondered, too, so I asked Egnyte co-founder Rajesh Ram some questions.

Founded in 2000, Synology is dedicated to develop high-performance, environmentally-friendly NAS servers. You have these cool toaster size devices that cost from $300 to $2000 and store from 1tb to 4tb per box that gives you really simple and convenient network storage for SMB or home (the home market is not Egnytes focus however). These devices get you efficient storage for groups of users, allowing you to share files securely, back them up, do printer sharing, mobile support and all sorts of cool features.

Shawn Gordon: What is the effect on the existing infrastructure and clients?

Rajesh Ram: Egnyte will sit on the Synology device and sync to the Egnyte cloud and provide that same seemless access to files from whatever device you are using. The convenience and management factors are that you can now just have Egnyte sitting on the Synology NAS device and not have to install it on every desktop computer in the company. In addition you have a granular security matrix to the files on the NAS, so I can say Sally has full read/write access to the Accounting folder but only read access to Sales Quotes, but Bob has full read/write access to both, etc.

SG: What is the sales, distribution, cost model for this? Am I going to buy a Synology device from Egnyte?

RR: For the moment it will typically deploy to an existing Synology customer, we’ll just install our software to their already in-house device. A new customer would acquire the Synology device through one of their resellers, we won’t be reselling the device ourselves. There is no additional cost above and beyond your typical cost for the device and our service.

SG: What is this bringing to the party?

RR: Really it is a matter of convenience in terms of deployment and use. There is very little effort to deploy this solution and the benefit is tremendous in terms of security and accessibility. Remember, we’re keeping your files in place, we aren’t making you put them up in the cloud unless you want to. This really reduces any potential incursion to your data, and with the recent announcements of breaches at Target and Snapchat, we can’t be too careful with regard to data security.

SG: What is the effect on the existing customer base?

RR: No impact whatsoever, it just opens up additional storage solution option, and on the Synology end, gives them easy access to the Egnyte system.

SG: When does this go live?

RR: We’re announcing here at CES and are sharing a booth with Synology as well. We’ll have the solution shipping in the first quarter of 2014.

And with that Rajesh was back to CES. Storage may not be particularly glamorous, but it is what makes everything happen. As a long time IT guy myself, I’m really excited about anything that makes it easier to secure and share my data in as controlled a fashion as possible, and in that vein, this is a very exciting solution that addresses a huge need in the SMB space.

Article : http://smartdatacollective.com/socialmktgfella/177416/now-lawyers-can-use-cloud-too

7 Big Data Trends for 2014

2014-01-04T11:03:00.000+05:30

As the year 2013 is almost over, it is good to have a look back at the trends that I discussed for 2013 and look forward to the Big Data trends of 2014. It can be said that 2013 was really the year that Big Data seriously took off and went from being adopted by an exclusive group of companies to mainstream awareness. This could be seen from the massive investments made in Big Data startups from around the world, to the growing list of Big Data best practices that appeared. But what happened to the trends that I foresaw in 2013 and what will be the most important Big Data trends for 2014?

Looking back at the 2013 Big Data trends

Last year I noted that on on-the-go Big Data, meaning being able to view Big Data visualizations on mobile devices, will become important and in 2013 we saw the rise of a bunch of new mobile devices including smart watches and Google Glass. There are some Big Data startups, such as Roambi, who have very clear understanding of on-the-go Big Data and are capable of bringing real-time interactive visualizations to mobile devices. On-the-go Big Data really took off in 2013 and is here to stay.

The second trend was that Big Data does not require big bucks because of the plethora of Big Dataopen source tools that are available in the market as well as the decreasing costs of storage. The price of storage does indeed continue to decrease in costs, but the amount of data also grows exponentially. Will we be able to keep up with this or will the amount of data outgrow the available storage? The amount of open source tools is growing rapidly, but there is also a rise in licensed Big Data solutions, because open source tools do require experience Big Data personnel and many organisations do not yet have these staff available. So, to start with Big Data it does not have to cost the world, but to develop and implement a complete Big Data solution can be expensive, although the results can also be significant.

The third trend was big real-time data and 2013 did indeed show an important growth in real-time analytics. More and more tools become available that create a layer on top of Hadoop to be able to deal with real-time data and Hadoop 2.0′s YARN framework enables real-time data analysis. In the coming years this will become more important as many industries see the advantages of real-time analytics.

Big consumer data, or the quantified-self movement, was the fourth trend and this really took off in 2013. Wearable technologies that can measure every day life have started to appear massively and more and more consumers are measuring at least something of their behaviour, be it their sleeping patterns or the running results. Recent research from Pew Research Centre revealed that 69% of U.S. adults keep track of at least one health indicator such as weight, diet, exercise routine or symptom.

The final trend was Big Data related to privacy. Last year I wrote that “it feels like we have fallen in love with Big Data and that we are blind for the pitfalls in Big Data. We do not want to see the backside of Big Data and the effect it will have on our privacy.” Of course, in 2013 we saw the PRISM leak by Edward Snowden, which showed that privacy in the Big Data world is indeed an endangered species and there is probably a lot more to be revealed in the coming months. Privacy is indeed affected by Big Data and as consumers, and companies, we will have to get used to this new reality.

The Seven Big Data Trends for 2014

So, what can we expect for the coming year? First of all, as IDC already predicted, the Big Data market will grow to $ 16.1 billion in 2014 and they also forecast that the Big Data technology and services market will continue to grow at a 27% CAGR to $ 32.4 billion through 2017. So, although the five trends discussed last year will continue to affect your Big Data strategy, for 2014 I foresee different areas within Big Data that will take off. Let’s have a look at the seven Big Data trends for 2014.

The rise of the Industrial Internet

The first trend I foresee is the rise of the Industrial Internet that will affect the industrial sector dramatically. The next year, machine-to-machine data will grow significantly and continue to do so in the years after. By 2020, 40% of all data will come from sensor data and it will unlock a $ 1 trillion global market in 2020 (currently it is a $ 121 billion global market). In addition, GE reports that the Industrial Internet could add $10 to $15 trillion to global GDP in the coming years.

These sensors will completely change the way companies, factories and supply chains will be operated and managed. Technology is transforming the industrial sector, creating machines that can see, feel, sense and react, so they can be operated far more efficiently. Already there are some great examples of how this will affect companies, ranging from airline companies that can reduce turn-around time with monitoring the plane during the flight, to analyzing many different variables to pick the best places to locate wind turbines around the world to be able to harvest the most energy at the lowest costs. As sensors and storage are becoming cheaper every day, algorithms are becoming better and organisations more and more see the need for smart factories, the Industrial Internet will really take off in 2014.

It is going to be cloudy: Big-Data-as-a-Service solutions

We already see more and more Big Data startups that are creating a Big-Data-as-a-Service solution to help organisations apply Big Data without the heavy costs involved. Especially useful for Small or Medium sized enterprises who do want to develop a data-driven information-centric organisation, but who do not have the capacity to develop and maintain a full-fledge Big Data solution on premises. Big-data-as-a-Service is a combination of Analytics-as-a-service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Data-as-a-Service and it will spur the adoption of Big Data also by smaller and medium sized organisations.

IIA calls this adoption “ready-made analytics in the cloud”. These solutions offer an attractive alternative for organisations that want to start with Big Data or want to easily scale existing programs. Gartnerpredicts that cloud computing will become the bulk in IT spending by 2016 and 2014 will be a turning point in the acceptance of the cloud as part of a Big Data strategy.

Security to protect the privacy

If there is on thing that the NSA documents have shown, governments from around the world have almost unprecedented access to data files from organisations and consumers. Organisations will start to focus more heavily on securing their data to protect the privacy of their customers. The first signs for this are that tech companies call for ‘aggressive’ NSA reforms at the White House meeting in December 2013. Executives from 15 companies expressed their concern that the NSA’s wide-ranging surveillance activities had undermined the trust of their users. Of course, a reform of the NSA activities is one side of the coin; the other side will be increased security measures by the companies to protect their data.

More and more organisations will start to use Big Data techniques to secure their IT infrastructure and prevent from being hacked and have data monitored or stolen. Log data will form an important aspect in this and organisations will start to see the importance in monitoring and analysing their IT infrastructure log data in order to keep their infrastructure and data safe. This will help to restore and keep the trust of their customers.

Personalization will become personal

Consumers are creating massive amounts of data through every click, like, tweet, cell-phone call, purchase and self-tracking applications they use. Companies like Amazon have already used these kinds of data for many years to create a personal online shopping experience with recommendations, personal homepages, personal discounts or personally targeted mass-email campaigns. However, in 2014 more organisations will also start to see the value in such a personalized approach, be it online or offline.

A good example is the Australian shoe retailer Shoes of Prey, who have developed an analytics system that enables them to look at individual customer-spend and profitability, and allows them to begin upselling based on the fashion tastes of its clients.

Personalization is making a giant leap forward in the coming years and 2014 could very well be the inflection point in the offering of personalized offers and the acceptance of it by consumers. Consumers will start to see that their data is valuable and they do want something in return for providing their data. So consumers are willing to cooperate and share their data if it brings them personalized discounts.

Education will be essential for success

As more organisations are trying to understand Big Data and preparing their staff for the Big Data era, education becomes a crucial aspect. Already in 2011, McKinsey predicted a shortage in the coming years of Big Data scientists and Big Data managers. Organisations will therefore stimulate their employees to be more Big Data skilled. Many organisations are heading for a major skill gap and will have to take action to be ready for the big data era. Also fresh-graduates or students will see the Big Data trend and in the competitive jobs market will feel the need to differentiate to stand a chance on the job market.

Therefore in 2014 we will see a steep increase in the available online and offline big data courses. Apart from the online universities such as Coursera or Udacity, many more universities from around the world will start offering a big data course or program. These courses or programs will range from Big Data strategy courses to deep analytics and machine-learning programs for Big Data scientists and anything in between to cater for the massive increase in Big Data students.

Big data moves into mixed data

In the past years Big Data was all about obtaining as much data as possible and the perception was that you require massive datasets to gain insights from those data sources. In the coming year however, organisations will start to see that the most important aspect of Big Data is not so much the volume of a dataset, but more the insights derived from combining several, smaller, datasets. Organisations that do not have exabytes or petabytes can still obtain very valuable insights with smaller, but more, data sets. Of course, more data does mean more accurate insights but it does not per se mean more insights. In the coming year, more organisations will understand this and take their first steps into the direction of Big Data. They will start mixing and combining several data sets that they will analyse to derive insights. So in 2014 Big Data will become mixed data.

It’s time for a Proof of Concept

The past years we saw a lot of talk around Big Data. More conferences, new books, more Big Data startups and more interesting best practices are being shared and distributed online and offline. In 2014 many more organisations will start working towards a Big Data strategy and start developing a Proof of Concept (PoC) to investigate what Big Data can mean for them. The PoC will help organisations gain a better understanding of Big Data, will help them get educated and will help them to be better able to predict the ROI of future Big Data projects. A Proof of Concept is a vital part of a Big Data strategy when you start with Big Data.

As Alec Gardner, industry consulting director at Teradata Australia and New Zealand, states: “More companies will roll up their sleeves and ‘have a try’ by starting to bring in new data sources and technologies to answer new business questions and gain insight either not possible or too difficult previously”. This will be a very important aspect as it will be the ignition required to get the Big Data engine started.

The above-described seven Big Data trends for 2014 will be an important aspect of Big Data in 2014 and organisations will have to ensure that the Big Data strategy that they develop is geared towards the exponential growth of data that can be expected in the coming years. 2013 was already exciting as we saw many things happening, but 2014 will be truly interesting as Big Data will become common language in boardrooms and organisations start to experiment with it.

Copyright Big Data Startups 2013. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from BigData-Startups.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Original article

India May Relax E-Commerce Rules, Opening The Door Further For Amazon And Other Global Giants

2014-01-04T10:56:00.000+05:30

As India prepares to reconsider the ban on foreign investments in the country’s e-commerce sector, two of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies — Amazon and eBay — are anxiously hoping to conquer what they refer to as their last frontier.

India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has put out a note inviting various stakeholders to share feedback on the existing regulations restricting foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail e-commerce. Sources at Amazon India and eBay’s operations in the country have told us that both the companies are aggressively preparing their pitches urging the policymakers to revoke the e-commerce ban.

So far, both Amazon and eBay have had no choice but to operate as online marketplaces in India, limiting their ability to compete effectively with local rivals such as Flipkart. In the marketplace model, companies such as eBay do not own any inventory, or sell any of their own merchandise to Indian shoppers. They are only allowed to offer products from third-party sellers.

In February 2013, Amazon’s global vice president, Paul Misener, had also met with an Indian trade minister, seeking amendments in the laws restricting e-commerce.

This is what the Indian laws say on foreign investment in e-commerce:

E-commerce activities refer to the activity of buying and selling by a company through the e-commerce platform. Such companies would engage only in Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce and not in retail trading, inter-alia implying that existing restrictions on FDI in domestic trading would be applicable to e-commerce as well.

India’s nearly $3.1 billion e-commerce market (excluding online travel industry) is dwarfed in size by China’s nearly $200 billion market for online sales, but it’s expected to grow by over seven times to $22 billion in five years, according to a CLSA report published in November 2013.

While existing regulations don’t allow foreign companies to run full e-commerce businesses in India, companies like eBay have become active investors in local startups that can.

EBay beat Amazon and Wal-Mart in April 2013 to lead a $50 million funding round in Snapdeal. Meanwhile, Amazon started its India site in June 2013: it is based on marketplace model that does not engage in any kind of direct sales to comply with the local regulations.

Up to now, the Indian government has kept companies like Amazon at bay as a kind of protectionist move, to encourage local business development. In September 2012, the Indian government allowed 100% foreign investment in single-brand retail, and up to 51% in multi-brand retail. However, the new policy excluded foreign investment norms in the country’s e-commerce sector.

But today, India is struggling to cope with its slowest economic growth since 2005, and is increasingly seeking ways to attract more foreign investment. Wooing offline companies like Tesco — the world’s biggest retailer — was a part of this strategy; and now it appears that the state is ready to give online companies the same freedom to trade.

However, in a bizarre move, the country has yet not okayed foreign investment in e-commerce despite allowing the same for offline retail operations of Wal-Mart and Tesco.

The Business Standard newspaper reported on December 31 that India could actually allow FDI in e-commerce by April this year.

To be sure, it’s not just Amazon and eBay praying anxiously for the current e-commerce ban to be lifted. Even Flipkart, India’s biggest e-commerce company, had to establish a separate subsidiary, Flipkart Holdings Singapore, to get around the Indian regulations. Flipkart also created WS Retail, a separate entity that owns and delivers over 90% of the products sold on its site.

It’s not just US e-commerce giants that could stand to benefit if at all India allows foreign investment in the sector. China’s biggest e-commerce company Alibaba could benefit too. However, Alibaba has kept a low profile in India, and it intends to keep it that way.

Since the beginning of 2010, venture capital worth $1.3 billion has been invested in Indian e-commerce startups. However, not every e-commerce startup in India has benefited from these investments. In 2013 alone, nearly 150 e-commerce startups in the country had to shut shop, with some 70-80% of those still around being in dire need of funds.

By allowing foreign investments in e-commerce, India could trigger a fresh wave of excitement among the e-commerce startups and their investors waiting nervously for the exits. The question mark will be whether the government will manage to take such a bold decision ahead of the upcoming general elections later this year.

Article : http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/03/india-may-relax-e-commerce-rules-opening-the-door-further-for-amazon-and-other-global-giants/

The Regional Council of Languedoc-Roussillon improves business intelligence with Talend

2013-12-21T07:36:00.001+05:30

To free itself from its former point-to-point data integration system based on manual scripts and to make its developments sustainable, the Regional Council of Languedoc-Roussillon decided to deploy Talend Enterprise Data Integration

"Easy maintenance has allowed us to reduce costs since, due to the performance of the Talend solution, we spend less time in development, bug tracking and maintenance, time that we can devote to other strategic projects."

--- Katia Levé Head of Research and Application Solutions in the Department of Information Systems

The Regional Council of Languedoc-Roussillon is primarily responsible for the economic development of the five departments that make up the region (Aude, Gard, Hérault, Lozère and Pyrénées Orientales, which contain more than 2.5 million people and more than 127,000 companies). It also is responsible for education and research, professional training, public transportation, territorial and environmental action, tourism, social action and culture. Showing the highest rate of population growth in France after Corsica (+33,000 inhabitants per year since 1999) and a rate of employment growth of about 2% per year, the region has a budget €1.17 billion, an increase of 1.3% , that it primarily dedicates to investment, economic support and youth-related activities.
A BI system to increase the visibility of elected officials and leaders
While the economy of the region is mainly based on construction, public services (health and education), tourism and viticulture, the major challenge for the progress and growth of the Languedoc- Roussillon region is wealth and job creation. Business and employment are central to the regional economic policy. Therefore, the region supports and promotes private initiatives in the design, implementation, coordination and evaluation of regional business support programs. However, the duties and concerns of the Regional Council are varied and it is essential that every elected leader in the region is fully informed of the progress of activities under its responsibility.
This is why the Regional Council has launched a vast BI program to give each player a clear view of the going-ons of the region. Significant amounts of data are extracted from business applications (financial management and accounting, professional training, school management and maintenance, HRM, grant management, etc.) and consolidated in order to draw a clear picture of each project via reporting in Business Objects.
“Previously, we had a data integration system based on point-to-point interfaces (each application is connected to another via scripts). This system became increasingly difficult to manage and maintain, and each development of the information system made it more and more complex,” explains Katia Levé, Head of Research and Application Solutions in the Department of Information Systems of the Languedoc –Roussillon Regional Council. “The evolution of our BI system should respond to the consolidation logic, including through the establishment of generic flows and web services.”
Talend Enterprise Data Integration to overcome the complexity of integration flows
The IT architecture of the Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Council is mainly based on open source technologies (Linux, PostgreSQL databases, etc.). Therefore, the Department of Information Systems has naturally studied the opportunity to deploy a solution for data integration in harmony with the open source philosophy of the region.
“Talend's solutions meet the standards of the Regional Council’s technical infrastructure. We chose to adopt a progressive approach: tests were conducted using Talend Open Studio for Data Integration with a gradual buildup and migration to the Talend Enterprise Data Integration solution provided in stride,” adds Katia Levé. “The ‘Enterprise’ version of the solution can support a higher complexity, provides more advanced support, uses more efficient flow administration tools and allows us to complete collaborative developments, all while managing configurations.”
The data stored in the Data Warehouse originates from two dozen heterogeneous applications and the data consolidation and consumption needs are significant in various fields. 1100 data flows are operated with the Talend solution. “We have developed many dashboards for different populations – the Regional Council consists of 22 different business divisions. In all, we have more than 5000 Business Objects reports,” continues Katia Levé.
Adaptability, scalability, user-friendliness and cost reduction
One of the main benefits highlighted by the Regional Council is the scalability of the BI system. “With Talend, we had the opportunity to start on a limited basis, and then expand gradually with a minimal initial investment. To go one step further and add intelligence (quality, control, profiling, monitoring, automatic corrections, etc.) to our integration flows, we are now exploring the possibility of deploying Talend ESB,” confirms Katia Levé.
For Katia Levé, Talend's solutions are easy to use, thanks to very user-friendly graphical programming. “Moreover,” she adds, “the Java knowledge and experience possessed by our developers is an advantage, especially for complex processing. They are able to enter the code to tweak any process if necessary.”
She particularly appreciates how easy it is to update and maintain data integration flows. “As it subcontracts its developments to outsourcers (now Bull), the Regional Council did not want to tie itself to a proprietary technology vendor to sustain its development. Meanwhile, this easy maintenance has allowed us to reduce costs since, due to the performance of the Talend solution, we spend less time in development, bug tracking and maintenance, time that we can devote to other strategic projects.”
In conclusion, Katia Levé highlights the contributions of the Talend open source model. “Aside from the fact that a local government like ours strictly controls the spending of public money, which sometimes in our case limits the use of proprietary solutions that are much more expensive than Talend, other factors enter into the equation. For example, the fact that the solution, as a standard, provides a wealth of components that allows us to cover all of our information systems without needing costly additional developments. Meanwhile, the community of Talend users also offers valuable assistance and guarantees the sustainability of our developments,” she concludes. “This falls perfectly in line with our philosophy and our efforts to decompartmentalize and open up our information system.”

Source : http://www.talend.com/ecosystem/customer-reference/the-regional-council-of-languedoc-roussillon-improves-business

7 Ways Big Data Could Revolutionize Our Lives by 2020

2013-12-19T20:45:00.001+05:30

We know that big data is changing the way we live and work. It is changing societies and changing businesses. On this platform we have included many best practices that show concrete example of how this is happening. To illustrate the vast possibilities even more, Whoishostingthis has released an info graphic that shows seven ways that big data will change our lives in 2020. Although some might be still far away, there are many examples in the info graphic that are already appearing; from better education for everyone or self-driving cars.

Source: Who Is Hosting This.com

Original article

12 Fast-Growing, High-Paying Jobs In 2014

2013-12-13T23:15:00.003+05:30

What are the hottest jobs of 2014?

CareerBuilder teamed up with Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. (EMSI) to identify the occupations that grew by at least 7% from 2010 to 2013, are projected to grow in 2014, and pay at least $22 per hour.
"In addition to higher pay levels and solid growth rates, what many of these jobs have in common is a talent shortage," Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder and co-author of the book "The Talent Equation," tells Business Insider. "Recruitment of skilled labor in specialized areas like information technology and health care has become highly competitive."
The list below, released on Thursday, reveals the jobs that are the fastest-growing, highest-paying for 2014:

1. Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software

What they do: Design computer programs
Total employment in 2013: 1,042,402
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 11%
Median hourly earnings: $45.06

2. Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists

What they do: Study market conditions in local, regional, or national areas
Total employment in 2013: 438,095
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 14%
Median hourly earnings: $29.10

3. Training and Development Specialists

What they do: Design and conduct training and development programs
Total employment in 2013: 231,898
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 8%
Median hourly earnings: $27.14

4. Financial Analysts

What they do: Assess the performance of stocks, bonds, and other types of investments
Total employment in 2013: 247,159
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 7%
Median hourly earnings: $37.34

5. Physical Therapists

What they do: Help patients who have injuries or illnesses manage their pain
Total employment in 2013: 207,132
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 7%
Median hourly earnings: $37.93

6. Web Developers

What they do: Create websites and help companies build a brand
Total employment in 2013: 136,921
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 11%
Median hourly earnings: $27.84

7. Logisticians

What they do: Analyze and coordinate the supply chain organization
Total employment in 2013: 127,892
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 10%
Median hourly earnings: $35.08

8. Database Administrators

What they do: Use software to store and organize data, such as financial information and customer shipping records
Total employment in 2013: 119,676
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 10%
Median hourly earnings: $37.39

9. Meeting, Convention and Event Planners

What they do: Coordinate meetings and events
Total employment in 2013: 87,082
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 14%
Median hourly earnings: $22.56

10. Interpreters and Translators

What they do: Convert information from one language to another
Total employment in 2013: 69,887
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 14%
Median hourly earnings: $22.39

11. Petroleum Engineers

What they do: Design and develop methods for extracting oil and gas from deposits below the earth's surface
Total employment in 2013: 40,733
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 21%
Median hourly earnings: $63.67

12. Information Security Analysts What they do: Plan, implement, upgrade, or monitor security measures for the protection of computer networks and information
Total employment in 2013: 75,995
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 8%
Median hourly earnings: $41.62
EMSI data is collected from more than 90 federal and state sources, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and state labor departments.

Article Source : http://www.businessinsider.in/12-Fast-Growing-High-Paying-Jobs-In-2014/articleshow/27252175.cms

Three Reasons to Check Out Google's Cloud Solution for Hadoop

2013-12-13T21:22:00.001+05:30

Most of us have heard about Apache Hadoop. Most of us have heard about cloud computing, but it seems that combining the two buzz words may be what brings big data analysis into the hands of small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the resources to build up Hadoop infrastructure on their own. Why is this?

While Hadoop is a much more affordable solution than a traditional warehouse for storing large amounts of data, the hardware, operational costs and expertise to set it up and run it can still be significant as well as time consuming.

Cloud computing combined with Hadoop allows small businesses to use big data without having to purchase and manage the hardware themselves.

To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at Google’s cloud solution for Hadoop: Google Compute Engine running MapR Distribution for Hadoop.

1. Get Started Immediately

Google Compute Engine allows businesses to sign up and get set up within minutes. This means small business owners can compete on the same level of the big data playing field without the huge startup costs of purchasing hardware. In addition, since the system is enterprise-ready, business owners can start getting insights without making complicated configurations or code changes.

2. Record-Setting Speed

Google Compute Engine partnered with the enterprise Hadoop vendor, MapR, and together they beat the standing MinuteSort record. To set such a record, Google Compute Engine sorted 15 billion 100-byte records in 60 seconds. That is 1.5 trillion bytes in one minute.

3. Cost-Effective Scaling

Let’s say for a minute that a business already has a big data solution, but occasionally it is too small to run the computation the business needs. It is usually too costly and time-consuming to expand the solution for a temporary situation. That is when the scalability and flexibility of cloud computing becomes particularly valuable. The Google Cloud Platform offers per-minute billing and scaling to thousands of cores, so companies can run an extra large project for a few hours and only pay for the time spent rather than paying to expand their infrastructure rather than having to skip the project altogether.

For business leaders looking for a big data solution that is very cost-effective, enterprise-ready and scalable, it seems looking to the cloud may be the next frontier.

Original Article : http://smartdatacollective.com/michelenemschoff/173196/check-out-google-s-cloud-solution-hadoop

Managing Your Sales Funnel: How Does CRM Software Help?

2013-12-13T21:12:00.000+05:30

When implemented properly, CRM software should improve your sales funnel and conversion rates.

CRM software is well-known for helping manage the sales funnel. But how exactly does it help your sales team?

Records all customer interactions

With CRM software in place, you immediately have a definitive repository for all customer contact data. A single CRM software solution can replace:

Individual contact lists and address books maintained by sales staff.
Separate marketing databases of contacts.
A support database for dealing with customer service queries and issues.

Instead, one platform becomes the single point for recording all customer contact so that you can get a complete view of their purchase history, needs and upcoming opportunities. The same data can then be subdivided for targeted marketing efforts, or to follow long-term relational data, such as support calls.
In this way, every user of the CRM software is helping to maintain the relationship, paving the way for future sales.
‘80% of business leaders believe they do a good job in building customer relationships, while only 8% of their customers agree, according to research from The Whetstone Edge. If your organisation uses more than one system to record and manage your customer touch points, centralised access to customer information will help your employees see the full relationship.’

CRM Software Blog

Provides a logical pipeline to follow

Depending on how your business works, your ideal CRM software solution will be configurable to match your sales pipeline. By keeping accurate records of each customer interaction, particularly upcoming opportunities, it becomes possible to see where any account is in terms of the sales funnel. You can set ‘Stages’ to track progress, enabling your sales reps to identify where a prospect is in the buying cycle and whether there are any risks. Your sales team will know what they need to do to move each account towards a final sale. Over time it even becomes possible to ‘template’ the process, making it even easier for sales staff to close deals. Having data displayed in this way ensures a consistent workflow for every sales opportunity.
‘The companies that do excel in SPM [sales pipeline management] have seen significant improvement in turning sales-qualified leads into customers in a predictable, well-disciplined manner and achieving revenue generation goals.’

Best Practices in Sales Pipeline Management, Michael Gerard, vice president at IDC

Automates common tasks

The logical extension of template procedures is to automate them. Using the built-in CRM software functions it becomes possible to send automated emails when certain pipeline conditions are met, such as order confirmation or acknowledgements of service requests.
Your marketing department can also take advantage of the marketing automation features to manage email campaigns designed to turn leads into opportunities, and to collect the data generated by such an activity. CRM software can automatically:

Deliver the emails.
Collect responses.
Monitor click-throughs, message opens and other important statistics.

And insert new leads into the start of the sales funnel for progression to sale.
‘47% of sales’ forecasted pipeline is first generated by marketing in the Best-in-Class companies that use sales and marketing automation.’

Sales and Marketing Alignment, Aberdeen Group

Reporting and forecasting

By carefully monitoring sales activities, it becomes possible to ensure that leads and opportunities are being followed up adequately, and to report on the activities of individual sales team members or the team in general. It then becomes easier for the sales manager to allocate workloads or direct efforts to move more opportunities along the sales funnel.
The CRM software also provides accurate sales and revenue forecasting which can be used by the accounts department to calculate future company income accurately. The more data collected in the CRM software, the more flexible and granular your reports can be.
Remember – CRM software helps with your sales funnel by:

Making all customer-related data available in one place.
Helping your sales team see where any opportunity is in the pipeline at any given moment.
Providing automation capabilities to increase efficiency and speed of business.
Create reports on any aspect of customer-related activity or data.

Original article

The Age of Analytics by MicroStrategy

2013-12-10T21:58:00.000+05:30

NSA Allegedly Spies On International Credit Card Transactions

2013-09-15T20:21:00.000+05:30

Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper – increasingly joining the NSA revelations train – reports today that the intelligence agency is interested in international credit card transactions and may have found a way to monitor payments processed by companies including Visa. Spiegel alleges it has even set up its own financial database to track money flows.
The paper says that in 2011, the NSA possessed 180 million records via its “Follow the Money” branch dubbed ‘Tracfin’, according to information acquired by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden. The vast majority of information is from credit card transactions.
It also alleges that the NSA targets the transactions of customers of large credit card companies like VISA for surveillance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. However, VISA denies this is happening.
Tracfin’s data bank – says Spiegel – also contains data from the SWIFT network, used by banks to send transaction information securely, possibly attained by watching printer traffic from numerous banks.
However, the document Spiegel has seen reveals that even intelligence agency employees are concerned about spying on this kind of information, which is full of “rich personal information”. I bet it does.

Source : http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-exclusive-nsa-spies-on-international-bank-transactions-a-922276.html

A fire at a factory in China could make all your gadgets more expensive this year

2013-09-07T19:54:00.003+05:30

Everything from smartphones to laptops to tablets could get a little more costly due to a fire this week at a Korean firm’s factory in Wuxi, China, where a substantial portion of the world’s memory chips are made. The Sept. 4 inferno at SK Hynix’s fabrication facility sent the price of benchmark 2-gigabyte Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) up 19% to a three-year high.
High demand from Chinese tablet and smartphone manufacturers has already caused a spike in DRAM prices this year, with prices nearly doubling from November to May. The cost of the industry standard 2-gigabit DRAM jumped 30 cents to $1.90 the day after the fire, and rose another $.10 to $2.00 on Friday.
Market research firm TrendForce said it would take half a year for SK Hynix to rebuild, leading to higher prices throughout the fourth quarter. The firm’s customers include Apple, Lenovo, Dell and Sony, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, not to mention Samsung—its main rival in the DRAM business, along with US chipmaker Micron. SK Hynix’s market share stands at about 30%, compared with 32.7% for Samsung and 28.1% for Micron, according to Trendforce. About half of SK Hynix’s DRAM chips are made at the Wuxi facility, equivalent to about 10% of world supply.
The company, whose shares fell sharply in the wake of the fire, insisted that the damage was not severe. “We expect to resume operations in a short time period so overall production and supply volume would not be materially affected,” the company told Reuters. It is still investigating the cause of the fire.

Source : http://qz.com/121893/a-fire-at-a-factory-in-china-could-make-all-your-gadgets-more-expensive-this-year/

Samsung Officially Announced Galaxy Note 3

2013-09-07T13:22:00.000+05:30

Samsung finally unveiled the much-awaited phablet of the year, the Galaxy Note 3 at the IFA 2013 trade show in Berlin. It is the successor of the extremely popular Galaxy Note II and also the first phablet to ship with the latest Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) Operating System. The new Group Play on Galaxy Note 3 not only allows you to play the same music, games and share documents, but also share videos and play content together with their friends simultaneously.

JK Shin, CEO of IT & Mobile Division at Samsung Electronics, said,
“We introduced the original Galaxy Note in 2011 and launched a whole new smart device category. The undeniable success of the Galaxy Note strengthened our conviction that consumers want higher quality features for smart devices and they want those new features to make their lives better. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is a powerful, original approach that enables users to tell the stories of their lives through dynamic and seamless expressions of their passions across work, play and life experiences.”

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 features a 5.7 inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, sporting a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, 2.3 GHz quad-core processor / 1.9 GHz octa-core processor, Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) OS, TouchWiz UI, 13 megapixel auto-focus camera with smart stabilization, LED Flash and Zero Shutter Lag, full HD (1080p) video recording and playback, 2 megapixel front-facing camera for video calls and more.
Apart from that, it packs 3 GB RAM, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, GPS, NFC (Near Field Communication), Bluetooth 4.0, 3.5 mm headset jack, FM Radio with RDS, 4G LTE Connectivity, 32 GB/ 64 GB internal memory, MicroSD card slot, 64 GB expandable memory, S-Pen, S Note, S Planner, Samsung Hub, Samsung KNOX, Samsung ChatOn, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and a 3200mAh battery. This handset will be available in Marble White and Titanium Gray colors.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will be available in Jet Black, Classic White and Blush Pink colors. Samsung will also offer exchangeable back covers in dozens of additional colors. This device will go on sale from September 25 in more than 140 countries around the world. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will also be available in the U.S. later this year on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular.

Source :http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/samsung-galaxy-note-3.html

How The Gambling Industry Is Betting On Big Data

2013-09-07T13:05:00.002+05:30

Banks, retailers, Google, the NSA, they all lover their data. But one of the more intriguing use cases for Big Data involves the gambling industry, a sector that’s so reliant on number crunching and intelligent prediction that it’s been left with little choice to grab a hold of its masses of data and exploit it to the max.
The first adopters of Big Data in the betting game were, unsurprisingly, the bookies themselves. UK bookmaker Paddy Power‘s experience is one that mirrors that of many leading betting sites, when the rise of online gambling meant that it was accumulating hundreds of terabytes of data that it had little idea what to do with.
“We had a start-up culture. [In BI], we managed more than we thrived,” Conor McMenamin, Paddy Power’s business intelligence manager, explained to ComputerWeekly.
The problem with online gambling is that it’s a hugely dynamic business, with odds constantly evolving in real-time. This makes standard data warehousing techniques redundant, as bookies need to be able to access their data instantaneously. Paddy Power got around the problem by adopting QlikView’s business intelligence solution for live data based on Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Server Integration Services with Excel-based clients.
“It was about putting in place a scalable platform that we could develop on quickly, and not be constrained by legacy issues,” McMenamin adds.
Paddy Power’s self-service BI model meant that its decision makers had wider access to the company’s data in way that keeps its IT managers in control of governance and data structure, whilst affording managers more time to focus on their strategic goals.

Betting firms aren’t the only one’s using Big Data in the gambling sector. Some services are also looking at ways in which data can be delivered to the gamers themselves, providing insights that enticing them to stick around and, presumably, increase their chances of cashing out. This is the promise of poker stats firm SharkScope, which recently deployed the TokuDB’s performance engine to optimize its database performance.
SharkScope claims to be the largest online poker tournament database in the world, and as such it accumulates vast amounts of data from millions of poker games played online every single day. The idea is that players can use SharkScopre to track their poker stats and improve their gameplay whilst avoiding the ‘sharks’ who’ll quickly eat up their cash. Until recently it got by with its old MySQL database, but in the fast paced world of online poker data needs to be accessible almost instantaneously. With some queries taking up to 20 seconds to process, this was clearly far too long, leaving SharkScope with choice but to find a faster solution.
Using TokuDB, Sharkscope’s MySQL database is now capable of ingesting data from over a million games every day, spewing out insights for a diverse set of requests in something that’s about as close to real-time as it’s possible to get – just under two seconds, according to TokuDB.
“TokuDB gave us faster search results, a much smaller database and fewer servers to manage,” said Steve Mayes, CEO SharkScope. “Because of Tokutek, SharkScope can continue to add new subscribers for the foreseeable future.”

Okay, so what if you could accurately predict the outcome in nine out of every ten English Premier League soccer matches? You’ll probably think you’re on the cusp of striking it very, very rich indeed, if only it were true.
Well, it might just be that your dreams really can come true if you’re a devoted soccer betting fan, with a new startup going by the name of Betegy confidently boasting that its capable of doing just that. Betegy’s site says that its able to successfully predict the outcomes of 90% of all English Premier League matches via its complex algorithm that considers every possible factor that might affect the game, from the coach’s birthday to the weather on the big data.
Based in Poland, Betegy actually offers forecasts for 21 different soccer leagues around the world, and claims a 76% success rate in its predictions. There are some leagues in which it does notably better however – such as England where this rises to 90%. In other leagues, its strike rate might be as low as 50%.
How does it do it? According to CEO Alex Kornilov, betegy uses two layers of data to predict the outcome of soccer matches. The first layer includes basic stats such as recent performances, history between the two teams in question, form and the average number of goals. The second layer goes deeper into it, taking into account factors like the weather and other details that may affect player’s motivation.
Betegy doesn’t claim to be perfect, but with only three possible outcomes in soccer – win, lose and draw – it’s 90% success rate stacks looks pretty tempting seeing as choosing an outcome at random would normally only result successful predictions 33% of the time.
So there’s every reason to play with Big Data if making money is your number one priority.

Source : http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/08/20/how-the-gambling-industry-is-betting-on-big-data/?goback=.gde_40057_member_267405163#!

Android KitKat Unveiled By Google And Nestle

2013-09-04T23:10:00.000+05:30

Google has named the latest version of its Android mobile operating system after the KitKat chocolate bar.

The company has a history of naming software after confectionery and desserts - previous versions include Ice Cream Sandwich, Gingerbread and Jelly Bean.
Android software is the world's biggest mobile operating system, driving more than a billion tablets and smartphones, according to Google.
The news is a surprise to some technology watchers as the company had previously indicated that version 4.4 - expected in October - would go by the generic name Key Lime Pie.

The Android mascot features on special bars of the chocolate (Pic: Nestle)

A giant Android figure made from KitKats has now joined the Gingerbread and Jelly Bean 'statues' outside Google's California headquarters.
Sundar Pichai, head of Android, tweeted a picture of the creation.
"We now have over 1 Billion Android activations and hope this guy in front of the building keeps that momentum going," said Mr Pichai.
Some 1.5 million Android devices are activated every day, Google's chief executive Larry Page said last month.

Apple will hope its new devices win back share from Android phones

The KitKat-Android marketing deal will also see buyers of Nestle's four-fingered bar able to win Android tablets by looking out for 50 million special wrappers.
The idea for the marketing hook-up was reportedly Google's, with Android bosses approaching Nestle about the idea in November.
Apple will be hoping to claw back momentum from Android-powered phones, which have a 79% share of the smartphone market, when it hosts a special event on September 10.
The company is widely expected to unveil the latest iPhone.
It is also rumoured to be launching a second, cheaper version of the device that could broaden its product range and help it tempt budget-conscious consumers.

Source : http://news.sky.com/story/1136830/android-kitkat-unveiled-by-google-and-nestle

Sony Confirms Xperia Z1 Flagship Phone: 5-Inch 1080p Display, 21MP Camera & A Photo Apps Focus

2013-09-04T22:34:00.003+05:30

Sony has named a new flagship in its Android-powered Xperia smartphone line up which focuses on beefing up camera capabilities. The 4G Xperia Z1, roundly leaked under the moniker ‘Honami’ but officially confirmed today at Sony’s IFA press conference in Berlin, is a follow up to the 5-inch, quad-core Xperia Z unboxed at the start of the year at CES.
The Xperia Z1 has a 20.7MP camera on its rump (vs the 13.1MP on the Xperia Z) coupled with a 1/2.3-inch Exmor RS CMOS image sensor, Sony’s G Lens (27mm wide angle, f2.0 aperture) and Bionz image processing engine which Sony users in its standalone cameras. There’s also 3x “clear image zoom” — with Sony claiming its optical zoom delivers “zero distortion”.
Sony is making big boasts for this lens combo — claiming it offers “best in class imaging” and is the “world’s leading camera in a smartphone” (Nokia may however disagree; its Lumia 1020 smartphone has a 41MP lens). NB: Sony’s odd wording here — “camera in a smartphone” — can be explained by its simultaneous attempts to extend phone camera smarts via a hardware add-on lens system that clips onto any phone, including the Xperia Z1.
Sony is preloading a series of camera apps onto the Z1 to extend its camera capabilities on the software side — including Social Life, a camera streaming app to broadcast what’s going on around you to Facebook; a Timeshift burst mode to take multiple images so you can choose the best shot from several; a visual search app called Info-Eye to get more info on snapped products/landmarks; and an augmented reality app called AR Effect to overlay customised animations onto images.
Sony is clearly following in the footsteps of rivals’ strategy here, including Nokia (with its PureView imaging push) and Samsung, which has also focused on making its own suite of imaging apps for flagship devices such as the Galaxy S4. But as well as making its own apps, Sony’s hoping to get developers working for it on the camera front too. “It’s built with an open SDK and we’re already working with a talented group of app developers that will extend its capabilities,” it said today.
Elsewhere, the Xperia Z1 looks to be a slightly beefed up version of its earlier sibling, with the same size 5-inch 1080p display — albeit this time including newer Sony screen tech that it has also brought to the Xperia Z Ultra phablet. Sony’s Triluminos screen tech apparently supports a greater range of colours with natural shades. The Z1 also features Sony’s X-Reality technology for improving the viewing experience of low res video.
The Xperia Z1 runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean at launch. Under the hood it has a 2.2Ghz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset. There’s also 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage –expandable via a microSD card slot — and a 3,000mAh battery. Design wise, the Xperia Z1 shares the look and feel of the rest of Sony’s Xperia range — with clean lines and blunt edges, although Sony says it’s evolved the design, most notably by adding a one piece aluminium casing to all the plastic.

Oh and the Z1 is also waterproof, as is its predecessor. To ram that point home, Sony apparently thought it was a good idea to entertain IFA attendees by getting some ladies to cavort with some phones in some water. As sexist displays go, it’s pretty impressive — even by tech industry ‘booth babe’ standards — so well done Sony for alienating ~50% of potential buyers. It better hope the other 50% gets so distracted they end up buying two phones apiece.
On the size front, neither the Xperia Z1 or its numeral-less sibling is the largest handset Sony makes, although their five inch displays sits on the cusp of phablet territory. The Sony enormo-phone award goes to its palm-stretching Xperia Z Ultra: a 6.4 inch phablet that’s so large Sony sells a Bluetooth handset accessory for it so you can comfortably take calls.
Sony said the Xperia Z1 is due to hit shelves “starting this month”.

Source :http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/04/sony-confirms-xperia-z1-flagship-phone-5-inch-1080p-display-20mp-camera/

Nokia Promises Its Amber Update Will Come To All Windows Phone 8 Lumia Devices By The End Of September

2013-08-31T22:14:00.004+05:30

Today Nokia promised owners of its Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices that its “Amber” update will reach all phones by the end of September. The Amber upgrade is a mix of feature improvements that will improve Nokia’s handsets, further setting them apart from devices built by other smartphone OEMs.
Amber contains a photo-editing tool, improved image processing, the ability to snag motion in sequence with “Action Shot,” the acceptance of double-tap input to wake the phone, and improved internal storage reporting.
However, the most important new piece delivered by Amber is “Glance Screen,” a tool that makes your phone’s inactive state more interesting. When your handset is inactive, it will display a clock and battery information. So, you can more quickly interact with your phone without having to do anything at all. You can turn off Glance, of course, or have it switch off after a set amount of time.
In past years, we would now discuss how Amber puts Nokia ahead of Samsung, HTC, and other Windows Phone OEMs (remember Dell?). We don’t have to do that anymore, as Nokia controls essentially the entire Windows Phone market. Thus, the changes are not as much changes to Nokia’s Windows Phone handsets as they are adaptations to the Windows Phone platform itself. Given that Nokia sells nearly 90 percent of Windows Phone devices, any changes that it makes become de facto official changes.
This is a problem for Microsoft, as it initially ceded flexibility to make changes to Nokia in partial exchange for it adopting the platform. This saved Microsoft’s mobile life, but in the process cost it control: If Nokia can essentially skin Windows Phone to its own contentment, Microsoft is in a material way not in charge of the Windows Phone user experience and design.
I doubt that sits well in Redmond. Thus, Microsoft either builds a phone itself (there have been rumors), or it bolsters HTC (the only remaining OEM partner with more than a scrape of market share that isn’t Nokia) to get a better grip on its platform.
Whatever the case, if you are a Nokia handset owner, the Amber update will be rolling out depending on your handset and country and likely carrier over the next month. Get ready.
Top Image Credit: Vernon Chan

Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/30/nokia-promises-its-amber-update-will-come-to-all-windows-phone-8-lumia-devices-by-the-end-of-september/

As Uber Drives Into India, It’s Shifting Its Emerging Market Strategy Up A Gear

2013-08-31T21:14:00.002+05:30

posted yesterday

4 Comments

Transportation tech startup Uber is continuing its aggressive expansion across Asia. As of this week, it is now live in India, starting first with a luxury car service in its tech capital, Bangalore. The subcontinent may boast a potential market of over a billion, a rising middle class and 164,000 millionaires, but these are silver linings to some possibly darker storm clouds: low credit card and smartphone penetration, inadequate infrastructure, and low levels of disposable income. Uber will try to impose its premium and efficient model on the market, but entrenched indigenous operators, whose lo-fi solutions have thrived, won’t give up their turf without a fight.
So far this year, the private transportation startup has been on a tear in Asia and it last night discreetly announced that Bangalore would be the latest cab off the rank. The strategy is being fuelled in part by a $258 million investment led by Google Ventures, which values the company at $3.5 billion. In India, the initial strategy appears to be an extension of what occurred in Singapore, Seoul and Taipei, where the service was positioned as a luxury option better than the status quo. The Bangalore launch comes amid a trio of debuts in three consecutive days, with Dubai and Cape Town preceding the India debut.
Uber hasn’t spelled out what its bigger plans are for India — whether it will be about trying to replicate the same roll-out in this emerging market as it has done in places like the U.S. by starting with luxury car services and then expanding from there. Luxury car services could be Uber’s canary in the mine in India, laying the groundwork before sending in subsequent waves of logistics services as well as targeting the mid-level segment via its Uber X brand. What seems more apparent as that, after proving the model at home and enjoying the proceeds of its long-tail revenue model, the firm is now looking to emerging markets for the next wave of growth.
In India, companies have generally failed, or only enjoyed modest success, when they try the model of making consumers pay for the privilege of excellent customer service. However, some believe that bucking the trend might work in its favor.
“In the US. they started with the black limo, the premium service, and people raved about Uber’s fabulous experience. It wasn’t just another taxi experience. From booking to ride to wait-time to payment, it was seamless and I think that over time they have broadened their offering in the U.S. Here, it’s interesting they’re not selling out and saying ‘let’s go into mass part of market’,” said Somaia.
“What I see more often in India is just get a focus on getting big, whether that’s scaling through inefficient marketing spend, coupons or discounts. Here cars arrive late, they’re not clean, drivers aren’t particularly knowledgable: it’s fairly poor, broken customer experience,” said Lightspeed Ventures partner Bejul Somaia. ”Even if they are saying ‘fine, we’re going to have slightly more premium offering, and the trade-off is scale,’ the point is they’re focused on superior consumer experience.”
In India’s taxi service today, it’s fair to say that you get what you pay for. Taxis are often smelly, dirty and uncomfortable but they get you from a to b.
Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of one of the country’s biggest taxi booking platforms Ola Cabs, estimates that in Bangalore there are only around 100 drivers licensed to drive luxury cars, compared with about 50,000 drivers authorised to carry passengers in medium to low-end vehicles.
The huge differential highlights the low interest in luxury services, he said. He believes that Uber has about eight luxury cars on its books and will find it difficult to sustain its cheap introductory prices and establish a solid foothold.
We reached out to Uber India’s spokesperson, who declined to comment for this article.
Even if Uber can grab some market share in the small luxury segment, it will need to navigate its way around some pretty big cultural hurdles before it can reach the untransported masses. Here, the majority of Indian consumers don’t have a credit card or smartphone, nor the financial incentive to catch a taxi (autorickshaws are still the cheapest, quickest way to move around the city, more below). A few major players have started tackling the e-payments problem but a mass market solution is still a few years off.
For now, locals prefer to book over the phone and pay via cash.
Unlike Uber’s build-it-and-they-will-come strategy, local players have typically used available, accepted methods to gain the trust of consumers and later introduced innovative technologies to improve the experience. India’s most successful startups, such as Flipkart, JustDial, and RedBus, are the ones that bent to the will of the people, and not the other way around.
Almost 95% of Ola Cabs’ passengers pay cash. And 80% of their bookings are taken via the call centre — over 10,000 customer calls a day. India’s largest radio taxi network Meru Cabs said that 60% of its 20,000 daily bookings are done over the phone, with the rest coming from mobile internet and the web.
Aggarwal’s three-year old firm has signed up about 6,000 drivers servicing customers in four cities, and expects to hit $100 million by the end of the current financial year, ending in April 2014. He believes that you need to customise solutions for the local market. ”My feeling is that launching a luxury brand is good for the luxury people that can afford it but for India you need to build an Indian solution,” he said. “You can’t just copy a Western solution for India. You need to solve the local problems.”
Yet Indians appear to be itching for a change.
Ola has offered a slick smartphone app for about a year, which shows the distance from the nearest taxi on the launch screen. Meru recently launched its own mobile apps , which feature an emergency distress button, in order to boost the number of bookings made from the smartphone app.
The number of bookings Ola has processed through its mobile app has increased by 100% quarter-on-quarter since it was launched in August 2012. And over two million people have visited the Android and iOS apps, while five million visited the website in the last year.
Cash Cab
In Bangalore Uber is charging a base fare of 150 rupees ($2.50), and a minimum of 250 rupees (~$4). It has secured an undisclosed number of Mercedes, Toyota Corolla Altis and Honda Civics for the task, but being conveyed in the lap of luxury will cost Indians 20 rupees per kilometre, and a waiting time of two rupees per minute — this usually ends up being quite lucrative considering the lengthy waiting times on Bangalore’s heavily congested, poorly constructed roads. There’s also a 100 rupee cancellation fee if you give the Uber driver a bum steer.
It might sound cheap by western standards but it doesn’t compare with the competition.
The country’s biggest radio taxi service, Meru Cabs, with a fleet of 5,500 air-conditioned small sedans, doesn’t charge a call out fee. It charges 80 rupees for the first four kilometres and 19.50 rupees for every additional kilometre. Waiting time is 10 rupees for 15 minutes. Meru recently launched mobile apps to boost its bookings.
So that means that a Uber cab will cost twice as much as the competition, who also don’t charge you a cancellation fee. A fare of 150 rupees in other taxis would get you from the centre of Bangalore “CBD” to the city’s outskirts, which are around 15 kilometres to 20 kilometres away. Uber’s flat rate of 2000 rupees to travel to the airport from the main city area, is nearly double what you would pay the other operators.
If you are comfortable venturing in an open, small-moving, lawnmower-engine powered three wheeler, known as ‘autorickshaws’, you can travel for about half or two-thirds of the expense of a regular taxi — or about the quarter of the price of an Uber cab.
All other operators accept cash, while Uber requires a valid credit card to sign up which is a huge barrier to entry in a country where most of the population still transact using paper money.
Already there have been a few teething problems with first customers hoping to participate in the pilot, but the firm has been very responsive on Twitter and appears to have waived the mobile verification process. Customer can also book via the website.
Uber’s Indian soft-launch involved ferrying two of Bangalore’s rich celebrities, but that leaves question marks over a strategy to target the city’s minority elite. Here, most of the wealthy locals and well-resourced foreigners have access to a car, either their own or via their employer, which comes with a full-time driver — who cost about 10,000 rupees per month ($160) or just over 300 rupees a day — to chauffeur them at a moment’s notice.

Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/30/as-uber-drives-into-india-its-shifting-its-emerging-market-strategy-up-a-gear/

Following Mobile Test, Facebook Tries Out A ‘Trending’ Section On Its Desktop News Feed

2013-08-31T20:59:00.001+05:30

Back in June, Facebook said it would be rolling out a number of features for following public conversations, and it looks like the company’s holding true to that promise.
Specifically, the company is testing a section highlighting “Trending” topics that appears alongside its desktop newsfeed. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the test, and it included a screenshot (which you can see to the left) that looks pretty much as you’d expect — a box with a list of linked topics.
A Facebook spokesperson sent me the following statement:

We are running a small test of a unit on News Feed that displays topics currently trending on Facebook. Right now it’s only available to a small percentage of US users and it is still in the early stages of development. We will share more details down the line if we decide to roll it out more widely.

Facebook has been moving towards something like this for the past couple of months. It launched searchable hashtags in June, and those are all about making it easy for people to see related conversations around a single topic. At the time, the company said it would be “rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics.” Then, earlier this month, it started showing trending topics to some mobile web users.
Trend-based navigation is a pretty natural outgrowth of adding hashtags, so it might seem strange that Facebook is taking a while to go from one to another. However, public-private dynamics can work pretty differently on Facebook than on Twitter (where the hashtag/Trending Topics ideas were popularized), so I imagine Facebook is using tests to make sure this approach makes sense with its more private model.

Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/30/facebook-trending-topics/

Google Updates Search Page Dictionary, Now Provides Word Etymology

2013-08-31T20:56:00.001+05:30

Google Search has long been a favorite tool of many to quickly check for word definitions, time zones, weather and flight details apart from the good old web search. Back in 2010, Google introduced the Dictionary OneBox that showed up with a definition whenever you looked up a word. Google updated the feature in 2011 and added synonyms and audio diction.
Google has today updated the OneBox with word etymologies, a translate feature and word usage trends. You’ll have to click the down arrow on the box on the search page in order to expand the box and see the new information.

If you choose a language, Google will translate the word for you right there. What you see after that will be the word trend chart showing how the usage of your word has been affected with time.

Wanna try? Google for “define word”

Google drops Nexus 4 price, now starts at $199 on Play Store

2013-08-28T23:12:00.002+05:30

Google has now made the Nexus 4 a whole lot lighter on the pocket for potential buyers. The latest Nexus device is now selling at a $100 less from its earlier official price on Google’s online store. From what can be seen on the Google Play Store right now, the 8GB variant of the Nexus 4 is up for grabs for $199 (Rs 13,380 approx) while the 16GB model will set you back by $249 (Rs 16,750 approx).

There is no official word on a newer Nexus smartphone yet, though earlier reports have hinted at a possible Nexus 5 in the pipeline. While that is still speculation, there is a definite possibility of the current Nexus line-up getting a few updates. The reasons for this assumption are manifold.

The first reason is the considerable inter-player competition that the Android market has. Major smartphone players like Samsung and Sony, among others, have been launching a host of new smartphones into the market this year. And Google itself has released Play editions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. This culminates in the Nexus 4 no longer being the only smartphone in the market with a stock Android experience. Thus the company may be looking for different avenues for the Nexus 4, the first being this considerable price drop.

Google has dropped the price of the Nexus 4 on the Play Store

The company has mentioned that the price drop is applicable only in Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Korea, the US and the UK. The current price of the 16GB variant on the LG Nexus 4 in India still stands at Rs 25,990 on Flipkart. The price drop definitely makes the Nexus 4 a lot more appealing, on paper at least, and it is hoped that the company expands on the number of markets that this offer is being rolled out to.

A quick recap shows that the Nexus 4 sports a 4.7-inch display with a resolution ratio of 1280 x 768. This amounts to a pixel density of 320 ppi. Internally, the smartphone comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC. In terms of photography, the Nexus 4 comes with an 8-megapixel primary camera and a 1.3-megapixel front shooter. Additional features include 8GB of internal storage as well as 2GB of RAM.

Source : http://tech2.in.com/news/smartphones/google-drops-nexus-4-price-now-starts-at-199-on-play-store/912358