Being a data-driven organization requires a combination of analysis and predictions. As we look at the last several years, big data has been the dominant force, moving from a consumer-based requirement to a must-have strategy for enterprises to stay competitive. This data revolution is seeing accelerated technology adoption curves and is forcing job roles to change, strategic investments in technologies like Hadoop and data quality/governance, threats to incumbent BI vendors, just to name a few. 2015 will see big changes in enterprise information management, as organizations transform every employee into being data-driven, as analytic use-cases become more complex, and as vendors try to predict the next need of the market.
Prediction 1: The lines will blur between data scientists and data analysts
Harvard Business Review declared data scientist as the “sexiest” job of the 21st century. But the role of data scientist is evolving rapidly from predictive analysis and code writing to someone who is able to to communicate in language that all their stakeholders understand. Likewise, the world of the data analyst who prepares graphs and visualizations from various data sets is also being disrupted.
As business requirements for data analytics and business intelligence tools emerge, the distinctions between data scientist and data analyst has become fuzzier. In 2015, I expect these job responsibilities starting to merge into a new class of data expert who possess the reporting and visualization skill sets but is also capable of understanding “the complexities of the new NoSQL databases like Hadoop and can marry data from many sources and types together to produce useful and profitable predictive models,” as Gartner articulated well.
Much of this has been driven by the democratization of business intelligence tools like Tableau, which has made it possible to transform complex data from back-office applications into simple-to-understand data visualizations.
Prediction 2: Microsoft and Salesforce will take a dominant share of the cloud-based business intelligence
Microsoft will likely achieve significant economies of scale in its cloud BI offerings, based on the Power BI suite for Office 366, which will result in considerable pricing pressures. Another potentially disruptive force is Salesforce Wave, its cloud analytics platform. If it lives up to its potential, Wave could wash out almost half of the BI incumbents. But Salesforce Wave will not fully crest unless they take a modern approach to how they help their customers solve the integration and quality challenges.
If successful, Microsoft and Salesforce will herald the arrival of a true end-to-end, cloud-based BI system that promises a unified offering for operational, predictive, packaged, and discovery analytics.
Prediction No. 3: Data preparation replaces Big Data as the hottest topic in BI
2014 was a formative year for data preparation, with a broad cross-section of contributors helping to define it as a distinct category within ETL. The data preparation market itself has been enabled and advanced by major technological breakthroughs in areas such as semantic algorithms, distributed computing, machine learning, and cloud computing.
The coming year will also see the industry delivering data-preparation technologies at scale for all users. The proliferation of ungoverned data will become so large and problematic that companies will need to shift their emphasis on data standardization, governance and data preparation.
The emergence of an all-in-one data prep stack will arise as CIOs and CDOs demand new approaches to end-to-end information management. The industry will respond by moving from delivering fragmented, point products to cohesive platforms built on elastic architectures that can scale and delivered as cloud-based and on-premise.
Prediction 4: Hadoop faces a make-or-break year in the larger enterprise market
If the entirety of the enterprise IT landscape were comprised only of Web 2.0 companies like Google , Yahoo , Facebook, and Twitter, Hadoop would be considered an unqualified success for Big Data projects.
Hadoop faces a tougher time however in demonstrating its applicability and value inside Big Data projects across the larger enterprise market, which constitutes a much larger commercial opportunity. The enterprise software market alone is estimated at nearly a $100 billion per year, growing at almost 5%. The challenges Hadoop faces in the enterprise market are varied:
Many Hadoop projects inside of mainstream enterprises are still largely “science projects” that have not been integrated into production environments;
The major Hadoop distributions (Cloudera, MapR, Hortonworks, Pivotal, and IBM etc.) are still largely not interoperable with each other;
As Hadoop encroaches further into mainstream enterprises, incumbent database vendors are responding more aggressively in protecting their primary turf.
Some other major Hadoop developments I foresee in 2015 include MapReduce being reduced to the ash heaps of history while Hadoop Spark having a banner year and becoming a mainstream technology.
Prediction No. 5: Marketing will be the primary driver of BI decisions
Traditionally, the IT department called all the shots when it came to all technology decisions. Then disruption happened in the forms of cloud computing and smart mobile devices, threatening IT’s hegemonic influence over the lines of business (LOBs). Self-service technologies have given rise to “shadow IT” and the shifting of the balance of power away from IT to the LOBs. According to Gartner, more than half of all budget spent on BI and analytics today are driven by the LOBs.
The power organization to watch in the BI and analytics space in 2015 is Marketing, as it attempts to reposition itself from a cost center to the growth engine of the company. BI and analytics are enabling platforms for data-driven marketing, along with a dizzying array of other tools and services that make up the marketing technology landscape today.
IT organizations who do not cooperate will be subject to whiplash as Marketing zips around them to get what they need elsewhere.
Prediction 6: Internet of Things Gets Real for B2B
One of the hottest “inventions” debuted at the 2014 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) was IoT toothbrush, enabling parents to see how long their children brushed. The number and variety of devices that will comprise the IoT is staggering and growing, everything from the Fitbit and Apple Watch to even the most economical car.
However, the real opportunity for IoT in 2015 will be in Smart Patient Rooms, Smart Cities, Aging in Place technologies, innovations around supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), smart meter reading, and even the reinvention of traditional workflows.
For instance, in the construction industry, workers can now get supplies brought to them instead needlessly going up/down ladders and risking injury. Imagine the insurance company who would offer discounts on premiums to the construction firm using an IoT ladder over an older model. Not so different than a utility offering discounts for purchasing “smart” appliances. An insurance company could correlate the data coming from the ladder against claim data and against risk data. Suddenly, the IoT data is ONLY contextual, and therefore valuable, if it can be viewed against other meaningful data coming from data warehouses.
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 December 2014
Saturday, 26 April 2014
Microsoft boosts OneDrive for Business capacity to 1TB
The cloud-storage arms race heated up even more on Monday when Microsoft gave its OneDrive for Business service a big capacity boost.
The per-user storage provided by OneDrive for Business is rising from 25 gigabytes to 1 terabyte. That applies to both the standalone version of the product and the versions that come bundled with Office 365.
The standalone version of OneDrive for Business is available as a $5-per-month option with the free Office Online Web-based productivity suite. Microsoft is currently offering the first year's subscription at half the price. That promotional offer is available through September.
Microsoft also announced that for the first time, it is including OneDrive for Business with Office 365 ProPlus, a full-featured version of the desktop Office suite that is sold via an annual subscription for $12 per user, per month. These subscribers will also get 1 terabyte of storage per user.
OneDrive for Business, previously called SkyDrive Pro, is a service where employees can store, share and sync personal work files.
OneDrive for Business is included with most editions of Office 365, the cloud email and collaboration suite that includes online versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, and with the standalone SharePoint Online service.
These Office 365 editions vary in price depending on their features and components. For example, Office 365 Small Business costs $5 per user, per month, while Office 365 Enterprise E4 goes for $22 per user, per month, to mention just two of the bundles.
The enterprise file sync and share market is crowded with specialty vendors such as Box, Dropbox, Accellion, Watchdox and Egnyte, and with products from larger providers such as Google, IBM, Citrix and EMC.
This type of storage product has become an essential component of modern collaboration systems designed to allow colleagues to jointly edit documents and access files from a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, via different methods including native mobile apps and standard Web browsers.
Dropbox charges $15 per user, per month for an unlimited amount of storage as part of its Business plan.
Meanwhile, Box charges $15 per user, per month for 1 terabyte of storage in its Business plan, and $35 per user, per month for unlimited storage.
Google Apps for Business, which costs $5 per user, per month, includes 30 gigabytes of Gmail and Drive storage. Customers can purchase more storage in various increments, including 1 terabyte for $89 per user, per month.
As part of its free Google account for individual consumers, Google offers each person 15 gigabytes of standard storage for Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos, 100 gigabytes for $1.99 per month and 1 terabyte for $9.99 per month. Google chopped down those prices from $4.99 and $49.99, respectively, in March.
The per-user storage provided by OneDrive for Business is rising from 25 gigabytes to 1 terabyte. That applies to both the standalone version of the product and the versions that come bundled with Office 365.
The standalone version of OneDrive for Business is available as a $5-per-month option with the free Office Online Web-based productivity suite. Microsoft is currently offering the first year's subscription at half the price. That promotional offer is available through September.
Microsoft also announced that for the first time, it is including OneDrive for Business with Office 365 ProPlus, a full-featured version of the desktop Office suite that is sold via an annual subscription for $12 per user, per month. These subscribers will also get 1 terabyte of storage per user.
OneDrive for Business, previously called SkyDrive Pro, is a service where employees can store, share and sync personal work files.
OneDrive for Business is included with most editions of Office 365, the cloud email and collaboration suite that includes online versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, and with the standalone SharePoint Online service.
These Office 365 editions vary in price depending on their features and components. For example, Office 365 Small Business costs $5 per user, per month, while Office 365 Enterprise E4 goes for $22 per user, per month, to mention just two of the bundles.
The enterprise file sync and share market is crowded with specialty vendors such as Box, Dropbox, Accellion, Watchdox and Egnyte, and with products from larger providers such as Google, IBM, Citrix and EMC.
This type of storage product has become an essential component of modern collaboration systems designed to allow colleagues to jointly edit documents and access files from a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, via different methods including native mobile apps and standard Web browsers.
Dropbox charges $15 per user, per month for an unlimited amount of storage as part of its Business plan.
Meanwhile, Box charges $15 per user, per month for 1 terabyte of storage in its Business plan, and $35 per user, per month for unlimited storage.
Google Apps for Business, which costs $5 per user, per month, includes 30 gigabytes of Gmail and Drive storage. Customers can purchase more storage in various increments, including 1 terabyte for $89 per user, per month.
As part of its free Google account for individual consumers, Google offers each person 15 gigabytes of standard storage for Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos, 100 gigabytes for $1.99 per month and 1 terabyte for $9.99 per month. Google chopped down those prices from $4.99 and $49.99, respectively, in March.
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Cloud Computing: Effectively Changing The Business Operation Model
Cloud computing technologies are ubiquitous. While not exactly new technologies, the speed with which they’re transforming business models and efficiencies seem to have accelerated over the past few years. The reason for the transformation depends on how the business operates and its specific needs, but there are some major trends that have emerged.
It All Started with Employees
Employees are one of the main driving forces behind many changes related to cloud computing within the business environment. Employees have families, want to work from home or even use devices with which they are most comfortable. Cloud computing has made it easier for remote employees to enjoy all of the benefits of working in an office (collaboration, Hosted Exchange email, access to documents, etc.) while they are working from home or even on the road.
While Yahoo YHOO +0.52%’s Marissa Mayer may have made the directive for employees to come into the office, most businesses, on the other hand, are seeing the benefits of allowing their employees to work remotely, namely that those employees are more productive. They’re more efficient and willing to work longer hours because they have the privilege and flexibility of working remotely.
For employees that do decide to come into the office, many want to bring their own devices because they prefer or are more familiar with them. Cloud computing is also accelerating the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, allowing employees to virtually “dial into” their corporate systems with their own computers or tablets Cloud computing gives employees these freedoms without IT having to worry about these different machines or the remote access overloading and crashing their on-site infrastructure.
Shaking Up Your Standard Business/IT Model
Speaking of IT, cloud computing has unburdened businesses from the traditional IT business model, giving them more options when it comes to their IT infrastructure. In the past, the business/IT model was very straightforward: Businesses hired IT professionals to run their computer hardware and software. The IT staff had to forecast business needs as far out as 5 or 10 years, and make purchases accordingly.
The problem with this business/IT model was that oftentimes the forecasts were wrong. We’ve all heard horror stories of IT forecasting. For example, IT may forecast that a business will only need a certain amount of data storage for the next five years and only purchase the forecasted amount, without considering growth, more personnel or even just more demand on the system. Then after only a year, IT realizes that they’re on the verge of running out of storage and need to purchase more.
With cloud computing, you never have to worry about running out of storage or server capacity, resulting in major cost savings. While you still need to forecast the amount of storage or server capacity that you may need, you no longer have to be overly concerned about the capital expense of scaling up your needs if you do require more space or capacity. It’s far less expensive and less of a hassle to increase cloud storage and cloud server needs than on-site infrastructure. You still need IT for many functions, but cloud computing may actually result in less of a need for a full-blown IT staff. You’ll be outsourcing most of your activity to a cloud vendor. While your IT staff may not be as robust in the past, they’re still necessary for business innovation. With standard maintenance and upgrades off of their plate, IT professionals can find time to create new technologies and products for your company. Take the Toyota example.
Toyota Has Seen the Impact of Using Cloud Applications
In a recent article by Julie Bort “To Understand Just How Much the Cloud Will Change the World, Look at Toyota” on Business Insider, she profiled Zack Hicks, Toyota’s CIO, North America. Hicks has been leading the efforts at Toyota to embrace cloud computing, including moving his entire team to Microsoft MSFT +1.54%Office 365, which includes Hosted Exchange Email and Microsoft Office, and a number of other cloud applications to improve productivity. The real advantage of using this type of software is that the team no longer has to worry about day-to-day maintenance of software, including verifying that everyone is using the same version of email.
These cloud applications have allowed Toyota to streamline their business, providing their IT teams with more flexibility to actually create new technologies for their cars. Hicks sees cars as the next type of connected platform with a whole range of technologies to help people in their day-to-day lives, including:
Semi-autonomous vehicles that can help the elderly get around
Steering wheels that “can measure your heartbeat, respiration, blood-sugar levels, and send it to a doctor”
Cars that can send an alert if a driver’s health condition has become unsafe and needs medical help
Your Customers Demand that You Change
Another way that cloud computing has changed business models is in the way that you interact with customers. It gives you the flexibility to immediately react to customer needs as soon as the customer wants you to. Customers no longer wait for business hours to shop for products or get the services that they need. They expect it 24/7. Plus, they want a more robust experience that often means websites with videos, tools and interactive presentations. Most medium to small businesses don’t have the internal bandwidth to host these interactive files.
Outsourcing your interactive data to a cloud vendor ensures that you have enough capacity to not only store these files, but guarantee that customers can download or view the files at higher speeds from a secure cloud computing platform.
It All Started with Employees
Employees are one of the main driving forces behind many changes related to cloud computing within the business environment. Employees have families, want to work from home or even use devices with which they are most comfortable. Cloud computing has made it easier for remote employees to enjoy all of the benefits of working in an office (collaboration, Hosted Exchange email, access to documents, etc.) while they are working from home or even on the road.
While Yahoo YHOO +0.52%’s Marissa Mayer may have made the directive for employees to come into the office, most businesses, on the other hand, are seeing the benefits of allowing their employees to work remotely, namely that those employees are more productive. They’re more efficient and willing to work longer hours because they have the privilege and flexibility of working remotely.
For employees that do decide to come into the office, many want to bring their own devices because they prefer or are more familiar with them. Cloud computing is also accelerating the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, allowing employees to virtually “dial into” their corporate systems with their own computers or tablets Cloud computing gives employees these freedoms without IT having to worry about these different machines or the remote access overloading and crashing their on-site infrastructure.
Shaking Up Your Standard Business/IT Model
Speaking of IT, cloud computing has unburdened businesses from the traditional IT business model, giving them more options when it comes to their IT infrastructure. In the past, the business/IT model was very straightforward: Businesses hired IT professionals to run their computer hardware and software. The IT staff had to forecast business needs as far out as 5 or 10 years, and make purchases accordingly.
The problem with this business/IT model was that oftentimes the forecasts were wrong. We’ve all heard horror stories of IT forecasting. For example, IT may forecast that a business will only need a certain amount of data storage for the next five years and only purchase the forecasted amount, without considering growth, more personnel or even just more demand on the system. Then after only a year, IT realizes that they’re on the verge of running out of storage and need to purchase more.
With cloud computing, you never have to worry about running out of storage or server capacity, resulting in major cost savings. While you still need to forecast the amount of storage or server capacity that you may need, you no longer have to be overly concerned about the capital expense of scaling up your needs if you do require more space or capacity. It’s far less expensive and less of a hassle to increase cloud storage and cloud server needs than on-site infrastructure. You still need IT for many functions, but cloud computing may actually result in less of a need for a full-blown IT staff. You’ll be outsourcing most of your activity to a cloud vendor. While your IT staff may not be as robust in the past, they’re still necessary for business innovation. With standard maintenance and upgrades off of their plate, IT professionals can find time to create new technologies and products for your company. Take the Toyota example.
Toyota Has Seen the Impact of Using Cloud Applications
In a recent article by Julie Bort “To Understand Just How Much the Cloud Will Change the World, Look at Toyota” on Business Insider, she profiled Zack Hicks, Toyota’s CIO, North America. Hicks has been leading the efforts at Toyota to embrace cloud computing, including moving his entire team to Microsoft MSFT +1.54%Office 365, which includes Hosted Exchange Email and Microsoft Office, and a number of other cloud applications to improve productivity. The real advantage of using this type of software is that the team no longer has to worry about day-to-day maintenance of software, including verifying that everyone is using the same version of email.
These cloud applications have allowed Toyota to streamline their business, providing their IT teams with more flexibility to actually create new technologies for their cars. Hicks sees cars as the next type of connected platform with a whole range of technologies to help people in their day-to-day lives, including:
Semi-autonomous vehicles that can help the elderly get around
Steering wheels that “can measure your heartbeat, respiration, blood-sugar levels, and send it to a doctor”
Cars that can send an alert if a driver’s health condition has become unsafe and needs medical help
Your Customers Demand that You Change
Another way that cloud computing has changed business models is in the way that you interact with customers. It gives you the flexibility to immediately react to customer needs as soon as the customer wants you to. Customers no longer wait for business hours to shop for products or get the services that they need. They expect it 24/7. Plus, they want a more robust experience that often means websites with videos, tools and interactive presentations. Most medium to small businesses don’t have the internal bandwidth to host these interactive files.
Outsourcing your interactive data to a cloud vendor ensures that you have enough capacity to not only store these files, but guarantee that customers can download or view the files at higher speeds from a secure cloud computing platform.
Friday, 26 April 2013
Microsoft boosts OneDrive for Business capacity to 1TB
The cloud-storage arms race heated up even more on Monday when Microsoft gave its OneDrive for Business service a big capacity boost.
The per-user storage provided by OneDrive for Business is rising from 25 gigabytes to 1 terabyte. That applies to both the standalone version of the product and the versions that come bundled with Office 365.
The standalone version of OneDrive for Business is available as a $5-per-month option with the free Office Online Web-based productivity suite. Microsoft is currently offering the first year's subscription at half the price. That promotional offer is available through September.
Microsoft also announced that for the first time, it is including OneDrive for Business with Office 365 ProPlus, a full-featured version of the desktop Office suite that is sold via an annual subscription for $12 per user, per month. These subscribers will also get 1 terabyte of storage per user.
OneDrive for Business, previously called SkyDrive Pro, is a service where employees can store, share and sync personal work files.
OneDrive for Business is included with most editions of Office 365, the cloud email and collaboration suite that includes online versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, and with the standalone SharePoint Online service.
These Office 365 editions vary in price depending on their features and components. For example, Office 365 Small Business costs $5 per user, per month, while Office 365 Enterprise E4 goes for $22 per user, per month, to mention just two of the bundles.
The enterprise file sync and share market is crowded with specialty vendors such as Box, Dropbox, Accellion, Watchdox and Egnyte, and with products from larger providers such as Google, IBM, Citrix and EMC.
This type of storage product has become an essential component of modern collaboration systems designed to allow colleagues to jointly edit documents and access files from a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, via different methods including native mobile apps and standard Web browsers.
Dropbox charges $15 per user, per month for an unlimited amount of storage as part of its Business plan.
Meanwhile, Box charges $15 per user, per month for 1 terabyte of storage in its Business plan, and $35 per user, per month for unlimited storage.
Google Apps for Business, which costs $5 per user, per month, includes 30 gigabytes of Gmail and Drive storage. Customers can purchase more storage in various increments, including 1 terabyte for $89 per user, per month.
As part of its free Google account for individual consumers, Google offers each person 15 gigabytes of standard storage for Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos, 100 gigabytes for $1.99 per month and 1 terabyte for $9.99 per month. Google chopped down those prices from $4.99 and $49.99, respectively, in March.
The per-user storage provided by OneDrive for Business is rising from 25 gigabytes to 1 terabyte. That applies to both the standalone version of the product and the versions that come bundled with Office 365.
The standalone version of OneDrive for Business is available as a $5-per-month option with the free Office Online Web-based productivity suite. Microsoft is currently offering the first year's subscription at half the price. That promotional offer is available through September.
Microsoft also announced that for the first time, it is including OneDrive for Business with Office 365 ProPlus, a full-featured version of the desktop Office suite that is sold via an annual subscription for $12 per user, per month. These subscribers will also get 1 terabyte of storage per user.
OneDrive for Business, previously called SkyDrive Pro, is a service where employees can store, share and sync personal work files.
OneDrive for Business is included with most editions of Office 365, the cloud email and collaboration suite that includes online versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, and with the standalone SharePoint Online service.
These Office 365 editions vary in price depending on their features and components. For example, Office 365 Small Business costs $5 per user, per month, while Office 365 Enterprise E4 goes for $22 per user, per month, to mention just two of the bundles.
The enterprise file sync and share market is crowded with specialty vendors such as Box, Dropbox, Accellion, Watchdox and Egnyte, and with products from larger providers such as Google, IBM, Citrix and EMC.
This type of storage product has become an essential component of modern collaboration systems designed to allow colleagues to jointly edit documents and access files from a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, via different methods including native mobile apps and standard Web browsers.
Dropbox charges $15 per user, per month for an unlimited amount of storage as part of its Business plan.
Meanwhile, Box charges $15 per user, per month for 1 terabyte of storage in its Business plan, and $35 per user, per month for unlimited storage.
Google Apps for Business, which costs $5 per user, per month, includes 30 gigabytes of Gmail and Drive storage. Customers can purchase more storage in various increments, including 1 terabyte for $89 per user, per month.
As part of its free Google account for individual consumers, Google offers each person 15 gigabytes of standard storage for Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos, 100 gigabytes for $1.99 per month and 1 terabyte for $9.99 per month. Google chopped down those prices from $4.99 and $49.99, respectively, in March.
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