Surveys show that security concerns are primarily stopping user from using cloud solutions. In reality, the security provided by reputed cloud vendors is much more secure than home grown solutions as seen in Sony's email hack and target credit card breach cases. Cloud solutions are cheaper, adds flexibility, providing tremendous computation capacities to users in just second without even installing software. It updates continuously, where we can store personal data with greater security because the cloud service provider know better protection than a customer. People are reluctant towards transferring all data from premise to cloud just for analysis because they don't understand how much of the data analyzed comes from internal system. Audience at the international conferences uses cloud analytics over Hybrid Transaction/Analytical Processing (HTAP) due to risk of disruption of jobs. The visible risks of cloud solutions are acceptable because of the rule that relying on outside services run by experts completely overwhelms the potential cost. Read more at:- http://timoelliott.com/blog/2015/10/whos-afraid-of-cloud-analytics.html

Stephanie Khoury (Marketing Manager), writes in her article about the latest trends in supply chain and warehousing management. Following are the trends that will optimize your supply chain and warehousing management in 2016. They are – EDI, Collaboration, Cloud deployment, and Business Intelligence. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/grow-software-solutions/4-warehousing-trends-for-2016-70687

Data analytics can extract patterns, trends, and information from large sets of data. We often use the term “business intelligence,” for data analytics. But, it’s useful to distinguish the terms. Business intelligence uses data to improve management and operations. Data analytics improve that data before acting on it; further, you can slice the data to extract insights that in turn provides a competitive advantage to your organization. Data analytics can put any company ahead of disruptions, leveraging the data to augment your competitive position relative to others in your field. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/business-intelligence/company-needs-data-analytics-01359169#pd3tMLVLOM7fcY29.97

Business intelligence can provide visions to businesses which helps them with decision making, in becoming more responsive to their customers and business partners. Cloud-based visualization software is now offering better business value. Rose de Fremery (founder of lowercase d consulting) writes in her blog about the four key benefits that it can bring to businesses. They are: Rapid Time to Value; Flexible Data Integration; Mobile Access to Data Insights; and Expert Guided Analysis. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/4-key-benefits-of-cloudbased-business-visualization-69631

Big data and internet of thing (IOT) have made it easier for companies to collect new data. This will help companies to have comprehensive view of consumer’s buying and viewing behavior which in turn is used to make competitive business intelligence. Today businesses are struggling to face high bills of Internet Service Providers (ISP) as they already have too much data to cope with. With huge investment, industries have spent time in finding solutions for crunching large data within limited time. There is huge cost involved in storing big data. But Software Defined Storage (SDS) gave storage the operational efficiency as other big data aspects. This provides flexible and scalable architecture to empower the business to meet big data fluctuation demand.  Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/big-data-and-the-communications-data-bill

Most of the big companies are now giving more weight to big data expecting that they could generate large revenues. Studies have shown that with the help of big data, companies have improved customer experience and attracted new customers. But lack of trained professionals and the need for better infrastructure has created some barriers for companies. Also, resources required to hire new professionals raise the cost of a firm. But this problem has been tackled by Data-as-a-Service (DaaS). This is a tool that mines the big data ecosystems and delivers the right data to your marketing channels and automation programs in real times. DaaS can be implemented across a number of industries, for both B2B and B2C.  Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/lbedgood/332896/how-generate-big-data-revenue-without-big-investment-team-data-scientists

The idea of using information and data for various purposes is not new and has been there since the first web connection was developed. Computer scientist John McCarthy had developed the idea of cloud computing. The internet has grown at a very small pace since the 70's but got revived in the early 90's when first move towards cloud computing was taken. Heavy investment and development in cloud computing shows it is predicted that cloud computing is soon to go mainstream with 34.1 percent of IT sector already running applications in the cloud and 66.4 percent are looking into the cloud, planning to implement installations. Server performance tuning has become easier and finding query performance is now rapid through database analyser, all due to the cloud where our future lies. Cloud computing has become a global phenomenon and people are choosing it for solution in a hybrid manner. Soon companies have to fully turn to cloud computing as it becomes mainstream and lots of other companies shall create their own unique framework including internal cloud adoption. Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/rick-delgado/324781/foreseeable-future-cloud-computing-explained

Financial managers find it very difficult to reconcile goods received against invoices not received. This issues called 'GR-NI' is time consuming to manage. The problem hence gets reduced to lowest of the priorities and leads to increase of financial liabilities and risk for the business. Without proper automation to monitor the discrepancies, paperwork gets piled up which leads to supplier connections suffering and credits being misused. However, with software based supplier reconciliation process in place, the organization can get rid of this huge task and also improve its audit processes solving several risk issues as they arise. A simple overview of the new 'GR-NI' process says that creation of a database with financial and orders data is to be integrated followed by different other steps. The key elements of this solution are methods to get statements directly into the system regardless of format and source and many others. To maximize the value, operational areas should be looked into that can benefit from better processes. Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/keith-peterson/329860/using-procurement-analytics-simplify-your-supplier-reconciliation

Today marketers know how to enhance customer experience and implement new strategies to attract new customers. Big data, social media marketing and customer relations have influenced the marketing behavior. There will be no insights without data. But by managing data and analyzing it will lead to achieving marketing goals. Analysis of data should be such that it provides helpful conclusion to businesses to make strategies and reach goals. Documentation of business objectives helps business to know what type of data is required and how to manage data. Data should be integrated and structured in such a way that it is reliable to customers. Data validation is required to check the validity of data.   Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/lbedgood/332008/ultimate-beginner-s-guide-data-quality-and-business-intelligence

Big data for a long time has been handled wrongly, as there is problem lies in assigning meaning to data. There is acute skill shortage and the human factor also complicates big data. Here are a few ways how we can get better benefits from big data.
1. The business has to say what it wants to achieve from collating and analyzing data.
2. Asking relevant questions, so the data can provide answers.
3. Start small and then get bigger, trim irrelevant data.
4. Managing costs better
5. Understanding what data matters to the business the most.
To know more, follow: http://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/123459617/big-data-phenomenon-broken-5-tips-doing-analytics-right-way

Big data is an emerging phenomenon. Nowadays, many organizations have adopted information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) in business to handle huge amounts of data and gain better insights into their business. Many scholars believe that Business Intelligence (BI), solutions with analytics capabilities, offer benefits to companies to achieve competitive advantage towards their competitors. But this journey of increasing adoption of analytics requires much more thinking with an organization.

1. Promotion of decision making based on business outcomes: 

Investment should focus on implementation of analytics rather than infrastructure. Great companies link analytics to results to ensure gains.

2. Data –led decision making: 

Adoption of analytics should be encouraged and intuitive decision making should be discouraged.

3. Technology and business move together: 

Capabilities are built by amalgamating data, technology and business talent.

Therefore, decision makers should realize the importance of big data analytics in improving their business. Changes should be created in organizations for successful adoption of business analytics.

To know more- http://analyticsindiamag.com/successful-adoption-of-analytics-the-journey-from-good-to-great/

Business Intelligence gives business owners an outline of their performance, which is essential to gain important insights and plan for future growth of the company. Often business owners are caught up in dealing with day today operational problems that they forget to look at bigger picture and plan to remain ahead of the crowd. Paul Robertson, in a blogpost in Phocas advices that business intelligence tools are a must to make informed and accurate decision. He puts forth 5 indications that will help you identify if your business need to upgrade its BI:

• Your idea of business intelligence is a spreadsheet.

• Your business intelligence process is largely manual.

• It takes few days to draw insight from your data.

• You can’t perform in-depth analysis of your data.

• You don’t know how well your business is performing. 

If any of them is affirmative for you then it’s time for better BI. For more insights click on the link http://www.phocassoftware.com/5-Signs-Your-Company-Needs-Better-Business-Intelligence

Lack of planning and special interest pressure among politicians resulted in failure of building the necessary infrastructure required for adequate water retention which lead to water crisis in the state of California. Governor Brown is trying to control who can use water and for what it can be used efficiently. Charging people for water won’t be of any help but through the use of technology things like underground leaks, non-revenue water loss can be identified specially by using the ‘Night-time Flow Analysis’ solution given from Esri. This analysis works by using an optimal time to analyse for leaks mostly at night when consumption is low comparatively. It is a configuration of ArcGIS platform which includes sample data. The accuracy of leak detection depends on customer’s pipe network. The solution responds in real time and is a freely available configuration used to observe base flow conditions and control water crisis.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/shawn-gordon/325636/where-did-all-water-go

Choosing the right Hadoop distribution can be a tricky process. There are 4 basic categories that businesses should look at for specific qualifying criteria.
1. Performance
Hadoop is widely chosen as a data platform due to its high performance achieved by replacing the stock MapReduce by Apache Spark. However not all operations need such superior hardware and a business must choose its hardware on basis of the operations it hopes to perform.
2. Dependability
When looking for a distribution, dependability is a significant but rare feature. Only few implementations in Hadoop can guarantee a system availability of 99.999%. Look for a distribution that provides Self-Healing, No Downtime Upon Failure, Tolerance of Multiple Failure, 100% Commodity Hardware, No Additional Hardware Requirements, Ease of Use, Data Protection and Disaster Recovery.
3. Manageability
Look for a distribution that has intuitive administrative tools that assist in management, troubleshooting, job placement and monitoring.
4. Data Access
Gathering and storing data is just the beginning of the process. What really matters is that the stored data must me easily accessible for further processing. Look for a distribution that provides
• Full access to the Hadoop file system API
• Full POSIX read/write/update access to files
• Direct developer control over key resources
• Secure, enterprise grade search
• Comprehensive data access tooling
Hopefully these four specification along with your criterions will enable you to choose the best Hadoop distribution for you.

For more information visit:
http://www.smartdatacollective.com/davemendle/324791/four-considerations-when-choosing-hadoop-distribution

SME’s have a large number of advantages in using big data technology and it is found to play an important role for them recently. Firstly it is important to understand that what big data is. Big Data is defined as a popular term to describe exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured and is important for businesses. It is a series of combined data lakes used for more accurate analyses. SME’s should move to Big Data storage solutions because storing the new data generated each day is becoming expensive for the companies and its increasing their costs. When SME’s start using such combined datasets, they will have enough data to analyse and improve their decision making. Interest in big data has reached new heights for SME’s as they take their chances of capturing more information from everywhere possible. SME’s can also use big data to attract new customers, tap new markets and reduce costs. Some more ways how big data technology can help SME’s prosper are by using big data tools which increase their ability to use predictive analytics for decision making. It also helps SME’s move unused data into different less expensive places. Hence SME’s should definitely be looking forward to such big data technology for improved performance.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bruce-robbins/329520/big-data-smes

Self-service analytics softwares are being used by businesses now and it has given rise to a new need, data governance plans. These new softwares provide a host of benefits. These have made accessing and analyzing data a lot easier coupled with the ability to feed bad data back into enterprises. A competition has been brewing between software vendors regarding improved data governance. Companies are launching business intelligence products that stress data governance. Such softwares can be built around the company's pre-existing enterprise data infrastructure bringing multiple data sources into a common data warehouse accessible by the entire organization. Read more at: http://www.dataversity.net/adding-data-governance-tools-to-self-service-analytics/

With the marketers trying to woo customers with all their grit, it's customer data that has proved to be their friend indeed. Data driven marketing increases the ROI to many fold. This is now a well-documented fact. Larisa Bedgood (author) in an article in the blog Datamentors talks about the following 3 ways to extract more revenue from data driven marketing:

• Break Down the Silos

• A 360-degree customer view

• Personalized experience is what customers want. 

For an extensive account of these 3 keys to higher ROI hit the link http://www.datamentors.com/blog/3-ways-data-driven-marketing-drives-higher-roi

Organizations are now facing a change in the way they get their business intelligence services. Initially it was the IT department that provided business intelligence services, with all powers vested upon them. With business intelligence tools becoming increasingly accessible and users having knowledge of data and processes, IT departments are no more the only source of business intelligence services making self-service business intelligence the next step. The market for self-service business intelligence analytics tools is growing pretty fast. With these tools, business users can access pooled data from various sources, leverage those and produce business insights. Self-service analytics comes with several advantages. With self-service business intelligence, data has lower turnaround times leading to increase in decision-making processes and productivity. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/the-drive-towards-self-service-business-intelligence

Big Data has always presented new avenues to make huge profit in almost every sector. However, it would be our short sightedness to associate big data benefits only for profit seeking organizations. Non-profit organizations are also increasingly using/gathering huge data to drive the social change they aim at. Sima Thakkar, content marketing manager at Umbel and founder of goodindiangirl.com, enlighten us about the big data projects carried out by different NGO's. To have a look at all these interesting big data initiatives driving the change we all want, follow the link http://www.smartdatacollective.com/sthakkar/323866/when-big-hearts-meet-big-data-6-nonprofits-using-data-change-world

Through predictive algorithms, text analytics in Big Data can discover a wide range of happening things about a business. On the positive side, text analytics can be fed a lot of unstructured text. Customer experience management, brand monitoring, compliance and brand management can be done with the help of text analytics. This was of great use during the US election as it found out reasons behind interested voters.  Though on the negative side, text analytics tool get confused for words which has a dual meaning in the same culture or for different cultures. Hence, it should be made such that it can stand up successful for different sentiments too which many are trying to establish now. Read more about this article by Elliot Pannaman (International Events Director) at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/maximizing-business-performance-with-text-analytics