WEBINAR: Turbocharge Data Science with Pivotal HAWQ and the Hortonworks Data Platform - May 27 2015

In this webinar you'll learn how Pivotal HAWQ, one of the world’s most advanced enterprise SQL on Hadoop technology, coupled with the Hortonworks Data Platform, the only 100% open source Apache Hadoop data platform, can turbocharge your Data Science efforts.

Together, Pivotal HAWQ and the Hortonworks Data Platform provide businesses with a Modern Data Architecture for IT transformation.

Given by Matt Morgan - VP of Global Product Marketing at Hortonworks, Michael Cucchi - Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Pivotal

Register here

WEBINAR: Get a Game-Changing Performance Advantage with Intel SSDs and Aerospike - Wednesday May 13, 2015

Learn how to maximize the price/performance of your Intel Solid-State Drives (SSDs) with Aerospike.

Frank Ober of Intel’s Solutions Group will review how he achieved 1+ million transactions per second on a single dual socket Xeon Server with SSDs using Aerospike's open source tools for benchmarking. The presentation will include a live demo showing the performance of a sample system.

Frank will cover:

The state of Key-value Stores on modern SSDs
What choices you make in your selection process of hardware that will most benefit a consistent deployment of Aerospike
How to run an Aerospike mesh on a single machine
Key learnings and Total Cost of Ownership choices that will make your deployment more effective long term

Register here.

SLIDESHOW: 20 Hybrid Cloud Questions CIOs Must Ask

Whether you’re looking for pure cloud applications or seeking to potentially migrate only a portion of your IT infrastructure to the cloud, here are 20 hybrid cloud questions that CIOs must ask, according to ScienceLogic. See it here on +Information Management

The Nexus of Big Data: Context

You know that data lake you recently started filling? Its data ecosystem is already well on its way to a catastrophic tipping point. Read about it here on the +MIOsoft blog

5 questions marketers should ask their Big Data

We hear this often: big data means big headaches for marketers due to the overwhelming volumes of information that are hard to sort through to find the right data that is then actionable. Continue reading here on +Big Data Made Simple

The 7 Most Data-Rich Companies In The World

Some companies really get big data. Not only do they realise size matters – they understand you also have to know what to do with it. Read this interesting blog by +Bernard Marr on Data Science Central.

SELECT INTO and non-nullable columns

Great blog post by Erik Darling on +Brent Ozar Unlimited about the uses of the SELECT INTO command and what you have to do in order to use it.

Joining the Big Data Revolution

The first step to participating in the big data revolution is to take stock of how one’s organization currently approaches the process of planning, strategizing, and making decisions. Continue reading here on +Data Informed

WEBINAR: Designing Information Applications in the Era of IoT - 12th May 2015

Register here on the +SD Times website.

The demand for smarter data-driven apps powered by embedded “intelligence” continues to grow. In fact, Forrester predicts smart computing software will become a $48 billion market, while Gartner projects that 25% of analytic capabilities will be embedded in business applications this year.  From personalized portals, to wearables, to connected devices that have been wired up to the Internet of Things (IoT), the data that will feed – and be consumed by a new generation of information apps – is all around us. Yet, just as moving to a mobile-first design mindset required some new skills and tools, designing information apps in the era of IoT is very much an art and a science.

During this webcast you will learn:

The top use cases for embedded analytics, and how an “analytic process” can guide the transformation of big (and small) data into useful insights and interactions
How our integrated design approach – based on open source foundations and rich APIs – shorten the time to connect to new data sources, deploy apps securely, and display interactive data visualization at scale, in any app, on any device (even a smartwatch!)
Why good information design and emerging best practices for embedding analytics are key to delivering more personalized information, driving user adoption, and delighting end-customers

How to Use Analytics to Show Social ROI for C-Level Execs

In the early days, social was considered a novelty. Some brands dove headfirst into social content and earned some early results, but their efforts were unguided and undirected.  Continue reading here on +Adweek

Customer Data: Designing for Transparency and Trust

With the explosion of digital technologies, companies are sweeping up vast quantities of data about consumers’ activities, both online and off.  Continue reading here on +Harvard Business Review

WEBINAR: Winning with Analytics in the Cleveland Indians’ Front Office - 30th April 2015

In this 45-minute webinar, learn how self-service analytics is helping the Cleveland Indians improve cross-organizational communication and data-driven decisions.

When you think of analytics in sports, you probably think of player performance evaluation, scouting, and game-day decisions. But for a professional athletics organization to be successful, data also needs to play a large role off the field.

During this 45-minute webinar, Neil Weiss, Sr. Vice President of Technology and Chief Information Officer will discuss the successful implementation of self-service analytics in the Cleveland Indians’ front office. He’ll also share the dashboards his team uses to gain insight on how to attract fans, get them through the gates, and keep them coming back for more.

In this webinar, learn how to:

Empower employees across the organization to gain new insights into ballpark operations, marketing, ticketing, and more
Inform executives and other key stakeholders with accurate and consistent access to data
Test and accelerate decisions by allowing users to easily drill down and sort their data
Nurture an organization-wide culture of business and sports analytics

Register here

WEBINAR: Solve Today's Big Data Challenges - April 28th 2015

Too often Big Data is talked about as a “problem” because it cannot be easily processed with traditional systems based on relational databases. In reality, it should be considered a tremendous opportunity to enhance and even transform how you run your business.

Processing Big Data can lead to innovations, such as new pricing models, new ways to engage with your customers and partners, operational efficiencies, compliance and risk monitoring and new market opportunities. In fact, according to IDG, in 2015, 42% of organizations are still stuck in neutral, still only planning to get started on Big Data projects.

Attend this live webinar to learn from mistakes commonly made by others and ways you can successfully transform Big Data into insights.

You'll learn how to:

Avoid common pitfalls in Big Data projects
Discover hidden insights within Big Data to detect patterns or root causes
Improve decisions by enriching information for decision makers
Operationalize Big Data to make it an integral part of everyday workflows
Enable a more agile and analytics-driven business culture

Unstructured Data: The Other Side of Analytics

Everyone is obsessed with “analytics.”  I cannot keep up with what the technology pundits and consultants are telling me about analytics, no matter how hard I try. Read here on +Forbes

How to Overcome Hadoop Growing Pains

When your Hadoop project moves into production mode, you need more powerful capabilities than the default analytic tools that come with Hadoop distributions. Read here on +Information Management

Structured Data Ain't Dead

Structured data and relational databases remain tops, and 60 percent of organizations have no plans to leverage Hadoop in the next three years, new research finds.  Read it here on +Information Management

Big Data Demands New Dialog Between Business & IT

Big data's biggest winners will likely be those that can master both a cultural shift as well as a technology evolution.  Read here on +Information Management

How to Impose Structure on Unstructured Data

Evan A. Schnidman, founder and CEO of Prattle Analytics, describes an alternate method for analyzing text and a more sophisticated approach to sentiment analysis.  Read about it here on +Data Informed

Caterpillar Breaks Ground On Big Data, Analytics Unit

Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of mining and construction equipment, is creating a new big data and business analytics unit to drive innovation. Read about it here on +Information Management

WEBINAR: Learn about New Features for ER/Studio – April 30

To register go to this Registration Form

WEBINAR: Learn about New Features for ER/Studio – April 30

Don’t miss the big news for ER/Studio! Save the date and register now for the April 30th webinar to see what’s coming next for Embarcadero’s leading data architecture and modeling solution. ER/Studio can improve agility and collaboration in your data architecture. Learn about product plans that include:

• Team Server glossary enhancements
• New Repository capabilities
• Advanced search updates

How Big Data Is Changing The Retail Industry

Big Data's influence is felt in all aspects of 21st century life in everything from government to education to business. Read about the impact of Big Data on the Retail industry here on +MyTechLogy.Com

A look at the Hadoop landscape through an investor’s eyes

When it comes to Silicon Valley, it is the venture capitalists that are the big-name Hollywood producers. Convince one of them to get on board, and your dreams of digital riches could come true.  Read about it here on +SD Times

Understand Customer Interactions Across All Channels

Companies are combining customer data from different sources for insights not possible when data is trapped in silos, writes Azita Martin of Datameer here on +Data Informed

5 Habits Of Effective Data-Driven Organizations

Five common characteristics that a data driven organisation should have.  Read it here on +VentureBeat 

Teradata rolls out platform updates designed to connect Hadoop ecosystem

The data-warehousing provider introduced the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2800, expanded Teradata QueryGrid integrations, and an enhancement to the Teradata database.  Read about it here on +ZDNet

Business Intelligence And Analytics Trend Towards Self-Service At The Gartner Summit

At this annual Gartner Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics Summit, three themes resonated: Self-service analytics is white hot and growing.  Read about it here on +BusinessIntelligence.com

SLIDESHOW: Top 11 Business Intelligence Software Companies

What are the leading business intelligence (BI) software companies? Forrester Research evaluated vendors against 60 criteria – which were groups into three high-level buckets: (1) Strength of current offering; (2) overall strategy and (3) market presence. Here's a recap of the findings on +Information Management .

Man vs. Machine: Is the Big Data Battle Valid?

Even as we enter the age of machine to machine (M2M) learning and communications, a successful big data strategy still requires domain experts -- yes, real people who are real experts.  Read about it here on +Information Management

Using Big Data Approaches to Disaster Response

Technology enables us to solve problems that contribute to the improvement of society's quality of life in general. Marcus Borba describes6 projects at universities in both Japan and the USA that leverages Big Data and Data Analytics to transform disaster management for individuals and for society at-large.

Read it here on +Datafloq

5 Steps to Datafy Your Business and Be Successful

The implications of the datafication of organizations and our lives are enormous. They probably are far more profound than we might expect today and therefore it is important to understand how you can datafy your business. This will enable you to be prepared for a data-driven society and be able to deal with your competitors. Here are five steps that will help you.

Read about it here on +Datafloq

Amazon Machine Learning – Make Data-Driven Decisions at Scale

Amazon just announced a new AWS service for machine learning that will let users make real-time predictions at scale. It looks fairly capable and apparently, is designed for users that aren't necessarily machine learning experts. This post in Amazon's AWS blog offers a good overview of what you can do with this new service and how to get started.

Can Workday's Analytics Reduce Employee Turnover?

Workday is pushing new data science and machine learning to help businesses improve talent acquisition and employee retention. The big question: Can data-driven decisions really help businesses to find, hire, motivate and retain staff?  Find it here on +Information Management

Cloud-based Business Intelligence Goes Mainstream

More than 50 percent of businesses currently use or plan to use cloud-based business intelligence, but several common hurdles have limited cloud-based BI adoption in some organizations, according to just-released survey results.  Read here on +Information Management

Redefine BI to Unleash Big Data's Power

Here are the three key elements to a successful business intelligence modernization strategy in this article from +Information Management

Self Service: A Data Scientist Productivity Boost

To make data scientists far more productive, it's time to embrace a new class of self-service data preparation solutions -- which simplify, automate and reduce the manual, error-prone steps that used to slow down the analytic process.

Read about it here on +Information Management

JPMorgan Big Data Algorithm Identifies Rogue Employees

JPMorgan is rolling out a program to identify rogue employees before they go astray  Read about it here on +Information Management

How to Become a Data Scientist for Free

Great article by +Zeeshan Usmani on Data Science Central here:

7 Key Ingredients for Knock-out Data Visualizations

Bernard Marr offers tips for ensuring that your data visualizations accurately reflect the data behind them and provide decision makers with the information they need.

Read it here on +Data Informed

MySQL Percona snaps up Tokutek to move onto MongoDB and NoSQL turf

Percona's acquisition of database company Tokutek, announced today, gives it a foot in both the MySQL and NoSQL camps with distributions and services.  Read about it here on +ZDNet

IBM, Apple Partner on Watson Health Cloud

IBM, backed by new Watson Health Cloud, partners with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic on healthcare patient data analysis.  Read about it here on +Information Management

If Algorithms Know All, How Much Should Humans Help?

Data science offers a lot of promise in many fields, but for now, it seems wise to keep human beings in the loop.

Read this interesting article here on +The New York Times

Big Data Applications Drive NoSQL Adoption

As businesses accelerate big data project deployments, demand for NoSQL as the underlying engine is growing about 35.1 percent annually, new research suggests.

Read about it here on +Information Management

Big Data Platforms: How To Migrate From Relational Databases to NoSQL

Practical guidance to help you migrate from a relational database management system (RDBMS) schema structure to a big data platform (NoSQL database implementation).

Read part 1 here and part 2 here on +Information Management

Deploying the same database to many different RDBMSs

With the idea of a generic Dacpac defined by international standard, comes the potential for a Visual Studio developer to use SSDT to create a generic database model to a SQL-92 compliant standard that can then be deployed to any one of the major RDBMSs.

Read it here on +simple talk

Skip the New Coke approach: Recycle classic IT methods for big data

Instead of coming with a totally new formula for your next big data initiative, try adapting one of these time-tested classic IT methods.

Read it here on +Tech Republic

Learning to See Data

A fascinating look at data (especially large quantities of it) and the suggestion that it's not what you look at by how you look a it that matters.  Read it here on +The New York Times

What Technology & Tool Skills Do Data Scientists Jobs Require?

An analysis of job descriptions used to hire a Data Scientist to show the most requested skills.  Hopefully the list should not be a surprise.

Read it here on Data Science Central

The Hierarchy of Needs for Analytics

This article goes through a 5 layer pyramid of analytical need which is based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Read it here on +Information Management

The rise of the data scientist: How it makes analytics a business driver

A discussion of the rise of the data scientist and the role they play promoting analytics to drive the business.

Find it here on +Enterprise Apps Tech

6 Data-Driven Ways to Create Better Content for Your Campaign

What you need to know about data that drives better content.  Read about it here on +Infinit Datum

Hypothesis Testing & Experimenting in Business

An interesting blog by Steve Miller where he looks at hypothesis testing and now that can be used in business (avoiding some of the pitfalls)

Read it here on +Information Management

IBM's $3B IoT Bet Seeks to Monetize Weather Data

International Business Machines Corp. announced that it’s joining with Weather Co. to build tools that help companies in the retail, insurance and utilities industries anticipate and prepare for bad weather.

Read more about it here on +Information Management

4 Ways to Avoid a Data Swamp

Ron Bodkin of Think Big Analytics offers tips to ensure your data lake meets your ongoing data analytics needs.

I agree with him on his point about understanding the value of metadata - if you get that right you have a far better understand of what you have and what you need to change or add to grow you data in the right way or direction.

Read it here on +Data Informed

Big Data Pushes Deeper Into Oil and Gas

An article about another push into a vertical market - this time oil and gas.  I think if more companies concentrate on providing market specific solutions the spread of bag data will increase but more importantly it will deliver results (which is often sadly lacking from some in house big data projects).

Read about it here on +Information Management

Informatica Acquired for $5.3B Amid Big Data, Cloud Shifts

Private equity firm Permira and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board agreed to buy Informatica Corp. in a $5.3 billion transaction, the largest leveraged buyout this year.

Read about it here on +Information Management

Five Ways How Startups Can Leverage Big Data

Big Data is not only for large organizations and you don’t need to have terabytes or petabytes of data to develop a Big Data strategy. Instead, any organization, small or big, startup or public company, can leverage the exponential data growth the world is currently experiencing.

Continue reading here on +Datafloq

Data Mining Concepts

Data mining is the process of discovering actionable information from large sets of data. Data mining uses mathematical analysis to derive patterns and trends that exist in data. Typically, these patterns cannot be discovered by traditional data exploration because the relationships are too complex or because there is too much data.

This is a Microsoft view of what Data Mining is.  Read it here.

8 Hadoop articles that you should read

+Vincent Granville draws our attention to 8 articles that are centred on Hadoop that we should all read on Hadoop 360.  I found the seventh one "Practical illustration of map-reduce hadoop-style on real data" particularly interesting.

You can find the list here.

When it Comes to Data, Small is the New Big

A look at how small quantities of data can be used effectively here on +Information Management

Sponsored Bike Ride

I am going to do a sponsored bike ride for the Berkshire MS Therapy Centre in early May. I will be cycling for 20 minutes using a special exercise bike that allows me to sit in my wheelchair and then my feet are strapped into it to cycle. You can see one here: http://www.motomed.com/…/mode…/motomed-viva2/properties.html

If you can help please sponsor me at this link:http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MandyParmenter

Thanks xxx heart emoticon heart emoticon

The Wisdom of Crowds: Using Big Data to Optimize Pricing

Interesting article discussing the principle that large numbers of people can give quite precise answers to different questions and how it relates to Big Data and Product Pricing.

Read about it here on +Data Informed

Big Data Solving Big Problems

Whether you’re involved in the business or tech industries, you’ve probably heard a lot of discussions regarding ‘big data.’ But, what exactly is big data and how is it being used to solve big problems?

Continue reading here on +Forbes

11 interesting Big Data case studies in Telecom

Telecom companies are sitting on a gold mine, as they have plenty of data. But what they require is a proper digging and analysis of both structured and unstructured data to get deeper insights into customer behaviour, their service usage patterns, preferences, and interests real-time.

Continue reading here on +Big Data Made Simple

The surprising things you don’t know about Big Data

Some interesting facts and figures on the subject of Big Data and Cloud computing.  Certainly some interesting facts that I didn't realise.

You can find it here on +Big Data Made Simple

Sentiment Analysis: Everything You Need to Know

Technology has found a way to make use of the enormous growth of data in recent years that led to big data, and we call it data analytics. With the explosive growth of users in social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, not only data through content is being collected or curated but also a lot of sentiment from users – opinions, emotions and feedback.

Continue reading here on +Infinit Datum

5 reasons to turn to Spark for big data analytics

Smoothing the way to advanced and real-time analytics on Hadoop, Apache Spark is fast becoming the next big thing in big data

Read about the 5 reasons here on +InfoWorld 

(Really) Taking On Customer Experience

Customer experience (CX) has rapidly moved from an ideal to an operational mandate.

I know myself that no company can afford to ignore the customer nor their experience if they want to either retain existing customers or get new ones - a bad review does much more damage than the good a good review will do.

Reading about it here on +Information Management

You might want to also read this article here from +Information Management again which also talks about Customer Experience and how to connect the various customer experiences across all channels and parts of your business.

​Hortonworks founder: Ambari 2.0 is as big a deal as Hadoop 2.0

From the Atlas security project, to Ambari 2.0 and SequenceIQ, Hadoop veteran and Hortonworks co-founder Arun Murthy discusses some big-data themes of the moment.

Analytics and the Customer Journey

Competition for customers is more intense today than ever before, and companies struggle to differentiate themselves from the competition.

Continue reading here on +Information Management

Fulfilling the Promise of Big Data with HTAP

It’s clear that the promise of big data still outweighs the reality. Until now, many businesses have found an effective way to store their data, but have limited means to act on it. Much of the problem lies with businesses’ using separate systems for data storage and data processing.

Continue reading here on +Data Informed

Introduction to Apache Spark

Today, Spark is being adopted by major players like Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! Many organizations run Spark on clusters with thousands of nodes. According to the Spark FAQ, the largest known cluster has over 8000 nodes. Indeed, Spark is a technology well worth taking note of and learning about.

Interesting article from +Toptal

Hadoop as a Service (HDaaS) Reality Check

Big data isn't just for big business. Thanks to emerging Hadoop as a Service (HDaaS) platforms, small and midsize companies are positioned to ride the big data wave, according to a Research and Markets report.

Continue here on +Information Management

Real-Time Analytics and the Internet of Things are a Perfect Match

The Internet of Things is here and is here to stay. With billions of devices already connected and another trillion coming our way in the next decade, organizations should prepare themselves for a data flood. A data flood that can generate real-time insights in how the organization is performing. Using a plethora of data sources, such as smart meters, in-store sensors, medical devices, automotive sensors and wearables, organization can start to optimize their business.

Continue reading here on +Datafloq

SLIDESHOW: Hadoop as a Service: 18 Cloud Options

Hadoop is a cornerstone technology for many big data projects and applications. But many organizations lack the time, expertise and budget to build and optimize their own Hadoop clusters. Not by coincidence, the Hadoop-as-a-service market (i.e., Hadoop in the cloud) will grow nearly 85 percent annually from 2014 to 2019, according to Research and Markets. Here’s a sampling of options cloud-based Hadoop option.

Find it here on +Information Management