ABCtech #146 04JAN13 InfoTech and Analytics

ABCtech #146 04JAN13 InfoTech and Analytics

Once flooded with paper and where to store it. Now choking with data and how to use it!  Corporate leaders, professions, and governments are recognizing the merit of “data-based” decision making and data as an asset.  They are proclaiming policies of open data for increasing revenue and decreasing costs, improving productivity and reducing errors. Welcome another New Age, where machines are being programmed to digest data and aide or automate decision making.

As demonstrated at last year’s Analytics, Big Data, and The Cloud Conference in Edmonton, Alberta’s IT infrastructure is mature, large data sets are accessible – or almost, and Analytics is growing fast across all sectors of Alberta industry, professions and government. The Conference generated Several Resolutions for continuing to advance Alberta’s Analytics industry.  This year’s Analytics, Big Data, and The Cloud II Conference will be hosted May 13th-15th simultaneously in BOTH Edmonton and Calgary and will again feature the broadcasting of keynotes worldwide via webTV.

To aide you, and help further advance Alberta’s Analytics industry, ABCtech is introducing this seasonal newsletter – a synthesis and composite of news and views, apps and issues re: analytics, big data, and the cloud. Your comments, questions and contributions are welcome. Contact info@ABCtech.ca                                      – Editor:  Peter Kelly

       FLASH – The Future is Now

eWEEKnews TWEETCHAT. Wednesday, Jan. 16 at Noon MST, “Big Data Analytics in the Cloud: Is the Future Now?”  FOR MORE

TOP INFOTECH PREDICTIONS.  Gartner Groups predictions for 2013 and beyond.  FOR MORE

      ANALYTICS – DATA AS POWER

“CONSUMERIZATION” – CONSUMING IT?   A decade’s talk about business/IT alignment and strategic benefit was just talk, and users have taken over.  FOR MORE

“SOLVING” PROBLEMS.   The tools that technology provides mean we know more and we understand more about previously-thought-unsolvable problems. With this data informing our course we can describe the kind of world we want to live in and then without airy-fairyness or wishful thinking, go after it. It’s the greatest opportunity that has ever been offered any generation. FOR MORE

HEALTHCARE ECONOMICS.   If US healthcare were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year. Two-thirds of that would be in the form of reducing US healthcare expenditure by about 8 percent. FOR MORE

BIG DATA’S SURPRISING USES.  From Lady Gaga to the CIA.  FOR MORE 

MONITORING INNOVATION.   Global Pulse is an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General, harnessing today’s new world of digital data and real-time analytics to gain a better understanding of changes in human well-being. Global Pulse aims to contribute a future in which access to better information sooner makes it possible to keep international development on track, protect the world’s most vulnerable populations, and strengthen resilience to global shocks. Global Pulse functions as an innovation laboratory, bringing together expertise from UN agencies, governments, academia, and the private sector to research, develop, test and share tools and approaches for harnessing real-time data for more effective and efficient policy action.  FOR MORE

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.   The amount of data in the world is exploding – large portion of this comes from the interactions over mobile devices being used by people in the developing world – people whose needs and habits have been poorly understood until now. Researchers and policymakers are beginning to realize the potential for channeling these torrents of data into actionable information that can be used to identify needs & provide services for the benefit of low-income populations. This discussion note is a Call-to-action for stakeholders for concerted action to ensure that this data helps the individuals and communities who create it. FOR MORE

  WORKFORCE GAPS & FORECASTS

WORKFORCE PROJECTIONS – McKINSEY REPORT.   The McKinsey Global Institute projects that the United States needs 140,000 to 190,000 more workers with “deep analytical” expertise and 1.5 million more data-literate managers, whether retrained or hired. FOR MORE

CANADA LAGGING – SAS STUDY.   Canadian companies are lagging international ones on the adoption of data management and analytics technology. While more than two thirds (76 per cent) of international companies interviewed by SAS have already adopted technologies, fewer than half (48 per cent) of Canadian respondent have, and 15 per cent have no adoption plans for the future. Also troubling is that decisions on data strategy are being relegated to mid-level IT managers vs the c-suite, which has potential dangerous implications for data governance. FOR MORE and EVEN MORE.

TALENT GAP – ACCENTURE STUDY.   The use of business analytics is spreading fast, bringing enormous benefits to companies in industries from natural resources to electronic media. But as new research from the Accenture Institute for High Performance demonstrates, when it comes to analytics talent—people with the ability to use statistics, quantitative analysis and information-modeling techniques to make business decisions—a critical mismatch between supply and demand is looming.  FOR MORE

ANALYTICS – IS NOT IT.  In their quest to extract insights from the massive amounts of data now available from internal and external sources, many companies are spending heavily on IT tools and hiring data scientists. Yet most are struggling to achieve a worthwhile return. That’s because they treat their big data and analytics projects the same way they treat all IT projects, not realizing that the two are completely different. FOR MORE

         GLOBAL ANALYTICS SERVICES

SMARTER ANALYTICS.   Smarter Analytics is IBM’s approach to business analytics for extracting insights from enterprise data and all the big data that is continuously flowing in from a variety of new sources. FOR MORE andEVEN MORE and MORE YET

GARTNER CAN HELP.   Gartner, Inc. a leading information technology research and advisory company with global reach, delivers technology-related insight supporting decision making for its customers. FOR MORE

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ANALYTICS.   Analytics is the most compelling competitive differentiator in business today. Few organizations, however, are confident in their ability to successfully build, fund, and prioritize a competitive analytics initiative. IIA is a research firm dedicated to defining the path to analytics excellence. FOR MORE

LANGUAGE COUNTS

CONSIDER – COMMON DEFINITIONS.   TechAmerica’s report maintains that the more we form up common definitions the better we will be able to articulate and move out towards common visions. FOR MORE

SAS’s DEFINITIONS of: ANALYTICS,  BIG DATA,  &  THE CLOUD

WEBOPEDIA REFERENCE.   Webopedia is a free online dictionary for words, phrases and abbreviations that are related to computer and Internet technology. Webopedia provides easy-to-understand definitions in plain language, avoiding the use of heavy jargon when possible so that the site is accessible to users with a wide range of computer knowledge. Full-time experienced editors gather information from standards bodies, leading technology companies, universities, professional online technical publications, white papers and professionals working in the field. FOR MORE

WHAT’S A CLOUD – webopedia.   A “Cloud” refers to a public or semi-public space on transmission lines (such as T1 or T3) that exists between the end points of a transmission. Data that is transmitted across a WAN enters the network from one end point using a standard protocol suite such as Frame Relay and then enters the network cloud where it shares space with other data transmissions. The data emerges from the cloud — where it may be encapsulated, translated and transported in myriad ways — in the same format as when it entered the cloud. A network cloud exists because when data is transmitted across a packet-switched network in a packet, no two packets will necessarily follow the same physical path. The unpredictable area that the data enters before it is received is the cloud.  FOR MORE

 TOOLS OF THE TRADE

KAGGLE: HOW IT WORKS.  Explaining predictive analytics and associated competitions. VIDEO

THE KNOWLEDGE CENTRE FOR DATA BASED PROFESSIONALS

ORACLE REINFORCES ITS CLOUD PORTFOLIO.   Oracle is reinforcing its cloud portfolio by, for instance, offering computing capacity that firms can rent for their own needs and by creating “private clouds” that sit behind a company’s firewall but whose hardware and software are managed by Oracle. These could appeal to banks and others that need tight safeguards on data for regulatory reasons. FOR MORE

BUILDING AN AWS TOOLKIT.   The primary SDKs, IDE Toolkits, and Command Line Tools for developing and managing AWS applications.  Tools for helping developers create and manage applications built on AWS. Both Amazon and the AWS developer community have produced a large number of tools to assist developers optimize their productivity by making good use of AWS. Browse the tools here  FOR MORE and EVEN MORE

MANAGING BIG DATA ECOSYSTEMS.  The landscape is fairly crowded and overwhelming with ecosystems for managing Big Data: Storm and S4 are different ways as compared with Hadoop MapReduce. MongoDB and CouchDB that offer another method to deal with document-based contents. Cassandra, Hypertable, Infobright, and BigTable are counterparts to HBase. Key-value stores like Voldemort and Riak enable data storing schemalessly. Hadoop competes with appliances such as Netezza, Vertica, and Greenplum, For data import, Talend and HParser can replace Sqoop and Flume in Hadoop. There are also in-memory databases like SAP Hana. Other competitors include BigQuery, Drill, Redshift, HPCC, etc. FOR MORE