Your daily digest of “All Things Big Data” gathered, collected and researched by your very own 10Fold Big Data Practice team.
Big Data
In a two-part series about how technology is helping companies reach gender equality, Kieran King, Global Vice President of Loyalty Strategy at Skillsoft, is interviewed in Forbes about how Big Data is helping companies improve their diversity efforts. Kim notes that the sources of such big data is extensive, especially if things like race, gender, age, location and tenure within the department are being examined. Companies analyze this data through a combination of analytical software tools, as well as the talents of data scientists that can help create diversity strategies. Additionally, Kim notes that a lot of research has proven that balance leadership in an organization results in statistically outperforming peers/competitors, especially those in a traditional male-dominated leadership structure. Organizations that focused on building out their Diversity and Inclusion programs through data analytics showed the best predictive capability of company performance. Kim also explains that big data can support building the pipelines for women in leadership by identifying qualified candidates that may be outside the traditional structure that organizations might look.
ComputerWorld examines the big data frenzy of recent, noting trends like the data lake and the tools, such as Hadoop, that propose to make the process of creating a data lake an easy process. However, Gartner predicts that by 2018, “70 percent of Hadoop deployments will fail to meet cost-savings and revenue-generation objectives due to skill and integration challenges,” and “80 percent of data lakes will not include effective metadata management capabilities, making them inefficient.” The big secret to succeeding at data management is being able to acquire, ingest, transform, secure, master, govern and blend it before consuming it.
How Big Data is Helping Move Women To The C-Suite – Forbes
Big Data. Big Value. Big Promise. Big Secret. – Computer World
IoT
Among the news coming out of Mobile World Congress this week is the news of Cisco’s inevitable purchase of IoT technology company, Jasper Technologies, for $1.4 billion. However, until this agreement is made official, Jasper is still signing more deals with partners to make its IoT technologies work even better. The company is partnering with mobile tech vendor, Germalto, home security system manufacturer, Telular, and Post Luxembourg, a delivery and network company that provides mobile service to France’s PSA Peugeot Citroen.
ARM has revealed what is described as an “ultra- efficient” processor for use in embedded applications and IoT connected devices. The company claims that the new processor brings the performance and efficiency of ARMv8-A architecture to small embedded and IoT systems. The Cortex-A32 is designed to be configurable in multiple ways, from single-core to quad-core, adding a level of scalability which allows it to be used for a range of IoT applications.
IoT vendor Jasper announces more partnerships – ComputerWorld
ARM unveils ‘ultra-efficient’ Cortex-A32 processor for IoT applications – ZDNet
eCommerce
Online sales accounted for more than half of total retail sales growth in 2015, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Huffington Post recommends 17 tools they believe will help eCommerce platforms become more successful. Some notable tools include: Clicky (a web analytics tool that allows users to access system information in real time), Chalmark (a user interaction tool that allows users to get feedback on designs before those designs are implemented), and PrestaShop (an open source eCommerce content management tool that comes with over 275 for any size business).
17 Ecommerce Tools that Will Drive Sales and Generate Revenue – Huffpost Business
Software Defined Networking
One of the hot topics earlier this month at Avaya’s annual Executive Partner Forum in San Diego was software defined networking. SDNs provide an excellent opportunity to gain share on Cisco and the rest of the field for Avaya resellers. Network World and Avaya brainstormed five steps that organizations should take to deploy an SDN.
- Simplify the environment
- Deploy a network fabric to enable edge automation
- Enable application automation
- Enable orchestration
- Enable open orchestration
5 steps to a software defined network – Networld World