Big Data
AEG Live, the production company that puts on the Coachella music festival, is working with app developer Aloompa to create an iOS app and Android app for the upcoming festival. Aloompa hopes that when Coachella-goers have opened the app and their Bluetooth is turned on, the company’s beacon technology can track their location down to a foot. AEG claims it is trying to leverage this data in a way that’s “not creepy,” nor invasive. Instead, the festival organizers can use this location data as a gut check, or can compare which artists app users favorited, starred, or scheduled, and which artists’ sets were actually attended. The data is also used by promoters to inform their decisions about booking artists that better resonate with a specific audience. It is suggested that AEG is employing this new technique after the success that Bonaroo had when compiling their 2015 lineup.
According to a TechRadar report from forrester, many businesses are looking to make changes to their companies by implementing streaming analytics and self-service into the way they do business. This is largely in part to the boom recently seen with enterprises incorporating more data adoption into their everyday businesses. Forrester defines stream analytics software as a technology that “can filter, aggregate, enrich, and analyze data from multiple sources. For the report, Forrester looked at about 20 different technology categories that include big data. In addition, they spoke with multiple vendors and experts in the field, and found that five specific technology categories ranked the highest in terms of customer interest. Those categories are data integration, data services and APIs, in-memory computing, data preparation and discovery, advanced analytics, and monitoring and administration.
HOW THE COACHELLA APP USES YOUR DATA IN A ‘NOT CREEPY’ WAY – Mac World
Big Data’s Priorities: Streaming Analytics, Self-Service – InformationWeek
IoT/ IIoT
The Internet of Things is changing everything, or it soon will, and few companies exemplify this trend more than industrial titan General Electric, which announced in January that it will pull up stakes from its long-established corporate headquarters in Connecticut and move to Boston for its concentration of elite research universities and tech firms. Additionally, the company plans to undergo a revolution driven by digital transformation and the Industrial Internet of Things. With new IIoT technologies, GE expects to grow its software and analytics enterprise from $6B in 2015 to a top 10 software company by 2020. However, others like Mark Bernardo, leader of Professional Services, Americas at GE Digital Services, believes this growth will take more than adopting new technology practices. Bernardo believes the company needs to become more agile (leaving behind or adjusting its traditional Six Sigma methodology for business process improvement), embrace change management, and encourage the CIO position to become a leadership in this effort of change.
Cognitive Computing
There were several articles about the University of Aberdeen Department of Computer Science being given access to one of IBM Watson. Aberdeen becomes one of only four UK Institutions to have access to the Watson Engagement Advisor solution and its experts. It will initially be used by students undertaking the Department of Computing Science’s Semantic Web Engineering module, and will eventually be offered more widely across a range of relevant programs.
Students get access to IBM Watson with University of Aberdeen Cognitive Computing Deal – Tech Week UK
University of Aberdeen students to get access to IBM Watson – CBR
Cloudification
Most IT organizations today are under pressure to increase their “cloudification” and speed up every data-driven aspect of their business, but the challenges of integrating disparate data, applications, and APIs are causing a slowdown that threatens to ground some companies. Darren Cunningham, VP of marketing at SnapLogic, outlines the steps an organization should consider when planning its upgrade to a modern cloud and big data integration technology. Some tips include finding a forward-thinking consulting partner with a great track record and satisfied clients to help you assess where you are, where you want to go, and how quickly you can get there, ensure the iPaaS solution you choose is resilient enough to handle updates and variations, and to get rid of technologies that keep you chained to them with heavily-involved or expensive upgrades.
Headed for the Cloud? Watch Out: Legacy Data Integration Can Bring You Down – Inside Big Data
Network Function Virtualization
At the Open Networking Summit this week, vendors big and small are talking about the success and direction of the open networking movement, including SDN, NFV, and whitebox hardware. The new era of networking is defined by several key trends: disaggregation, a move to software virtualization, and open source. Guru Parulkar, Chair of ONS and the Executive Director at the Open Networking Research Center (ONRC) sees a need to also build and support fully integrated open source solutions that enable the disaggregated network experience. He emphasizes that those solutions need proven scalability, performance, and ease of use to prevent closed solutions from dominating the industry.
ONS and the challenge of Open Networking – Enterprise Networking Planet