SigmaWay Blog

According to the research firm Gartner, health care providers in the Middle East and Africa will spend $2.8 billion on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2013.It is expected that Saudi Arabia & UAE will continue to focus on building and expanding their healthcare infrastructure. Information Technology enabled services got a huge role to play in this market and health care IT professionals are expected to deliver more in terms of quality while containing costs. Users of technology in the health care industry expect their IT systems to work, delivering what they need and when they need it. Lives can depend on this.An effective way of meeting these objectives is the deployment of robust IT analytics, which will provide hospitals with clear visibility into the health and performance of their IT infrastructure. Inefficiencies, disruptions and failures can be identified automatically as they occur, and often before end-users are even aware of them.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.arabnews.com/news/562151

An article by Chris Syme, owner of CKSyme Media Group, talks about how monitoring social media can help in preventing crisis. She also mentioned that the first step in crisis communication planning is learning to listen. She spoke about some key conversations that one should monitor while listening and also discussed about how to monitor those conversations.

To know about effective listening strategies in details follow http://socialmediatoday.com/chrissyme/2362621/how-monitor-social-media-prevent-crisis

A website is a container of various contents like product or services the organization offers, its mission, vision, values, contact centre etc. Nowadays no business can grow without a properly maintained website. That is where quality of website content comes into play. It is essential to regularly analyze performance of your website content to see what’s working and what hasn't hit the spot. Google analytics site content reports can help you to a great extent for this purpose. Information like which pages getting most of the views, time specific traffic generation, visitor location, entry and exit pages etc will help you to put your effort in a more systematic manner and eventually it will address your thirst for rising above the rest. Anna Lewis, Analyst, Google Analytics, speaks about the benefits of Google Analytics content reports and how it can help you with information on page views, unique page views, Avg. time on page, entrances, bounce rate, exit percentage, page value, content groupings, navigation summary, content drill down etc.

To read more, visit

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2340779/Google-Analytics-Content-Reports-Understanding-the-Key-Benefits

Google released the Dashboard Analytics Solutions Gallery more than a year ago, but marketers are yet to take full advantage of this free resource. Most advanced Google Analytics users have created custom dashboards but few have imported templates from the Solutions Gallery.This reluctance is caused by unavailability of proper support stuff, limited usage process information &preference of custom made solutions etc. However, Google Analytics Solutions Gallerydashboards can be used to find insights and drive more profit.To use it as your advantage, the following steps can be followed:

·         1^st: Decide about what insights you are actually looking for.

·         2^nd: Create new Dashboard & import from Gallery.

·         3^rd:Filter Gallery results by Popularity, Reviews, Category or Type.

·         4^th: View Data, look for insights, & Automate Reporting.

·         5^th: Edit, Customize or Segment Data as required.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2341320/5-Steps-to-Quick-Insights-Using-Google-Analytics-Solutions-Gallery

AWS has been authorized to operate under FedRAMP(U.S. government-wide general security standard) since May of 2013. Under FedRAMP, AWS has already made contracts with U.S. Military, Air-force & Navy. With the recent authorization from United States Defence Department’s cloud security standards, AWS can work with all agencies within the U.S Defence Department from now on. It’s like a new feather added to the AWS hat! Teresa Carlson, AWS’s vice president for the public sector, said the new certification could mean more than just new Defence Department business. This would let AWS work with more defence agencies to host several sensitive projects.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/amazon-web-services-gets-defense-security-authorization/2014/03/28/7959ad8a-b500-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html

According to Forrester principal analyst Mike Gualtieri, "Hadoop is not big data. It's a big-data technology. You can break down the siloes but Hadoop is also a framework for processing the data". So, proper handling of big data is very essential for any company. Hadoop can help in explaining corporate data by managing it across clusters of commodity hardware. Research shows that many of the big companies using Hadoop. To know more on the advantages of Hadoop, follow the article by Toby Wolpe, senior reporter at ZDNet in London:

http://www.zdnet.com/hadoops-rise-why-you-dont-need-petabytes-for-a-big-data-opening-7000028282/

Teradata launched a technology called QueryGrid. It aims to extract analytical data from multiple systems storing, both big and little data. QueryGrid can bridge the division between data warehouses and big data. To know the model of QueryGrid, follow the article by Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet. - See more at:

http://www.zdnet.com/teradata-launches-querygrid-one-workflow-for-big-little-data-7000028044/

How good is methodology when it comes to innovation? One key reason for going Agile is that it enables people to be creative and come up with ideas. With Agile, people are given freedom - but they need to understand what to do with it, as well as what they are expected to produce with it. There are certain challenges that makes Agile difficult to implement in the beginning but it will bring productivity in the long run. To know more about the challenges met, follow the article by Rebecca Leitch, writer in ESI International.

http://www.esi-intl.co.uk/blogs/pmoperspectives/index.php/2014/04/the-challenges-for-project-managers-to-overcome-when-going-agile/

Want to know more about future car! The car of the future is going to drive itself, brake itself, park itself and it will be a part of a worldwide communication system which will be based on 4G. It will gather and communicate data. It will be more like a Facebook-style personalized experience to drivers. Gil Golan, director of GM's Advanced Technical Center (ATC) in Israel, has also come up with a prototype of the future car. GM is aggressively pursuing the smart car market. To know more details on General Motor's future vision, go through the article by David Shamah, writer about Israeli technology.

http://www.zdnet.com/big-data-4g-and-life-saving-sensors-gms-vision-of-the-smart-car-future-7000023029/

"This is the dirty secret of the analytics world - that there are so many errors" - Velamakanni, CEO, Fractal Analytics. Company politics, bad data and inefficient analysis are affecting many organizations, leading to some wrong conclusions. To know more about this aspect, follow the article by Toby Wolpe, senior reporter at ZDNet in London:

http://www.zdnet.com/lies-damned-lies-and-big-data-how-firms-get-analytics-wrong-and-how-to-get-it-right-7000023476/

Horton Networks is giving an effort to fit Hive to work with the component that frees Hadoop from the tyranny of batch processing in order to bring Hadoop more into enterprise mainstream. With the release of Horton Networks Data platform 2.1, the company has completed that Hive interactive query capability, known as Stinger Phase 3 - and is simultaneously releasing it for both the Windows and Linux platforms. To know more about this big release, follow the article by Andrew J. Brust, a developer, consultant and entrepreneur in the software industry:

http://www.zdnet.com/hortonworks-announces-data-platform-2-1-7000027949/

The two open-source software companies, Red Hat and Horton Networks are aiming at speeding up enterprise big data Apache Hadoop projects. The two firms unveiled the beta of Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) combined with Red Hat Storage, which is designed to give companies a unified storage pool for all Hadoop workloads. They also announced the integration of HDP with Red Hat JBoss Data Visualization, enabling Hadoop to work with existing data sources including warehouses, SQL and NoSQL databases, on premise and cloud apps and flat and XML files. To know more on this aspect, go through the article by Toby Wolpe, senior reporter at ZDNet:

http://www.zdnet.com/red-hat-and-hortonworks-unveil-hadoop-big-data-collaboration-7000026154/

Hyper growth - this term is on its way to become attached with the 'Public Cloud' market.

As per the report of Forrester Research, the global public cloud market is expected to rise to $191 billion by 2020 as compared to 2013 which stood at $58 billion. The reason behind this growth is the shift from on premise technology to cloud which has proved to be cost effective. Nowadays cloud technology is considered as a replacement of the existing systems. Forrester’s report also predicts that by 2020, the global public cloud platform service will soar to $44 billion, the cloud business service will hit $14 billion and the cloud applications which will be Software – as – a – Service or SaaS, will hit $131 billion. The cause of this whopping valuation is attributable to the fact that more and more CIOs and their technology management organizations are taking initiative for this change.

So, what’s the future of public cloud market? Read at http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247883/Public_cloud_market_ready_for_hypergrowth_period_ for more details. 

An article by Tom Treanor, founder of Right Mix Marketing, conveys that it is important to maintain a balance between all social media accounts to know the strengths of each social networking site which can give your business organization an interesting mix and help you to reach your target audience. Everybody knows about the popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but there are plenty of others which are slightly less famous but can form an essential ingredient in social media strategy. Thus, from your Facebook page people should be able to go to your Instagram account or your Pinterest page and so on. He also mentioned that one of the biggest strengths of Google plus is that it gives you opportunities to link up with all your other social profiles. It also becomes important for your website to have all your social media profile buttons displayed prominently. Your social media profile has to be driven by the right kind of images and videos. Thus, leveraging the right kind of social media tools can indeed become a huge productivity enhancer for your business organization.

To know more follow http://www.business2community.com/social-media/businesses-can-optimize-social-media-profiles-0844522#!EjbHw

Customer contact centers fulfil different functions according to the organization they serve and the industry that they function in. Regardless of their objectives, the focus should be on the customer - meeting expectations, enhancing service levels and improving satisfaction. Contact centers are finding it necessary to add more communication channels to their platforms in order to get in touch as easily as possible. Customer satisfaction and performance levels remain among the most important tenets of any call center and the market is changing to address customer communication needs. Technologies like unified communications will be playing a greater role in going forward.

 To know more about this aspect, read the article by Mike England, content director of Imago Techmedia, follow http://www.callcentrehelper.com/customers-driving-unified-communications-55759.htm

Software as a Service and cloud computing service providers are targeting school administrators. The objective is to demonstrate to the students the virtues of the vendors' hardware products and software solutions to gain their allegiance later in the business world. So, smart SaaS companies can capitalize on the data they collect to provide benchmarks and KPIs that offer greater value to their customers.

To know more about this aspect, read the article by Jeff Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies and founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace, visit http://www.technewsworld.com/story/79979.html

A new feature is built into Facebook's mobile app that allows you to see which of your friends are close by and even share your exact location with others. The new feature uses the geo location technology in your smart phone to determine when you are close to one of your Facebook friends. When activated, the feature will send periodic notifications to friends who are nearby. Users who did not activate Nearby Friends won't be affected in any way, and will not share with or receive any location information from others on the platform.

To know more about the use of this new feature visit the article by Kurt Wagner, Social media reporter for Mashable, http://mashable.com/2014/04/17/facebook-nearby-friends/

An article by Jaylee Miguel, Lead Community Manager for social media management agency Emoderation, conveys that the beauty industry is often overlooked when we think about the ways how social media has grown and how brands have adapted. Just like beauty counters at a department store, social media can be a great place for consumers to interact with beauty brands. Brands are now investing more money in digital-led campaigns not only to improve their social media presence but also to achieve a higher ROI in areas that TV failed to deliver.  It is essential for brands to understand their strategy, through the line campaign that works in conjunction with its advertising and marketing by using social media as a platform to push content.

To know more visit http://socialmediatoday.com/jaylee-miguel/2354996/beauty-brands-and-social-media

Building a strong relationship with your customers is very important for your company to prosper because then only they will return to you and buy products or services from you time and again.

Earlier, what used to happen is that customers went to favorite retailer and the product they needed was made readily available in front of them – this happened because the retailer knew what type of product they wanted. Now there is a shift. People are going to supermarkets or even they are buying products online. Unlike the old days, where the retailer chatted with customers to know their likings, they do not chat with the owner – be it supermarkets or online shops. So, how, you as a shop owner or a retail owner must try to maintain strong relationship with your customers in order to attract them and make repeated purchases?

Thanks to Big Data, you can now again personalize your relationship with consumers and build strong bonding with them so that your customers buy more and more. But what are the ways to do so? Read them here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/21/5-ways-big-data-is-helping-companies-help-their-customers/.

When we talk about Big Data and the stuffs alike, we normally think of how it helps in running any business. But, hold on a second. Here, we will talk about something fundamental related to our society.

In order to drive a country economically forward, we need talented people, no matter whether the country is a developed country or a developing country. You know that talented people cannot be formed just like anything. For this, you have to invest in education and training. To end poverty, bridge the gap of economic inequality and rise on the economic ladder, we must find better ways to teach that are cheaper and can be applied on a vast scale – because, we are talking about a country. It is of no doubt that binding technology with education has proved fruitful tremendously; and now, with techniques of analyzing Big Data known to us, we can leverage the power of it for betterment of education. With the help of Big Data, teachers and companies can get several information about students’ learning patterns and depending on that, schools can design personalized instructions in a more sophisticated way.

Big Data technologies can even be used in strengthening a country’s national educational system. In fact, The World Bank Group in association with its private sector lending arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) are presently working on this to support national educational systems. They recently launched an initiative named Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER), which collects and shares comparative data on educational policies and institutions from countries around the world. In private sector, Big Data can create favorable impact by collecting information about interactions between teachers and students and between students and learning systems. Spreading the light of education can become much easy with increasing a country’s literacy rate and educating poor students.

Read more at http://businessdayonline.com/2014/04/big-data-for-poor-students/#.U1SHFPmSxqI on how the power of Big Data and adaptive technologies can be utilized in fortifying education.