10 Best Practices in Big Data

Here are some must have practices for the best utilisation of Big Data in enterprises

Mitesh Agarwal  |  04 June 2012

Mitesh Agarwal

Researchers estimate that enterprise data grows nearly 60 percent per year (90 percent of that being unstructured) and the average amount of data stored per company is 200 terabytes. This growth is triggered by the increasing channels of data in today’s world. Examples include, but are not limited to, user-generated content through social media, web and software logs, cameras and intelligent sensors embedded in physical devices that can sense, create, and communicate data.
Companies are realizing that now is the time to put this data to work. However, several obstacles limit their ability to turn this massive amount of unstructured data, often termed as Big Data, into profit. The most prominent

Upcoming Trends in Unified Communication

Trends such as cloud-based UC and mobility are set to bring in flexibility and agility while enhancing productivity

Subir Bhatnagar  |  18 June 2012

Subir Bhatnagar

In the past couple of decades, human communication, both at personal and corporate level, has evolved far beyond just voice. The telephone, although a highly useful and impressive technology in its own right, has undergone many generations of improvements, and today, the communication vendors, and their customers alike, consider voice communications only part of the communications puzzle. Today, we use plethora of communication and collaboration tools such as email, voicemail, instant messaging, video conferencing, smartphones and the like on a daily basis. Needless to say, effective communication through the use of appropriate technologies is a key to any successful enterprise.
Unified Communication (UC) is gaining a lot of mindshare in the last four to

Top 10 strategic technologies

Technologies that, according to Gartner, will be assimilated into mgmt tools. Among them: big data, tablets and cloud

12 June 2012

The impact of Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies will not center only on the business — their capabilities will also increasingly become integral to future generations of management architecture, according to Gartner, Inc.
“We are already seeing the adoption of 'big data' within the IT and operations management [ITOM] industry. In particular, software-as-service [SaaS] management providers now have to collect and synthesize large volumes of data,” said Milind Govekar, managing vice president at Gartner. “We also expect more next-generation analytics to come to the forefront to address an increasingly hybrid cloud environment. On the social front, IT service desk social management tools will establish an interactive relationship with end users, enhance end-user productivity, provide a platform to share information and ideas, and market the value of IT to the business.”

For Your Money’s Worth

So you thought IT managers had nothing to do with financial insights? Think again!

Berjes Eric Shroff  |  07 June 2012

Berjes Shroff

When Robert Frost wrote this poem “Never Ask of Money Spent /Where the spender thinks it went/Nobody was ever meant/To remember or Invent/What he did with every cent” little did he realise that the world of finance is not just the responsibility of the accountants but also closely linked with other groups.
The world of business as we all know today has changed the rules for everyone. Suffice to say that knowledge of finance and accountability to the same is the responsibility of every manager in an organisation and the IT manager is no exception to this rule.
The irony of the education system is that it does not incorporate the knowledge of finance in its technical courses. Like Frost, most assume that the world of finance is best left to the accountants and finance professionals

Analytics: What to Consider?

Before jumping into analytics, one must consider ways to manage the data volume, and time and cost components

Ajay Sharma  |  22 June 2012

Ajay Sharma

Business insights deduced from data can act as a catalyst to business growth. Deriving wisdom based on history, events and actions can tell you a story of business evolution and help in setting the tone for the future. If you get answers to all your questions that tell you the reason behind a particular outcome, you can use that learning to take corrective actions, avoid pitfalls and pursue proven ones.

The Pros and Cons of Cloud

The three core cloud computing service models—IaaS, PaaS and SaaS—have their own systems integration issues

Alexander Pasik  |  21 June 2012

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing is a model for enabling on-demand access to a pool of computing resources that can be provisioned and released with minimal effort.
Furthermore, NIST categorises cloud computing into three service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Each has distinct advantages and disadvantages that impact the information technology (IT) efforts of an enterprise as well as its business practices and finances.