February 08, 2014

7 ways Big Data can help your BI solution
Big Data continues to be the buzzword du jour. And as with most popular concepts espoused by everyone from marketers and consultants to purveyors of software and infrastructure, the phrase can mean different things to different people. For us at Sullexis, we think of Big Data as a set of technologies that enable our clients to consume and process high volumes and/or diverse types of information. But our clients need ROI. Neither access to a large amount of diverse data nor possession of the most sophisticated Hadoop stack of Big Data technologies will generate ROI without the right application.


MobileFirst, API's, and PaaS - Field Perspective
Enterprise back ends have grown more complex. The larger the enterprise, the better the possibility that you have to fetch data from a shared back end. This leads developers to develop an application Domain Model that represents the business view of the application. When an application will have to access multiple back ends then a Domain Model typically referred to as a Canonical Data Model, which represents the data model for an enterprise and maintains relationships to different back end systems.


Disinformation Visualization: How to lie with datavis
When working with raw data we’re often encouraged to present it differently, to give it a form, to map it or visualize it. But all maps lie. In fact, maps have to lie, otherwise they wouldn't be useful. Some are transparent and obvious lies, such as a tree icon on a map often represents more than one tree. Others are white lies - rounding numbers and prioritising details to create a more legible representation. And then there’s the third type of lie, those lies that convey a bias, be it deliberately or subconsciously. A bias that misrepresents the data and skews it towards a certain reading.


Phones, Browsers, and Search Engines Get a Privacy Overhaul
Blackphone, a smartphone to launch next month, is perhaps the most ambitious of these projects. The Android handset will function like a regular smartphone but has a series of modifications to protect the privacy and security of its owner. Blackphone is a joint venture between Spanish smartphone manufacturer Geeksphone and Silent Circle, a company that Phil Zimmerman, inventor of the PGP encryption software (see “An App Keeps Spies Away from Your Phone”), founded to make apps that encrypt voice calls and text messages.


This iPhone-Sized Device Can Hack A Car, Researchers Plan To Demonstrate
The Spanish researchers’ work adds to a growing focus in the security industry on the vulnerability of networked automobiles to hackers’ attacks. Before the Defcon hacker conference last July, researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek put me behind the wheel of a Ford Explorer and a Toyota Prius and then showed that they could plug their laptops into a dashboard port of vehicles to perform nasty tricks like slamming on the Prius’ brakes, jerking its steering wheel and even disabling the brakes of the Explorer at low speeds.


Personal History May Thrust New Microsoft CEO Into Visa Debate
Nadella earned a master's degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Neil Ruiz, a senior policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, doesn't believe that Microsoft is trying to make any policy points with the Nadella appointment. But by nature of his background, "he can add a more human touch to the Microsoft message" in the immigration debate.


How to Avoid Irrelevance, Guaranteed!
You might be an innovator, developer, organizer, maximzer, or activator. But, irrelevance looms large if you can’t apply your strengths – in relevant ways – to the people you serve. Peter Drucker said, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, was mentored by Drucker. Lafley listened to his mentor. The first core strength of P&G is a deep understanding of the customer. (Game-Changer by Lafley and Charan)


NoSQL Vs. RDBMS for Interactive Analytics: Leveraging the Right and Left Brain of Data
Limiting the structured versus unstructured debate to just operational use cases ignores three key factors for downstream analytics: the tools, domain expertise and SQL compatibility gaps in the current NoSQL ecosystem, the challenges of exporting and warehousing volumes of this changing, semi-structured data and hidden costs of leveraging operational databases for complex, ad hoc analysis. Here is what organizations must additionally consider for their analytics needs as they evaluate NoSQL and RDBMS.


Are Analytics Shifting Power from Executives to Employees?
Executives can no longer hoard decisions at the C-suite level. Savvy executives are realizing they must now delegate and distribute decision rights deeper into their organization to empower their managers and employees. This is because of the exponentially growing mountain of data, both structured (numbers) and unstructured (text) data including social media, and a sped-up and volatile world. In my imagined pyramid, the executives are at the top, just like in an organization chart. Their decision types are strategic ones.


Why effective Web app firewalls are worth the investment
Many organizations look at Web app firewalls as protection technologies that are deployed to detect and stop attacks before they can result in some sort of loss or compromise. This is certainly desirable, but, as previously discussed, actually achieving these results can be challenging and involve hidden or unplanned costs. An alternate way to look at a WAF deployment is to consider it a way to gain intelligence about the application's usage and attack patterns.



Quote for the day:

"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender." -- Vince Lombardi

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