Mar/Apr 2016

During the 1992 presidential election, the Clinton team coined the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid,” as an easy way to remember one of the most important platforms of the campaign. For the cloud – and especially predictive analytics in the cloud – it’s not the economy, but the data, that makes all the difference.

• Dave Hirko

“Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it. Digital Darwinism does not discriminate. Every business is threatened.” – Brian Solis

• Srujana H.M.
• Sanjay S. Sharma
• Amitava Dey

A solution to world hunger might be found on the streets of Mountain View, Calif., and Austin, Texas. We’re talking about Google’s self-driving cars, now being test driven, and the technology behind them.

• Alex Thomasson
• Gabe Santos
• Atanu Basu

We are constantly reminded that people are an organization’s most valuable resource, and yet it is one of the most mismanaged. The problem is pervasive, eroding performance at many levels. At an individual level, too many employees are unclear about what their roles in the organization really are. At a higher level, too many organizations are still struggling to understand where their people are and what they are doing, let alone realizing their plans and aspirations for the future. To add to this mix, the people function often finds itself at the bottom of the pile when it comes to budgeting priority and investment. So how can organizations turn this around? The answer lies in organizational data (OD) and analytics.

• Rupert Morrison

The greatest asset for any organization involved in analytics consulting is its people and the willingness of its consultants to learn new ideas, to enhance their capabilities and to innovate. To ensure that its people remain on top of the latest trends in analytics, consultancies need to emphasize a learning culture, supported by appropriate and ongoing training.

• Chandrakant Maheshwari

In the beginning, there was data. Then along came “analytics” to try and make sense of, and ascertain insight from, the data. Then in rolled “big data,” a tsunami of data of such grand proportions that most folks crowned it “Big Data,” with capital letters, in a show of respect for its massive size. Big Data, in turn, begot the “data scientist” – the golden child of the Analytics Age and the Internet of Everything. And now, behold, “cloud computing”: Internet-based, networked computing that promises to give Big Data a virtually unlimited roomy place to call home and to give analytics a seemingly ideal environment in which to work.

• Randolph W. Hall
• Janice Partyka