Businesses don't want a machine that can do everything reasonably well. But, they want a computer that excels at specific tasks. Businesses are being experimented with clusters of high-density and low-power servers known as microservers. These microservers are suited to the growing workloads found inside modern datacenters. The quantifiable nature of workloads allows microserver circuitry to be paired back to what's needed to execute these tasks. To know more on the microservers, go through the article by Nick Heath, chief reporter for TechRepublic UK.

http://www.zdnet.com/microservers-what-you-need-to-know-7000027388/

Many companies are trying to figure out how to make the best use of big data and which skills are most needed when trying to get useful business insights out of unstructured data. With hard technical skills, managers are also looking for some more unexpected skills too. Creativity, developer background, business intelligence expertise, data science expertise are some of the important skills which a manager looks for. To know more on this, go through the article by Colin Barker, senior reporter for ZDNet.

http://www.zdnet.com/what-skills-do-companies-really-want-on-their-big-data-team-7000025945/

We are living in a time when we cannot ignore social media. It has become a part of our life and marketers, to stay ahead of the tough competition, are taking advantage of it more and more. This is also reflected in a survey report by eMarketer. As per the report, 777 million users in Asia Pacific have accepted social networks at a level of mainstream adoption. Yes, 777 million, and companies agree to its growing importance.

But unfortunately, few companies are able to realize the social media impact in terms of ROI. The survey also revealed that only 15% of the respondents were capable to transform the social media impact into quantifiable metrics. It is a fact that when speaking of numbers, marketers still feel uncomfortable and unable to justify its expenditure in the social media space.

What are the tips to measure and manage social media ROI? Read them at http://www.marketing-interactive.com/features/mmsg_may2014_masterreport_chapter_to-new/ .

No one can deny the fact that in recent times, social media has come in forefront when companies need to market their products and services. It has become an important channel. This has been also revealed in a survey done by Social Media Examiner. In its annual report, the findings say that marketers continue to emphasize social media and 92 percent of marketers think that social media is important for their business – a rise from 86 percent last year. Expanding business by using social media has made the winning race more competitive.

But, at a time, when the word social media is buzzing everywhere, there are some concerns. Social networking site Facebook is losing its shine. Facebook reach is declining. To stay ahead in the race, marketers must think of other platforms and strategies where they can invest.

What are they? Know them at http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233959 .

Cloud is the most scoring buzzword in technology and business spaces. Everyone is talking about the business benefits of cloud - benefits like cost, affordability, storage, etc. It is known to all of us.

Cloud has a flip side also. While there is no problem with data storage, but retrieving and uploading them is a problem. The problem is because of limited bandwidth. But, the way everything is now becoming connected – from jet engines in airplanes to mobile devices in your hands, we cannot reject data connectivity. It is not possible either – because predictive analytics has gained prominence where real time data serves as input and the analytics tools are located remotely. Third and fourth generation cellular networks are simply not fast enough to stream data to and fro. When there is a problem, there must be a solution to it. Experts are saying to stop concentrate on cloud and look at an alternative approach. Christened as ‘fog computing’ by Cisco, it has some edges over cloud computing. In cloud computing, where devices are distant and remote, in fog computing, it is just the reverse. Things are done near to the devices that are not so much powerful, but can make decisions.

So, the next time you go for cloud computing, give a thought over fog computing. Know more about it at: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304908304579566662320279406?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304908304579566662320279406 .

Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing are like large knowledge repositories - they provide you with any information you want. But, there is a condition - you have to type right keywords. Everyone one of us knows this.

How many times have you got the right search results you expected? It can be never 100% correct, even though you thought of the keywords carefully. Here comes the accuracy of the search engines, and improving this accuracy between what you type and what results you get is of utmost importance to the search engine providers. Behind the wall, lots of text analytics are involved.  What you normally type in the search box is an unstructured content and the search engine's job is to analyze, extract meta data and index it to convert the content into a structured one. The query is made upon the indexed data, after which the results are shown to you. What makes search engines different is the ability to add context, extract meta data from unstructured content, and index them so that accurate search results are shown to the extent possible.

What text analytics are involved here? Know them here: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/text-analytics-important-search-0889955#!PueWW .

The way technology is making a progress and competition is becoming tougher with increased uncertainty, big data and analytics tools have become important to your company. There is another matter that is also important - your customers. So, which will you give more importance? Your analytics tools or your customers? It is of no doubt that big data and analytics tools will give you hidden information that is not visible easily, by sifting through customer data. But, you have to remember one thing - analytics tools have no brains. It will never ever answer 'why' - well, that is the biggest answer for your business. The reason - analytics tools never understand your customers!

To attract customers to your shop, or to your website, you have to build an experience within them. Your marketing communication strategies will form that experience and reshape them. You have to address questions like what your customers want and why they want - in short, you have to understand their behavior. So, to excel in business, it is more important to understand your customers, not analytics tools.

How to understand your customers' behavior? Read them at: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/05/21/beyond-analytics-understanding-humans-scaling-business/ .

When talking of Big Data, most of the times we mean business. But now, Big Data can improve your health too. Yes, it’s true.

Big Data is increasingly playing a role to modernize biomedical researches. Scientists, researchers and clinicians are leveraging the power of Big Data to generate aggregate of digital data through DNA sequencing, biomedical imaging and transforming a patient’s health record electronically.

With the help of Big Data, linkages can be found out between various genes, diseases and traits. Given that there is a huge database of genetic variants associated with diseases, like that of VARIMED, a list of gene-disease pairs can be established. This can be tracked down to the traits by developing disease – trait associations, depending on which a prediction can be made whether an individual will develop a particular disease.

To know more on how Big Data can play a role in improving our health, read at http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2014/05/how-big-data-can-improve-your-health/84904/?oref=voices-top

Wearable technology is the latest trend in healthcare industry. This technology helps doctors, by assisting them in the operating room and providing real time access to electronic health records. By collecting information through this technology, healthcare providers now have more complete and essential real-time data to treat patients. David Peterson - CMO Emdeon Inc., believes that the adoption of wearable healthcare-related devices could indeed be a significant step in patient engagement and improving population health. Not only doctors, now patients can also monitor their own health continuously. Read more about this technology at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/wearable-technology-the-c_b_5263547.html

Recent news said that Twitter is coming up with a new platform called Twitter Commerce. These branded tweets, which look just like normal tweets, can be expanded to reveal a Buy button that allows consumers to make a purchase from within the Twitter app. Though twitter commerce has not been launched yet, social media providers are on a path to convert the social media platform into e-commerce platform. Few years ago presence of a brand in social media used to provide a significant advantage to the brand identity. But currently brands use the social platform as a communication channel with their consumer. With new and upcoming social commerce technologies, the biggest change for social media marketers will be a shift in focus from branding to lead generation. For more details please visit: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6318-future-of-social-commerce.html

The universal healthcare system should be divided into private and public spheres according to the commission of audit. The audit suggested a complete reform in health system in order to be sustainable. As per the report, more deregulated and competitive markets with appropriate safeguards have the greatest potential to improve the sector's competitiveness and productivity. In the current community rating system, risks are shared and therefore insurers can't charge a sick person higher premium than a healthy person. They also recommended that high income group should take out private health insurance. For more details please visit the following link: http://www.afr.com/p/national/end_universal_healthcare_audit_says_zrc6GH6VmXQx2YBwlB7gSJ

For emerging markets, exploring data to predict trends is not an easy option, mostly because of less availability of data in new fields. However, organizations in the emerging markets have the option of gradual progress. They have to start with analysing small data and then there will be scope to move into big data in near future. Problems for companies trying to do business in these areas are limited access to information and appropriate analytic modelling techniques. Gartner reports that companies are predicting 40 to 60% of their growth in revenues will come from emerging markets over the next decade, and McKinsey & Company predicts that in 12 years, 57% of the nearly one billion households with earnings greater than $20,000 a year will live in the developing world. "Companies need analytics to cope with these new markets," said Richard Howells, vice president of Go to Market for SAP. To know about this aspect, please visit the following link: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/start-with-small-data-in-emerging-markets-to-get-to-big-data-analytics/#. 

In a recent study it was found that more than 50% of revenue for small businesses comes from repeat customers. It is important for small businesses to retain their customers rather than acquiring new ones. Customer loyalty program is a good tool for small organizations to retain customers. Successful customer loyalty program requires authentic customer information. A digitally run and managed program will efficiently explore the data available and will in turn provide deeper insight about customers. For more details please visit the following link: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6310-big-data-customer-loyalty.html

The goal of Accountable Care Act is to lower costs and improve outcomes through the creation of Medicare Accountable Care Organization but deep fragmentation in the health system is preventing to reach these goals. To know about this research, please follow this link: http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2014/4/23/study-fragmented-health-care-system-could-hamper-medicare-acos

A recent study suggests that more than two-third of US population is being served by the ACOs. According to Department of Health and Human Services' the latest approval of ACOs in January brings the total number of Medicare ACOs to 368, up from 259 last year. Currently there are total 522 ACOs serving both Medicare and non-Medicare patients. According to CMS, 10% of Medicare beneficiaries will receive their healthcare from ACOs. The research also found that Medicare ACOs are serving near about 33 million non-Medicare patients. Though there is a significant growth in ACO participation, Mr. Niyum Gandhi, a partner in Oliver Wyman's Health & Life Sciences practice and one of the firm's experts on ACOs, criticized the fact by saying "The process of shifting American healthcare to a new, sustainable model is nowhere near the finish line. On the other hand, these numbers mean we have a critical mass lined up at the starting gate." To know more, follow the article written by Oliver Wyman (leader in management consulting) at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/accountable-care-organizations-now-serve-up-to-17-of-americans-2014-04-23?reflink=MW_news_stmp