Manufacturers are slowly beginning to appreciate and accept the idea of putting portions of their ERP systems onto the cloud. Although most still shows resistance to the idea, but they are keeping an eye on the cloud market, maybe for potential future use. There can be various approaches which manufacturers can adopt. One can be use a hybrid combination of cloud based ERP and traditional ERP.  Others can use a private cloud for ERP.  Reports state that in certain scenarios, cloud based ERP would really make sense for manufacturers.  In situations where - Global companies want a two-tier ERP strategy; smaller organizations that can't afford on premise cloud; new manufacturing business   that start from scratch and many more. Read the complete article here: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3043778/enterprise-applications/manufacturers-resistance-to-the-cloud-is-weakening.html

Earlier, whenever an employee was hired, a lot of paperwork generated which required hours of works by managers. They had to file them, record them and place them securely. And whenever a need arises to have a look at that document, one will find herself in the midst of piles of document, searching for it. But now processes have changed. But now, whenever an employee is hired an email is sent to the person providing her a link where she can upload her documents which is equivalent to the paperwork done before. This saves time, space and is prone to fewer errors. This system is recoverable in case a document is lost. Cloud has made HR's life significantly easier. Read the complete article here: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3049420/cloud-computing/how-the-cloud-is-transforming-hr.html

The cloud market continues to grow in 2016. Companies are now more willing to adopt the cloud technology. But security being one of the biggest concern, it is often difficult to choose which cloud style to choose- Public cloud or on premise cloud. Public clouds have a very nice structure and security mechanism which helps the user use the platform economically and securely. On premise setup will require a large investment. But then there are some data which can't be moved to the public cloud. For regulatory, compliance or customer demand reasons, a company can't expose data to public clouds. So the company must invest in the security of their applications and let the public cloud giants secure the infrastructure. Read the full article here http://www.computerworld.com/article/3016281/cloud-computing/public-cloud-vs-on-premises-which-is-more-secure.html

India is going to get a startup corridor soon which will enable incubators to create consortium. The government is providing a fund of INR 5 crores for the same. This setup will encourage startups and will team with multi - disciplinary incubation support. Startup Corridor will function under the science and technology ministry and NSTEDB will be the nodal agency to implement it. Read the complete article here: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/india-to-soon-get-startup-corridorwill-be-under-science-technology-ministry/articleshow/51487214.cms

Mythili Bhusnurmath, Consulting Editor ET NOW says that banking is not science which is claimed by many economists but an art. To prove this point she considers Fed and said that the broad consensus is that Fed is not going to hike its rate, which is in contradiction to the fact that macroeconomic numbers coming from US suggest that Fed should increase its rates.  The point is Fed is not driven by numbers. Roadmap clearly suggests that it would be a quarter percent hike every quarterly but Fed has not made any such announcement so far. So this proves the point that central banking is an art not science as the results which are suggested by numbers are clearly not followed. Read the article here: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2016-03-16/news/71573617_1_janet-yellen-mythili-bhusnurmath-fed

Artificial Intelligence or AI is the latest term for the tech people. So here are few things about AI which you should keep in mind.

·         AI has deep roots in history

·         Alan Turing contributed in A.I a lot

·         Formal AI research started in 1950s

·         NLP aka Natural language is the key to artificial Intelligence

·          Key to Autonomous vehicles is A.I

·         Investors are also interested in AI based companies

·         Tech giants are also betting on AI

·         AI powered robots can do things together

·         Robots can also socialize like humans

·         AI is polarizing

Read the complete article at: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-artificial-intelligence/

A.I is like a magic to people at times where machines are doing super cool stuff like humans. How do they do it? People have associated many misconceptions with A.I. So here are few things which people get wrong about A.I. : Automation is not A.I. ; Humanoid robots are not the face of A.I, computers are; A.I. is about intelligence rather than consciousness;  A.I is not all tech; Biggest myth buster will be this - TERMINATOR is NOT future A.I.; Misunderstanding of Machine learning and; Underestimating the power of A.I. Read the full article here: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-7-biggest-myths-about-artificial-intelligence/

Our world is somewhat running on artificial intelligence. Siri, Facebook, computer stocks, self-driving cars or what not. But there is one field where AI is really lacking and that is education. The most      challenging task will be: Virtual mentors for every learner; Addressing 21 century skills; Analysis of interaction data; Provide opportunities for global classrooms; Lifelong and like wide technologies. Technologies like Intelligent Tutor Systems, content delivery support systems are what required. Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/barbarakurshan/2016/03/10/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-in-education/#6315deb21e64

Artificial Intelligence or AI is the science to make machines as smart as humans. When a machine can think and behaves like human we call it an intelligent machine. It's been trending a lot from past couple of years. We have seen robots, intelligent chess games where champions got defeated by machines. But what does future hold for Artificial Intelligence?  Experts claim that AI will soon be coming with technologies in healthcare, automation, finance that will change the way technologies are used now. Machines with power to take thousands of complicated decisions in nanoseconds will revolutionize the industry. Read more at: http://www.cio.com/article/3025161/robotics/what-does-the-future-hold-for-artificial-intelligence.html

Well, nobody is perfect; we make mistakes, learn from them and make ourselves better; Right? But mistakes do waste most of the time. So what can be wiser than learning from other's mistakes rather than making your own? So here are few mistakes which Scrum Team tends to make –

·         Increasing the level of multitasking exponentially.

·         Behavior- oriented management; Foggy goals.

·          Making decisions without consulting teams.

·         Only efficiency focused mind set.

·          Centralize control.

·          No visualization.

·          Lack of team building activities.

·          No environment to ensure safe failure.

·          Ignoring quality.

Read the complete article here: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/march/top-10-mistakes-scrum-teams-make

You started working in agile; everything was going fine and smooth. But did you ever crosscheck that, are you still in the Agile Mode? If any of the following questions answers in yes, then you are no more working in an agile mode –

·         Has your organization working on the same project for years and the agile team has not changed and the requirements are always changing?

·         Have you regularly missed daily scrums, redefined stories? Does your burn-down chart have revisions or do the rules change often?

·         Do you see a sudden increase in velocity?

·         Are the Definitions of Done being redefined?

Read the full article here: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/march/are-you-really-working-in-agile-mode

Conducting daily scrum meetings is so easy when people are physically present at the location of scrum meeting. But what happens when the people are at a different geographical location and time zones. Here are some hacks to ease out the situation:

·         Choose the most possible convenient time zone for all teams.

·          Identify and attack blockers between scrums.

·          Use Agile planning tool to keep the team on the same page.

·          Mute telephones while another distributed team member is updating their status.

·          Take daily Scrum notes; Use chat tools to overcome the barrier of different language.

 Read the full article here: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/march/effective-ways-of-conducting-daily-standup-meeting

One of the most emerging trends in IT companies is the shift from traditional waterfall to Agile. Agile is dynamic and provides better results, but it does possess some limitations and challenges. Many organizations work on legacy systems where there are a lot of dependent systems that are operating under waterfall model. There is a need to find a way to support the client's demands for a major marketing push and enhancements within the given limitations. Read the complete article here: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/march/rome-wasnt-built-in-a-day

According to Environmental Protection Agency CTO Greg Godbout, Agile development is not only about completing projects efficiently and cost effectively, but it's about urging the government to take new initiatives in planning and acquisition. He also said that it's all about the ability to learn more flexible ways to handle change in technology. It can be noted that managers resist change because they think it means to them that they have been doing it wrong. The push for agile is often met with resistance, but management eventually comes around. Read the full article here: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/02/agile-management-rockwell.aspx

India needs to invest in human capital to take advantage of its demographic transition with increased spending on health, education and skills. A positive correlation between investment in maternal and early life, health and economic growth is observed. This approach is cheaper and easier than investing in older children. India has started looking into matters with programs like Swacch Bharat, but it needs to scale up its efforts. Quality of education must be next concern. It needs to shed fund in advanced healthcare technology. Read the article here: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-editorials/india-must-step-up-public-investment-in-human-capital/

Employee's attitude is obvious and can be judged, the moment you enter the workplace. They tend to carry this attitude with them when they attend a training course. Trainers can benefit a lot if they have an indication of those employees' attitude. According to a recent Korean study there are two kinds of employee attitudes - Organizational commitment and Organizational identification. The thorough study done by Korean helped them in Trainee Selection and Training Design. Read the complete article here: https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Science-of-Learning-Blog/2016/03/How-Organizational-Attitudes-Can-Predict-Training-Performance

Workspace innovation can be a change in the organization physical or mental which can boost employee's productivity, efficiency and creativity. It's not a new idea, but many companies don't follow it. But startups have been able to successfully implement this. With a proper HR team who have the right mindset and creativity, customization of the workspace can be achieved economically. Three simple changes that firms can try are: Let your employees pick their job titles; Create a play /activity/relaxation room; Switch to adjustable furniture from traditional one. Read the full article here: https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Human-Capital-Blog/2016/02/3-Easy-Ways-to-Innovate-Your-Workspace

Apache Arrow, a new open source project, is designed to provide high performance in-memory analytics across different systems. It eliminates cross system communication overhead cost and can improve performance 100 times. It is based on the code of Apache Drill. Developers from other Apache projects. It removes the burden of serialization and deserialization of data. It also supports complex data in addition to relational data. Read the complete article here: http://www.cio.com/article/3034279/big-data-gets-a-new-open-source-project-apache-arrow.html

EMR (electronic Medical Record) adoption, big data and other trends are helping a lot in the generation of data in the healthcare industry. But data is not what drives the healthcare industry- managing this data does. In healthcare, data analytics is done in use cases. Multiple use cases are created according to the need like one while patient got admitted in some department, a use case gets created. To provide best services to patients timely, immediate access to patient’s data without the barrier of time or location. Read the full article here: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3038315/data-analytics/accelerate-time-to-value-with-healthcare-discovery-analytics.html

The National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2015-20 plans to make India a world-class bio-manufacturing hub, with intent to launch big missions, creation of new biotech product and creating a strong infrastructure for R&D. The catalyst in this mission is harnessing the power of big data. IT and healthcare have always worked together. Big data and data analytics have helped a lot in cancer research, drug safety, genomics and clinical research. Big data helps in solving the complexities of healthcare that looked impossible to solve before. It helps in making sound decision within a short period of time and with cost effective measures. The error rates have also decreased enormously leading to a significant increase in efficiency. Read the full article here: http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/national-dept-of-biotechnology-sees-big-data-propelling-it-to-100-bn-industry-by-2025-293213.html?utm_source=also_read