Human resources analytics, also called talent analytics, is the application of sophisticated data mining and business analytics (BA) techniques to human resources (HR) data. The “Ulrich model with four specializations” is quite handy in case of HR operations and widely adopted throughout the globe.

Depending on the level of formalism in the organization, a lot can go into the wording of job descriptions here. It starts with the hiring manager looking for specific skills and operational responsibilities of the candidate. Moves into the negotiation with HR where it fits in the performance and compensation plans, and with the hiring practices. Recruitment firms provide the added value of data on candidate availability to the given descriptions, in addition to their access to such candidates from their networks. With the right data, companies can change their strategies not only for individual job descriptions but also bigger decisions like broader hiring, flight risk, or where to better place a new business office.

Rawn Shaw speaks in depth about modern HR operations and what will define the future of HR strategies. To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rawnshah/2015/04/13/taking-hr-analytics-beyond-technologists/4/

Predictive analytics is a “business game changer” that will separate the winners from the losers, according to Forrester. The better a company is at predicting what will happen in the future, the better positioned they are to do something about it. While data scientists will do the heaviest analytic-related lifting at big enterprises, the improvements that have been made to predictive analytic (also called advanced analytic) applications enables regular business people and developers to partake of the predictive bounty. With so many companies coming into the foray of analytics services, today the users have more options to choose from keeping the cost-benefit & need-value trade-offs in mind.  RapidMiner offers a “rock solid” enterprise solution with more than 1,500 methods that address all stages of the analytics lifecycle and has among the tightest integration with the cloud, Forrester says. There are also other options like SAS, SPSS, KNIME, sap, oracle to name a few.

To read more, visit:

http://www.datanami.com/2015/04/07/predictive-analytics-now-in-reach-of-the-average-enterprise-forrester-says/

The investment banks are now looking at how they can use big data to do what they do better, faster and more efficiently. Senior executives at the banks want to enhance how they use data to raise profitability, map out markets and company-wide exposures, and ultimately win more deals. Big data is also a fundamental element of risk-profiling for the banks, enabling data analysts to immediately assess the impact of the escalation in geopolitical risk on portfolios and their exposure to specific markets and asset classes. Specifically, banks have now built systems that will map out market-shaping past events in order to identify future patterns. There lies the requirement of big data talent!

The banks are actively recruiting big data and analytics specialists to fill two main, but significantly different roles: big data engineers and data scientists. Data Scientists are responsible for bridging the gap between data analytics and business decision-making, capable of translating complex data into key strategy insight, while Data Engineers typically come from a strong IT development or coding background and are responsible for designing data platforms and applications. The competition between banks and fund managers to hire big data specialists is heating up. Data scientists are expected to have sharp technical and quantitative skills. They are in highest demand and this is where the biggest skill shortage exists.

To read more, visit the link given below:

http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Investment-banks-recruit-for-the-rise-of-big-data-analytics

Some 2 billion people continue to live on less than $2 a day! Millions of women and girls around the world lack basic human rights. A slew of initiatives address these and other intractable social issues, yet often, even the most successful ones only address a fraction of the problem. The good news is that a number of cutting-edge leaders and organizations are shifting their focus to ask: "How can we help to have impact at a scale that actually solves the problem?" And they are finding that technology, particularly information tech, offers answers. According to Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering and a renowned expert on artificial intelligence, "Once any domain, discipline, technology, or industry becomes information-enabled and powered by information flows, its price/performance begins doubling approximately annually." This phenomenon opens up the potential for exponential growth in reach and impact.

Here are six ways that information technology is breaking through scale barriers:

·      Empowering with information.

·         Teaching and engaging.

·         Making matches.

·         Crowdsourcing hotspots.

·         Reaching the under-served.

·         Raise cash for good.

Abe Grindle, famous author, speaks about the ways technology is breaking the barriers to social change. To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3043761/techsocial/6-ways-technology-is-breaking-barriers-to-social-change

Cricket and Analytics are hot topics today. With the help of technology Analytics, the interest quotient of cricket has gone up exponentially. High definition telecasts, data visualisation have really made cricket exciting to watch nowadays. Vijay Sethi, VP and CIO at Hero MotoCorp Ltd, speaks about how he sees his favourite game today that comes with a generous dose of analytics. To read more, visit the following link:

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/analytics-in-cricket-is-a-technological-marvel-hero-motocorp-cio-vijay-sethi/536201-3.html

A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. For example, an organization might use a public cloud service, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for archived data but continue to maintain in-house storage for operational customer data. The hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities. This type of hybrid cloud is also referred to as hybrid IT. The hybrid cloud has the potential to transform enterprise IT completely and shift the cost/benefit emphasis from cost to benefit.

Matt Watts, Netapp, speaks about how hybrid cloud can bring this transformation. To know more, please visit:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2015/03/18/hybrid-cloud-cost-benefit/

Google Analytics is one of the best tools one can use for the purpose of analyzing the audience. With the right insights, one can modify the approach, anticipate customer needs, and create a superior user experience. It is also possible to measure a tremendous diversity of data on your web users, and using that data, you’ll be able to make meaningful change to your branding and marketing strategies. The acquisition insights and behavioural insights will help you explore more details and trend understanding. This information is especially useful in determining which of your marketing strategies is the most effective, but it’s also useful for determining what types of people are visiting your site and why. For example, if you find that the majority of your users are finding your site through content you’ve syndicated on social media, you could double your content writing and syndication efforts to attract an even greater number of users.

To read more, please visit the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/03/19/how-to-analyze-your-audience-in-google-analytics/

The cloud services leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been challenged by the big daddy Google by announcing new storage partnerships with a number of companies for data backup (Veritas Technologies Corp./Symantec Corp.), on-premises appliances for data de-duplication (NetApp), encryption and compression (Iron Mountain Inc.), and offline disk storage and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions (Geminare Inc.). Google offers an Online Cloud Import service that can be used to migrate petabyte-scale data from other online storage services to Google Cloud Storage, the company said in a white paper about Nearline Storage.Nearline will enable users to easily back up and store limitless amounts of data at a very low cost and access it at any time in a matter of seconds, which has been positioned against the Amazon Glacier storage service.

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2015/03/16/google-nearline-storage-challenges-aws.aspx

Analytics has now become an integral part of cricket. Before the match begins, there is a series of analysis about the pitch, weather conditions, weather predictions, history of two teams against each other, history of the teams on the particular ground, in the particular country, among others . Similarly, each player of the teams gets analyzed in great details, in terms of his records, his performance against the opponent, on the pitch, his strengths and weaknesses. Each player is also analyzed as a fielder in terms of the history of his catches taken or dropped. Strategies of captain get predicted and its possible impacts are discussed. The list is just endless. Cricket is no longer only the game to be played on the ground. Much of it happens off the ground, using analytical tools.

Satish Pendse, president of Highbar Technologies Ltd, an HCC group company, explains how he sees cricket today with technology impacting the viewing experience. To know more, click on the link below

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/cricketnext/real-cricket-action-happens-off-the-ground-with-analytics-highbar-tech-cio-satish-pendse/533130-78.html 

Rapid Miner had an existing partnership with Radoop - an analytics company that optimizes the big data platform known as Hadoop. Now, after successfully acquiring Radoop, Rapid Miner will be able to provide access to many other Hadoop features to its customers which will in turn build a larger presence in the Hadoop ecosystem for RapidMiner. The acquisition also brings partnerships with Hadoop platforms Cloudera and Hortonworks, and adds 20 new clients to RapidMiner’s customer base. The powerful combination of RapidMiner and Radoop will allow applications of advanced analytics to big data. Apart from providing scripting and advanced predictive analytics for experts, it will also help non-technical people to access, analyze, and visualize big data.

To read more, Visit the following link:

http://betaboston.com/news/2014/06/17/rapidminer-acquires-big-data-analytics-company-radoop/

The ongoing World Cup is expected to see most Social Media mentions of any sporting event. Since June 2013, there have been 19 million social mentions including the phrase “World Cup”! Soccer is the most popular sport in earth and social media is the creamiest option for fan & follower interaction and debate. However, for business houses, it is also the right time to explore this hype to turn the tides in their favour. With proper social media strategy, this world cup fever can help you reach 230 countries! According to FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke, FIFA will earn $4bn (£2.3bn) in revenue from this tournament – ten per cent more than last time. About $1.4bn (£837m) will come from sponsorship deals, the balance from TV rights. Much of that increased investment will go into content and social media. "They will certainly continue to use conventional paid-for media, but owned and earned media are occupying a larger share of the communications mix as brands increasingly become publishers in their own right during major cultural moments," says Martin. The brands are at war! Brands like Nike, pepsi, Adidas all are trying to bank on this social media interaction Tsunami and beat competitors. While brands have long been publishers in one way or another, the latest iteration of brand publishing using social media to engage and magnify the content is really only now coming to maturity. There is even a tenuous strain of thought that suggests the 2014 World Cup could mark the high tide of this approach. Nancy Smith, President and CEO of New York-based marketing consultancy Analytic Partners, says her company has examined billions of dollars of marketing spend and has come to very different conclusions. She said that “Budgets are increasingly stretched and social media are a very good way to extend those dollars. It is clear that owned and earned media are a must. We have found that owned and earned engagement has boosted incremental sales from paid marketing by two to six per cent. The average is about five per cent, although we have seen effects from social media for smaller niche companies as high as four hundred per cent”. The question remains open: Brands are going full throttle on their online channels for this footy frenzy but could the 20th World Cup be the high watermark for social media? To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.prweek.com/article/1297965/20th-world-cup-social-media-strategies-brand-war-rooms

Google had maintained a complete secrecy about the algorithm it uses to generate site links. Google includes pages in the sitelinks that don't appear to be the healthiest pages in traffic acquisition, engagement, or any other supporting data point. Why is Google selecting these pages? Below are three possible explanations:

• Something for Everyone.
• Search Trends.
• Testing.

Examining web analytics data on site content and to try and "save users’ time" are something organizations do on a daily basis. There is a common assumption that Google has a clever way of determining the popularity of site pages without knowing the website analytics.The method that Google utilizes to determine sitelinks is still somewhat of a mystery. But data shows that Google is anticipating the popularity and health of pages within a site and in many cases including one sitelink that is not typically very popular on the site.

Mark Ryan, Lead Analyst, Extractable writes on this aspect in detail. To read, visit the following link:

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2342233/comparing-google-sitelinks-with-google-analytics-data

According to a report by www.theinformation.com, Google plans to offer a premium Android experience with high end Android Silver line of products. The US market is the initial target. The number of non Google apps installation will be restricted in this product category. Android Silver products will also get prompt software updates and will have top-end features like advanced voice recognition and water resistance.Unlike Google Play Edition and Nexus products, Android Silver devices will be heavily promoted by the internet search giant. Unlike Google Play Edition devices, Android Silver devices are expected to carry Google's brand, not the manufacturers. The report also says that Google has already roped in LG and Motorola to produce the first Android Silver devices.This is not the first time that rumours about Google killing the Nexus line have surfaced in the news. It is needed to be seen that whether Google will annihilate their Nexus products to avoid any kind of cannibalization effect to its soon to be launched silver range or they will opt for a mutual existence strategy.

To read more, visit

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Google-to-replace-Nexus-line-with-Android-Silver-Report/articleshow/34419033.cms

Delivering efficient data modelling & analytics solutions depends a lot on having manpower with relevant skills. Training an existing workforce is a necessity today in the field of big data as data scientists are an elusive catch and there certainly aren’t enough of them to go around just yet. With competitors catching up in this regard and university campuses are yet to address the huge demand of data scientists, organizations got no option other than training the manpower resources they already have! Bill Laberis, Social Media Manager, Custom Solutions Group at IDG said “Think of Big Data like a tsunami. Most of it is still out sea, a veritable wall of data born in large measure from the social media boom. As it approaches land and the shallows, suddenly it looms. Then crashes to shore. On top of your business”.

To read more on this aspect, visit the following link:

http://www.big-dataforum.com/197/training-big-data-talent-necessity-not-option

Economic uncertainty makes dynamic resource model of the cloud a tempting option for start-ups. With the elasticity of cloud computing, no capital goes unused and organizations don't have to guess how much capacity they require. AWS is attractive to small businesses because it is inexpensive to deploy and allows companies to pay only for the resources they use. Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels said that “Cost of failure in the cloud world is close to zero". Application and deployment speed, in addition to ease of use, are key benefits of the cloud for enterprises. For large organizations, hardware savings also can be significant.Redistributing capacity to use capital in the most efficient way is another main reason to implement AWS.

To read more, visit

http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240182220/Startups-omit-in-house-IT-with-Amazon-Web-Services

The industry-wide cloud services pricing curve have inclined downwards with respect to time. Courtesy to the big players like Amazon, Google & Microsoft, price cut is a routine phenomenon in this industry. Amazon Web Services is well known for its belief in the phrase “change is the only constant”. AWS has made frequent changes to its cloud service in recent years, from price cuts to tighter integration with private data centres, to accommodate the enterprise market and branch out beyond its original clientele of developers and start-ups. They had reduced their price 42 times over the past 8 years! At the same time, with huge amount of data available today, a lot of hidden, unearthed insights can be found for each and every industry. AWS Kinesis is an amazing platform to perform various operations on big data. There are also other third party tools to help you explore your data. Matt Wood, General Manager for data science, Amazon Web Services, said “One of the biggest trends is the augmentation -- not the replacement, but the augmentation -- of traditional business intelligence reporting with more real-time services. … Being able to use the two together is very empowering”.

In a recent conversation, Matt Wood, General Manager, AWS, spoke about cloud pricing, big data trends etc. To read, visit the following link:

http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240217081/AWS-chief-data-scientist-talks-cloud-pricing-big-data-trends

There is a huge demand for production ready MongoLab plans on Microsoft Azure. The MongoLab and Microsoft are excited about their latest high-memory MongoDB database plans with virtual machine options that can immediately supply up to 56GB of RAM per node. These will be available in all eight Microsoft Azure data centres worldwide, which will be able to fulfil the massive need.The cloud-served MongoDB instances come from MongoLab, a fully managed database service provider that works with major cloud platforms such as those provided by Amazon and Google. Along with the new memory capacity, the service also provides management tools for backups, performance monitoring of key metrics, analysis to speed up queries and index recommendations. Support is also provided via e-mail or an around-the-clock emergency hotline, depending on the plan.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2014/04/22/announcing-new-mongodb-instances-on-microsoft-azure.aspx

According to the research firm Gartner, health care providers in the Middle East and Africa will spend $2.8 billion on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2013.It is expected that Saudi Arabia & UAE will continue to focus on building and expanding their healthcare infrastructure. Information Technology enabled services got a huge role to play in this market and health care IT professionals are expected to deliver more in terms of quality while containing costs. Users of technology in the health care industry expect their IT systems to work, delivering what they need and when they need it. Lives can depend on this.An effective way of meeting these objectives is the deployment of robust IT analytics, which will provide hospitals with clear visibility into the health and performance of their IT infrastructure. Inefficiencies, disruptions and failures can be identified automatically as they occur, and often before end-users are even aware of them.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.arabnews.com/news/562151

A website is a container of various contents like product or services the organization offers, its mission, vision, values, contact centre etc. Nowadays no business can grow without a properly maintained website. That is where quality of website content comes into play. It is essential to regularly analyze performance of your website content to see what’s working and what hasn't hit the spot. Google analytics site content reports can help you to a great extent for this purpose. Information like which pages getting most of the views, time specific traffic generation, visitor location, entry and exit pages etc will help you to put your effort in a more systematic manner and eventually it will address your thirst for rising above the rest. Anna Lewis, Analyst, Google Analytics, speaks about the benefits of Google Analytics content reports and how it can help you with information on page views, unique page views, Avg. time on page, entrances, bounce rate, exit percentage, page value, content groupings, navigation summary, content drill down etc.

To read more, visit

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2340779/Google-Analytics-Content-Reports-Understanding-the-Key-Benefits

Google released the Dashboard Analytics Solutions Gallery more than a year ago, but marketers are yet to take full advantage of this free resource. Most advanced Google Analytics users have created custom dashboards but few have imported templates from the Solutions Gallery.This reluctance is caused by unavailability of proper support stuff, limited usage process information &preference of custom made solutions etc. However, Google Analytics Solutions Gallerydashboards can be used to find insights and drive more profit.To use it as your advantage, the following steps can be followed:

·         1^st: Decide about what insights you are actually looking for.

·         2^nd: Create new Dashboard & import from Gallery.

·         3^rd:Filter Gallery results by Popularity, Reviews, Category or Type.

·         4^th: View Data, look for insights, & Automate Reporting.

·         5^th: Edit, Customize or Segment Data as required.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2341320/5-Steps-to-Quick-Insights-Using-Google-Analytics-Solutions-Gallery