SigmaWay Blog

Going digital has its own advantages. Along with flexibility, adaptability it allows for transparency and openness. With increasing openness and transparency, customers get to know the whole truth which helps them to trust better. Lack of trust is prominent among leading societies and economies nowadays and it has impacted them. Customers trust what they use and this is the whole point of digital transformation. It has its own culture that empowers us with digital tools to know more about the customers. Its span includes the big data surge. With more information on customers focus has been shifted to the effective use of these data. Again, while collecting personal data from customers there is often a lack of trust which hinders the whole process. To know more, please follow: http://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/digital-change-is-cultural-change/

Dubai Airports CEO, Paul Griffiths, is revolutionizing the airport experience and working. The Dubai Airport is handling 120 million annual passengers. This causes a need for something preventing the degradation of customer experience. Using in-dept. analytics to assign gates in a dynamic way is the first step. The system can assign gates in a far more efficient manner – such that if two flights have a significant numbers of passengers common between them, they will dynamically be assigned gate positions as close as possible. A new initiative allows retail stores in the airport to scan passengers' boarding passes and provide current updated about their departure gate, time, and the estimated time to move from the customer's current position to the gate. There are thus using data to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost structure of air industry operations. Read more at: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2944535/big-data-business-intelligence/big-data-enables-an-entirely-new-design-of-airport.html

Earlier, the concept of cloud security was obscure and hence corporate executives and IT professionals used to tremble even at its very mention. The reason behind it was that only few could protect the data. Since data is vulnerable to hacking therefore any minor negligence could put the enterprise at risk. However, things changed in 2015. Businesses need not have to be concerned about cloud computing security due to the following reasons:

• Introduction of new and effective methods to safeguard data through company suites, backups/redundancy and virtualization.
• One needs to be extremely cautious while choosing a vendor and it is highly recommended to visit their site in person in order to scan their system.
• Finally, with the advent of advanced technologies companies started using cloud computing without any worries.

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/why-businesses-shouldn-t-worry-about-cloud-computing-security

Choosing the right Hadoop distribution can be a tricky process. There are 4 basic categories that businesses should look at for specific qualifying criteria.
1. Performance
Hadoop is widely chosen as a data platform due to its high performance achieved by replacing the stock MapReduce by Apache Spark. However not all operations need such superior hardware and a business must choose its hardware on basis of the operations it hopes to perform.
2. Dependability
When looking for a distribution, dependability is a significant but rare feature. Only few implementations in Hadoop can guarantee a system availability of 99.999%. Look for a distribution that provides Self-Healing, No Downtime Upon Failure, Tolerance of Multiple Failure, 100% Commodity Hardware, No Additional Hardware Requirements, Ease of Use, Data Protection and Disaster Recovery.
3. Manageability
Look for a distribution that has intuitive administrative tools that assist in management, troubleshooting, job placement and monitoring.
4. Data Access
Gathering and storing data is just the beginning of the process. What really matters is that the stored data must me easily accessible for further processing. Look for a distribution that provides
• Full access to the Hadoop file system API
• Full POSIX read/write/update access to files
• Direct developer control over key resources
• Secure, enterprise grade search
• Comprehensive data access tooling
Hopefully these four specification along with your criterions will enable you to choose the best Hadoop distribution for you.

For more information visit:
http://www.smartdatacollective.com/davemendle/324791/four-considerations-when-choosing-hadoop-distribution

Forex, in terms of daily trading volume, is the largest market on the planet and should not be surprising that data mining has a lot to do with determining success in the Forex market. Algorithmic Trading is the automated execution of a trading algorithm. In our case, the algorithm is derived from data mining. Once the algorithm is in place, all it requires is some programming codes to allow it to run the algorithm. The most important part of this puzzle is the data used to set up the algorithm-the scope for extensive data mining.
Many open source platforms are available for this purpose and one can choose the desired one according to his/her preference of speed and accuracy with there being an obvious trade-off between the two, given the vast amount of data available to us.

For more information visit:
https://www.mql5.com/en/blogs/post/640795

In today's world where manufacturing has turned into a truly global industry spanning over multiple time zones with multiple languages and cultures, language can prove to be a stumbling block for communication and hence success. The expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never had more practical meaning than today. Visuals can actually help us understand complex problems faster than just texts or numbers.
Let us look at what goes in the making of a great visual:
• Easy to Setup: In a learn environment where stress is imposed on minimizing waste it is of prime importance that the time and resources needed to setup, a visual is minimized.
• Easy to See: Even before we get down to the task of analyzing the graphs what must be kept in mind is that the graphs should be visible. And by visibility we also broadly mean that the visuals should be placed at strategically at the “right place”.
• Easy to Maintain: Information posted via a visual must be constantly updated and it would be more cost efficient if every consequent update does not render the previous version as unusable.
• Easy to Use: The visuals should be designed in such a way that everyone is able to use the information displayed- so that no special training is needed to read the information shown.
• Easy to Understand: Visual symbols can work great for communication only if the information displayed is readily usable for analysis. If further processing of data has to be done before they can be used, it greatly diminishes its functionality.

For more information visit:
http://www.apriso.com/blog/2015/07/the-5-es-great-lean-visuals-have-in-common/

Make way, its drone landing on your terrace with your favorite pizza. That’s how your favorite pizza outlet might advertise in a few years down the line. IoT based drones for pizza delivery is going to be the buzz for both pizza vendors and consumers. You get your pizza faster, it’s not soggy and sizzling hot direct from oven to your home. Scott Andreson, Director of consulting Services at CGI, in a post on Cloud Tweaks give us fascinating insights about this new possibility, the challenges which are likely to occur and of course there will be a few solutions too.  All you pizza lovers and technology aficionados hit the link to know more http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/06/hot-emerging-trends-the-pizza-delivery-drone/

A startling revelation has been made by a group of math and computer experts that has been hard to digest. Leaving behind data consumption giants like you tube, twitter in social media and astronomy, particle physics in science the field that has emerged as a leader is genomics.  Genomics generate the most electronic bytes per year relative to other fields. It has been a challenge to capture, store and interpret the genome encoded biological information. Data generation has increased at a fast pace with the growth of biological sciences. Leading edge data generation and processing technologies are needed to tackle the present situation be it in the field of biological sciences or social media or high tech science. To know more, please follow: http://www.dataversity.net/wheres-the-biggest-big-data-to-be-found-genomics/

Big Data is nowadays drastically affecting people's lives by its various uses. 1) With the growing population, infrastructure also have to grow. Hence, Transport for London (TFL) is going through a data-driven approach to increase the network access across England's capital city. This helps in informing people about alternatives when there are closures in a route. 2) With considerable growth, the necessity to plan proper waste management has increased. Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (GMWDA) in UK collects data to increase the recycling level to move more towards a sustainable age. 3) Accuracy of weather forecasting is increasing with the help of big data using complex and more accurate devices. It still isn't perfect but is on the track to get that accuracy helping outside worker plan ahead of time. Read more about this article by Chris Towers (Big Data Divisional Head) at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/big-data-in-real-time

Hadoop, for many years, was the leading open source Big Data framework but recently the newer and more advanced Spark has taken over. Spark is reported to be 100 times faster although it lacks its own distributed storage system. For this reason many projects involve installing Spark on top of Hadoop, where Spark’s advanced analytics can make use of data stored using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
What really gives Spark the edge is speed. Spark handles most of its operations ‘in memory’- copying them from the distributed physical storage into far faster logical RAM memory. Spark’s speed of handling advanced data processing tasks such as real time stream processing and machine learning is much more than what could be achieved by Hadoop. Faster dynamic data handling gives Spark the upper hand over Hadoop.
However it must be concluded that these two frameworks are not necessarily mutually exclusive and do not perform exactly the same tasks. In fact using both of them together can actually provide better results than using either one separately.

For more information visit:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/06/22/spark-or-hadoop-which-is-the-best-big-data-framework/

Organizations along with their partners needs to participate in the supply chain - from suppliers to customers in order to fully exploit their business relationships. The route for management of supply chains is high speed communication and cooperation. The digital supply chain helps to build trust and improves transparency and efficiency. The Internet of Things (IOT) is crucial for facilitating supply chains in future. It uses sensor-embedded equipment in order to convey data about the parameters and this boosts performance and safety. Predictive analytics is also a blessing for the supply chains. However the most significant aspect of a digital supply chain is social media. Some businesses integrate social technology with business transactions thereby leading to an increase in transparency.

For further details on this study, please follow the link: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/the-development-of-the-digital-supply-chain

Lean Six Sigma or LSS is a combination of two business management techniques, where lean strategizes in waste reduction and Six Sigma uses a methodical five step (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve &Control) approach to solve business problems. LSS helps to save money, optimize and streamline internal processes and communication. Implementation helps in efficiency, higher quality and better customer service. The benefits are: 1. Increased Efficiency
2. Higher Quality Output
3. Better Customer Service
4. A Safer Workplace
5. Program Implementation. Read more at: http://www.pddnet.com/articles/2015/06/benefits-lean-six-sigma-methodology-culture

There is a call for new school of cyber defense,since the perimeter security cloud cannot prevent cyber-attacks anymore. The first step is to mitigate the damage. The best way is to run a fully updated , layered  ,in depth set of security tools and educating the end users about how to falling for attack lures. Second step is to prepare for the aftermath of the attack. The approach here should be data centric. Prepare a written plan as to who to contact and what to do in case of security breach. Read more at: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/twitter-chat-how-to-prepare-for-a-cyberattack/a/d-id/1321216

Hadoop, for many years, was the leading open source Big Data framework but recently the newer and more advanced Spark has taken over. Spark is reported to be 100 times faster although it lacks its own distributed storage system. For this reason many projects involve installing Spark on top of Hadoop, where Spark’s advanced analytics can make use of data stored using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
What really gives Spark the edge is speed. Spark handles most of its operations ‘in memory’- copying them from the distributed physical storage into far faster logical RAM memory. Spark’s speed of handling advanced data processing tasks such as real time stream processing and machine learning is much more than what could be achieved by Hadoop. Faster dynamic data handling gives Spark the upper hand over Hadoop.
However it must be concluded that these two frameworks are not necessarily mutually exclusive and do not perform exactly the same tasks. In fact using both of them together can actually provide better results than using either one separately.

For more information visit:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/06/22/spark-or-hadoop-which-is-the-best-big-data-framework/

With every passing day it is becoming very important to safeguard data by companies both small and big. It can be done in the following ways:
1. Prioritize the issue – The issues must be computed and addressed regularly.

2. Understand what your data assets are – It will be beneficial if the data assets of a company are identified beforehand.

3. Learn about what you are up against – The Company should have at least an idea on how the hackers might steal or compromise the data.

4. Communicate issues with employees – The employees should be encouraged to take up habits that reduce data breaches and awareness should be spread.

5. Be ready to react – The Company and its IT experts should be alert and ready to react in any emergency situation.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/keithrbr/326717/5-tips-protecting-your-data-assets-more-effectively

These days recruiting a new employee accounts for a huge investment by the company. A major section of the company’s revenue is spent on staff salaries. Thus with improvement in technology, improved strategies and planning can be used in the recruitment process.
Klout scores are used by companies to rank users according to their social influence, especially for recruitments in sales and marketing roles. Gild is another service used in the field of technical programming jobs. In this, service software development professionals are assessed based on their contribution to public and open sources and their experiences in the past.
Thus Big Data helps in eliminating the guess work in the recruitment process thus finding a more scientific approach of recruiting staff.
Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bernardmarr/327498/how-big-data-changing-recruitment-forever

The Internet Of Things (IOT) ) affects the way in which the enterprises interact with their customers. With the sole motive of customer satisfaction, it is crucial to note how the future would appear for the customers and the best ways of satisfying them and they are as follows:

• It is recommended to go for smooth transformation of customer experience and provide the customer with maximum profit. Focus groups and customer feedback helps to maintain it.
• Usually customers take time to embrace new technology and hence provision of information would facilitate easy usage.
• The platform is also important because a big platform can destroy a customer experience and relationship.
• It is necessary to get initials and continuous stakeholders as they will generate speed into the project.                                                                   

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7667-planning-for-a-future-state

Keeping tabs on products just got easier for manufacturers and retailers. Smart sensors, a part of IOT has enabled tracking of products from manufacturing till the time it gets sold. This technology has drastically reduced waste. Not only that, usage data could be collected throwing light on usage patterns and thereby helping improve the product from a consumer perspective. Interestingly it would help optimize product revenue and collect specific information related to individual consumers that might be used to expand sales or even invalidate warranty.  This sort of monitoring does not go down well with a section of consumers who believe this is an invasion of privacy. In this age of IOT, clear boundaries should be set demarcating what is acceptable in consideration of the benefits. To know more, please follow: http://www.dataversity.net/are-smart-products-getting-too-smart/

An effective way to communicate is to visualize the rightful information.  The trending problem is to properly present a data than just collecting it. The ‘infographics’ is the most widely used tool to communicate and avoid ‘chartjunk’ ,which leads to less loss of data. The visual way should be easily interpretable and easily communicable. The visual data should have the quality of explaining the business information. The visual communication is most widely used and is more acceptable to human brain. The data should be simple enough to reach and communicate the masses for better and efficient business. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/business-intelligence/business-intelligence-insights-present-visual-data-team-understands-01263960

Hadoop works on extracting voluminous unstructured data to interpret business performance, customer relationship management etc. Large business houses are at a distinct advantage in handling big data, but with features like Excel reporting in Hadoop, small businesses can also take advantage. Some salient features are:
1. Hadoop is being used with cloud storage platforms to expand storage capabilities.
2. Third party tools and add-ons help tighten up big data security, as big data security is vital.
3. Allowing big data processing through integration with IT systems.
4. Hadoop allows modifications, to extend functionality and accessibility.

To know more: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/hadoop-keeps-even-small-businesses-loop-big-data-analytics-01257559