Nowadays, many organizations use data and analytics to understand customers, develop new products and optimize business processes. 

“Organizations able to take advantage of the new generation of business analytics solutions can leverage digital transformation to adapt to disruptive changes and create competitive differentiation in their markets,” said IDC analyst Dan Vesset in a statement issued in conjunction with the release of IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide earlier this year.  A recent Forrester Research study also found that, 50% of businesses now use data and analytics tools to analyze their existing customers, while 48% use them to find new customers and 47% use them to develop new products and services. Read more at: http://www.cio.com/article/3147293/analytics/analytics-50-how-big-data-innovators-reap-results.html#tk.ciofsb

Many organizations have large amount of data, but don’t really know how to manage it all. You will decide to move all the data to the cloud, but, is your business ready for it? Do you move every single asset to the cloud? Once capital, infrastructure, technology, and operational aspects of the enterprise are under control they can start to think what needs to be optimized, how and what should be relocated to the cloud. It is critical to have a cloud strategy, make sure it is flexible due to the nature of growing and shrinking of data. Moving customer prone applications or internally developed applications to the cloud without careful evaluation can lead to loss in revenue. Applications can be ‘cloudified’ by using application-specific workloads such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) etc. To decide which application, make sense in cloud, enterprise’s IT teams must balance performance, interoperability and compatibility. Having a Data Center Management (DCM) platform allows company to procure, deploy, monitor and measure IT assets through web browser. Read more at: https://www.computer.org/web/data-center-insider/content?g=55674596&type=blogpost&urlTitle=big-data-in-the-mist-are-you-cloud-ready-

Mention database and what all things will come to your mind? Data management, storage, tables, RDBMS… But this trend is changing. The reason for the change is big data. Data has become so big that conventional methods and tools are not enough to manage this data. So what to do? We need some database technologies which can deal with big data. Hadoop is the most popular technology which can tackle big data. It is a data-centric platform which is highly scalable and used to run applications in parallel. Another alternative to RDBMS is the use of NoSQL platforms like MongoDB. Read the full article here: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3003647/database/how-big-data-is-changing-the-database-landscape-for-good.html

In healthcare, conclusions drawn from predictive analytics can directly influence patient's health but unfortunately it's not used widely because of the vendor hype and sales exaggeration of sales. Nowadays, doctors are using predictive analytics in treating breast cancer also. They ask questions like: Of the last 10,000 Asian females, with a tumor like this, how were they treated, what was the outcome, what were the side-effects to ensure she gets the right kind of medicine. That is what we call a learning health care system. Using data and predictive analysis is the need of the hour to improve our health care delivery.?Read more at:  http://www.zdnet.com/article/harvard-medical-professor-big-data-and-analytics-help-cure-cancer/

Big data has a vital application in healthcare industry. Social media will increase communication between providers, patients and communities. This will not only work to globalize and democratize healthcare, but it is also a potentially important source of big data.  It will impact how these players engage with the healthcare ecosystem, especially when globalization, external data, regionalization, mobility and social networking are involved. The problem in healthcare isn't the lack of data but the lack of information that can be used to support decision-making, planning and strategy. In healthcare, big data challenges are compounded by the fragmentation and dispersion of data among the various stakeholders, including payers, data vendors, standards organizations, providers, labs, ancillary vendors, financial institutions and regulatory agencies. The entire healthcare system can realize benefits from democratizing big data access. Big data can make decision support simpler, faster and ultimately more accurate because rational decisions are based on higher volumes of data that are more current and relevant. Read more at:

A recent survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that those who were polled believe that customer service and marketing is expected to gain most from analytics, but customer service is unprepared to deal with big data. Proper analytics of the brand will enable business houses to understand how their business is performing, whether they need any improvement or not.  An October 2013 Gartner report, Market Trends: Leveraging Analytics in Vertical Industries, identified four major categories of analytics: Descriptive, Diagnostic, Prescriptive, Predictive. Three ways in which analytics is transforming customer service: Analytics is encouraging organizations to break down barriers

Analytics is changing perceptions of important measurements

Analytics is allowing brands to get ahead

To know more about the three ways in which analytics is transforming customer service, go to:https://blog.zopim.com/2013/11/20/3-ways-analytics-transforming-customer-service/