When technology is running fast in the cloud way, taking multinational companies as its partner, restaurants are not very much successful in it. Most of them are still using costly proprietary software that never gives benefits in return. If MNCs can adopt the cloud and mobile technology, why do restaurants, which have large number of transactions per day, are not able to do it?

With the world becoming increasingly mobile, cloud services becoming cheap, restaurants have ample chance to switch over to cloud and mobile technology. You may be thinking of what are the benefits of switching? Well, you will be able to increase your operational efficiency and better manage your employees and that too while dealing with your customers and simultaneously not sitting in front of your desktop.

So, what are you thinking of? Making your restaurant system interesting and keeping in sync with the technological advancement?   Larry Abramson, CEO of Red Book Connect writes about why you should switch to cloud and mobile technology. Read them at at http://www.fastcasual.com/article/231005/3-reasons-why-restaurants-need-mobile-cloud-technology.

Neural Network is the buzzword in Financial Analytics nowadays. You may be thinking now 'what is a neural network?' Well, Neural Network is a state - of - the - art trainable algorithm which is emulated to function like a human brain. Speaking in terms of stock markets, you can train the algorithm with some historical stock market data and the algorithm will predict the pattern for you.

As forecasting of stock markets, currency markets and other markets are becoming increasingly difficult, neural network is gaining prominence among traders to predict where markets are heading in the near future. Certainly, there are reasons for it. As generation is progressing at a fast pace, people are adopting technologies quickly. The usage of Neural Network has amplified because of the availability of several open source software which have the capability to form a neural net framework. To enhance your shareholder wealth maximization, it is desirable that you must be equipped with the knowledge of how neural network is applied in forecasting markets. Though, as a thumb rule you must remember that no forecasting is accurate, but still this neural network can give some valuable insights.

Wondering how to go about it? Read at http://www.geocities.ws/francorbusetti/KaastraArticle.pdf to know how a neural network is designed for forecasting financial time series data.

An article by E-Commerce Times columnist, Peter S. Vogel, says that it is hard to detect which is growing at a faster pace - cloud or cybercrime. Cloud may be anywhere in the world which creates interesting and complex legal questions regarding privacy of data stored in the cloud. Nevertheless, more businesses are migrating to the cloud to host data, often without regard to the legal consequences.  Many companies are migrating to the cloud to reduce their IT costs but are creating new malware-based and cyber-crime risks to their businesses. If cybercrime and cloud-focused malware continue to grow along with the cloud, the predicted growth of cloud migration may not be realized.

To know more follow http://www.technewsworld.com/story/80107.html

MongoDB added new backup and recovery abilities to its monitoring service to track deployments. People can set up the monitoring service for free when they use it as a cloud-based service and companies can pay to run it in an onsite data center. In version 2.6, the database supports index intersection, which makes it possible to search for information with multiple characteristics.

To read more read the article by Jordan Novet, staff writer based in San Francisco, follow http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/08/mongodb-bigwig-says-new-features-keep-it-way-ahead-of-everybody-else/

In his recent article on human capital management, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, proprietor of ADVANCED SYSTEMS, speaks about how to handle the most expensive asset of a company-Human Capital.  Human capital management emphasizes in recruitment, managing the work force and developing workforce skills. Sustainability is the issue in today's dynamic business world. An efficient human capital management can transform a small business to achieve a foothold in a bigger sphere of operations.

To read more, visit the following link: http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/hoaglandsmith/26937937-452/ignoring-human-capital-is-beyond-foolish.html#.U1SVMFWSyZY

In an article written by Stephen L. Cohen, a private practitioner, strategic and business planning, said how one can identify the talent management growth strategies. In talent management industry, there are only a few ways to differentiate the business: content, delivery, or expertise. This article also describes the above business aspects in details.

To read more, visit the following link: http://www.astd.org/Publications/Blogs/Human-Capital-Blog/2014/04/Talent-Management-Growth-Strategies

One important call center metric is that you should pay attention to abandon rates. An abandon rate is the percentage of calls that people disconnects before an agent can take a call. To keep your customers satisfied with your service, it is important that you should keep your abandon rate to as low as possible because, if a customer hangs up a lot, they may not like the speed of your service. The longer it takes to answer a call, the higher is the abandon rate. High abandon rate can cause a much bigger problem - they can inflate future call volumes which resonates to even higher call abandon rates. Inflating call volume means that the same caller tries to call your call center agent for second or third time.

So, how will you progress to reduce your call abandon rates? Read at http://www.callcentrehelper.com/how-to-bring-down-your-call-abandon-rates-50805.htm  to get some guidelines.

The power of Big Data is used by many industries ranging from healthcare to finance and automobile manufacturer to government. But, a recent survey showed that the retail sector is not an ardent participant in using big data. Research by eCommera reveals that only 23% of UK retailers are able to interpret data quickly for making business decisions, 16% of them are confident about how to use this data to get a clear picture of their requirement and 50% said that they do not have correct business intelligence tools.

It is data, more appropriately Big Data, which will be the future driver in the retail sector. So, to be able to survive stiff competition, it is vital that you should properly use it and interpret it. The question is how will you progress? You will face challenges and you should overcome it.

So, what are they and how should you mitigate them? Caroline Baldwin from ComputerWeekly.com writes about them here:  http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240218550/Are-retailers-using-data-analytics-to-their-advantage. 

Much is being talked about how to protect our environment. But, have you ever thought that how Big Data can play a major role in it? Certainly not, right?

Well, let me tell you then – Big Data is the future for bringing an eco-friendly environment at a time when all of us are chanting the ‘Go Green’ mantra.  Due to its versatility, Big Data is necessary for various environmental needs. It can help in surveying a large area and can also assist you in monitoring a small city’s water supply. With Big Data enabling you to collect data having no limit, it can be implemented with rapidity and ease. As opposed to traditional ways where analyzing environmental data was a slow and laborious task, you can collect the same information much faster with Big Data leading to application of it in a shorter time.

By tackling the grievous environmental problems like deforestation, oil dumping and more, Big Data can help our environment to paint in green. Read at http://www.bigdata-startups.com/5-ways-big-data-protect-planet/ for more details on this.

Long ago, Google has integrated Hadoop on its cloud platform to provide customers a framework for storing and processing large amount of data. Earlier, the only way to get in and out of Hadoop on Cloud Platform was through Google’s Cloud Storage service. In order to run Hadoop on data within its “BigQuery SQL” and “Cloud Datastore NoSQL” databases, recently Google has launched connectors for both of these two products, complementing the existing Cloud Storage implementation.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/googles-cloud-platform-gets-improved-hadoop-support-with-bigquery-and-cloud-datastore-connectors/

A recent research on 1000 Information Technology executives and decision maker respondents by the cloud services company EvolveIP™ revealed that 84% of organizations that do not currently deploy Unified Communication features, are planning for, or considering the services, for their business in the next one to three years.For the study, Evolve IP defined UC as: "The concept of consolidating phone, email, fax, chat, video, and collaboration into a single unified channel, either on a device or on a computer”. The survey also examined UC components and uncovered that the most requested UC features are:

1. Audio & Web Conferencing (51%).
2. Unified Messaging (46%).
3.  IM&P Instant Messaging and Presence (40%).

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/84-of-organizations-considering-unified-communications-uc-in-the-near-future-253461811.html

Red Hat aims to reduce the search time &solution search cost for customers with its OpenShift Marketplace. Customers will be able to easily find the information, tools and community they need to discover and procure the right solution. They will be able to securely access and manage leading OpenShift application technologies from a single location. Customers and developers will be able to easily search for third-party OpenShift solutions and add-on productivity offerings, including database, email delivery services, messaging queues, application performance monitoring, all managed from a central location.As more developers use enterprise PaaS for an increasing array of applications, a key to their success is a vibrant and robust partner ecosystem. OpenShift’s current partner ecosystem uses the OpenShift Cartridge specification method to link key technologies and services into applications built on OpenShift, giving customers access to a variety of offerings from cloud industry leaders.Will Shulman, CEO and co-founder, MongoLab, said "We're extremely excited to offer fully-managed MongoDB through the OpenShift Marketplace. Red Hat users will be able to quickly integrate MongoDB into their application and focus on product development instead of operations."

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/141770/

Since its debut a year ago, Red Hat flagship application container Docker has generated much interest among technology professionals. It assists in packaging of applications in a virtual container so that it can be run across different Linux distributions. Docker containers can be easily moved across different Linux servers without the need for reconfiguration.Red hat is planning to release a variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution that is customized to run Docker with maximum efficiency. It has also initiated two community projects to help Docker make better use of new technologies in the Linux kernel and ecosystem.  One- Project Atomic, will concentrate on simplifying maintenance, reducing the footprint, adding additional layers of verification and control to Docker containers. The second community project, called GearD, will integrate Docker into its PaaS hosting software, OpenShift Origin.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/543014/red_hat_adds_muscle_docker_container_technology/

For many enterprises, the most recognizable model of cloud computing is the public cloud model, which provides ultimate scalability, flexibility, location independent access and is of course cost effective. But workload evaluation is important before an organization moves to the public cloud. There can be situations wherepublic cloud such as AWS costs may far exceed on-premise infrastructure costs. According to research firm Gartner, the evaluation every organization must undergo before moving into a public cloud consists of taking into account few major things. These are: number of machines an organization will run, number of hours per day or per week they'll run and the amount of storage these machines will generate. The evaluation should also include the licenses that need to be paid for on a recurring basis; how many times and how often snapshots occur; the rate of change in the data; and how much new data they are going to generate. Mike Ryan, consultant, Epitech, said that “You're paying for the elasticity of Amazon, and if you're not using that, it makes sense to bring things into your own data centre”. The scaling flexibility of public cloud is great during the growth phase, but which solution is the best from an enterprise long term perspective?

Beth Pariseau, senior news writer, SearchAWS, wrote about this aspect on her recent article. To know more, visit the following link:

http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240219066/Enterprises-hit-tipping-point-in-AWS-cloud-vs-private-cloud-costs

Kinesis is a service related to real-time processing of streaming data. It buffers data into a storage system with checkpoints to absorb the data into the Redshift cloud data warehouse. Users can store and process large datasets each hour from various sources like financial transactions, social media feeds, location-tracked events etc. With Kinesis, business customers can write applications, generate alerts, and make other decisions virtually apart from retrieving the stored data back instantly. According to Amazon, Kinesis can support applications and data streams of any size while replicating across multiple availability zones. Kinesis has been positioned as an answer to big data, with a “pay-as-you-go” pricing.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.zdnet.com/kinesis-amazon-web-servicess-answer-to-big-data-7000023223/

RiseSmart, an enterprise career management solutions that drive employee engagement, won the 2014 Leadership 500 Excellence Awards program. The 2014 Leadership 500 Excellence Award is given by Leadership Excellence, a publication in partnership with HR.com, to recognize the top 500 leadership organizations and also their strategies and solutions. This year award recipients were selected based on both an application and nomination process as well as voting.

To read more, visit the following link:http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1852993

Hospitals tend to be less hierarchical than manufacturing, requiring building consensus among stakeholders before taking action. In addition to cost cutting in healthcare, Lean initiatives improve patient safety and reimbursement rates and create new standards. Lean combined with Six Sigma, a process-improvement strategy, can help in reducing variability in business processes. An article by Susan D. Hall, experienced writer and editor in Dallas, talks about how Lean Six Sigma improves outcomes and saves costs by employing better care coordination and implementing a culture of efficiency, data-rich technology and real-time operation performance measurement.

To know more visit http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/lean-leadership-healthcare-what-does-it-take/2012-08-22

During 2013 December, Amazon launched Kinesis. It is a service for real-time processing of streaming data. Kinesis is designed to capture small records, which in turn forms huge amount of backend data. Amazon wanted to be able to capture all of that data, aggregate it, and put it into its AWS cloud storage service (S3), so that they could look at it at a later stage. Waite, General Manager of Data Services, AWS, said “This enables us to scale the metering service to new limits and give alerts in real time”.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/20/why-amazon-created-aws-kinesis-its-live-data-processing-service/

According to a recent research report “Clicking Clean: How Companies are Creating the Green Internet” by Greenpeace, most of the enterprise cloud service providers are powering their services with renewable energy sources. However, the cloud giant AWS received lowest grades on energy transparency, renewable energy commitments, energy efficiency initiatives, deployment and advocacy in the report. AWS, which has more than 50 % of market share over the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market in North America and Europe, seems to be lagging behind other major cloud providers in terms of its use of green energy sources to power its data centres. According to the report, AWS “remains among the dirtiest and least transparent companies in the sector, far behind its major competitors, with zero reporting of its energy or environmental footprint to any source or stakeholder.”

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2014/04/14/aws-increasingly-isolated-as-least-green-cloud/

A recent report by Rightscale revealed details about pricing changes by IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) vendors.Cloud Service Providers AWS, Rackspace, Google and Microsoft's Azure cut prices for computing services, storage solutions and networking 25 times in 2013, up from 22 times in 2012. According to Rightscale, cloud infrastructure prices continue to fall, especially for computing services and storage solutions. AWS leads the pack in price cuts and Microsoft's Azure is reacting most to these price cuts made by AWS.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.zdnet.com/infrastructure-as-a-service-price-cuts-accelerate-7000027581/