Lots happened the past week in the social media, social business, big data and business intelligence world. Read below a review of the most interesting happenings and developments that caught my particular attention. What news did you find the most interesting?
Social media and social business
7Summits reports record growth: Demand for social business solutions continues rising
Social business agency 7Summits announced strong financial and company results for fiscal 2012. The company posted 158% revenue growth alongside record earnings as it turned in its most profitable year since its inception in 2009. Over that same period, 7Summits has brought over 50 online community experiences to life for its growing base of Fortune clients, with over 2.8 million members engaging across the globe.
7Summits unveiled its new solution model in 2012, with an emphasis on five key areas:
1) Social Business Management – Social business strategy, change management, activation and gamification, as well as measurement and analytics;
2) Social Marketing and Outreach – Socially-enabled websites, social listening and response, outreach and activation, as well as search and relevancy optimization;
3) External Customer-Centric Communities – Customer support communities, brand building communities, partner extranets and industry-centric hubs, as well as integrated social commerce experiences;
4) Internal Employee-Centric Communities – Social intranets, knowledge management solutions and HR and Corporate Communications solutions, all with an emphasis on culture and collaboration;
5) Socially Enabled Business Processes – Emphasis on distributed business processes such as sales enablement, global marketing, product development, customer service and capital planning.
Studies on social media
A study says one out of three adults aged 65 and up who use the internet also use social media.
The study, done by Pew Internet, was conducted through phone interviews with over 2,200 Americans age 18 and older.
Results found that as of April 2012, 53 percent of adults aged 65 and up are using email or the internet. Of those using the internet, 34 percent are using social media sites like Facebook and 18 percent of them are using social media regularly says researchers.
Another survey showed that young people who use social media seek fame. Tweens and young teens who use social media place a higher value on fame than kids who don’t use it or use it infrequently, according to a new survey of media use among those ages 9-15.
Of the 334 young people surveyed online with their parents’ permission, almost half say they use social networks; among the under-13 age group, 23% use a social networking site; 26% of the younger group say they have a YouTube account.
A third (33%) of the young people surveyed said being famous was either somewhat important, important or very important.
Big data
E.ON partners with Ericsson on grid big data
European power giant E.ON is building out a smarter grid across its various networks, including rolling out smart meters, and announced a new big data partnership with grid gear and software provider Ericsson.
The deal is focused around 600,000 smart meters in Sweden.
Ericsson competes with GE, Siemens, ABB and others to sell software, services and hardware to utilities and power companies. Increasingly utilities and power companies are interested in buying more data analytics tools as their networks are becoming IT networks that need to monitor, digest, and analyze data to run more efficiently.
Some of the power gear vendors are turning to the big data startup leaders for partnerships around the latest analytics.
Cloudera works with universities to close talent gap
Cloudera developed the CAP program to address the shortage of qualified data professionals and support the development of a skilled workforce capable of accelerating the new data economy.
Professors and students affiliated with CAP program institutions can freely download a wide selection of Cloudera’s industry-leading training materials and receive discounts on all Cloudera Certification exams.
Accredited, non-profit academic institutions also can take advantage of the more robust features of Cloudera’s software suite through a special University License. CAP members have free access to Cloudera Manager Enterprise Edition for 12 months to support data-intensive testing, development, and research. In conjunction with Cloudera’s industry-leading open-source CDH platform, the University License provides CAP participants with the tools needed to achieve major breakthroughs in Big Data.
“Big Data is one of the hottest technology segments right now. Everybody is at least talking about Big Data, and with San Jose State being in the heart of Silicon Valley, we are excited to pioneer this work in the academic realm. This would not have been possible without Cloudera,” said Peter Zadrozny, Big Data instructor at San Jose State University.
Business intelligence
Asahi Technologies announces next-gen Business Intelligence solutions using RapidMiner
RapidMiner is a complete business intelligence suite enabling enterprises to make the most of business data in a simple and cost-effective way.To help businesses harness the power of the comprehensive data mining tool, Asahi Technologies announces RapidMiner Business Intelligence solutions.
By leveraging our RapidMiner based business intelligence solutions, organizations gain competitive advantage in terms of data analysis and management that helps them to make insightful business decisions.
A fully integrated platform for data mining, predictive analysis and business intelligence, RapidMiner is deployed in thousands of applications in more than 40 countries.
“By leveraging our RapidMiner business intelligence solutions, organizations gain competitive advantage in terms of data analysis and management that helps them to make insightful business decisions,” stated Mr. Vinod Subbaiah, the CEO and Founder of Asahi Technologies.
Asahi Technologies is a New York based web design and development firm that provides software consulting and Web solutions to small and medium level businesses all across North America.
Adoption of smartphones and tablets drive mobile Business Intelligence market, according to report
According to the report, one of the major drivers is the increasing adoption of smartphones and tablets. The Global Smartphone and Tablet market is expected to grow rapidly during the period 2012-2016.
The Global Mobile Business Intelligence market has been witnessing the increasing usage of mobile business intelligence for sales activity. However, the incompatibility of mobile business intelligence applications with the mobile devices could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.
The key vendors dominating this market space are IBM Corp., Information Builders Inc., MicroStrategy Inc., Qlik Tech Inc., and SAP AG. The other vendors mentioned in the report are Actuate Corp., Birst Inc., Dimensional Insight Inc., Gooddata Corp., Jaspersoft Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., PivotLink Corp., Roambi Inc., SAS Institute Inc., and Spotfire Inc.
Commenting on the report, an analyst from TechNavio’s Telecom team said:
“More enterprises are adopting mobile business intelligence (BI) to strengthen their sales team and sales processes through the use of mobile BI. In addition, the mobile BI solution helps in tracking the activity of sales employees on field. Sales managers or team leaders can track the sales activity of an employee and streamline the sales team as per the requirement. Thus, more organizations are adopting mobile BI for tracking their on-field sales teams, which is an emerging trend in the market.”
Further, the report reveals that the incompatibility of mobile BI applications with mobile devices is one of the major challenges confronting the market.
Cloud computing
Savings generated by Cloud Computing allow businesses to grow
Phaneesh Murthy, the CEO of iGATE, is committed to pioneering the way for new discoveries in technology. For this reason, he has led his company to provide solid services in the increasingly popular field of cloud computing and remains focused on what this technological development could do for businesses located around the globe. Murthy explains that cloud computing can offer companies convenience, security, as well as an opportunity to decrease spending — funds that, according to a recent Forbes article, can be reinvested into business development strategies.
The survey assessed cloud computing strategies and related cost benefits among businesses in a variety of industries, and found that use of the data technology has been leveraged by companies for a wide variety of benefits.
Phaneesh Murthy responds to the new data, “Although cloud computing is relatively new, it is exciting to see that businesses are embracing the technology and actively applying its benefits towards business growth. As this progressive technology evolves, it is my hope that more businesses will grow satisfied with the amount of development cloud computing can offer.”
As a business development professional, Murthy remains focused on the end results of IT solutions.According to Phaneesh Murthy, these statistics are likely to improve as the technology grows in its abilities.
Microsoft cuts Cloud services prices to target Amazon.com
Microsoft is cutting prices for hosting and processing customers’ online data in an aggressive challenge to Amazon.com Inc’s lead in the growing business of cloud computing.
It is the most aggressive move in the arena yet by Microsoft, which is hoping its Windows Azure business can win customers from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which pioneered the renting out of technology resources such as computing power and storage, known as cloud computing.
“If you had concerns that Windows Azure was more expensive, we’re putting those concerns to rest today,” said Steven Martin, an Executive in Microsoft’s Azure business.
This is a growing business for Microsoft, which claims more than 200,000 Windows Azure customers, but the company does not break out the revenue from it.
This success has lured other large technology companies into the cloud computing business, including Google Inc and Microsoft.
Gianluigi Cuccureddu is co-founder of Damarque, helping you to improve your commercial performance through better engagement with your employees, customers and strategic business partners.
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