The adoption of cloud services such as storage, CRM, etc., are a given at this point. One of the faster growing sectors, though, is in human resources management (HRM), sometimes known as human capital management, which is an approach to employee staffing where people are looked at as assets (human capital) whose value can be measured and can be enhanced through investment. Gartner predicts that cloud systems will account for almost half of the $9 billion human capital management systems market in 2015. By leveraging the cloud, businesses can outsource core human resources (HR) functions like payroll, benefits, and risk and compliance, eliminate the burden of HR administration and focus on growing their businesses.
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Mobile and Cloud By @FujitsuAmerica | @CloudExpo [#Cloud #IoT]
Change is constant, and over the last decade the nexus of two trends in particular has transformed the enterprise. Mobile technology and cloud software are fundamentally changing the way we interact internally within businesses, and externally with partners and customers.
Never before have workers enjoyed such freedom and flexibility. The days of being tied to a desk, manning a landline, are gone. Distributed teams can collaborate easily via virtual workplaces. Mobile technology provides access to the business world from any location and the cloud delivers the necessary data and software.
Driving IT Innovation in the Mid-Market | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Recent studies have shown that over two thirds of CIOs have difficulty balancing the time and resources needed in order to drive both business innovation and operational excellence. IT services teams in mid-sized organizations have so much to do that it’s difficult to prioritize. Maintaining existing operational effectiveness takes a significant portion of the available resources. Add to that new IT projects and upgrades and it becomes even more difficult to participate in business innovation efforts. Once you add the support of new technologies such as cloud services, mobile device management and BYOD, as well as ever-present security threats, it quickly becomes clear why it’s so hard to find any balance between operational excellence and innovation.
Industry Bifurcation? | @CloudExpo [#Cloud #IoT]
Apple reported record sales in the most recent quarter, thanks to its upgraded iPhone line. But it was almost alone among the big technology firms in doing so. Profits reported for the same period, have fallen at Google as well … Continue reading 
G20: Saudi Arabia Needs More Cloud
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia needs more cloud computing, more Big Data, and more IoT. This is according to our research at the Tau Institute. The nation does not finish well in our research, yet has a great chance to improve things right at the present moment. Can it? Will it?
Saudi Arabia was represented at the recent G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia, presenting a plan with a call to “deepen and accelerate the pace of economic diversification” while enrolling some 450,000 students in technical and vocation centers by the year 2020.
The country’s rulers plan a “renewed focus on quality” (rather than quantity) and technological development when it comes to its non-oil exports, and seeks more outside investments through the creation of numerous new “free zones.”
The House of Saud also wishes to reduce its own consumption of oil and natural gas, according to the Comprehensive Strategy it presented in Brisbane.
Setting the Scene
There have been many years since the first oil shock of 1973 when Saudi Arabia’s leaders would have been considered the most important at any global gathering. This was not one of those years, as recent drops in oil prices, brought on partially by increased oil production in the US and Canada, have made Saudi Arabia less of a top-level global mover and shaker.
Indeed, the Brisbane meeting was dominated by explicit Western criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The presence of Saudi Arabia may have seemed like a footnote.
But Saudi Arabia is a legitimate member of the G20, with the world’s 19th largest economy. Its per-capita income does not rank among the world leaders, though, as it wrestles with a situation in which new-found oil wealth since the 1970s has created a society of about 30% immigrant labor among a total population that’s approaching 30 million people.
Does Not Rank Well
Our research at the Tau Institute examines the relative ICT development and dynamics of 103 nations of the world. Saudi Arabia ranks 84th overall, slightly higher than its impoverished neighbor Yemen. Within its region, Saudi Arabia trails Jordan and the UAE, although to be fair, it does lead neighboring oil-centric nations Oman, Kuwait, and Iran.
Within its income tier (with per-person incomes between $13,000 an $25,000), Saudi Arabia ranks 17th of 18 nations surveyed. This is the toughest class in our research, with global leaders such as South Korea, Taiwan, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Chile and Uruguay all going gangbusters as they develop their ICT environments and overall economies.
Given its relatively small population, the overall challenge in improving Saudi Arabia’s ICT infrastructure is middling, similar to that of Turkey, Jordan, and Mexico.
The Challenge Ahead
We believe in the fundamental theorem that aggressive ICT development acts as a trigger to economic growth and societal development. So naturally, we recommend that the Kingdom make ICT development as an explicit goal.
Technology can also act as a driver of government transparency and be quite disruptive, something that Saudi Arabia’s leaders will not want to hear. The society faces great stresses, along religious lines as well as the publicly stated problem of reducing the amount of immigrant labor within its population. Both of these issues – religious and demographic – are potential tinderboxes.
Saudi Arabia announced its Tenth Development Plan, covering the years 2015-2019, prior to the Brisbane Summit. The plan calls for infrastructure development of about $100 billion, up 76% from the previous five-year plan. In the end, the Kingdom says it wishes to develop “a national strategy and action plan for a gradual shift to a knowledge-based economy,” creating 1.3 million new jobs for Saudi citizens.
Yet only 3.4% of its planned infrastructure development is earmarked for “transportation and communications,” with nothing explicitly devoted to ICT or, say, the way the Internet of Things could be used to develop its transportation vision. There are modern trains in this vision, though, and we’d expect the IoT to play a role here. Implied here is the notion that the Kingdom should commit itself to cloud computing and all that goes with it to create an ICT infrastructure suitable for the 21st century.
Saudi Arabia has a high level of wealth and relatively low population level that, in theory, gives it a better chance than most countries to develop economically and societally over the next few decades. The country’s leaders seem to be clear-eyed about the need to diversify its economy as the glory days of oil start to fade in the rear-view mirror. Looking ahead, it’s also clear the nation’s leaders face a tremendous societal challenge as they work to develop the nation’s economy.
Internet of Things and New App Economy By @Centrify | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
In 2007, there were virtually no mobile apps. Last year alone, over 100 billion apps were downloaded, generating $26 billion in sales. App stores operated by Apple and Google now offer more than a million apps each and people every day depend on apps like Facebook, Google Maps and Uber.
The app economy is here. And – with the coming tide of wearable devices giving rise to a new generation of applications and the Internet of Things taking off – it’s going to get big. Fast. There are app developers right now who are working on ways to connect your TV to your fridge, so you know what drinks are available without tearing yourself away from “Orange Is the New Black.”
The DNS of Things @ThingsExpo 2014 By @PSilvas [#IoT]
With Levi’s Stadium as a backdrop, I share a bit about the Internet of Things and the strain it will place on the Domain Name System (DNS) along with a preview of his DNS of Things session at CloudExpo/ThingsExpo at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Reporting from Silicon Valley.
The Evolution of the ‘Internet of Things’ By @RedHatNews | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
The Internet of Things is not new. Historically, smart businesses have used its basic concept of leveraging data to drive better decision making and have capitalized on those insights to realize additional revenue opportunities. So, what has changed to make the Internet of Things one of the hottest topics in tech?
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Gray, Director, Embedded and Internet of Things, discussed the underlying factors that are driving the economics of intelligent systems. Discover how hardware commoditization, the ubiquitous nature of connectivity, and the emergence of Big Data and analysis are providing the pull to meet customer expectations of a widely connected, multi-dimensional universe of people, things, and information.
What to Store in the Cloud By @RickNotDelgado | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Storing data of any kind on the cloud can be a risk, but there are ways to mitigate the risks. With such an abundance of cloud providers, there are plenty of options for you to choose from for security purposes. Finding a vendor that encrypts data in motion as well as data at rest is a wise move, making it safer to store information of all types in the cloud. Just make sure you’re aware of all the security measures a vendor takes, and you’ll make an informed choice.
Solr vs Azure Search
Microsoft Azure, a cloud platform, is rapidly expanding its scope to include newer enterprise class services. Some of the significant new additions are:
Azure Search: Azure Search Service is a fully managed, cloud-based service that allows developers to build rich search applications using REST APIs. It includes full-text search scoped over your content, plus advanced search behaviors similar to those found in commercial web search engines, such as type-ahead, suggested queries based on near matches, and faceted navigation.