Garbage data in, garbage information out: Big data or big garbage?

Do you know the computer technology saying, garbage data in results in garbage information out?

In other words even with the best algorithms and hardware, bad, junk or garbage data put in results in garbage information delivered. Of course, you might have data analysis and cleaning software to look for, find and remove bad or garbage data, however that’s for a different post on another day.

If garbage data in equals garbage information out, does garbage big data in result in big garbage out?

I’m sure my sales and marketing friends or their surrogates will jump at the opportunity to tell me why and how big data is the solution to the decades old garbage data in problem.

Likewise they will probably tell me big data is the solution to problems that have not even occurred or been discovered yet, yeah right.

However garbage data does not discriminate …

Garbage data in, garbage information out: Big data or big garbage?

Do you know the computer technology saying, garbage data in results in garbage information out?

In other words even with the best algorithms and hardware, bad, junk or garbage data put in results in garbage information delivered. Of course, you might have data analysis and cleaning software to look for, find and remove bad or garbage data, however that’s for a different post on another day.

If garbage data in equals garbage information out, does garbage big data in result in big garbage out?

I’m sure my sales and marketing friends or their surrogates will jump at the opportunity to tell me why and how big data is the solution to the decades old garbage data in problem.

Likewise they will probably tell me big data is the solution to problems that have not even occurred or been discovered yet, yeah right.

However garbage data does not discriminate …

Cloud SOA – The Revenue Opportunities

The objective of our new Cloud Revenues program is to build a knowledge base of insights and materials to support Solution Selling new Cloud offerings.
Key insights include those from key thought leaders – For example this piece on the Cloud SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is powerful and timely.
Tom zooms in on the heart of the matter, what the real disruption effect of the Cloud will be, which is that an entirely new vision of IT itself is needed.
Focusing on the SOA as the headline for this he introduces a new iteration of the model to reflect this Cloud wave, what he calls the ‘Distributed SOA’.

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Agile Solutions for Cloud, Big Data, Mobility Services

The enhanced adoption of Cloud, Big Data, Mobility is causing more services to be developed and aggregated, hence there is a greater emphasis on Agile for service aggregation. Agile processes have specific methods to manage the rapid development cycles and changing requirements in application development. There are several steps to achieving Agility for the entire lifecycle. The first step is to perform a thorough business analysis and review existing, target business processes. Based on the analysis appropriate services that are reusable can be designed and developed. Services can then be developed at either the Enterprise levels or lower levels. Enterprise services such as email and collaboration have been very popular in organizations and agencies, other services can be developed at the business, application and database levels. The integration and workflow aspects of these services have to be defined and then the services are integrated and assembled with the overall solution.

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AT&T & IBM join forces (again)

Mike Sapien, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Telecoms, Ovum

In October 2012 AT&T and IBM announced a new strategic relationship that uses the telco’s secure private network to access the tech company’s back-end infrastructure. The goal is to give Fortune 1000 customers access to IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise+ (SCE+) services with AT&T’s VPN network services. IBM and AT&T plan to launch the new service in early 2013. Either company could take the lead, but it seems likely that IBM will drive these opportunities among its Fortune 1000 customers.

This new relationship should take advantage of the earlier AT&T–IBM partnership, known as “Blue Sky”, and leverage the experience of that relationship. In fact, this latest move should ideally be positioned as an extension of the previous partnership.

With the addition of IBM’s SCE+ services, both players could position the new relationship as a unique …

A Cloud Security Conversation with the SMB

Did you know 72% of data breaches worldwide the previous year occurred at companies with 100 or fewer employees — a 63 percent increase. However, with unified security solutions, small businesses can gain enterprise-class safeguards at an affordable price.
I just got off the phone with a friend of mine. His name is AJ and he was particularly grouchy. He had just spent the last 12 work hours scouring month-old machine logs so that he could compile a quarter-end audit that met his company’s compliance requirement. AJ is the Director of IT for what would be considered an SMB. It’s a modest home warranty related company that deals with homeowner end users, finance and loan offices, mortgage companies and manufacturers. It does roughly 15-20 million in business each year and employs about 60 direct employees and maybe 100 contracted agents. AJ has a staff of 3 other IT professionals, but given the workload, could easily double that headcount.

AJ is very proud of his jack-of-all-IT-trades status. He is proficient at writing code as he is virtually installing access on contractor home devices or planning strategic IT footprint expansion. And it’s this proficiency that has been making him grumpy. Because he can work some sort of magic with just about any application, the bosses have him wear many different hats. In fact, one of his online IT forum handles is “The Maddest Hatter.” But it is this reliance on his tribal knowledge and multidisciplinary acumen that keep the C-Levels saying “that sounds like it’s right up AJ’s alley.” AJ’s biggest problem is that there are only 24 hours in a day and he can only prioritize so many projects that are interspersed with hair-on-fire emergencies.

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More Businesses Using Cloud

Companies are continuing to move along with adopting cloud computing even though they haven’t completed their formal strategies for using it, according to ZDNet.com.
Analyst IDC found that nearly three-quarters (69 percent) had already started using private cloud technologies, with nearly half (40 percent) saying they were using public and hybrid cloud.
But while some companies are already taking the plunge, 64 percent of UK organizations said they are still «considering» what to do with the cloud (compared to 60 percent in France and 52 percent in Germany).
Most enterprises’ cloud strategies aren’t particularly sophisticated, however, and focus on the technology-related drivers for cloud adoption, such as cutting the cost of IT, rather than business-related drivers, such as creating new revenue streams, according to IDC.

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Predictive Real-Time Analytics Is the Big Data Lifeline

Big Data is everywhere. Predictive analytics and real time in-memory computing isn’t everywhere.
This truth (if we can accept it to be so) represents something of an imbalance.
As a subset of data mining, predictive analytics driven by in-memory computing efficiencies now has an opportunity to bring real-time analysis and insight to fast-moving live transactional data flows. Or to put it another (rather shorter) way, we can now start to manage and understand Big Data better than ever.
If we combine contemporary approaches to predictive analytics with the newly arrived Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor that produces what is claimed to be over one teraflop per second in terms of workload computational power for highly-parallel workloads, then CIOs can start to think about what “50-processor core computing” will mean for us in the very near future.

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Cloud Gaining Traction

A new survey about cloud computing explores the business growth opportunities for buyers and consumers of cloud services alike, with surprising findings about confidence and a high degree of ongoing experimentation.
The multi-year annual survey on the cloud market provides a springboard for examining some of the implications for where the growth opportunities are and where the inhibitors for the growth may be.
To learn more about where the cloud business has been and where it’s going, BriefingsDirect sat down with Michael Skok, Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

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