Category: Big Data

Enterprise big data and analytics cuts through the hype to make sense of data collection, storage, management, dissemination and discovery technologies, all employed collectively as a means of realizing corporate efficiencies and uncovering business opportunities.

Tableau Strives to Empower a Broader Audience with Business Science

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data

Summary Bullets:

R. Bhattacharyya

• Tableau has introduced the concept of Business Science, which brings advanced data analytics tools to users that aren’t data scientists.

• During its mid-November user conference, Tableau debuted two new tools that support Business Science: Model Builder and Scenario Planning.

Tableau’s mission is to help all people better visualize and understand data. The company wants to make analytics, and the insights it can drive, available to line of business professionals throughout an organization. To support this vision, it has introduced the concept of Business Science. Business Science brings advanced data analytics tools to users that aren’t data scientists, yet feel comfortable working with data and have a strong understanding of the operational and overarching business issues facing their organization. The tools are powerful enough to offer capabilities such as customized views, drill downs, and predictions, but don’t require the expertise of a data scientist to manipulate them. Essentially, they empower the data-savvy, line of business professional to combine domain expertise with advanced analytics to make better decisions more quickly.

Continue reading “Tableau Strives to Empower a Broader Audience with Business Science” →

Digitalizing the Customer Journey

by Gary Barton, posted in Big Data, Communicate

G. Barton
G. Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • Businesses need to adapt their customer contact models to a world where remote is the default.
  • AI-powered digital technologies can play a powerful role in improving the customer journey – both independently and in tandem with human agents.

At AT&T’s 2021 Business Summit, GlobalData supported the American telecoms giant in exploring one of the key themes of the event: reimagining the customer journey in a post-COVID, cloud-enabled world.  This is a critical challenge for most businesses as the impact of COVID has fundamentally changed the relationship between customers and businesses, as well as the way the two communicate. Continue reading “Digitalizing the Customer Journey” →

PLDT Digicon: A Sustainable Smart City Starts at the Infrastructure Layer

by Alfie Amir, posted in Big Data

Summary Bullets:

A. Amir

• A sustainable smart city should consider the deployment goals, but also the underlying infrastructure.

• PLDT checks most boxes in the infrastructure and technology layers as well as in the other ICT domains but it could consider further expanding its capabilities in the professional services and partner ecosystem.

PLDT’s Sustainable Smart City Initiatives

In the Philippine Digital Convention (Digicon) 2021, PLDT shared its initiatives and capabilities in driving sustainable smart city adoption and helping industries to achieve goals in the sustainability three pillars: economic, environmental, and social. On the application layer, PLDT offers a range of smart city solutions across verticals in line with the sustainable smart city goals. This includes remote learning in education, COVID response in healthcare, and emergency response in public safety. As an ICT provider, PLDT also continues to build the underlying infrastructure to enhance existing applications and enable new sustainable smart city solutions. It has 15 subsea cables including Jupiter, Asia Direct, and Apricot, and 12 point-of-presence (PoPs) across the world to offer reliable global interconnections. Domestically, it has over 540,000km of fiber providing high-speed connectivity nationwide as well as more than 4,000 5G base stations covering major Philippines cities. Besides connectivity, PLDT has 10 interconnected data centers that deliver 9,000 racks and 27 MW of power to host enterprises applications and workloads. Further, in line with its sustainability agenda, it is working to achieve 1.4 power usage effectiveness (PUE) for its facilities, source at least 20% of its data centers’ power consumption from renewable energy, and obtain Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) and ISO 50001 certifications.

Continue reading “PLDT Digicon: A Sustainable Smart City Starts at the Infrastructure Layer” →

Finance Organizations Require a Range of AI Tools

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader

Summary Bullets:

R. Bhattacharyya

• Financial organizations are using artificial intelligence (AI) in multiple ways, including to improve service, better understand customers, gauge risk and predict market movements, and speed claims processing.

• Recent results from GlobalData’s 2021 ICT Customer Insight survey reveal that between 25-27% of digital spending by companies in finance will go towards artificial intelligence and machine learning.

For years the finance industry, which encompasses organizations in financial services, insurance, and banking, has been a strong adopter of AI. Financial organizations are AI in multiple ways, including to improve service, better understand customers, gauge risk and predict market movements, and speed claims processing. For example, chatbots and natural language processing (NLP) assist with customer support, optical character recognition (OCR) helps with the ingestion of information from documents, computer vision analyzes images and videos to speed claim processing, and machine learning (ML) models assess risk, detect fraud, and help determine rating and pricing.

Continue reading “Finance Organizations Require a Range of AI Tools” →

Collaboration Finds a Seat at the DevOps Table

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

  • Salesforce’s Slack integration into high-productivity platforms eases IT’s ALM demands.
  • Microsoft initiated collaboration integration with developer platforms via Teams and Power Platforms.

Why have collaboration tools suddenly become an indispensable piece of the DevOps toolbox? Well, some might say the advent of the global pandemic and the rise of low-code’s prominence after being injected with AI have created the perfect storm for shoring up the next wave in app modernization. Continue reading “Collaboration Finds a Seat at the DevOps Table” →

Vodafone’s Data Analytics Update: Clear Traction as Focus Moves to Executing on Strategy

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Internet of Things

J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • Vodafone’s data analytics strategy continues to focus on both internal and external opportunities to harvest data (including aggregated, anonymized customer data) for increased efficiency and monetization.
  • Its update briefing for analysts was notable more about its progress in the latter.

Vodafone provided an update to analysts on its big data and advanced analytics activities, which are focused both on internal data optimization for Vodafone’s own business outcomes and on external data for use in products and solutions.  The briefing also included three demos: an internal solution for intelligent pricing as well as customer solutions for visitor traffic analytics and IoT connectivity analytics. Continue reading “Vodafone’s Data Analytics Update: Clear Traction as Focus Moves to Executing on Strategy” →

Data, Data Everywhere

by Steven J. Schuchart Jr., posted in Big Data

Summary Bullets:

S. Schuchart

• New analytics around network and application performance are bringing great visibility to administrators

• These new data sources rarely work with other data sources, making piecing together a picture difficult for enterprises

This is the age of analytics. Well, perhaps the computer era has always been the age of analytics, but today we are seeing a lot more discussions of analytics in general. Areas that are particularly suited to analytics are networking, as well as application performance. These areas are particularly suited because they deal with, for the most part, defined and known measurables. For instance, in networking, packet loss, latency, etc. are all known measurables. In application performance monitoring, you can measure application response time, error rates, and number of application instances among other application specific variables. There is a whole market dedicated to application performance monitoring, to say nothing of the newer observability platforms designed to help DevOps practitioners monitor performance.

Continue reading “Data, Data Everywhere” →

Robot Farmers Will Require 5G, but Agriculture Is Already Getting Smart with IoT

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Internet of Things

J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • IoT is reducing costs, eliminating waste, and improving quality across the agriculture sector.
  • The next step is automation, with 5G-enabled robots in Sweden poised to get their hands dirty in the field.

There is now an autonomous ‘field robot’ which can pull weeds faster – and presumably more accurately – than any farmworker, at least according to Ekobot AB’s ‘precision agriculture’ tagline.  The smart agriculture approach, which utilizes artificial intelligence, automation, and the public 5G network, should reduce costs and improve performance of the farm.  Ekobot’s mission is to be able to offer practical and sustainable solutions to agricultural issues while reducing workloads with autonomous tools for vegetable farmers. Continue reading “Robot Farmers Will Require 5G, but Agriculture Is Already Getting Smart with IoT” →

5G War Begins Again in Malaysia as Launch Nears

by Alfie Amir, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Internet of Things, IT Leader, Mobilize, Network

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

  • Service providers are picking up their pace again in developing 5G capabilities.
  • Solution co-creation is key not just in building solution capabilities but also in driving brand share.

Early Pace of 5G in Malaysia

Malaysia had an early start with 5G.  The race between service providers began in mid-2019 when Celcom launched the country’s first live 5G cluster trial that enabled various use cases across multiple verticals (for more, please see “Celcom Leads the 5G Race in Malaysia with 5G Live Cluster Field Trial,” July 29, 2019).  This was only a few months after the launch of the very first commercial 5G network in the world.  Not long after that, Maxis announced a partnership with Huawei to deploy 5G and develop use cases, Digi partnered with Cyberview on the 5G OpenLab to co-create 5G smart city applications, and TM shared its plan to be the first provider to offer 5G standalone (SA) network.  The government, MCMC, also played key roles in driving the technology development in the country.  It established a 5G task force in December 2018, hosted a 5G event in April 2019, collaborated with telcos and other industry players to launch 55 use cases across 32 locations (5GDP), and planned for commercial availability of the technology in the first half of 2020 (for more, please see “5G Enterprise in Malaysia: Strong Push by the Government Despite Low Market Maturity,” October 17, 2019).  It was ahead of many other countries in the region. Continue reading “5G War Begins Again in Malaysia as Launch Nears” →

Analytics in ASEAN: Low Awareness and Adoption, but Bright Outlook

by Alfie Amir, posted in Big Data, Internet of Things, IT Leader

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

  • Awareness and adoption of enterprise analytics are still low in ASEAN.
  • There is a strong outlook in the near to midterm driven by digital transformation.

Low Awareness and Adoption

A GlobalData study with 158 ICT decision-makers in ASEAN shows very low awareness and adoption around analytics in the region.  The study reveals that only 23% of enterprises see analytics as very important criteria when considering new IoT solutions, 22% in cloud, 18% in unified communications, and 17% in cybersecurity.  Analytics was also among the least important criteria for respective solutions.  This shows that while most enterprises understand the general benefits of analytics (e.g., turning data into insights), many are still unable to relate analytics to their business objectives. Continue reading “Analytics in ASEAN: Low Awareness and Adoption, but Bright Outlook” →