Dassian Inc. Becomes SAP® Channel Partner Delivering SAP Business All-in-One Solutions to Midsize Government Contracting and Professional Services Businesses

Dassian will leverage partnership with SAP to offer services and enterprise software specifically for government contracting and service provider midmarket companies, consolidating delivery efficiencies and reducing TCO.

Scottsdale, AZ (PRWEB) May 07, 2013

Dassian Inc., a leading business software provider of SAP® solution-based government compliance industry-focused solutions, today announced it has become an SAP channel partner authorized to resell the SAP® Business All-in-One solutions to midsize government contracting companies in North America. SAP Business All-in-One is a comprehensive, proven solution with preconfigured, industry-specific business processes to enable predictable and affordable implementations. Optimized for midsize companies, SAP Business All-in-One has the flexibility to adapt and extend as a business evolves and grows.

With its designation as an authorized SAP channel partner, Dassian now provides a complete solution that encompasses all facets required for successful implementation, including SAP Business All-in-One software licensing, implementation services, training and documentation, staffing and optimization and support.

“We are quite pleased to have the strength of a world leader in enterprise software behind us, through our new status as an SAP channel partner,” said Dan Murphy, president and CEO of Dassian. “This partnership will enable Dassian to help our government contracting customers benefit from the SAP Business All-in-One solutions provided by Dassian. We’ll help them to increase business transparency, drive competitive advantage, and accelerate the value of their investments in SAP solutions.”

Dassian intends to broaden its services for SAP solutions by offering the SAP Business All-in-One solutions to midsize companies in the government contracting industry enabling DCAA compliance through a pre-configured turn-key enterprise solution. Through its partnership with SAP, Dassian can bundle services and enterprise software where consolidated delivery efficiencies can provide a lower price for total cost of ownership.

“SAP and its partners offer midsize companies the vertical solutions they need to compete effectively and grow their businesses profitably,” said Mark Milford, national vice president, North America Ecosystem Group, SAP. “We look forward to working with Dassian as an SAP channel partner authorized to resell SAP Business All-in-One solutions to midsize companies in North America, helping companies to achieve their objectives of improved growth, lower costs and a better understanding of business processes.”

About Dassian Inc.
Dassian is an SAP channel partner and an SAP software solution and technology partner in the SAP PartnerEdge® program with a solution certified by SAP. It has a well-earned reputation for consistently delivering a full-range of innovative, industry-focused solutions to government contractors and professional services firms worldwide since 2001. Dassian is a global company, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, with customers across four continents. More information is available at http://www.dassian.com and http://www.facebook.com/DassianInc or call 480-922-1700 with further questions.

SAP, PartnerEdge and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world.
All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

SAP Forward-looking Statement
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

For more information, press only:

Dassian – Barbara McElnea, Director of Marketing, bmcelnea(at)dassian(dot)com

Contact Information
Barbara McElnea
Dassian Inc.
http://www.dassian.com
(480) 922-1700

Source: http://bit.ly/ZsElxT

Pentagon Reviews Contractor Profit Guidelines for Weapons

The Pentagon is reviewing guidelines used to negotiate profits for contractors under an initiative to improve weapons-buying practices.

The review is intended to “align profitability more tightly” with efforts to make defense programs more affordable, according to a memo released today by Frank Kendall, the undersecretary for acquisition.

The Pentagon has been increasing the use of fixed-price contracts that require companies to shoulder a greater share of cost overruns. The review of profit guidelines is included in the final version of the Department of Defense’s “Better Buying Power 2.0” initiative headed by Kendall.

“Profit is the key lever in motivating contractors to perform in alignment with DoD goals,” Kendall said in the memo. The industry “must be profitable or there will not be an industrial base, but the profits DoD provides should be consistent with the risks industry takes and the return needed to attract the required capital.”

While current profit levels “in the aggregate are reasonable and sustainable” they “are not tied tightly enough to successful performance in meeting DoD goals,” he said.

Incentives under review “also provide opportunities for companies to realize profits above” the levels defined “based on their performance,” according Kendall.

Kendall told the Pentagon’s director of defense pricing to report by July 1 on the status of revised profit guidelines and of a new “Incentive Training Guide” for contracting specialists.

Calling for innovative methods for controlling costs, Kendall said, “Our workforce should be encouraged by leaders to think and not automatically default to a perceived ‘school solution’ just because it is expected to be approved more easily.”

 Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-04-24/pentagon-reviews-contractor-profit-guidelines-for-weapons

U.S. House Panel Chair Looks To A ‘Seapower’ Decade

With the Congressional budget season swinging fully into gear, one key lawmaker is zeroing in on a shift from providing a land-oriented defense posture to one relying more on seapower.

“We’re tying to change the debate on how to do this,” Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. “We believe the last 10 years was a disproportionate sacrifice on the part of the Army and Marine Corps. We think that over the next two or three decades we’re going to have to have seapower and projection forces done correctly.”

Forbes is the new chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee — in years past one of the most influential naval bodies on Capitol Hill.

“We need to be constantly looking at the assumptions we’ve made and if they’re right and if we have the right balance,” Forbes said.

“We want to make sure we’ve got the analysis right, that it’s not just driven by the budget. We want to make sure that’s not really happening.”

In Tuesday’s Navy posture budget hearing before the full committee, Forbes pointed out shortcomings in the ability of naval carrier aircraft to strike the Chinese mainland without putting the carriers at extreme risk.

“When you look at the lethality of some weapons around the world, I think the next decade will be a huge one,” he said Wednesday. “It’s important for us to ask if our assumptions that our carriers can always be moving at will in close quarters are true, and if not, do we need to make an analysis of that.”

Forbes referred to a chart showing the range of carrier aircraft — about 400 nautical miles for F/A-18 Super Hornets and about 590 nautical miles for F-35Cs — with 810-plus nautical mile reach of the Chinese DF-21 ballistic missile, developed to defeat American flattops.

“When our carriers are pushed further and further back it gets more difficult for our strike aircraft to do what they’re designed to do,” Forbes noted.

“So, do we have the right mix? Do we need to add anything in terms of range?”

It’s not just a Navy proposition, he noted.

“You need a layered approach, and obviously the Air Force comes into play there. And we have to look at our basing arrangements down the road of where they would be launching from.”

Future options to operate U.S. aircraft in foreign countries could be more limited, Forbes noted, nodding to political sensibilities.

“More and more of these countries are finding it more difficult to say one thing and do another,” he observed.

With a hearing scheduled April 24 on Navy and Air Force acquisition programs, Forbes is seeking a key piece of the future planning process: the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans. The plans were not sent to Congress April 10 along with the rest of the 2014 budget submission.

“They’re supposed to accompany the budget, there’s supposed to be a certification that the budget conforms with those two plans,” Forbes noted.

While the aviation plan seems some weeks, even months, from being completed, the shipbuilding plan is nearly ready.

“The plan is done, we just don’t have it yet. We’re pushing to get it before this hearing,” Forbes said. “It sets a much better foundation for us.”

Reached at the Pentagon, a Navy official acknowledged the shipbuilding plan is still being worked on.

“We are continuing to work through the details of the 30 year shipbuilding plan,” the official said Wednesday. “While the plan has not yet been submitted to Congress, we expect it will be released in the near future.”

Source:  http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130417/DEFREG02/304170018/U-S-House-Panel-Chair-Looks-8216-Seapower-8217-Decade 

Decoding the Value of Going Real-time with SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA

You’ll hear a lot about how SAP has changed the game with the release of the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA. But exactly what does integrating transactional and analytical systems on SAP’s real-time data management platform mean for organizations and the people they serve? Amazing things happen when companies are able to integrate all kinds of data from a variety of sources. They run smarter, faster, and simpler.

• Physicians efficiently customize a treatment plan that addresses each individual patient’s health care issues. People get well faster and stay healthy longer. Health care costs go down.

• Retailers have the right products and services available where and when customers want them. Delighted customers buy more; the business grows.

• Utility and other field service and repair technicians monitor maintenance systems to head off breakdowns. When problems occur, they get operations up and running faster with real-time communication. Integrated systems help reduce risk and fraud.

• First responders bring succor faster to citizens in need during crises and disasters.

• Government agencies send payments to the right recipients for the right amount at the right time. Less waste, meaningful collaboration, and better services help improve schools, create jobs, and make countries more secure.

• Companies see the real-time impact of marketing campaigns. They can modify offers instantaneously wherever the customer is—via mobile device, website, or in the cloud.

• Customers get the products and services they need without wasting time (not to mention annoyance) on things they don’t want.

• Financial departments accurately calculate risk at any point in time based on comprehensive, quality data. They make better decisions by acting on anticipated shifts as well as unexpected, fast-moving events.

• Inventory control has a unified view of customer demand, supply chain, and financial data. Efficiencies save costs while customers get the goods they want.

• Developers spend more time producing killer products to beat the competition.

• Everyone has easy access to quality analytics.

• HR has ready access to top talent able to propel the company forward in a new era of Big Data, cloud, mobile, and social computing.

In short, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA addresses the top CEO priorities for 2013: to improve products, services, and customer engagement, gain greater competitive differentiation, and consolidate and implement IT systems for better business value.  The future may always be uncertain, but for organizations that adopt this software, nothing will ever be the same again.

Source: http://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2013/01/10/decoding-the-value-of-going-real-time-with-sap-business-suite-powered-by-sap-hana

Re-Thinking Your Supply Chain With SAP HANA

As the New Year begins, stubborn business challenges persist. Global supply chains are under pressure to deliver from volatile demand signals, complex supply scenarios and processes that are difficult to change quickly.

Why? Customers are more demanding. By leveraging social media and online research, customers are plugged in and informed. Their expectations for those they do business with are increasing. At the same time, today’s supply chains are becoming more complex. We know supply has become global. But growth in emerging markets is increasing global demand in the face of rising prices and diminishing resources. Compliance, product safety and sustainability add complexity when bringing products to market in a timely fashion.

All of this is takes place in an era of ongoing economic uncertainty fraught with changing buyer behavior and consumer spending that is increasing only marginally. Balancing costs with service levels within the supply chain has never been so critical.

So, when I think of today’s supply chain, the old adage, “the only constant is change itself” comes to mind. We must be responsive to change and treat exceptions as the norm!  So as a New Year’s resolution I believe we need to rethink our supply chains and the processes that drive them:

• Rethink Responsiveness by considering customer, product and supplier priorities when defining how to improve customer satisfaction. This requires the ability to act smarter through an accurate picture of demand for all products and markets at any time through real-time visibility.

• Rethink Collaboration across departments and companies to build and adjust profitable business plans. This requires near real-time planning processes and “what-if” scenarios support to make faster and more profitable decisions.

• Rethink Distribution to improve relationships and responsiveness to customer demands. This can potentially lead to a complete new strategy for warehouses (maybe many more local warehouses but much smaller ones) or different transportation models (change from big truck to small trucks).

• Rethink Operations to introduce smarter, faster and simpler demand and supply planning processes in order to profitably plan and re-plan based on distribution and manufacturing costs.

• Rethink Decisions with real time insight and information to rapidly analyse and respond to changing business dynamics.

Changing the Game with SAP HANA

With the introduction of Business Suite powered by HANA, these supply chain aspirations are achievable today. SAP HANA enables the collection and monitoring of huge volumes of internal and external supply chain “big data” in real-time. This can include information about orders, shipments and point-of-sale purchases, inventory positions and customer sentiment analysis. Supply chain professionals can then perform high-speed what-if analysis and KPI tracking against supply chain information. They can slash the planning cycles to drive profitable and smarter decisions with real-time insight. And with new real-time visibility, analytics planning and execution capabilities provided by SAP HANA, companies can completely re-think their Supply Chain.

Here are some of the HANA enabled capabilities available to supply chain executives today.

• Sales & Operations Planning powered by HANA leverages a unified model of demand, supply chain, and financial data to analyze in real time at any level of granularity or dimension. Decisions can be made faster through rapid simulation and comparison of scenarios on a complete, detailed S&OP model. And these decisions are smarter by empowering collaborative processes through an embedded, context-aware social platform to accelerate planning and decision making across the company.

• Demand Signal Management powered by HANA leverages big data from both structured and unstructured (sentiment analysis, web chatter etc.) sources to accurately manage demand, and align consumer, promotional and forecast data into one complete view of your demand picture. A complete view of demand enables real-time visibility of both successful and problem products, regions and channels. You can then integrate the holistic demand view to drive planning, fulfillment and execution processes.

• APO powered by HANA utilizes the high-speed computational capabilities of SAP HANA to improve time consuming and performance intensive process making planning faster and more responsive. APO now has real-time analytics for SCM planning scenarios to increase speed of information analysis, and simulations in areas of forecasting and supply network planning. It also supports pre-defined dashboards for different use cases (analytical workflows) for APO based planning scenarios.

• MRP powered by HANA enables faster re-planning allowing more frequent MRP runs in shorter cycles and simulation of different ‘what if’ scenarios in real-time.

• Supply Network Collaboration powered by HANA enables rapid collaboration with supply chain partners to gain multi-tiered visibility and status across your extended supply chain.

• Real-time Inventory Management powered by HANA delivers an inventory management cockpit for real-time stock insight and inventory monitoring

• Supply Chain Info Center powered by HANA helps to execute decisions in real time through embedded dashboards to drill down into issues and perform ad-hoc analysis and decision support based on near real time information (e.g. forecast accuracy,  stock coverage, supply projection)

Today, innovations from SAP offer you real-time supply chain management and the opportunity to rethink your supply chain and its processes to take it to new levels of responsiveness, efficiency and customer service.  Imagine what your business can do with this great opportunity.

Source: http://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2013/01/10/re-thinking-your-supply-chain-with-sap-hana?campaigncode=CRM-XM12-SOC-PROGCAMP-Twitter

The In-Memory Database Revolution

This is a seminal moment in the history of database technology: a moment when the dominant paradigms for database management for the past 40 years are being challenged by new approaches designed to take advantage of changes in system power and architecture and shifts in the underlying cost structure.

We are seeing the convergence of very fast, multi-core processors, lower cost main memory, and fast, configurable networks with demand for extreme transaction rates, high speed complex queries, and operational flexibility. One area of software technology that has arisen in response to this convergence is memory-base database management.

Unlike disk-based database management, memory-based technology does not require optimization for disk storage, has no overhead for such optimization, and dramatically reduces the storage footprint while simultaneously delivering extremely high throughput rates.

Memory-based databases are optimized for manipulation in memory, with less frequently accessed data swapped out to disk. Not all memory based databases require disk swapping, however. The fastest form of this technology is that which holds the entire database in memory all the time; this is commonly called in-memory database (IMDB) technology.

The implications of this new technology are broad and varied. We are just seeing a glimpse of what may be done when all the data is managed in memory. Because reorganizing data on disk is slow and cumbersome, and because supporting alternate forms of access adds unacceptable overhead, disk-based databases have required fixed schematic structures that afford only a single mode of access, usually involving base tables, with views defined to offer a bit of access flexibility.

IMDB, on the other hand, allows data to be dynamically reorganized, and viewed according to multiple paradigms. As a result, an IMDB can handle on-the-fly schema changes, and in many cases can render the same data either in conventional relational table form, or as complex objects or documents as required.

Operationally, the implications are just as profound. Database administrators no longer need to spend most of their time pondering storage allocation, index definition, and scheduling unload/reloads for data reorganization and re-indexing.

They can, instead, concentrate on building data structures and renderings that address the business needs of the enterprise, and provide higher value support to applications and users; the kind of support that gains recognition and yields professional rewards.

A number of new database technology firms have emerged over the past few years, delivering IMDB products optimized for various workloads. Some more established firms have joined in, offering new IMDB technologies that promise to disrupt the database technology marketplace. One that is already making waves with its ability to mix transactional and analytic workloads is SAP HANA, part of SAP’s “Real Time Data Platform”.

The “old guard” vendors also are evolving their technology feverishly in an IMDB direction. Anyone involved in database technology from either a data or application management perspective would be well advised to learn about these companies and initiatives; they are the future of this business. Embrace the new paradigm, and plan for it!

Source: http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/big-data/the-in-memory-database-revolution-025260

Four reasons which makes HANA a compelling business necessity

More Speed:

Excerpts from my earlier Blog

Nimble Organization analyzes information at faster speed to stay ahead of their competitors. For Example, Smart organizations are capturing their success of their product releases by analyzing the tweets and messages of its products real time and even making necessary course corrections. To make smart and faster analysis of the data-set so large and complex (which have been named Big Data for their sheer volume), having a faster system performance has become a basic hygiene factor of any system.

Disk Scan speed has only become faster by 10 times over the last 30 odd years. Compared to the data growth, it is not adequate and will add to more scan time. There is a requirement to remove the redundancy involved in scanning and moving the data from disk to CPU for processing. In Memory Data Management removes two time consuming processes to make the processing faster – Scanning the data from Disk and moving it to the main memory (DRAM). As the CPU’s have direct access to DRAM, the processing power is enhanced exponentially resulting in desired efficiency.

More Simplicity:

Excerpts from Blog by Vishal Sikka

“With the collapse of OLTP and OLAP in one platform, there is a massive simplification on the way. For longCIOs have tried to fundamentally alter their investment away from “keeping the lights on” to “innovation” that gets their business stakeholders excited. With the elimination of batch, ability to do on the fly aggregates and extensions we have an agile system that will reduce operational costs while powering smarter innovations. Simplification in IT layers will also eliminate layers in business, where we can eliminate overhead functions have evolved to collect and expedite information clogged information flow across the company”

Big Data ready:

Excerpts from my earlier Blog

Data is growing exponentially. With more automation, more structured data is being captured in our organizations. Also, with the widespread adoption of social media, views, expressions and opinions are getting captured in Face book status messages, twitter tweets, Instagram’s pictures etc. which are categorized as unstructured data. The explosion of data can be summarized with the fact that the humans have doubled the amount of data that they produced in the last century in the last decade.

In Memory Data Computing leverages the advanced encoding methodologies which can reduce he data size to the tune of 20 times. It benefits the organization with lesser infrastructure requirement.

SAP HANA is big data ready as shown in the Early Findings of Scale Out Performance Test Results.

Cloud ready:

Excerpts from my earlier Blog

In Memory Databases such as HANA leverages the positives of columnar databases so that

• New Attributes can be added easily vis-à-vis a row based database architecture
• Locking for changing the data layout in only required for a short period contrary to row based architecture where the entire database or table would be completely locked to process data definition operations

Apart from these four compelling reasons, a faster system results in improved organizational efficiency. With faster technology, organization can definitely rewrite/ redesign the business processes. It will definitely enable the organization to “run better”.

Source: http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-memory/blog/2013/01/13/four-reasons-which-makes-hana-a-compelling-business-necessity

2013 Technology Trends

 

 

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about future technology trends. Two years later, I wrote another post looking back to my predictions and found that while I was spot on for major themes like mobile payment and cloud computing, I missed the growth of daily deal sites and the socialization of education technology, and underestimated the sea change in mobile health technologies.

I was also over enthusiastic on power management platforms — but the advent and popularity of Nest was definitely a step in the right direction — and e-government — perhaps because a lot of investment has actually gone into cyber-security (on the public side), or grassroots organizational capability (on the private side, in support of the recent hotly contested election cycles).

However, my main takeaway from the exercise in 2012 was that I needed to make my review and new predictions more often, lest my predictions be outdated and hopelessly outstripped by the rapid pace of disruptions in technologies nowadays.

For example, some of my 2012 predictions have already been borne out: crowdsourcing has really achieved mainstream success, people are spending more and more time on non-search engine driven discovery platforms, and mobile devices are surely revolutionizing how people work in traditional industries such as manufacturing and service.

So, what is in store for the year 2013?

1) Big Data Will Become Mainstream

Big Data has been a buzzword for the last few years, but I predict that 2013 will be the breakout year for all manner of Big Data, from NoSQL databases to high performance business analytics platforms. The technologies are already there, but many startups and major players have been toiling away at building market-ready solutions and the market for them. In 2013, they will find the mass acceptance of customers and the maturity of business use cases for Big Data platforms.

2) Tablets Will Define Everything We Do

Tablets — all shapes and forms — are rapidly becoming the device of choice for many people. The great rivalry raging between Google, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft only helps to empower the innovative impetus that leads to better applications, better user interface, and more versatile usage of the tablets at work and in everyday life.

An example of this trend is the app “Chromatik“, which aims to revolutionize how people learn music by making the process of reading and practicing with sheet music — with or without a teacher or other musicians — incredibly simple and portable.

3) Get Ready for More HR Software Disruptions

What I did not anticipate in 2012 was the rapid consolidation of the Human Resource Management technology market, with the acquisitions of Taleo and SuccessFactors. However, in 2013, this market is ripe for disruption. Younger, more nimble companies are making disruptive innovation in all aspects of human resource software and technologies.

Job boards are becoming more interactive and engaging, company review websites like Glassdoor are gaining traction, and data-heavy applications are transforming performance management and employee motivation at major corporations. Meanwhile, employee-oriented benefits and health management platforms are helping companies make dramatic strides in providing better work environment and benefits for their employees.

4) We’ll See a New Wave of Marketing Technologies

Last year saw the coming of age of SaaS marketing companies, with the successful IPOs of ExactTarget and then Eloqua (which has since been acquired by Oracle). Innovations are happening at such a rapid pace in this space that in 2013, we’ll see a whole wave of new marketing technologies that will challenge the dominance of larger players and conventional wisdom about how marketing should be done.

The newcomers will offer best-of-breed solutions, focused on specific, discrete areas of marketing automation, such as retargeting, high volume delivery (Sendgrid), high volume content optimization (Sailthru), automated list vending (Marketfish), automation of local marketing tasks, and social CRM.

5) Rise of New Content Platforms

In 2013, I believe that content creation will be taken to a whole new level, as companies are now finally finding out ways to help customers deal with the information overload of the social media age.

For example, LinkedIn has developed an extremely successful content platform with thought leaders providing extremely high-quality content for its business-oriented network. Social media aggregators like Circa or Rebelmouse let users define ways to filter through the mass of content they receive through their social networks and other information sources. Then there are platforms like Medium orStorify that allow users to reproduce that data in their preferred format and republish it back to the world, but along with their own words and perspectives.

I fully expect to see more innovations in this space and a definite trend towards empowering content creation and delivery by the end users themselves.

6) Wearable Computing

Wearable computing is truly coming of age because the technologies have finally caught up with the vision and people have become used to having and carrying “smart” devices. These devices — such as the Shine by startup Misfit Wearables — are also becoming more standardized and easily connected to the cloud or other devices, which make sharing of the data easy and effective.

Furthermore, wearable computing is being commercialized not only by major players (like Google with its 3D goggles), but by startups and enthusiasts, powered both by traditional VC funding and crowd-sourced efforts on Kickstarter. I expect this trend to continue, and by the end of 2013 many people will be very used to wearing the devices. We may even see an entire network of users develop for them.

 

Big Data: Business or Technology Challenge?

Last year, Big Data has proven to be more than a trend, and there are numerous predictions being formed in terms of how the market will play out over the coming year, mostly coming from technology providers of Big Data solutions or from those who analyze or follow the market. The reality is that the customer will ultimately determine the shape of things to come and will also decide on which technology solutions will work together to solve their unique business problems.

In today’s increasingly data-driven world, Big Data has become a critical top-line business issue that enterprises must tackle in order to remain competitive and relevant. Just as the cloud trend has ebbed and flowed over the past few years and is now starting to change how enterprises IT solves the complex challenge of managing farms of infrastructure for their most critical assets — the conversation around Big Data is starting to move out of a sand-box and really laying out the critical requirements that both IT and business needs. And with the amount of data expected to increase by about 60 percent in 2013, according to a recent Computerworld study, this problem isn’t expected to go disappear any time soon.

So what should the enterprise expect in 2013, the year in which Big Data grabs the spotlight more than any other business or IT challenge? We can be sure of one thing — 2013 will bring challenges and changes—both in the providers of Big Data technologies and in the enterprise boardroom—in terms of initiatives, budget and acquisitions driving industry transformation.

Prediction 1: Enterprise Big Data Initiatives Move out of the Sandbox and Define a Clear Set of Business and Technology Requirements

Throughout 2012, enterprise adoption of Big Data initiatives have escalated at a more rapid pace than most had predicted. According to a recent Computerworld study among 300 of the world’s largest enterprises, the volume of data is expected to increase by about 60 percent in 2013. Thirteen percent of respondents reported that they have Big Data initiatives already in place. An additional 38 percent plan to implement’ or are likely to implement projects over the next year.

Enterprises are forming dedicated Big Data teams, and for many it has become a line item on the budget as they continue to find better approaches to managing, storing and analyzing their data assets which continue to grow and must be kept online and available for analysis. We will begin to see more clearly defined requirements – both from business and IT – such as scalability at the lowest cost, rapid response query and analysis, and ability to leverage existing standards-based tools that include SQL and BI. This is in addition to built-in security and data availability features that enterprises have come to expect when handling mission critical data assets.

Prediction 2: Companies will Look to New Technology Combinations, other than Hadoop, when Managing Big Data
Over the past year, Apache Hadoop has gained momentum in the enterprise, which was exemplified by the October 2012 Hadoop World event where 2,500 attendees gathered – an increase from 500 attendees just three years earlier. Hadoop, popularized by Web 2.0 organizations, is now taken seriously among banks, financial institutions, communications operators, large retailers and others. However, Big Data initiatives are not only centered on the Hadoop platform.

Business and IT challenges are being solved using a combination of different technologies that work in concert, which varies by sector and even by company. Enterprises are deploying on private clouds in order to manage data estates and a combination of both traditional databases and data warehouse environments, alongside Hadoop-based environments that run on a variety of hardware including NAS and object stores. A common theme across all enterprise Big Data projects is the desire to get up and running quickly without causing disruption to existing IT environments and realizing a result in under 12 months.

Prediction 3: Budget Limitations will Pose one of the Biggest Hurdles to Solving Big Data Challenges
Big Data spending is on the rise, but over the coming year, cost will remain one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when initiating Big Data projects. According to a recent analyst report, Big Data spending is projected to drive $34 billion in 2013. Organizations in particular sectors must keep data online and available because compliance regulations dictate so, and additionally businesses want to harness more raw data from multiple sources in order to conduct better analytics. Getting the balance right — finding the most efficient technology infrastructure while satisfying business demands — is the challenge.

Growth rates are not slowing down. Building out capacity for existing needs and future requirements is critical. Too much too soon is not the way to go, and Big Data does not necessarily mean big budgets. The tolerance for $20,000 – $40,000 per terabyte of managed data is fast disappearing in the minds of enterprise decision makers.

Prediction 4: Big Data Tools Must Satisfy both Business and Technical Users
In 2013, we will see increased demand for Big Data tools and applications that will be easier to use and will satisfy the business user, not just data scientist users. All market indicators point to this. If you look at Hadoop-based technology capabilities, many are still immature and require unique specialized skills. We have already seen new product announcements that address this need, including the recent announcements on Cloudera Impala and Microsoft Polybase. In fact, some of these capabilities already exist today, making it easier to access the right data at the right time with the best set of tools.

Prediction 5: Heavyweights, such as Oracle and IBM, will Make Acquisitions in the Big Data Market
Large organizations have already embraced Big Data, which has legitimized the market over the past year. We expect that some of the established players who lack unique technology capabilities or expertise will make acquisitions in 2013. The two obvious heavyweights are Oracle and IBM – which already have a diverse portfolio of established products in the data management sector, but who also recognize that time to market is critical in order to gain a stronger foothold with an all encompassing Big Data offering for enterprise customers.

Big Data Takes the Spotlight
The increasing need to leverage Big Data for competitive advantage, along with the rise in innovative product offerings, will change the way enterprises store, manage and analyze their most critical asset — data. Enabling enterprises to manage petabyte scale environments in a much more efficient and cost effective way is what is now required. Over the next 12 months, data management will take the spotlight because it is on every company’s short list.

 Taken from: http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/01/big-data-business-or-technology-challenge/

Is Big Data The New Term For Business Intelligence?

The term “business intelligence” was first coined by IBM researcher Hans Luhn in 1958, and then used in its modern sense in 1989 by then-Gartner analyst Howard Dresner.

Earlier this year, Gartner joined other analyst firms such as IDC and started using “business analytics”as an umbrella term for solutions for turning data into value :

Business analytics is comprised of solutions used to build analysis models and simulations to create scenarios, understand realities and predict future states. Business analytics includes data mining, predictive analytics, applied analytics and statistics, and is delivered as an application suitable for a business user. These analytics solutions often come with prebuilt industry content that is targeted at an industry business process (for example, claims, underwriting or a specific regulatory requirement).

There’s still lots of disagreement about the differences between the terms “business intelligence” vs “business analytics”, but it now increasingly looks like the battle of the semantics has been lost to a newcomer: “big data”.

 

Google Trends lets us take a look at the dramatic rise of the term in searches, while “business intelligence” continues its slow, steady decline, and “business analytics”, while still growing, doesn’t look like it will ever catch up…

The term “big data” is used just as nebulously as its rivals. The reality is that new terms are created because of new technology — in this case ‘big data” was first used (this time around) to describe the new opportunities afforded by Hadoop, Map Reduce, etc.

But, of course, everybody in the market knows that they are supposed to talk about the business benefits not the features: “the hole, not the drill bit!” — but the business benefits are, of course, the same as they’ve always been: better decisions, insight, lower costs, etc. So everybody, even those not using Hadoop etc, started using it in conjunction with whatever was new in the industry (technologies like in-memory, mobile, cloud, visualization, predictive; data sources such as sensors, social, etc… )

This meant that the definition of “big data” quickly became another industry squabbling match that has generated liters of ink (and nostalgia: The Google Books Ngram Viewer seems to show the term was first used in the 1930s and that the term was clearly used  in roughly the same sense as today even  in 1969: “”Datamec has made some headway outside the field of big data processors”)

What will the future hold? Will we all end up using “big data” as the new umbrella term? Will something else come along to take its place?

Time will tell, but in the meantime, I’ll stick to my position in the BI vs analytics post: “real people” shouldn’t care very much. Let the analysts and marketers bicker — instead, you should concentrate on pragmatically solving the business needs you face with the best technology available, whatever it’s called…

 Taken from: http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/big-data/is-big-data-the-new-term-for-business-intelligence-023926