Verizon Terremark exec says partnerships with major enterprise app providers can assist ease more enterprises into cloud-based offers. Expect to peer leading brand-name enterprise apps become more cloud-based in 2014 as cloud services do an easier job of securely supporting hybrid cloud environments. This may give enterprises more confidence to go more core apps into the cloud, a top Verizon Terremark executive predicts. John Considine, CTO, Verizon Terremark, says the consumerization of it’s far gathering steam and putting greater pressure on IT departments to deliver more functionality and achieve this at cheaper price, thus increasing the attractiveness of pay-as-you-go cloud-based solutions. Mutually, Considine says, cloud service providers together with Verizon are becoming better at providing secure cloud connections and easier transitions to cloud services, in addition to supporting hybrid cloud environments. These factors will combine to make 2014 a huge year for cloud adoption, Considine says. He’s among those telecom execs who’ve admitted that cloud adoption so far was slow, but believes it should still... Read More »

Running a Cloudera Hadoop cluster on Amazon Web Services, Paytronix gains insight into customer behavior it couldn’t tease out of a database. 16 Top Big Data Analytics Platforms (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) With fewer than 100 employees, Paytronix Systems technically fits within the small-business category, however it has an oversized reputation inside the restaurant industry, fueled partially by its ability to deliver big-data driven customer insights. Paytronix helps restaurant chains (and, more recently, convenience store chains) run customer loyalty programs and marketing campaigns. It’s been a knowledge-intensive business since its founding in 2001. In 2012, the corporate started experimenting with a Cloudera-based Hadoop cluster running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It hasn’t looked back. Two things people say concerning the cloud: It’s for SMBs, and it’s for tire kicking and sandbox development. But as Paytronix has learned, it isn’t only for SMBs, and additionally it is useful as a production platform, not only tire kicking. Even the most important companies on earth... Read More »

Data analysis is a do-or-die requirement for today’s businesses. We analyze notable vendor choices, from Hadoop upstarts to conventional database players. Revolutionary. That almost always describes the knowledge analysis time by which we are living. Businesses grapple with huge quantities and sorts of data on one hand, and ever-faster expectations for analysis at the other. The seller community is responding by providing highly distributed architectures and new levels of memory and processing power. Upstarts also exploit the open-source licensing model, which isn’t new, but is increasingly accepted or even sought out by data-management professionals. Apache Hadoop, a nine-year-old open-source data-processing platform first utilized by Internet giants including Yahoo and Facebook, leads the enormous-data revolution. Cloudera introduced commercial support for enterprises in 2008, and MapR and Hortonworks piled on in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Among data-management incumbents, IBM and EMC-spinout Pivotal each has introduced its own Hadoop distribution. Microsoft and Teradata offer complementary software and primary-line support for Hortonworks’ platform. Oracle resells and... Read More »

From HealthCare.gov to the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, listed here are many of the year’s biggest letdowns. To quote a protracted-dead English author, “It was the simplest of times, it was the worst of times.” Indeed, 2013 had its share of fine times and tech innovation. More companies invested in private and public cloud services and began using data analytics to enhance bottom lines. Advancements in robotics got a lift as major players like Amazon and Google bought various robot companies (many call this progress, but it surely qualifies as a letdown in case your job is replaceable by a robot). The tablet craze continued this year as more sizes and designs hit the market. An influx of Android-based tablets helped reduce Apple’s tablet market share to about 50%. Apple also acknowledged that the iPad had to evolve by releasing the iPad Mini and iPad Air. Collectively, mobile apps and smartphones got better and more plentiful, and more employees found work-life flexibility with BYOD programs. So... Read More »

Apple patent application suggests the corporate is asking so as to add personal security measures to its mobile devices. 10 Best iOS Apps Of 2013 (Click the picture for a bigger view.) To mitigate the specter of “Apple picking” – a term cops sometimes use to consult cellphone theft — Apple’s next iPhone may include “attack detection mode.” The World Intellectual Property Organization has just published a patent application that Apple filed last June, titled “Mobile Emergency Attack and Failsafe Detection.” It describes how to set a mobile communications device to summon aid at the user’s behalf if the user fails to engage with the device. “While the device is in attack detection mode, certain events may cause the device to summon assistance automatically, even without further interaction from the device’s user,” the patent application states. “For instance, while the device is in attack detection mode, if the device’s user ceases to have interaction with the device in a specified manner for a minimum of... Read More »