Technologies to Watch That Will Change Businesses in 2014

Business Intelligence
The ability to mine business data in order to identify and capitalise on customer trends has always been out of the reach of the majority of businesses, until now. Business Intelligence (BI) or business analytics is now widely available and, unlike the systems of the past, it doesn’t require expensive software and hardware, and it shouldn’t need too much input from IT. The latest BI software is downloadable as an app for your iPad and takes just a few minutes to setup and can be revealing trends in your data within minutes.


Creating individual customer experiences
Providing customers with a tailored service is expensive and normally requires additional manpower. However, the rise of automated technologies such as customer relationship management software, combined with techniques such as segmentation, can allow businesses to provide a level of service that looks and feels like an individual experience, without you having to add extra manpower and without adding substantially to your costs.


Employee apps
Apps are everywhere and most businesses are using apps as part of their regular business toolkit, but why stop there? With an employee app your staff can have secure access to business data and forms on their own devices wherever they are, and you can control the level of access.

For most businesses, the ability to create apps specifically for your business has always been regarded as expensive. However, thanks to the success of Apple’s App Store there are now tens of thousands of well-qualified and cheap app developers. There are also more simple drag-and-drop tools like Appery.io, Codiqa and Conduit that allow you to create apps without too much programming knowledge.


The virtual desktop
One of the big trends in enterprises over the last year is ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD). Hundreds of thousands of employees now use their own smartphone or tablet alongside their work computer to complete business tasks. However, some businesses are now going that one step further and allowing their employees to use their own devices entirely. While this may be a trend that works well in tech-savvy IT departments, it’s not something that works everywhere. Ideally, there still needs to be some sort of work device that users can fall back on, which is where virtual desktops come in. A virtual desktop can be accessed either from a web browser or as a dedicated application and gives the user access to all of their applications and data, no matter where they are or what device they are on. With a virtual desktop you still maintain control over your businesses data, you also have access to as
much computing power as you need, so you can work on the most complicated spreadsheets on a smartphone. And, unlike a real desktop, it doesn’t need to be upgraded every couple of years. What’s more, adding a new desktop for a new employee takes a few seconds and, even better, you only pay for what you use.


Everything as a service
As the use of cloud computing continues to increase, businesses won’t be just using the cloud to provide applications online such as Box or Salesforce, it will also be used more and more to outsource all of the things that aren’t central to the business or require an expensive expert such as a recruitment, delivery, warehousing, telesales, customer service, through to creating new ideas and raising finance.

There are now cloud-based services to source specific skills, services such as Odesk, Guru and Elance, which can be used to fulfil either full-time posts or specific projects on an ad-hoc basis. Other services like Crowdcube and Kickstarter allow you to use the cloud to get outside investors interested in a project without having to spend weeks and months trawling around angel investors.

http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/five-technologies-change-business-2014/_____________________________________________

Technology Trends for 2014 by Cisco From a Panel of Distinguished Professionals

Cisco has gathered a group of distinguished professionals to share their predictions of technology trends in 2014. You will be pleased to know what is in the future for those who are in the technology sector.


Internet of Everything (IoE) and M2M communications: The Internet of Things, and specifically increased automation in industrial systems and processes, coupled with big data, will bring tremendous advances in predictive diagnostics, with important applications in environments as diverse as retail and automotive safety. By 2022, M2M connections will account for 45 percent of total connections while person-to-machine (P2M) and person-to-person (P2P) will account for the remaining 55 percent. M2M already represents a significant market which continues to grow. Some of the most common M2M applications are telemetry (e.g. utility meters), telematics (e.g. car navigation systems), sales and payment (e.g. vending machines), and fleet management (e.g. cargo tracking).

Multi-vendor Clouds: Public, private and hybrid cloud environments based on static configurations will give way to dynamic and multi-vendor cloud environments. New technologies will allow Cloud service providers across multiple environments to adopt common Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to provide reliable and economical services. Video in ultra-high definition: High definition video systems are becoming rapidly more affordable, presenting us with exciting opportunities for new video experiences on a previously unseen scale. Video technology in ultra-high definition (2160p and 4k - 8k- 4320p) will become imperative for smart phones, augmented reality glasses, tablets and other devices equipped with camera. With a resolution up to 16-times higher than current HD TV (1080p), their impact on the network requires the adoption of new technologies like P2P streaming, federated content distribution networks, HEVC (H.265) or HTTP adaptive streaming.

Context Aware Computing and Collaboration:The mash-up of big data and collaboration applications is going to drive the creation of a new wave of “context-aware” computing and collaboration experiences. Within 12-24 months, we will witness the rise of collaboration applications which automatically present to us information about the people and organizations contacting us. Furthermore, collaboration applications will leverage context-aware information and big data to gather useful historical information (documents, past interactions, recordings of meetings, even Facebook status) which are relevant to how teams work together, thereby preserving intellectual property and strengthening relationships and collaboration.

Real-time analytics: In the era of the data deluge, businesses demand fast access to information and immediate data insights in order to make quick and informed decisions, and to improve financial and operational performance. Real-time analytics have a broad area of application, spanning from financial markets to advertising, automation and security. Analyzing massive amounts of data almost on the fly implies high performance requirements on systems’ hardware and software.

Interactive collaboration through the web: The embedding of rich media collaboration within browsers – promises to transform the way businesses and organizations communicate and engage with customers. Within 12 months, we’re going to see retailers, financial services organizations, and other providers of high value services embedding Web Real Time Collaboration (WebRTC) into their web interfaces to transform the way they engage with customers.

New Internet architectures: With the number of connected devices set to rapidly expand from 10Bn today to 50Bn or more by 2020, current internet infrastructure needs to evolve to support this exponential growth of connected devices. We will see the rise of a new Internet architecture characterized by (a) ‘Fog Computing’ – the convergence of networking and compute at the edge of networks to create a more distributed intelligence that balances the need for centralized mega-scale data centers with more locally-useful computing and decision making capabilities, (b) a new type of networking architecture characterized by open APIs and by the embrace of developer communities who will create applications that optimize the integration of networks and management systems and business applications, (c) we will pass the peak of the SDN hype cycle and see real-world applications emerge in 2014, and (d) a new set of IT skill sets which accompany the convergence of computing, networking, storage and applications will emerge.

Security and Internet of Everything: As more and more devices – from wearable medical devices to devices that carry personal financial information – join the Web, privacy and security become more important than ever. In the coming 1-3 years, we will see a new form of multi-layered security emerge, replacing today’s model of “protecting the perimeter” with a combination of security technologies that includes localized clients embedded within devices or localized connections and centralized cloud-based intelligence which constantly scans to protect.

Self-Organizing Networks (SON): SON refers to a set of capabilities that increases the level of automation in network planning, operations and maintenance of LTE (Long Term Evolution) and next generation mobile networks. Today‘s mobile networks are largely human operated. SON is expected to decrease the capex and opex associated with them. These automated functions aim towards a self-configuring, self-optimizing and self-healing network, increasing network performance and quality by adapting to dynamic changes in network conditions.

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/286896/cisco-identifies-multi-vendor-clouds-internet-transformational-trends-define-2014

Why is it Important to Know If Your Website Was Built in Open or Closed Source Code

Realizing that most website owners are just happy that their site is functioning well and looks great. Have these businesses ever realized that they need to educate themselves about the technology on the back side of their website?

Craig Reardon has some great advice to give on the subject.

There are three really important questions smaller business operators need to know about their website technology: Who recommended the website technology you are currently using? How impartial was that recommendation? And why is it important anyway?

The answers to these lie in a debate the software industry has been battling out for decades now. That of ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ source development code.

Before you click over to something a little more interesting than computer code, it’s important that you read on. Because not knowing the difference can greatly impact your expenses, your sales and even your reputation.

The open source community method

By definition, ‘open’ source means that software and now web developers are able to access the computer programming of the software or website in question and alter it to create new functionality.




The closed proprietary alternative
On the other hand, ‘closed’ source software or technology does not allow ordinary developers to access the development source code in this way. Typically companies create such software and deliberately ‘close’ the source code so that only they can modify it.

This is not just for purely profit motives. Closing the code in this way allows you to control the quality of the software by preventing ‘enthusiasts’ from inadvertently creating faulty or insecure programming code, which of course can compromise the software brand and reputation.

As a result, any issue you have with the software is generally directed back to the company who provided it, sometimes via licensed local developers. As in any manufactured product, warranties and service level agreements cover any fault that might occur to your program.

Packaged, branded technology

The best analogy to this community versus company scenario lies in your standard book-keeping programs. In the very early days of personal computing, you could hire a programmer to develop or ‘write’ a book-keeping program for you. Because ‘off the shelf’ book-keeping systems were still new (and we are talking 25 years ago or more) your only real option was to pay the hourly rate for a programmer or developer to create it for you.

But because computer code can easily be duplicated in much the same way music now can, it made sense for the developer in question to make the software available to others for a price much lower than having to re-create it each time.

So very quickly entrepreneurial developers packaged up their programs and mass produced and marketed them, much like MYOB, Quicken, etc do today.

Whilst you pay an initial and usually ongoing license fee to purchase and use closed software, you also get teams of trained professionals ensuring its upkeep and quality control – particularly in an industry renowned for disgruntled or otherwise meddlesome hackers constantly trying to create havoc.



Famously, this battle of Open vs Closed was fought out between Microsoft and Apple when it came to the way they licensed their operating systems and software. Microsoft’s ‘open’ approach allowed pretty much anyone with any development nous to incorporate its operating system into its hardware, regardless of its quality, and in so doing allowing the market for it to flourish. And it’s the reason why it held up to 94% of the operating system market at one point.

The core of Apple

On the other hand, for all but a few years Apple completely closed its operating system to outside providers so as to control the complete product in much the same way that many car manufacturers do. Whilst this approach came very close to ensuring its demise at one point, it eventually led to hugely successful vertical integration possibilities as is now being realised by its hardware, operating system, iTunes, app store, etc, products.

Actually, Apple may not have happened at all if co-founder Steve Wozniak had his way. He wanted the original Apple 1 to recoup only the cost of the hardware, add a small profit margin and essentially give away the operating system before Steve Jobs talked him out of it – a decision that took the fledgling business out of the hobbyist market into the consumer market, with revolutionary results.

But coming back to website technology, business operators can now choose from an open source website platform or a closed proprietary one – something that few actually realise or are even alerted to by their web professional.

The cost of freedom

But whilst an open approach may provide developers with all the freedom they need to be able to create pretty much any kind of website, it also creates the potential for a number of problems that closed systems don’t.

These relate to quality, upgrades, maintenance, security, other improvements and the cost of each of these.

But whilst an open approach may provide developers with all the freedom they need to be able to create pretty much any kind of website, it also creates the potential for a number of problems that closed systems don’t.
These relate to quality, upgrades, maintenance, security, other improvements and the cost of each of these.

Unlike a license with a closed or proprietary provider, there is no obligation on the part of your web developer to ensure that your website platform is kept up to date with all the various ongoing maintenance requirements web technology require.

So, say browsers such as Internet Explorer or Chrome alter their operational specifications? Your developer must keep up with these (regular) changes and ensure your website meets them; whereas proprietary providers do this regular maintenance as a matter of course – because at some point you have paid for it.

So what has all this background information got to do with you as a smaller business operator? As it now turns out, plenty.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/technology/34246-is-your-website-built-in-open-or-closed-source-code.html

What Are the Glitches of the Government Website For Obama Care Sign Up?

                                            jim hoft

You may wonder why the Obama Care Health Insurance website was not prepared for the amount of traffic by Americans wanting health coverage.  According to sources there were many problems and Department of Health and Human Resources are trying to solve the glitches in the process. What exactly are the problems?

Basically, the website needs more server capacity to improve efficiency and design changes as well. Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the DHHS says,"We can do better and we are working around the clock to do so."

The government is making software and hardware changes to smooth the process of creating accounts needed to gain access to the marketplace, federal officials said.

The website is troubled by coding problems and flaws in the architecture of the system, according to insurance-industry advisers, technical experts and people close to the development of the marketplace.

Among the technical problems thwarting consumers, according to some of those people, is the system to confirm the identities of enrollees. Troubles in the system are causing crashes as users try to create accounts, the first step before they can apply for coverage.

Experian EXPN.LN +0.35% PLC, an information-services firm, holds a federal subcontract to support that system. The company declined to comment.

Information technology experts who examined the healthcare.gov website at the request of The Wall Street Journal said the site appeared to be built on a sloppy software foundation. Such a hastily constructed website may not have been able to withstand the online demand last week, they said.

Engineers at Web-hosting company Media Temple Inc. found a glut of stray software code that served no purpose they could identify. They also said basic Web-efficiency techniques weren't used, such as saving parts of the website that change infrequently so they can be loaded more quickly. Those factors clog the website's plumbing, Media Temple said.

The identity-checking foul-ups are also triggering problems for state-run exchanges, which rely on the federal system. The problem caused delays last week for users of MNsure, Minnesota's exchange, as they waited for federal confirmation to create their accounts, said April Todd-Malmlov, MNsure's executive director. She said the issue in her state was largely resolved by Friday.

Administration officials, who reported nearly nine million unique visitors to the federally run exchange as of Friday night, said the system underwent maintenance over the weekend.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404579119740283413018.html

Student Web Developers Nationwide Are Being Challenged by CapitolBlue Cross to Create Applications for Healthcare or New Web Tools for One of 3 Great Prizes

                                       




Sharing this challenge is important to us that are in web design and development. New applications and tools that help produce informative websites or applications in order keep up with the current technology is always welcomed.

Below is the information needed in order to enter the contest.




Capital BlueCross is challenging student developers nationwide to create web-based tools or mobile applications that enrich the health care consumer experience. All entries must be submitted by Nov. 22, 2013, and winning entries can earn one of three prizes totaling $30,000.

Titled Blue Innovates, the challenge is an opportunity for students 18 years of age or older to bring their innovative ideas to life in one of three categories:

Financial: Applications that assist health care consumers in finding, accessing, organizing, simplifying, understanding or minimizing health care expenditures.

Telemedical: Technology that provides consumers with affordable and high quality health care while saving time and money.

Experiential: Tools that help consumers have a more personalized and satisfying health care experience and that enhance their well-being.

Students may use their preferred tools, programming languages and technologies to develop a unique solution.

To get started, students can visit Blue Innovates to review contest rules and register. Developers can also use the online forum on the Blue Innovates web site for support and advice throughout the process.

The developer of the first-place winning application will receive $15,000, while the second and third place winners will receive$10,000 and $5,000 respectively. Winners will be announced by Dec. 20, 2013. Entries must be original work created by the developer who is submitting the application for consideration.

About Capital BlueCross

In 2013, Capital BlueCross is celebrating 75 years of serving central Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley residents and businesses as the region's leading health insurer. Through its family of companies, Capital BlueCross brings innovative services and clinical solutions to the marketplace. Committed to delivering medical value to its communities, Capital BlueCross focuses on improving patient satisfaction, enhancing quality of care and reducing costs. The company continues to lead the change in the industry by meeting the evolving health needs of its customers, most recently by entering the retail market and building a first-of-its-kind health and wellness store called Capital Blue. Headquartered in Harrisburg, Pa., Capital BlueCross is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, employing more than 1,800 people. More information about Capital BlueCross can be found at capbluecross.com.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deadline-nears-for-new-web-tools-or-mobile-health-care-applications-as-capital-bluecross-challenges-student-developers-nationwide-223120191.html