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What are the Benefits of Data Modeling for Businesses?

Data Modeling
Businesses that are data-driven are well-known for their success, as data is widely considered to be a company's most valuable asset. Understanding data, its relationships, and the law requires the use of data modelling techniques. Sadly, people who are not familiar with data modelling best practises see them as a pointless documentation exercise. In the eyes of others, it is a hindrance to agile development and a waste of money.

A data model is more than just documentation because it can be implemented in a physical database. Therefore, data modelling is not a bottleneck in the development of an application. Due to these benefits, it has been proven to improve application quality and reduce overall execution risks.

  • Data modeling reduces the budget of programming by up to 75%.
  • Data modeling typically consumes less than 10% of a project budget.


Data Modelling- Today’s Scenario

Data models methodologies for data modelling have existed since the dawn of time. At the very least, it's been around since the dawn of the digital age. In order for computers to deal with the bits and bytes of data, they need structure. Structured and semi-structured data are now part of the mix, but that doesn't mean we've reached a higher level of sophistication than those who came before us in the field of computing. As a result, the data model lives on and continues to serve as the foundation for the development of advanced business applications.

Today's business applications, data integration, master data management, data warehousing, big data analytics, data Lakes, and machine learning require a data modeling methodology. Therefore, data modeling is the foundation of virtually all of our high-value, mission-critical business solutions, from e-Commerce and Point-of-Sale to financial, product, and customer management, to business intelligence and IoT.

"In many ways, up-front data design with NoSQL databases can actually be more important than it is with traditional relational databases [...] Beyond the performance topic, NoSQL databases with flexible schema capabilities require more discipline in aligning to a common information model."

Ryan Smith, Information Architect at Nike

How is Data Modelling Beneficial for Businesses

A data model is similar to an architect's blueprint before construction begins. The visual manifestation of a development team's understanding of the business and its rules is data modeling. The data modeling methodology is the most efficient way to collect accurate and complete business data requirements and rules, ensuring that the system works as intended. In addition, the method raises more questions than any other modeling method, resulting in increased integrity and the discovery of relevant business rules. Finally, its visual aspect makes it easier for business users and subject matter experts to communicate and collaborate.


Let us look into some of the core benefits of data modeling for businesses.

Enhanced Performance

Following Data modeling techniques and best practices prevents the schema from endless searching and give results faster, resulting in a more efficient database. The data model's concepts must be concise to ensure the best performance. It's also crucial to accurately convert the model into the database.

Higher Quality Data

Data modeling techniques can make your data precise, trustworthy, and easy to analyze. Inaccurate data and corruption are even worse than application errors. Data can be adequately understood, queried, and reported on as a good data model defines the metadata. Developers can foresee what can lead to large-scale data corruption before it happens because of the visual depiction of requirements and business rules.

Reduced Cost

Effective data modeling techniques detect flaws and inconsistencies early in the process, making them significantly more accessible and less expensive to fix. As a result, data models allow you to design apps at a reduced cost. Data modeling often takes less than 5%-10% of a project's budget, and it can help lower the 65-75 percent of a project's budget that is usually allocated to programming.

Better Documentation

By documenting fundamental concepts and language, data model methodologies lay the groundwork for long-term maintenance. The documentation will also aid in the management of staff turnover. As an added bonus, many application providers now provide a data model upon request. For those in the information technology field, it's common knowledge that models are a powerful tool for explaining complex ideas in a simple and straightforward manner.

Managed Risk

An application database that contains numerous related tables is more complex and thus more prone to failure during development. On the other hand, data model techniques quantify software complexity and provide insight into the development effort and risk associated with a project. Therefore, the model's size and the degree of inter-table connectivity should be considered.

Summing up

Any business can benefit greatly from data modelling methods and techniques. To the untrained eye, data modelling may appear to be distinct from the type of data analytics that actually add value to a company. In order to make data storage in a database easier and have a positive impact on data analytics, data modelling is an essential first step.

Frequently Asked Questions


What is data modeling?

In software engineering, data modelling refers to the use of specific formal techniques to develop a data model for an information system.  This is used to communicate between data structures and points.

Which are the five crucial data modeling types?

  • The five crucial data modeling types are
  • Conceptual data model
  • Physical data model
  • Hierarchical data model
  • Relational data model
  • Entity-relationship (ER) data model

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Role of Edge Analytics in Smarter Computing & Business Growth

Article | May 16, 2023

As businesses are moving towards using more and more data for decision-making, data-driven insights have become the most valuable asset for any company. Today, businesses are feeling the need to process data and access analytics in real-time. In the past, businesses collected data from various IoT devices and sensors, centralized it in a data warehouse or data lake, and then analyzed it to get insights. What if businesses could bypass the data centralization or integration stage entirely and go straight to the analysis stage? This technique is known as edge analytics. This method allows businesses to accomplish autodidact machine learning, improve data security, and reduce data transfer costs. With edge analytics and edge computing, businesses can not only generate more sales but also boost efficiency, enhance productivity, and save costs. Let’s dive deeper into edge analytics, how it complements cloud computing, and why businesses are increasingly opting for it. How can Edge Analytics Complement Cloud Computing? Real-time decision-making is still challenging in IoT systems due to factors like bandwidth, latency, power consumption, cost, and various other considerations. This problem, however, can be addressed by using of artificial intelligence in edge analytics, which also makes cloud computing better. Cloud computing and edge computing are very different approaches and purely depend on the software implemented. These two technologies don’t discredit each other, but rather complement each other. Reduces utilization of data bandwidth or transfer Ends the need for continuous connectivity to the cloud Boosts the real-time performance with faster processing Enhances data security Common Pitfalls to Dodge with Edge Analytics and Edge Computing According to Statista, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices will reach 30.9 billion units by 2025. Moreover, the global IoT market is expected to grow to $1.6 trillion by 2025. The cost of transferring and storing all of that data, combined with the lack of a clear advantage, has led many to question whether the IoT is worth the hype. That is why the industry is shifting its focus to edge analytics or computing to fully leverage the data collected from IoT devices. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges that can be addressed with the help of edge analytics: Many industrial IoT solutions require complete uptime. Consumer IoT apps need to process localized events in real-time. A power outage might result in a security breach. Difficulties in adhering to data regulations. Why You Should Employ Edge Analytics? “To remain competitive in the post-cloud era, innovative companies are adopting edge computing due to its endless breakthrough capabilities that are not available at the core.” - David Williams, managing principal at AHEAD. Edge analytics solutions assist businesses wherever data insights are needed at the edge. It can be used in various industries for numerous things, such as retail customer behavior analysis, remote monitoring and maintenance, detecting fraud at ATMs and other financial sites, and monitoring manufacturing and logistical equipment. Here are some reasons you should choose edge analytics and edge computing for your business. Saves Time The prime objective of adopting an edge analytics system is to filter out unnecessary information prior to analysis, and only relevant data is sent via higher-order methods. This saves a lot of time when it comes to processing and uploading data, which makes the complex analytical process done on the cloud a lot more valuable and effective. Reduces Cost The use of edge analytics in IoT cuts the cost of data storage and administration. It also saves operating expenses, bandwidth requirements, and resources spent on data processing. All of these things add up to substantial financial savings. Safeguards Privacy Edge analytics assists in the preservation of privacy when sensitive or confidential data is gathered by a device, such as GPS data or video streams. This sensitive data is pre-processed on-site rather than being transferred to the cloud for processing. This additional step ensures that only data that complies with privacy laws leaves the device for further analysis. Reduces Data Analysis Delay Edge analytics tools enables faster, autonomous decision-making since insights are identified at the data source, preventing latency. It is more effective to analyze data on the defective device itself and shut down the faulty equipment immediately instead of waiting for the data from the equipment to be transferred to a central data analytics environment and waiting for the result. Solves Connectivity Issues By making sure that applications are not disrupted by restricted or interrupted network access, edge analytics in IoT helps to safeguard against possible connectivity disruptions in IoT. It is particularly beneficial in rural areas or for minimizing connection costs when utilizing costly technologies such as cellular networks. Industries Leveraging Edge Analytics Closing Lines Edge analytics is an exciting field, with businesses in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector growing their expenditures every year. Leading vendors are actively investing in this rapidly growing market. Edge analytics provides measurable business advantages in certain industries such as retail, manufacturing, energy, and logistics by decreasing decision latency, scaling out analytics resources, resolving bandwidth issues, and perhaps reducing expenditures. The potential at the edge leads to a very exciting future of smart computing as sensors get more affordable, applications need more real-time analytics, and developing optimized, cost-effective edge algorithms becomes simpler. FAQ What distinguishes edge analytics from regular analytics? Except for the location of the analysis, edge analytics offers remarkably similar capabilities to regular analytics systems. One significant difference is that edge analytics apps can run on edge devices that can have memory, processing power, or communication. What are edge devices, and what are some examples? An edge device serves as an access point to the core networks of businesses or service providers. Some examples include routers, switching devices, integrated access devices (IADs), multiplexers, and other metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide area network (WAN) access devices. What exactly are edge machines? Edge ML is a technology that allows smart devices to analyze data locally through local servers or at the device level. This is done with the help of machine and deep learning algorithms, decreasing dependency on cloud networks.

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Power up Your Game with Robust BI Tools & Techniques

Article | April 28, 2023

With more data at our fingertips, it’s difficult to focus on the relevant information and present it in an actionable way. From sales executives to the C-suite, everyone wants to use data to their advantage. According to Sigma, 88% of executives feel the urgency to invest in big data. Business intelligence tools make it easier to gather the right data and visualize it in a manner that helps understand its meaning. Business intelligence (BI) deployment also brings additional value to the business in every vertical. BI tools provide insights from structured data for data-driven decisions. According to Google's Head of Marketing, Nic Smith, "BI is about providing the right data at the right time to the right people so that they can make the right decisions." Selecting an accurate business intelligence tool is tough. With so many BI tools competing for attention, even the most tech-savvy can become paralyzed. 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Mobile Business Intelligence Mobile business intelligence makes BI apps and dashboards accessible on smartphones and tablets. Mobile BI tools are often developed keeping in mind the ease of use, which is more about displaying data than analyzing it. Software-as-a-Service BI SaaS BI tools are also known as cloud BI tools. They use vendor-hosted cloud computing platforms to provide customers with data analysis tools in the form of a subscription-based service. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Tools One of the oldest BI technologies, the OLAP tool, helps users analyze data across multiple dimensions, specifically tailored to complex queries and calculations. 3 Industries That Have Benefited by Business Intelligence tools and Techniques As business intelligence technology advances, more BI tools will become available, resulting in broad use across industries. 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Entertainment Today, companies in the media and entertainment industries help you narrow down your search for TV shows, movies, music, and other media by making intelligent suggestions. Business intelligence is used by media streaming giants like Netflix and Spotify to generate a list of recommended movies, shows, and songs based on the customer's preferences and streaming history. Top Business Intelligence Tools Choosing the best business intelligence tools is a personal decision based on your company's requirements. Are you looking for a business intelligence tool that lets you make interactive data visualizations or a tool that lets you do in-depth financial data analysis? While each business's requirements are different and unique, there are several business intelligence tools that work well across a wide range of businesses and industries. Here we have made a list of business intelligence tools named in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants 2021. 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Is Augmented Analytics the Future of Big Data Analytics?

Article | April 13, 2023

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It also automates data science and ML model development, management, and deployment.” Augmented analytics is different from BI tools because ML technologies work behind the scenes continuously to learn and enhance results. Augmented analytics facilitates this process faster to derive insights from large amounts of structured and unstructured data to gain ML-based recommendations. In addition, it helps to find patterns in the data that usually go unnoticed, removes human bias, and allows predictive capabilities to inform an organization of what to do next. Artificial intelligence has brought about an augmented analytics trend, and there has been a significant increase in the demand for augmented analytics. Benefits of Augmented Analytics Organizations now understand the benefits of augmented analytics which has led them to adopt it to deal with the increasing volume of structured and unstructured data. Oracle identified top four reasons organizations are opting for augmented analytics: Data Democratization Augmented data science availability to everyone has become a possibility thanks to augmented analytics. Augmented analytics solutions come prebuilt with models and algorithms, so data scientists are not needed to do this work. In addition, these augmented analytics models have user-friendly interfaces, making it easier for business users and executives to use them. Quicker Decision-making You will receive suggestions and recommendations through augmented analytics about which datasets to incorporate in analyses, alert users with dataset upgrades, and recommend new datasets when the results are not what the users expect. With just one click, augmented analytics provides precise forecasts and predictions on historical data. Programmed Recommendations Natural language processing (NLP) is featured on the augmented analytics platforms enabling non-technical users to question the source data easily. Interpreting the complex data into text with intelligent recommendations is automated by natural language generation (NLG), thus speeding up the analytic insights. Anyone using the tools can find out hidden patterns and predict trends to optimize the time it takes to go from data to insights to decisions using automated recommendations for data improvement and visualization. Non-expert users can use NLP technology to make sense of large amounts of data. Users can ask doubts about data using typical business terms. The software will find and question the correct data, making the results easy to digest using visualization tools or natural language output. Grow into a Data-driven Company It is more significant to understand data and business while organizations are rapidly adjusting to changes. Analytics has become more critical to doing everything from understanding sales trends, to segment customers, based on their online behaviors, and predicting how much inventory to hold to strategizing marketing campaigns. Analytics is what makes data a valuable asset. Essential Capabilities of Augmented Analytics Augmented analytics reduces the repetitive processes data analysts need to do every time they work with new datasets. It helps to decrease the time it takes to clean data through the ETL process. Augmented analytics allows more time to think about the data implications, discover patterns, auto-generated code, create visualizations, and propose recommendations from the insights it derives. Augmented analytics considers intents and behaviors and turns them into contextual insights. It presents new directions to look at data and identify patterns and insights companies would have otherwise missed out on completely- thus altering the way analytics is used. The ability to highlight the most relevant hidden insights is a powerful capability. Augmented analytics, for example, can help users manage the context at the explanatory process stage. It understands the values of data that are associated with or unrelated to that context, which results in powerful and relevant suggestions that are context-aware. Modern self-service BI tools have a friendly user interface that enables business users with low to no technical skills to derive insights from data in real-time. In addition, these tools can easily handle large datasets from various sources in a quickly and competently. The insights from augmented analytics tools can tell you what, why, and how something happened. In addition, it can reveal important insights, recommendations, and relationships between data points in real-time and present it to the user in the form of reports in conversational language. Users can have data queries to get insights through the augmented analytics tools. For example, business users can ask, “How was the company’s performance last year?” or “What was the most profitable quarter of the year?” The systems provide in-depth explanations and recommendations around data insights, clearly understanding the “what” and the “why” of the data. It enhances efficiency, decision-making, and collaboration between users and encourages data literacy and data democracy throughout an organization. Augmented Analytics: What’s Next? Augmented analytics is going to change the way people understand and examine data. It has become a necessity for businesses to survive. It will simplify and speed up the augmented data preparation, cleansing, and standardization of data, thus assist businesses to focus all their efforts on data analysis. BI and analytics will become an immersive environment with integrations allowing users to interact with their data. New insights and data will be easier to access through various devices and interfaces like mobile phones, virtual assistants, or chatbots. In addition, it will help decision-making by notifying the users of alerts that need immediate attention. This will help businesses to stay updated about any changes happening in real-time. Frequently Asked Questions What are the benefits of augmented analytics? Augmented analytics helps companies become more agile, gain access to analytics, helps users make better, faster, and data-driven decisions, and reduces costs. How important is augmented analytics? Augmented analytics build efficiency into the data analysis process, equips businesses and people with tools that can answer data-based questions within seconds, and assist companies in getting ahead of their competitors. What are the examples of augmented analytics? Augmented analytics can help retain existing customers, capitalize on customer needs, drive revenue through optimized pricing, and optimize operations in the healthcare sector for better patient outcomes. 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Big Data Management

How Should Data Science Teams Deal with Operational Tasks?

Article | April 16, 2021

Introduction There are many articles explaining advanced methods on AI, Machine Learning or Reinforcement Learning. Yet, when it comes to real life, data scientists often have to deal with smaller, operational tasks, that are not necessarily at the edge of science, such as building simple SQL queries to generate lists of email addresses to target for CRM campaigns. In theory, these tasks should be assigned to someone more suited, such as Business Analysts or Data Analysts, but it is not always the case that the company has people dedicated specifically to those tasks, especially if it’s a smaller structure. In some cases, these activities might consume so much of our time that we don’t have much left for the stuff that matters, and might end up doing a less than optimal work in both. That said, how should we deal with those tasks? In one hand, not only we usually don’t like doing operational tasks, but they are also a bad use of an expensive professional. On the other hand, someone has to do them, and not everyone has the necessary SQL knowledge for it. Let’s see some ways in which you can deal with them in order to optimize your team’s time. Reduce The first and most obvious way of doing less operational tasks is by simply refusing to do them. I know it sounds harsh, and it might be impractical depending on your company and its hierarchy, but it’s worth trying it in some cases. By “refusing”, I mean questioning if that task is really necessary, and trying to find best ways of doing it. Let’s say that every month you have to prepare 3 different reports, for different areas, that contain similar information. You have managed to automate the SQL queries, but you still have to double check the results and eventually add/remove some information upon the user’s request or change something in the charts layout. In this example, you could see if all of the 3 different reports are necessary, or if you could adapt them so they become one report that you send to the 3 different users. Anyways, think of ways through which you can reduce the necessary time for those tasks or, ideally, stop performing them at all. Empower Sometimes it can pay to take the time to empower your users to perform some of those tasks themselves. If there is a specific team that demands most of the operational tasks, try encouraging them to use no-code tools, putting it in a way that they fell they will be more autonomous. You can either use already existing solutions or develop them in-house (this could be a great learning opportunity to develop your data scientists’ app-building skills). Automate If you notice it’s a task that you can’t get rid of and can’t delegate, then try to automate it as much as possible. For reports, try to migrate them to a data visualization tool such as Tableau or Google Data Studio and synchronize them with your database. If it’s related to ad hoc requests, try to make your SQL queries as flexible as possible, with variable dates and names, so that you don’t have to re-write them every time. Organize Especially when you are a manager, you have to prioritize, so you and your team don’t get drowned in the endless operational tasks. In order to do this, set aside one or two days in your week which you will assign to that kind of work, and don’t look at it in the remaining 3–4 days. To achieve this, you will have to adapt your workload by following the previous steps and also manage expectations by taking this smaller amount of work hours when setting deadlines. This also means explaining the paradigm shift to your internal clients, so they can adapt to these new deadlines. This step might require some internal politics, negotiating with your superiors and with other departments. Conclusion Once you have mapped all your operational activities, you start by eliminating as much as possible from your pipeline, first by getting rid of unnecessary activities for good, then by delegating them to the teams that request them. Then, whatever is left for you to do, you automate and organize, to make sure you are making time for the relevant work your team has to do. This way you make sure expensive employees’ time is being well spent, maximizing company’s profit.

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Big Data Management, Data Science, Big Data

The Future of Big Data: Trends and Innovations for 2023 and Beyond

Article | May 16, 2023

As businesses are moving towards using more and more data for decision-making, data-driven insights have become the most valuable asset for any company. Today, businesses are feeling the need to process data and access analytics in real-time. In the past, businesses collected data from various IoT devices and sensors, centralized it in a data warehouse or data lake, and then analyzed it to get insights. What if businesses could bypass the data centralization or integration stage entirely and go straight to the analysis stage? This technique is known as edge analytics. This method allows businesses to accomplish autodidact machine learning, improve data security, and reduce data transfer costs. With edge analytics and edge computing, businesses can not only generate more sales but also boost efficiency, enhance productivity, and save costs. Let’s dive deeper into edge analytics, how it complements cloud computing, and why businesses are increasingly opting for it. How can Edge Analytics Complement Cloud Computing? Real-time decision-making is still challenging in IoT systems due to factors like bandwidth, latency, power consumption, cost, and various other considerations. This problem, however, can be addressed by using of artificial intelligence in edge analytics, which also makes cloud computing better. Cloud computing and edge computing are very different approaches and purely depend on the software implemented. These two technologies don’t discredit each other, but rather complement each other. Reduces utilization of data bandwidth or transfer Ends the need for continuous connectivity to the cloud Boosts the real-time performance with faster processing Enhances data security Common Pitfalls to Dodge with Edge Analytics and Edge Computing According to Statista, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices will reach 30.9 billion units by 2025. Moreover, the global IoT market is expected to grow to $1.6 trillion by 2025. The cost of transferring and storing all of that data, combined with the lack of a clear advantage, has led many to question whether the IoT is worth the hype. That is why the industry is shifting its focus to edge analytics or computing to fully leverage the data collected from IoT devices. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges that can be addressed with the help of edge analytics: Many industrial IoT solutions require complete uptime. Consumer IoT apps need to process localized events in real-time. A power outage might result in a security breach. Difficulties in adhering to data regulations. Why You Should Employ Edge Analytics? “To remain competitive in the post-cloud era, innovative companies are adopting edge computing due to its endless breakthrough capabilities that are not available at the core.” - David Williams, managing principal at AHEAD. Edge analytics solutions assist businesses wherever data insights are needed at the edge. It can be used in various industries for numerous things, such as retail customer behavior analysis, remote monitoring and maintenance, detecting fraud at ATMs and other financial sites, and monitoring manufacturing and logistical equipment. Here are some reasons you should choose edge analytics and edge computing for your business. Saves Time The prime objective of adopting an edge analytics system is to filter out unnecessary information prior to analysis, and only relevant data is sent via higher-order methods. This saves a lot of time when it comes to processing and uploading data, which makes the complex analytical process done on the cloud a lot more valuable and effective. Reduces Cost The use of edge analytics in IoT cuts the cost of data storage and administration. It also saves operating expenses, bandwidth requirements, and resources spent on data processing. All of these things add up to substantial financial savings. Safeguards Privacy Edge analytics assists in the preservation of privacy when sensitive or confidential data is gathered by a device, such as GPS data or video streams. This sensitive data is pre-processed on-site rather than being transferred to the cloud for processing. This additional step ensures that only data that complies with privacy laws leaves the device for further analysis. Reduces Data Analysis Delay Edge analytics tools enables faster, autonomous decision-making since insights are identified at the data source, preventing latency. It is more effective to analyze data on the defective device itself and shut down the faulty equipment immediately instead of waiting for the data from the equipment to be transferred to a central data analytics environment and waiting for the result. Solves Connectivity Issues By making sure that applications are not disrupted by restricted or interrupted network access, edge analytics in IoT helps to safeguard against possible connectivity disruptions in IoT. It is particularly beneficial in rural areas or for minimizing connection costs when utilizing costly technologies such as cellular networks. Industries Leveraging Edge Analytics Closing Lines Edge analytics is an exciting field, with businesses in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector growing their expenditures every year. Leading vendors are actively investing in this rapidly growing market. Edge analytics provides measurable business advantages in certain industries such as retail, manufacturing, energy, and logistics by decreasing decision latency, scaling out analytics resources, resolving bandwidth issues, and perhaps reducing expenditures. The potential at the edge leads to a very exciting future of smart computing as sensors get more affordable, applications need more real-time analytics, and developing optimized, cost-effective edge algorithms becomes simpler. FAQ What distinguishes edge analytics from regular analytics? Except for the location of the analysis, edge analytics offers remarkably similar capabilities to regular analytics systems. One significant difference is that edge analytics apps can run on edge devices that can have memory, processing power, or communication. What are edge devices, and what are some examples? An edge device serves as an access point to the core networks of businesses or service providers. Some examples include routers, switching devices, integrated access devices (IADs), multiplexers, and other metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide area network (WAN) access devices. What exactly are edge machines? Edge ML is a technology that allows smart devices to analyze data locally through local servers or at the device level. This is done with the help of machine and deep learning algorithms, decreasing dependency on cloud networks.

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Big Data Management, Data Science, Big Data

Implementing Big Data and AI: Best Practices and Strategies for 2023

Article | April 28, 2023

With more data at our fingertips, it’s difficult to focus on the relevant information and present it in an actionable way. From sales executives to the C-suite, everyone wants to use data to their advantage. According to Sigma, 88% of executives feel the urgency to invest in big data. Business intelligence tools make it easier to gather the right data and visualize it in a manner that helps understand its meaning. Business intelligence (BI) deployment also brings additional value to the business in every vertical. BI tools provide insights from structured data for data-driven decisions. According to Google's Head of Marketing, Nic Smith, "BI is about providing the right data at the right time to the right people so that they can make the right decisions." Selecting an accurate business intelligence tool is tough. With so many BI tools competing for attention, even the most tech-savvy can become paralyzed. To choose an appropriate tool for business intelligence, you must first understand the types of tools available. Here is a list of the five most commonly used types of business intelligence tools. Types of Business Intelligence Tools Many existing business intelligence techniques and tools share similar features. The way business intelligence is used to improve decision-making is unique to each implementation. The types of business intelligence tools are mentioned below: Real-Time BI In a real-time business intelligence tool, data is analyzed as soon as it is produced, gathered, and processed so that users can get an up-to-date view of company operations, consumer behavior, financial markets, and other areas. Embedded BI Embedded business intelligence tools integrate BI and data visualization into business software. This allows business users to examine data within the systems that they use on a regular basis. Mobile Business Intelligence Mobile business intelligence makes BI apps and dashboards accessible on smartphones and tablets. Mobile BI tools are often developed keeping in mind the ease of use, which is more about displaying data than analyzing it. Software-as-a-Service BI SaaS BI tools are also known as cloud BI tools. They use vendor-hosted cloud computing platforms to provide customers with data analysis tools in the form of a subscription-based service. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Tools One of the oldest BI technologies, the OLAP tool, helps users analyze data across multiple dimensions, specifically tailored to complex queries and calculations. 3 Industries That Have Benefited by Business Intelligence tools and Techniques As business intelligence technology advances, more BI tools will become available, resulting in broad use across industries. The industries listed below have established themselves and are now at par with companies that are already reaping benefits from BI tools on a regular basis. E-commerce E-commerce is one industry that has greatly benefited from business intelligence tools and techniques. To improve their supply chain, e-commerce giants like Amazon must constantly monitor and analyze data. Amazon, in particular, has a huge supply chain that involves 11 marketplaces and sells over 3 billion products. Retail Business intelligence is used by players in the retail industry to help them recognize and target potential consumers and strengthen their relations with existing customers. Retail businesses can use business intelligence tools to combine data from CRMs, ERPs, and other systems to get a comprehensive, and clear idea of their consumers. Entertainment Today, companies in the media and entertainment industries help you narrow down your search for TV shows, movies, music, and other media by making intelligent suggestions. Business intelligence is used by media streaming giants like Netflix and Spotify to generate a list of recommended movies, shows, and songs based on the customer's preferences and streaming history. Top Business Intelligence Tools Choosing the best business intelligence tools is a personal decision based on your company's requirements. Are you looking for a business intelligence tool that lets you make interactive data visualizations or a tool that lets you do in-depth financial data analysis? While each business's requirements are different and unique, there are several business intelligence tools that work well across a wide range of businesses and industries. Here we have made a list of business intelligence tools named in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants 2021. Board Board International is made up of three tools, which work together. They are business intelligence, predictive analytics, and performance management. Domo Domo is a cloud-based platform that is easy to use and focuses on business-user-deployment dashboards. Microsoft Power BI Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular BI tools available in the market. It’s easy for clients to use the Power BI app to analyze and visualize data from local or cloud sources, publishing their reports to the Power BI platform. Oracle Analytics Cloud Conversational analytics can be used in the Oracle analytics cloud to answer questions in natural language. It can also automatically generate natural language explanations to help people understand visualizations and trends. SAS Visual Analytics The SAS Visual Analytics tool aims to highlight critical correlations in datasets. In the new edition, there are automated suggestions for relevant factors, as well as visualizations and insights from natural language. Conclusion These business intelligence tools can help with a wide range of tasks inside a company. Off-the-shelf technologies necessarily focus on wide appeal instead of specialized features, since a single tool cannot accomplish all the task. There are several types of BI tools available on the market; businesses can explore and test them before making a final choice on which one to incorporate. Business intelligence is a flexible and effective tool that can be used in almost every industry. FAQ Will BI systems integrate with existing systems? Providers of business intelligence solutions understand the need to integrate data from many platforms. To connect directly with the existing systems and databases, they require a multitude of specialized drivers. Every new business intelligence system version adds to the list of accessible drivers. Is there a need to modify existing IT systems to integrate them with BI tools? The implementation of a BI system does not require the intervention of any existing systems. Some systems need more configuration to connect them to business intelligence tools. What is the time frame required to implement a business intelligence system? It depends on the scope of the project. Implementing business intelligence tools might take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. Many companies begin to see the benefits and decide to expand their system by adding new areas and features.

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Business Intelligence, Big Data Management, Data Science

Navigating Big Data Integration: Challenges and Strategies

Article | April 13, 2023

We currently live in the age of data. It’s not just any kind of data, but big data. The current data sets have become huge, complicated, and quick, making it difficult for traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions to handle. These dated BI solutions are either unable to get the data, deal with the data, or understand the data. It is vital to handle the data aptly since data is everywhere and is being produced constantly. Your organization needs to discover any hidden insights in your datasets. Going through all the data will be doable with the right tools like machine learning (ML) and augmented analytics. According to Gartner, augmented analytics is the future of data analytics and defines it as: “Augmented analytics uses machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) techniques to automate data preparation, insight discovery, and sharing. It also automates data science and ML model development, management, and deployment.” Augmented analytics is different from BI tools because ML technologies work behind the scenes continuously to learn and enhance results. Augmented analytics facilitates this process faster to derive insights from large amounts of structured and unstructured data to gain ML-based recommendations. In addition, it helps to find patterns in the data that usually go unnoticed, removes human bias, and allows predictive capabilities to inform an organization of what to do next. Artificial intelligence has brought about an augmented analytics trend, and there has been a significant increase in the demand for augmented analytics. Benefits of Augmented Analytics Organizations now understand the benefits of augmented analytics which has led them to adopt it to deal with the increasing volume of structured and unstructured data. Oracle identified top four reasons organizations are opting for augmented analytics: Data Democratization Augmented data science availability to everyone has become a possibility thanks to augmented analytics. Augmented analytics solutions come prebuilt with models and algorithms, so data scientists are not needed to do this work. In addition, these augmented analytics models have user-friendly interfaces, making it easier for business users and executives to use them. Quicker Decision-making You will receive suggestions and recommendations through augmented analytics about which datasets to incorporate in analyses, alert users with dataset upgrades, and recommend new datasets when the results are not what the users expect. With just one click, augmented analytics provides precise forecasts and predictions on historical data. Programmed Recommendations Natural language processing (NLP) is featured on the augmented analytics platforms enabling non-technical users to question the source data easily. Interpreting the complex data into text with intelligent recommendations is automated by natural language generation (NLG), thus speeding up the analytic insights. Anyone using the tools can find out hidden patterns and predict trends to optimize the time it takes to go from data to insights to decisions using automated recommendations for data improvement and visualization. Non-expert users can use NLP technology to make sense of large amounts of data. Users can ask doubts about data using typical business terms. The software will find and question the correct data, making the results easy to digest using visualization tools or natural language output. Grow into a Data-driven Company It is more significant to understand data and business while organizations are rapidly adjusting to changes. Analytics has become more critical to doing everything from understanding sales trends, to segment customers, based on their online behaviors, and predicting how much inventory to hold to strategizing marketing campaigns. Analytics is what makes data a valuable asset. Essential Capabilities of Augmented Analytics Augmented analytics reduces the repetitive processes data analysts need to do every time they work with new datasets. It helps to decrease the time it takes to clean data through the ETL process. Augmented analytics allows more time to think about the data implications, discover patterns, auto-generated code, create visualizations, and propose recommendations from the insights it derives. Augmented analytics considers intents and behaviors and turns them into contextual insights. It presents new directions to look at data and identify patterns and insights companies would have otherwise missed out on completely- thus altering the way analytics is used. The ability to highlight the most relevant hidden insights is a powerful capability. Augmented analytics, for example, can help users manage the context at the explanatory process stage. It understands the values of data that are associated with or unrelated to that context, which results in powerful and relevant suggestions that are context-aware. Modern self-service BI tools have a friendly user interface that enables business users with low to no technical skills to derive insights from data in real-time. In addition, these tools can easily handle large datasets from various sources in a quickly and competently. The insights from augmented analytics tools can tell you what, why, and how something happened. In addition, it can reveal important insights, recommendations, and relationships between data points in real-time and present it to the user in the form of reports in conversational language. Users can have data queries to get insights through the augmented analytics tools. For example, business users can ask, “How was the company’s performance last year?” or “What was the most profitable quarter of the year?” The systems provide in-depth explanations and recommendations around data insights, clearly understanding the “what” and the “why” of the data. It enhances efficiency, decision-making, and collaboration between users and encourages data literacy and data democracy throughout an organization. Augmented Analytics: What’s Next? Augmented analytics is going to change the way people understand and examine data. It has become a necessity for businesses to survive. It will simplify and speed up the augmented data preparation, cleansing, and standardization of data, thus assist businesses to focus all their efforts on data analysis. BI and analytics will become an immersive environment with integrations allowing users to interact with their data. New insights and data will be easier to access through various devices and interfaces like mobile phones, virtual assistants, or chatbots. In addition, it will help decision-making by notifying the users of alerts that need immediate attention. This will help businesses to stay updated about any changes happening in real-time. Frequently Asked Questions What are the benefits of augmented analytics? Augmented analytics helps companies become more agile, gain access to analytics, helps users make better, faster, and data-driven decisions, and reduces costs. How important is augmented analytics? Augmented analytics build efficiency into the data analysis process, equips businesses and people with tools that can answer data-based questions within seconds, and assist companies in getting ahead of their competitors. What are the examples of augmented analytics? Augmented analytics can help retain existing customers, capitalize on customer needs, drive revenue through optimized pricing, and optimize operations in the healthcare sector for better patient outcomes. These are some of the examples of the use of augmented analytics. { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [{ "@type": "Question", "name": "What are the benefits of augmented analytics?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Augmented analytics helps companies become more agile, gain access to analytics, helps users make better, faster, and data-driven decisions, and reduces costs." } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "How important is augmented analytics?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Augmented analytics build efficiency into the data analysis process, equips businesses and people with tools that can answer data-based questions within seconds, and assist companies in getting ahead of their competitors." } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "What are the examples of augmented analytics?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Augmented analytics can help retain existing customers, capitalize on customer needs, drive revenue through optimized pricing, and optimize operations in the healthcare sector for better patient outcomes. These are some of the examples of the use of augmented analytics." } }] }

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Big Data Management

How Should Data Science Teams Deal with Operational Tasks?

Article | April 16, 2021

Introduction There are many articles explaining advanced methods on AI, Machine Learning or Reinforcement Learning. Yet, when it comes to real life, data scientists often have to deal with smaller, operational tasks, that are not necessarily at the edge of science, such as building simple SQL queries to generate lists of email addresses to target for CRM campaigns. In theory, these tasks should be assigned to someone more suited, such as Business Analysts or Data Analysts, but it is not always the case that the company has people dedicated specifically to those tasks, especially if it’s a smaller structure. In some cases, these activities might consume so much of our time that we don’t have much left for the stuff that matters, and might end up doing a less than optimal work in both. That said, how should we deal with those tasks? In one hand, not only we usually don’t like doing operational tasks, but they are also a bad use of an expensive professional. On the other hand, someone has to do them, and not everyone has the necessary SQL knowledge for it. Let’s see some ways in which you can deal with them in order to optimize your team’s time. Reduce The first and most obvious way of doing less operational tasks is by simply refusing to do them. I know it sounds harsh, and it might be impractical depending on your company and its hierarchy, but it’s worth trying it in some cases. By “refusing”, I mean questioning if that task is really necessary, and trying to find best ways of doing it. Let’s say that every month you have to prepare 3 different reports, for different areas, that contain similar information. You have managed to automate the SQL queries, but you still have to double check the results and eventually add/remove some information upon the user’s request or change something in the charts layout. In this example, you could see if all of the 3 different reports are necessary, or if you could adapt them so they become one report that you send to the 3 different users. Anyways, think of ways through which you can reduce the necessary time for those tasks or, ideally, stop performing them at all. Empower Sometimes it can pay to take the time to empower your users to perform some of those tasks themselves. If there is a specific team that demands most of the operational tasks, try encouraging them to use no-code tools, putting it in a way that they fell they will be more autonomous. You can either use already existing solutions or develop them in-house (this could be a great learning opportunity to develop your data scientists’ app-building skills). Automate If you notice it’s a task that you can’t get rid of and can’t delegate, then try to automate it as much as possible. For reports, try to migrate them to a data visualization tool such as Tableau or Google Data Studio and synchronize them with your database. If it’s related to ad hoc requests, try to make your SQL queries as flexible as possible, with variable dates and names, so that you don’t have to re-write them every time. Organize Especially when you are a manager, you have to prioritize, so you and your team don’t get drowned in the endless operational tasks. In order to do this, set aside one or two days in your week which you will assign to that kind of work, and don’t look at it in the remaining 3–4 days. To achieve this, you will have to adapt your workload by following the previous steps and also manage expectations by taking this smaller amount of work hours when setting deadlines. This also means explaining the paradigm shift to your internal clients, so they can adapt to these new deadlines. This step might require some internal politics, negotiating with your superiors and with other departments. Conclusion Once you have mapped all your operational activities, you start by eliminating as much as possible from your pipeline, first by getting rid of unnecessary activities for good, then by delegating them to the teams that request them. Then, whatever is left for you to do, you automate and organize, to make sure you are making time for the relevant work your team has to do. This way you make sure expensive employees’ time is being well spent, maximizing company’s profit.

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Big Data Management

Google Cloud and Bloomberg Unite to Accelerate Customers Data Strategies

Bloomberg | November 06, 2023

Bloomberg and Google Cloud integrate Data License Plus (DL+) with BigQuery for efficient data access and analytics. Customers can access fully modeled data within BigQuery, eliminating data preparation time. Mackenzie Investments adopts DL+ ESG Manager to host the acquisition, management, and publishing of Multi-vendor ESG data. Bloomberg has unveiled a new offering designed to accelerate the data strategies of Google Cloud customers by integrating Bloomberg's cloud-based data management solution, Data License Plus (DL+), with Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless data warehouse, BigQuery. Now, with access to Bloomberg's extensive experience modeling, managing, and delivering vast quantities of complex content, mutual customers can receive their Bloomberg Data License (DL) data, entirely modeled and seamlessly combined within BigQuery. As a result, organizations can leverage the advanced analytics capabilities of Google Cloud to extract more value from critical business information quickly and efficiently with minimal data wrangling. Through this extended collaboration, customers can harness the powerful analytics features of BigQuery and tap into Bloomberg's extensive collection of datasets available through Data License to power their most essential workloads. Bloomberg's Data License content offers a wide variety, including reference, pricing, ESG, regulatory, estimates, fundamentals, and historical data, supporting operational, quantitative, and investment research workflows, covering over 70 million securities and 40,000 data fields. Key benefits include: Direct Access to Bloomberg Data in BigQuery: Bloomberg customers can seamlessly access Bloomberg Data License content within BigQuery, allowing for scalable use across their organization. This eliminates the time-consuming tasks of ingesting and structuring third-party datasets, thereby accelerating the time-to-value for analytics projects. Elimination of Data Barriers: Google Cloud and Bloomberg will make Bloomberg's DL+ solution available to mutual customers via BigQuery. This allows for the delivery of fully modeled Bloomberg data and multi-vendor ESG content within their analytics workloads. In a recent announcement, Bloomberg revealed that Mackenzie Investments has selected DL+ ESG Manager to host the acquisition, management, and publishing of multi-vendor ESG data. This move positions Mackenzie Investments to implement ESG investing strategies more efficiently and develop sophisticated ESG-focused insights and investment products, with BigQuery playing a central role in powering these analytics workloads moving forward. Don Huff, the Global Head of Client Services and Operations at Bloomberg Data Management Services, stated that as capital markets firms are in the process of migrating their workloads to the Cloud, their customers require efficient access to high-quality data in a preferred environment. He expressed excitement about extending their partnership with Google Cloud, aiming to stay at the forefront of innovation in financial data management and to enhance their customers' enterprise analytics capabilities. Stephen Orban, the VP of Migrations, ISVs, and Marketplace at Google Cloud, stated that Google Cloud and Bloomberg share a common commitment to empowering customers making data-driven decisions to power their businesses. He mentioned that the expanded alliance between the two companies would allow customers to effortlessly integrate Bloomberg's leading datasets with their own data within BigQuery. This would simplify the process of conducting analytics with valuable insights related to financial markets, regulations, ESG, and other critical business information.

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Big Data Management

Sigma and Connect&GO Redefine Data Analytics for Attraction Industry

Sigma Computing | November 07, 2023

Sigma and Connect&GO have recently introduced the new Connect&GO reporting tool, an advanced embedded analytics solution that empowers attractions worldwide to enhance operational efficiency, boost revenue, and evaluate their data in real-time. This no-code platform, a result of Sigma's cloud analytics expertise and Connect&GO's integrated technology, offers an intuitive and customizable dashboard for real-time data insights. It simplifies data analytics, reporting, and sharing, making it suitable for a wide range of attractions industry customers, including marketing, finance, and operations managers, as well as C-suite executives. The new Connect&GO reporting tool equips attractions industry customers with the ability to make informed decisions through customizable dashboards. Operators can effortlessly upload data sets, such as forecasts and projections from various systems, and compare them in real-time with actual data, including budgets. This live data and insights allow them to delve into the granular details of their business, enabling them to address day-to-day challenges, compare data sets, and plan for the future more accurately. These capabilities enable attractions to improve guest satisfaction, foster collaboration, ease the burden on engineering teams, and ultimately generate new revenue streams. For instance, park management can use better data to predict attendance, adjust staffing levels as needed, and ensure appropriate retail, food, and beverage inventory to enhance the guest experience. Sigma has rapidly established itself as a go-to cloud analytics platform, experiencing significant growth over the past years and earning numerous awards, including Snowflake BI Partner of the Year 2023. Sigma's success can be attributed to its mission of removing traditional barriers to data access and empowering business users to extract maximum value from live data without requiring technical expertise. Platform users can directly access and manage data stored in a cloud data warehouse without the involvement of a data team. With a familiar and intuitive interface, they can easily explore data and test different scenarios, gaining new insights and the context needed for decision-making. In contrast to legacy technology platforms that keep data isolated and operations disjointed, Connect&GO's cutting-edge solution, Konnect, is a fully integrated system that enables operators to oversee every aspect of their business seamlessly. This platform uniquely provides operators with real-time data, making it effortless to manage eCommerce, access control, point-of-sale, and cashless payments through proprietary Virtual Wallet technology. With its configurable interface and connected RFID wearables, Konnect enables operators to curate premium guest experiences that drive revenue and enhance engagement. About Sigma Computing Sigma Computing is a prominent cloud analytics solutions provider, offering business users seamless access to their cloud data warehouse for effortless exploration and insight gathering. With its intuitive spreadsheet-like interface, Sigma eliminates the need for coding or specialized training, enabling users to effortlessly navigate vast datasets, augment them with new information, and conduct real-time 'what if' analyses on billions of rows of data. About Connect&GO Connect&GO is a leading integrated technology and RFID solutions provider for the attractions industry. Its flexible operations management platform seamlessly integrates e-commerce, food & beverage, point-of-sale, access control, RFID, and cashless payments using its proprietary Virtual Wallet technology, consolidating all data in one place. The company helps drive revenue and maximize guest engagement with valuable real-time data insights. Connect&GO serves amusement and water parks, family entertainment centers, zoos & aquariums, and other attractions worldwide, integrating user-friendly wearable technology into extraordinary experiences.

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Data Science

Snowflake Accelerates How Users Build Next Generation Apps and Machine Learning Models in the Data Cloud

Business Wire | November 03, 2023

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, today announced at its Snowday 2023 event new advancements that make it easier for developers to build machine learning (ML) models and full-stack apps in the Data Cloud. Snowflake is enhancing its Python capabilities through Snowpark to boost productivity, increase collaboration, and ultimately speed up end-to-end AI and ML workflows. In addition, with support for containerized workloads and expanded DevOps capabilities, developers can now accelerate development and run apps — all within Snowflake's secure and fully managed infrastructure. “The rise of generative AI has made organizations’ most valuable asset, their data, even more indispensable. Snowflake is making it easier for developers to put that data to work so they can build powerful end-to-end machine learning models and full-stack apps natively in the Data Cloud,” said Prasanna Krishnan, Senior Director of Product Management, Snowflake. “With Snowflake Marketplace as the first cross-cloud marketplace for data and apps in the industry, customers can quickly and securely productionize what they’ve built to global end users, unlocking increased monetization, discoverability, and usage.” Developers Gain Robust and Familiar Functionality for End-to-End Machine Learning Snowflake is continuing to invest in Snowpark as its secure deployment and processing of non-SQL code, with over 35% of Snowflake customers using Snowpark on a weekly basis (as of September 2023). Developers increasingly look to Snowpark for complex ML model development and deployment, and Snowflake is introducing expanded functionality that makes Snowpark even more accessible and powerful for all Python developers. New advancements include: Snowflake Notebooks (private preview): Snowflake Notebooks are a new development interface that offers an interactive, cell-based programming environment for Python and SQL users to explore, process, and experiment with data in Snowpark. Snowflake’s built-in notebooks allow developers to write and execute code, train and deploy models using Snowpark ML, visualize results with Streamlit chart elements, and much more — all within Snowflake’s unified, secure platform. Snowpark ML Modeling API (general availability soon): Snowflake’s Snowpark ML Modeling API empowers developers and data scientists to scale out feature engineering and simplify model training for faster and more intuitive model development in Snowflake. Users can implement popular AI and ML frameworks natively on data in Snowflake, without having to create stored procedures. Snowpark ML Operations Enhancements: The Snowpark Model Registry (public preview soon) now builds on a native Snowflake model entity and enables the scalable, secure deployment and management of models in Snowflake, including expanded support for deep learning models and open source large language models (LLMs) from Hugging Face. Snowflake is also providing developers with an integrated Snowflake Feature Store (private preview) that creates, stores, manages, and serves ML features for model training and inference. Endeavor, the global sports and entertainment company that includes the WME Agency, IMG & On Location, UFC, and more, relies on Snowflake’s Snowpark for Python capabilities to build and deploy ML models that create highly personalized experiences and apps for fan engagement. Snowpark serves as the driving force behind our end-to-end machine learning development, powering how we centralize and process data across our various entities, and then securely build and train models using that data to create hyper-personalized fan experiences at scale, said Saad Zaheer, VP of Data Science and Engineering, Endeavor. With Snowflake as our central data foundation bringing all of this development directly to our enterprise data, we can unlock even more ways to predict and forecast customer behavior to fuel our targeted sales and marketing engines. Snowflake Advances Developer Capabilities Across the App Lifecycle The Snowflake Native App Framework (general availability soon on AWS, public preview soon on Azure) now provides every organization with the necessary building blocks for app development, including distribution, operation, and monetization within Snowflake’s platform. Leading organizations are monetizing their Snowflake Native Apps through Snowflake Marketplace, with app listings more than doubling since Snowflake Summit 2023. This number is only growing as Snowflake continues to advance its developer capabilities across the app lifecycle so more organizations can unlock business impact. For example, Cybersyn, a data-service provider, is developing Snowflake Native Apps exclusively for Snowflake Marketplace, with more than 40 customers running over 5,000 queries with its Financial & Economic Essentials Native App since June 2022. In addition, LiveRamp, a data collaboration platform, has seen the number of customers deploying its Identity Resolution and Transcoding Snowflake Native App through Snowflake Marketplace increase by more than 80% since June 2022. Lastly, SNP has been able to provide its customers with a 10x cost reduction in Snowflake data processing associated with SAP data ingestion, empowering them to drastically reduce data latency while improving SAP data availability in Snowflake through SNP’s Data Streaming for SAP - Snowflake Native App. With Snowpark Container Services (public preview soon in select AWS regions), developers can run any component of their app — from ML training, to LLMs, to an API, and more — without needing to move data or manage complex container-based infrastructure. Snowflake Automates DevOps for Apps, Data Pipelines, and Other Development Snowflake is giving developers new ways to automate key DevOps and observability capabilities across testing, deploying, monitoring, and operating their apps and data pipelines — so they can take them from idea to production faster. With Snowflake’s new Database Change Management (private preview soon) features, developers can code declaratively and easily templatize their work to manage Snowflake objects across multiple environments. The Database Change Management features serve as a single source of truth for object creation across various environments, using the common “configuration as code” pattern in DevOps to automatically provision and update Snowflake objects. Snowflake also unveiled a new Powered by Snowflake Funding Program, innovations that enable all users to securely tap into the power of generative AI with their enterprise data, enhancements to further eliminate data silos and strengthen Snowflake’s leading compliance and governance capabilities through Snowflake Horizon, and more at Snowday 2023.

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Big Data Management

Google Cloud and Bloomberg Unite to Accelerate Customers Data Strategies

Bloomberg | November 06, 2023

Bloomberg and Google Cloud integrate Data License Plus (DL+) with BigQuery for efficient data access and analytics. Customers can access fully modeled data within BigQuery, eliminating data preparation time. Mackenzie Investments adopts DL+ ESG Manager to host the acquisition, management, and publishing of Multi-vendor ESG data. Bloomberg has unveiled a new offering designed to accelerate the data strategies of Google Cloud customers by integrating Bloomberg's cloud-based data management solution, Data License Plus (DL+), with Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless data warehouse, BigQuery. Now, with access to Bloomberg's extensive experience modeling, managing, and delivering vast quantities of complex content, mutual customers can receive their Bloomberg Data License (DL) data, entirely modeled and seamlessly combined within BigQuery. As a result, organizations can leverage the advanced analytics capabilities of Google Cloud to extract more value from critical business information quickly and efficiently with minimal data wrangling. Through this extended collaboration, customers can harness the powerful analytics features of BigQuery and tap into Bloomberg's extensive collection of datasets available through Data License to power their most essential workloads. Bloomberg's Data License content offers a wide variety, including reference, pricing, ESG, regulatory, estimates, fundamentals, and historical data, supporting operational, quantitative, and investment research workflows, covering over 70 million securities and 40,000 data fields. Key benefits include: Direct Access to Bloomberg Data in BigQuery: Bloomberg customers can seamlessly access Bloomberg Data License content within BigQuery, allowing for scalable use across their organization. This eliminates the time-consuming tasks of ingesting and structuring third-party datasets, thereby accelerating the time-to-value for analytics projects. Elimination of Data Barriers: Google Cloud and Bloomberg will make Bloomberg's DL+ solution available to mutual customers via BigQuery. This allows for the delivery of fully modeled Bloomberg data and multi-vendor ESG content within their analytics workloads. In a recent announcement, Bloomberg revealed that Mackenzie Investments has selected DL+ ESG Manager to host the acquisition, management, and publishing of multi-vendor ESG data. This move positions Mackenzie Investments to implement ESG investing strategies more efficiently and develop sophisticated ESG-focused insights and investment products, with BigQuery playing a central role in powering these analytics workloads moving forward. Don Huff, the Global Head of Client Services and Operations at Bloomberg Data Management Services, stated that as capital markets firms are in the process of migrating their workloads to the Cloud, their customers require efficient access to high-quality data in a preferred environment. He expressed excitement about extending their partnership with Google Cloud, aiming to stay at the forefront of innovation in financial data management and to enhance their customers' enterprise analytics capabilities. Stephen Orban, the VP of Migrations, ISVs, and Marketplace at Google Cloud, stated that Google Cloud and Bloomberg share a common commitment to empowering customers making data-driven decisions to power their businesses. He mentioned that the expanded alliance between the two companies would allow customers to effortlessly integrate Bloomberg's leading datasets with their own data within BigQuery. This would simplify the process of conducting analytics with valuable insights related to financial markets, regulations, ESG, and other critical business information.

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Big Data Management

Sigma and Connect&GO Redefine Data Analytics for Attraction Industry

Sigma Computing | November 07, 2023

Sigma and Connect&GO have recently introduced the new Connect&GO reporting tool, an advanced embedded analytics solution that empowers attractions worldwide to enhance operational efficiency, boost revenue, and evaluate their data in real-time. This no-code platform, a result of Sigma's cloud analytics expertise and Connect&GO's integrated technology, offers an intuitive and customizable dashboard for real-time data insights. It simplifies data analytics, reporting, and sharing, making it suitable for a wide range of attractions industry customers, including marketing, finance, and operations managers, as well as C-suite executives. The new Connect&GO reporting tool equips attractions industry customers with the ability to make informed decisions through customizable dashboards. Operators can effortlessly upload data sets, such as forecasts and projections from various systems, and compare them in real-time with actual data, including budgets. This live data and insights allow them to delve into the granular details of their business, enabling them to address day-to-day challenges, compare data sets, and plan for the future more accurately. These capabilities enable attractions to improve guest satisfaction, foster collaboration, ease the burden on engineering teams, and ultimately generate new revenue streams. For instance, park management can use better data to predict attendance, adjust staffing levels as needed, and ensure appropriate retail, food, and beverage inventory to enhance the guest experience. Sigma has rapidly established itself as a go-to cloud analytics platform, experiencing significant growth over the past years and earning numerous awards, including Snowflake BI Partner of the Year 2023. Sigma's success can be attributed to its mission of removing traditional barriers to data access and empowering business users to extract maximum value from live data without requiring technical expertise. Platform users can directly access and manage data stored in a cloud data warehouse without the involvement of a data team. With a familiar and intuitive interface, they can easily explore data and test different scenarios, gaining new insights and the context needed for decision-making. In contrast to legacy technology platforms that keep data isolated and operations disjointed, Connect&GO's cutting-edge solution, Konnect, is a fully integrated system that enables operators to oversee every aspect of their business seamlessly. This platform uniquely provides operators with real-time data, making it effortless to manage eCommerce, access control, point-of-sale, and cashless payments through proprietary Virtual Wallet technology. With its configurable interface and connected RFID wearables, Konnect enables operators to curate premium guest experiences that drive revenue and enhance engagement. About Sigma Computing Sigma Computing is a prominent cloud analytics solutions provider, offering business users seamless access to their cloud data warehouse for effortless exploration and insight gathering. With its intuitive spreadsheet-like interface, Sigma eliminates the need for coding or specialized training, enabling users to effortlessly navigate vast datasets, augment them with new information, and conduct real-time 'what if' analyses on billions of rows of data. About Connect&GO Connect&GO is a leading integrated technology and RFID solutions provider for the attractions industry. Its flexible operations management platform seamlessly integrates e-commerce, food & beverage, point-of-sale, access control, RFID, and cashless payments using its proprietary Virtual Wallet technology, consolidating all data in one place. The company helps drive revenue and maximize guest engagement with valuable real-time data insights. Connect&GO serves amusement and water parks, family entertainment centers, zoos & aquariums, and other attractions worldwide, integrating user-friendly wearable technology into extraordinary experiences.

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Data Science

Snowflake Accelerates How Users Build Next Generation Apps and Machine Learning Models in the Data Cloud

Business Wire | November 03, 2023

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, today announced at its Snowday 2023 event new advancements that make it easier for developers to build machine learning (ML) models and full-stack apps in the Data Cloud. Snowflake is enhancing its Python capabilities through Snowpark to boost productivity, increase collaboration, and ultimately speed up end-to-end AI and ML workflows. In addition, with support for containerized workloads and expanded DevOps capabilities, developers can now accelerate development and run apps — all within Snowflake's secure and fully managed infrastructure. “The rise of generative AI has made organizations’ most valuable asset, their data, even more indispensable. Snowflake is making it easier for developers to put that data to work so they can build powerful end-to-end machine learning models and full-stack apps natively in the Data Cloud,” said Prasanna Krishnan, Senior Director of Product Management, Snowflake. “With Snowflake Marketplace as the first cross-cloud marketplace for data and apps in the industry, customers can quickly and securely productionize what they’ve built to global end users, unlocking increased monetization, discoverability, and usage.” Developers Gain Robust and Familiar Functionality for End-to-End Machine Learning Snowflake is continuing to invest in Snowpark as its secure deployment and processing of non-SQL code, with over 35% of Snowflake customers using Snowpark on a weekly basis (as of September 2023). Developers increasingly look to Snowpark for complex ML model development and deployment, and Snowflake is introducing expanded functionality that makes Snowpark even more accessible and powerful for all Python developers. New advancements include: Snowflake Notebooks (private preview): Snowflake Notebooks are a new development interface that offers an interactive, cell-based programming environment for Python and SQL users to explore, process, and experiment with data in Snowpark. Snowflake’s built-in notebooks allow developers to write and execute code, train and deploy models using Snowpark ML, visualize results with Streamlit chart elements, and much more — all within Snowflake’s unified, secure platform. Snowpark ML Modeling API (general availability soon): Snowflake’s Snowpark ML Modeling API empowers developers and data scientists to scale out feature engineering and simplify model training for faster and more intuitive model development in Snowflake. Users can implement popular AI and ML frameworks natively on data in Snowflake, without having to create stored procedures. Snowpark ML Operations Enhancements: The Snowpark Model Registry (public preview soon) now builds on a native Snowflake model entity and enables the scalable, secure deployment and management of models in Snowflake, including expanded support for deep learning models and open source large language models (LLMs) from Hugging Face. Snowflake is also providing developers with an integrated Snowflake Feature Store (private preview) that creates, stores, manages, and serves ML features for model training and inference. Endeavor, the global sports and entertainment company that includes the WME Agency, IMG & On Location, UFC, and more, relies on Snowflake’s Snowpark for Python capabilities to build and deploy ML models that create highly personalized experiences and apps for fan engagement. Snowpark serves as the driving force behind our end-to-end machine learning development, powering how we centralize and process data across our various entities, and then securely build and train models using that data to create hyper-personalized fan experiences at scale, said Saad Zaheer, VP of Data Science and Engineering, Endeavor. With Snowflake as our central data foundation bringing all of this development directly to our enterprise data, we can unlock even more ways to predict and forecast customer behavior to fuel our targeted sales and marketing engines. Snowflake Advances Developer Capabilities Across the App Lifecycle The Snowflake Native App Framework (general availability soon on AWS, public preview soon on Azure) now provides every organization with the necessary building blocks for app development, including distribution, operation, and monetization within Snowflake’s platform. Leading organizations are monetizing their Snowflake Native Apps through Snowflake Marketplace, with app listings more than doubling since Snowflake Summit 2023. This number is only growing as Snowflake continues to advance its developer capabilities across the app lifecycle so more organizations can unlock business impact. For example, Cybersyn, a data-service provider, is developing Snowflake Native Apps exclusively for Snowflake Marketplace, with more than 40 customers running over 5,000 queries with its Financial & Economic Essentials Native App since June 2022. In addition, LiveRamp, a data collaboration platform, has seen the number of customers deploying its Identity Resolution and Transcoding Snowflake Native App through Snowflake Marketplace increase by more than 80% since June 2022. Lastly, SNP has been able to provide its customers with a 10x cost reduction in Snowflake data processing associated with SAP data ingestion, empowering them to drastically reduce data latency while improving SAP data availability in Snowflake through SNP’s Data Streaming for SAP - Snowflake Native App. With Snowpark Container Services (public preview soon in select AWS regions), developers can run any component of their app — from ML training, to LLMs, to an API, and more — without needing to move data or manage complex container-based infrastructure. Snowflake Automates DevOps for Apps, Data Pipelines, and Other Development Snowflake is giving developers new ways to automate key DevOps and observability capabilities across testing, deploying, monitoring, and operating their apps and data pipelines — so they can take them from idea to production faster. With Snowflake’s new Database Change Management (private preview soon) features, developers can code declaratively and easily templatize their work to manage Snowflake objects across multiple environments. The Database Change Management features serve as a single source of truth for object creation across various environments, using the common “configuration as code” pattern in DevOps to automatically provision and update Snowflake objects. Snowflake also unveiled a new Powered by Snowflake Funding Program, innovations that enable all users to securely tap into the power of generative AI with their enterprise data, enhancements to further eliminate data silos and strengthen Snowflake’s leading compliance and governance capabilities through Snowflake Horizon, and more at Snowday 2023.

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