Presents

IT and Analytics Guide

2019-20
For queries and suggestions, mail to:

[email protected]
Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4
Global trends ...................................................................................................................................... 4
Industry Profile ................................................................................................................................... 4
Key Statistics ................................................................................................................................... 4
NASSCOM and It’s Role ...................................................................................................................... 5
Cloud Computing ......................................................................................................................... 9
Service Models ................................................................................................................................... 9
Challenges......................................................................................................................................... 10
Deployment models ......................................................................................................................... 10
Internet of Things (IOT) .............................................................................................................. 14
Consumer and enterprise IoT applications ..................................................................................... 15
Benefits of IoT in banking services .................................................................................................. 16
Artificial Intelligence .................................................................................................................. 17
Types of artificial intelligence .......................................................................................................... 17
Examples of AI technology ............................................................................................................... 18
AI applications .................................................................................................................................. 19
Augmented Reality .................................................................................................................... 20
Machine Learning ...................................................................................................................... 24
Applications ...................................................................................................................................... 24
Marketing ..................................................................................................................................... 24
Finance .......................................................................................................................................... 25
Operations .................................................................................................................................... 26
Information Technology ............................................................................................................... 27
Examples of Machine Learning ................................................................................................... 28
IBM.................................................................................................................................................... 28
Amazon ............................................................................................................................................. 28
Google ............................................................................................................................................... 28
Salesforce.......................................................................................................................................... 28
Netflix ............................................................................................................................................... 28
Blockchain ................................................................................................................................. 29
Applications of Blockchain: .............................................................................................................. 31
Digital Marketing ....................................................................................................................... 33
What is the role of digital marketing to a company? ..................................................................... 36
Cyber Security............................................................................................................................ 37

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Analytics .................................................................................................................................... 38
Social Media Analytics ............................................................................................................... 40
What is Big Data and why is Big Data Analytics important? ......................................................... 41
What Does Data Scientist do?.......................................................................................................... 44
What do Big Data Professionals do?................................................................................................ 45
What does a Data Analyst do? ......................................................................................................... 45
Big Data Analytics Challenges .......................................................................................................... 47
Big Data Analytics Trends................................................................................................................. 48
Example of Data Analytics .......................................................................................................... 49
Coca-Cola .......................................................................................................................................... 49
Netflix Recommendation System .................................................................................................... 50
UOB bank from Singapore ............................................................................................................... 50
Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods ..................................................................................................... 51

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Introduction
Information Technology (IT) can be defined as the utilization of hardware, software, services
and infrastructure to create, store, exchange and leverage information in its various forms to
accomplish multiple business objectives. Additionally, the term encompasses the workers that
develop, implement, maintain and utilize information technology directly and indirectly.

IT Hardware – computers, tablets, mobile phones, printers, servers, etc.

Software – productivity applications, network applications, security applications, etc.
IT Services – integration, maintenance, repair, application development, managed services, etc.
IT Infrastructure – the Internet backbone, fiber optic networks, data
centers, etc. Information – text data, documents, voice, video and images,
etc.

Business Objectives – migration, communication, collaboration, efficiency, insight, production,

e-commerce, etc.

Global trends

According to Gartner, cognitive technologies or AI is the top technology trend that will shape
digital business opportunities and set the stage for the digital transformation for businesses.

Industry Profile
Key Statistics
Global

The Global IT Sector surpassed US$4.5 trillion in 2017, according to IDC. US is the largest tech
market in the world, followed by the Asia-Pacific Region. The sector is expected to grow by 5%
in the year 2018 with revenues reaching US$4.8 trillion dollars.

India

Market Size:

India’s IT & ITeS industry grew to US$ 181 billion in 2018-19. Exports from the industry
increased to US$ 137 billion in FY19 while domestic revenues (including hardware) advanced to
US$ 44 billion.

Spending on Information Technology in India is expected to grow over 9 per cent to reach US$
87.1 billion in 2018.*

Revenue from digital segment is expected to comprise 38 per cent of the forecasted US$ 350
billion industry revenue by 2025.

Investments/ Developments

Indian IT's core competencies and strengths have attracted significant investments from major
countries. The computer software and hardware sector in India attracted cumulative Foreign

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Direct Investment (FDI) inflows worth US$ 35.82 billion between April 2000 to December 2018,
according to data released by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

Leading Indian IT firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Tech Mahindra, are diversifying their
offerings and showcasing leading ideas in blockchain, artificial intelligence to clients using
innovation hubs, research and development centres, in order to create differentiated offerings.

Some of the major developments in the Indian IT and ITeS sector are as follows:

• Nasscom has launched an online platform which is aimed at up-skilling over 2 million
technology professionals and skilling another 2 million potential employees and
students.
• Revenue growth in the BFSI vertical stood at 6.80 per cent y-o-y between July-
September 2018.
• As of March 2018, there were over 1,140 GICs operating out of India.
• PE investments in the sector stood at US$ 2,400 million in Q4 2018.
• Venture Capital (VC) investments in the IT & ITeS sector stood at US$ 53.0 million during
Q4 2018.

Government Initiatives

Some of the major initiatives taken by the government to promote IT and ITeS sector in India
are as follows:

• The government has identified Information Technology as one of 12 champion service

sectors for which an action plan is being developed. Also, the government has set up a
Rs 5,000 crore (US$ 745.82 million) fund for realising the potential of these champion
service sectors.
• As a part of Union Budget 2018-19, NITI Aayog is going to set up a national level
programme that will enable efforts in AI and will help in leveraging AI technology for
development works in the country.
• In the Interim Budget 2019-20, the Government of India announced plans to launch a
national programme on AI and setting up of a National AI portal.
• National Policy on Software Products-2019 was passed by the Union Cabinet to develop
India as a software product nation.

NASSCOM and It’s Role

About the Industry

NASSCOM is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in
India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 2000 members, which include both
Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOM's member and
associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software
services, software products, consulting services, BPO services, e-commerce & web services,

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engineering services off shoring and animation and gaming. NASSCOM’s membership base
constitutes over 95% of the industry revenues in India and employs over 3 million professionals.

It is a not-for-profit organization, registered under the Indian Societies Act, 1860.

Currently, NASSCOM is headquartered in New Delhi, India with regional offices in the cities of
Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Pune.

Chairman : Rishad Premji

Objectives

Following are their main objectives and services:

• Encourage members to provide world-class quality products, services and solutions in

India and overseas and help build brand equity for the Indian IT software and services
industry.
• Taking effective steps to campaign against software piracy.
• Provide an ideal forum for overseas and domestic companies to explore the vast
potential available for Joint Ventures, Strategic Alliances, Marketing Alliances, Joint
Product Development, etc., by organizing business Meets with delegations of
various countries.
• Work actively with Overseas Governments, Embassies to make the Visa and Work
Permit Rules more "India Industry Friendly".
• Disseminate various policies, market information and other relevant statistics by
sending more than 200 circulars (annually) to all members.
• Involve membership participation in various forums of NASSCOM on subjects such as
HRD,
• Technology, Exports, Domestic Market, E-Governance, IT Enabled Services, IPR, Finance, Government
Policies, Quality etc.

Other Initiatives

• Domestic Market Initiative: It provides the platform to link the non IT sector with the IT
industry and to develop a vision for sustainable growth of the domestic IT market.
• Education Initiative: Under this initiative, NASSCOM aims to enhance graduate
employability through appropriate skill enrichment and act as bridge between industry,
academia and government
• Women in Leadership-IT Initiative: NASSCOM has launched the Women in Leadership-IT
Initiative to enhance participation of women into the workforce and create more
women leaders in the IT-BPO industry.
• Security Initiative: Aim towards creating an enabling environment in the country for
information security and compliance through awareness and conducive legal framework

Pre-Sales

What is Pre Sales?

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Pre Sales includes the entire gamut of activities involved in preparing to engage with prospects,
clients and others and includes specific responses to client requests. Clients or companies that
need software services and project implementations generally call for proposals or expect
responses from their vendors and service providers. Although it is hard to generalize on the
nature of or the contents of such proposals, most documents follow a structured framework:
detailing the project, asking vendors for suggestions or solutions or proposals along with cost
estimates regarding the work to be done.

In a typical sales cycle the stages are:

The task of a presales person starts from the initial contact phase and often ends once the
customer is acquired i.e. sale is made. In some cases, presales also provide some initial or
transitional support post sale.

The responsibilities differ from organization to organization but in general include:

• Solution Preparation/Proposal based on Customers’ Requirements.

• Product demonstrations
• Proof of Concept Creation
• Creation of Marketing Documents

Typical Pre-sales support activities include:

Responding to client requests: Responses to clients could include informal responses, pointers
to publications, collaterals or other references or take more specific forms like responses to
proposals including: Request for Proposal (RFPs), Request for Information (RFI) and specific
Statement of Work (SoW) or Work Orders

Supporting client visits: In some cases, clients or prospective clients may make a trip to offshore
vendor's offices for a personal visit prior to engaging with them. This could include offshore
client visits targeted at offshoring

Visiting clients and/or making presentations: Engaging clients for larger, complex deals involves
a number of activities, including making presentations, meeting with clients to discuss specific

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aspects of their (client's) initiatives, to get a better understanding of the context in order to
make specific recommendations in proposals. This may also include preparing proof-of-concept
demonstrations and solution mockups.

Competitor Analysis and market scanning: This is a crucial aspect of pre-sales since many
clients evaluate responses from multiple vendors, and responses should address such
competitive scan. The analysis could include using online tools, subscribing and analyzing
research reports, analyst studies,market research data etc.

Sales Support: Such activities may include supporting sales and account teams responding to
general client queries about solutions and capabilities. This could include partnering with
onsite/client facing Sales or Business Development Managers to identify and convert prospects
into customers.

Interfacing with other internal groups (within the organization) while responding to client
requests. This is especially true of larger software service firms where Pre-sales people from one
group/division may have to rope in Subject Matter Experts from other groups while responding
to a client request or proposal.

Marketing support: Large service firms work hard at differentiating themselves from others by
formulating marketing messages and evolving Go-to-market solutions or customized offerings.
This may also take a form of alliances with other software product development firms or niche
vendors. Pre-sales activities may include leveraging such alliances to showcase extended
capabilities to clients.

How does Pre-sales work?

Clients or companies that need software services and project implementations generally call for
proposals from a pool of preferred vendors. Although it is hard to generalize on the nature of or
the contents of such proposals, most documents follow a structured framework: detailing the
project, asking vendors for suggestions or solutions or proposals along with cost estimates
regarding the work to be done. RFP responses would generally involve two components:

The technical solution:

A typical response to an RFP or proposal will include a substantial technical component. People
responding to RFPs at service firms generally follow a well-defined operating process involving
plugging the response documents with common templates about the company and its
capabilities. The customization process kicks in when it comes to project and client specific
responses; and here someone with a technical background is really valuable. Technical subject
matter experts are needed to analyze the client's problem, think through a framework to create
a solution based upon their knowledge and experience. Such skills can be especially useful while
preparing a proof of concept or technical demo. The focus areas include:

• Demonstrate to the client that you get their problem and showcase how you will
approach the solution. During Pre-sales phase, technical solutions could include a

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 mockup of the end-state technical view, reference architecture (aka. Marchitecture),
approach or framework to solve the client's specific problem.
• Demonstrating organizational capabilities. Organizations typically demonstrate their
capabilities by referencing past successes (Case studies, whitepapers etc.), and may also
develop proof-of-concept (POC), demonstrations or mockups.

Cloud Computing
The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and
process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

Advantages

It reduces upfront infrastructure cost so that the organization can focus on projects. It relies on
sharing resources and focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of the shared resources. Cloud
resources are usually not only shared by multiple users but as well as dynamically re-allocated
as per demand. This can work for allocating resources to users in different time zones. For
example, a cloud computer facility which serves European users during European business hours
with a specific application (e.g. email) while the same resources are getting reallocated and
serve North American users during North America's business hours with another application
(e.g. web server). Moreover, for new installations, it enables the organizations to get their
solutions up and running in less time. The maintenance and scalability issues can be relatively
easily addressed in cloud based solutions.

Service Models
Cloud computing providers offer their services according to several fundamental models:
infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service: Cloud providers of IaaS offer computers - physical or (more often)
virtual machines - and other resources.

Platform as a Service: Cloud providers deliver a computing platform, typically including

operating system, programming language execution environment, database, and web server.

E.g.: Microsoft Azure, force.com

Software as a Service: Cloud providers allow access to application software and databases.

E.g.: Google Apps, Salesforce, Citrix GoToMeeting

Infrastructure as a Service: Cloud providers provide virtualized computing resources over the
internet

E.g.: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure

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Challenges
1.) Customers do not have full visibility and control since the server is not within their own network.
2.) Security concerns if sensitive data lands on public cloud servers.
3.) There are capacity concerts since users may use an unpredictable amount of resources at any given time
and then disappear.
4.) Budget concerns around overuse of storage or bandwidth.
5.) Managing Multi-Cloud Environments

Deployment models
The most popular deployment models are:

1.) Private cloud: Cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization.
2.) Public cloud: When the services are opened for public use.
3.) Community Cloud: When infrastructure is shared between several organizations from a
specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.)
4.) Hybrid cloud: It is a composition of two or more clouds.
5.) Personal cloud: Application of cloud computing for individuals similar to a
Personal Computer

Scope in Banking and FinTech

Cloud computing creates an opportunity for bankers to connect with their users directly. Digital
services maintain the customer relations anywhere and anytime through cloud computing. With
the help of the internet, many services like storing, managing and accessing the information
have become easier for both the bankers and the consumers. Cloud computing is an easy
technique to deploy and integrate with all the services of the bank system which decreases the
time and effort of the user.

The evolution of cloud computing enabled the banks to focus more on the customer-centric
model and digitalizing the trading & wealth. Cloud computing creates a multi-channel
relationship with the customers at every aspect of the service. It helps in storing, backup and
recovering huge data of the company. Not only the storing of the data, various other services
like delivering the software, transferring the data, Updating and recovering of data is very easy

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through cloud computing technology. Cloud computing also increases the turnover of the banks
by integrating cost-effective cloud solutions.

The banking industry needs to address the ever-growing data input demands. There is a need to
explore the systems that do not rely on like-system migration so that infrastructure can be
modified without any disruption. Banks have been slow in adopting cloud computing as there
are apprehensions regarding reliability, regulatory and security risks. But slowly, cloud
computing is changing the way consumers interact with banks.

FinTech maintains the substantial growth and sustains the growth constantly, courtesy cloud
technology. FinTech reduces the CAPEX and OPEX budgets, increase the service portfolio and
the user experience. The most important aspect of cloud computing is reducing the risk factors
related to the data center and its infrastructure. The confidential data will be completely
secured. It also helps in risk analysis of the business so that the main focus will be on business
rather than securing the crucial information.

Some of the big names in the FinTech cloud computing sector are:

• Amazon Web Services

• Google Virtual Cloud
• Microsoft Azure
• Aliyun
• IBM Bluemix

Application in Banking and FinTech

• Cloud computing increases the efficiency in the industry. Usage of cloud technology is
an added advantage in banking and finance sector. Digitalizing the services will allow
the banks and financial institutions to build up an infrastructure to provide the best and
appropriate service to the customers.
• Data centers generally go through many attacks from the hackers which corrupt and led
to the loss of very crucial information in the bank. Such attacks can be eliminated by
authenticating the data centers which are very easy through cloud computing. Every
data stored is safe with hybrid cloud computing technology.
• Amazon web services and Microsoft’s Azure are cloud providers who provide hybrid
cloud computing servers to the companies. Getting the hybrid cloud computing servers
provides end-end protection to the information stored in the cloud. Cloud computing
ensures Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of the information over the internet.
• Cloud computing ensures secure transactions and smooth customer experience in
banks. Hosting over the internet with the help of web apps ensures better speed and
service to the users.
• Payment Gateways, digital wallets, online fund transfer, and secure online payments are
among the best examples of the cloud computing service. Cloud ensures the secure and
unified customer experience. Updating the payments is quite very easy through cloud
computing.

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 • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship (CRM) software are the
most popular software of cloud computing. This software’s allows the banks and
financial institutions to secure the data and also provide the better support to the
customers. This software also enables the remote accessing of the information by the
users.

Cloud Computing addressing challenges in HealthCare Industry

Healthcare lags most other verticals in the adoption of technology. Most healthcare
organizations depend on workflows that consist of paper medical records, duplicate tests, film-
based radiological images, handwritten notes, fragmented IT systems, and silos of information.
Information sharing across providers is inefficient and data portability is rare. Care providers
rely on outdated technology for their communication needs. Collaboration and coordination of
care processes is a major challenge.

The Digital Divide: In major cities across India, we have some of the best hospitals in the world
in terms of adoption of technology and provision of high quality of healthcare services.
However, the scenario is completely different in rural hospitals, which lack even basic
infrastructure, let alone high end technological infrastructure. This means that the doctors,
nurses, administrators, and other personnel working in the rural hospitals are not exposed to
technology at all, as opposed to their counterparts in the major cities.
There is a need for sustained efforts from both the Government and private sector to create
uniformity in healthcare technology adoption. The good news is that cloud technology can make
healthcare applications like EMRs, HIS, PACS, and others affordable and easily accessible.

High cost of implementing and managing multiple diverse infrastructural components: The
general feeling is that traditional technology requires elaborate infrastructure and manpower to
run. For example the computer network requires a separate infrastructure, as opposed to the
telephony network. In addition, devices like pagers, nurse call systems, public address systems,
etc. requires a different set of infrastructure. There is a need for a common integrated network
infrastructure, which can create the 'Foundation for Connected Health'. To capitalise on
technology investments now and in the future, hospitals need an integrated IT network that
helps diverse entities to collaborate and communicate effectively. The cloud can act as the
foundation for connected health to support a range of complex, disparate, and mission-critical
applications. The cloud helps the hospitals and healthcare providers to use the applications,
hardware, and services on a'pay per use' model, which allows them to avoid heavy capital
expenditure on buying and deploying expensive technology.

Data Centre Virtualisation for Healthcare The rapid adoption of electronic health records:
EMR, HIS, PACS, and other advanced clinical applications are creating a critical need for more
data storage, resulting in the expansion of the range of healthcare services, and increased IT
spending. Cloud technology provides the answer by ensuring that users have access to the data
and applications they need on demand and from any location.
These new advancements in cloud technology are fundamentally changing the way healthcare
providers operate their technological infrastructure. They are realising the benefits of adopting

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cloud technology, instead of owning and maintaining huge data centers that need massive
investments in technology and human resources.
Concerns about patient data confidentiality and security issues are also weighing down heavily
on the adoption of cloud technology. As patient data will reside at a location distant from their
own facility, there is a concern about the possibility that sensitive data could be lost, misused,
or fall into the wrong hands. Technology vendors have to build robust security and disaster
recovery features into the cloud technology, to ensure that all administrative and clinical data is
securely and safely maintained.
Gaining confidence of all the stakeholders is also an enormous challenge. Gaining the buy-in
from both internal and external stakeholders is very crucial. Healthcare providers still do not see
the value of the cloud as an enabler of faster, safer, efficient, and more effective healthcare.
Providers are often unwilling to make investments in cloud-based initiatives. Hence it is
important to take the entire ecosystem into confidence, before embarking on any large-scale
cloud initiative.
Training of the users also can be a significant challenge because of the'digital divide'. Training of
the users should be tailored according to the needs of the users and should take into account
their educational background, aptitude, and pace of learning. Training may also need to be
conducted in the local language.

How Microsoft Cloud is Healing Healthcare?

Healthcare facilities that ultimately decide on a private, public, or hybrid cloud solution can opt
for a virtualization platform at VMware or Microsoft. At Innovative Architects, we usually
recommend choosing Microsoft's secure cloud platform, which uses Windows Server with
Hyper-V and the System Center. This scalable solution is best able to meet most growing
business’s needs, helping easily power cloud applications and/or supply cloud-based computing
and services .

The Microsoft Azure cloud computing system, in particular, can provide on-demand simple
access to healthcare applications and data. Using a PaaS environment, Microsoft provides a
service to supply providers with networks, servers and storages.

Microsoft Azure complies with the data protection and privacy laws set forth in HIPAA and the
HITECH Act. This system also meets Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) as well as Governance, Risk
and Compliance (GRC) criteria. Either implement Azure's .NET Services to integrate public cloud-
based applications, or turn to SQL Server-based data services to properly secure the entire
infrastructure.

Regardless of what cloud service platform you choose or which provider delivers the best
service, the delivery of computing and service must permit sharing of proprietary data resources
to help physicians and healthcare providers to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. Both the
cloud platform and cloud provider must also ensure all of your digital medical data remains
secure and private.

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So long as these conditions are met, there will be less and less resistance to cloud computing
adoption in the healthcare industry.

Internet of Things (IOT)

The internet of things, or IoT, is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and
digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers ( UIDs )
and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-
computer interaction.

A thing in the internet of things can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal
with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire
pressure is low or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and
is able to transfer data over a network.

Increasingly, organizations in a variety of industries are using IoT to operate more efficiently,
better understand customers to deliver enhanced customer service, improve decision-making
and increase the value of the business.

How IOT Works?

An IoT ecosystem consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded processors,
sensors and communication hardware to collect, send and act on data they acquire from their
environments. IoT devices share the sensor data they collect by connecting to an IoT gateway or
other edge device where data is either sent to the cloud to be analyzed or analyzed locally.
Sometimes, these devices communicate with other related devices and act on the information
they get from one another. The devices do most of the work without human intervention,
although people can interact with the devices -- for instance, to set them up, give them
instructions or access the data.

The connectivity, networking and communication protocols used with these web-enabled
devices largely depend on the specific IoT applications deployed .

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Benefits of IoT

The internet of things offers a number of benefits to organizations, enabling them to:

• monitor their overall business processes;

• improve the customer experience;
• save time and money;
• enhance employee productivity;
• integrate and adapt business models;
• make better business decisions; and
• generate more revenue.

IoT encourages companies to rethink the ways they approach their businesses, industries and
markets and gives them the tools to improve their business strategies.

Consumer and enterprise IoT applications

There are numerous real-world applications of the internet of things, ranging from consumer
IoT and enterprise IoT to manufacturing and industrial IoT (IIoT). IoT applications span
numerous verticals, including automotive, telco, energy and more.

In the consumer segment, for example, smart homes that are equipped with smart thermostats,
smart appliances and connected heating, lighting and electronic devices can be controlled
remotely via computers, smartphones or other mobile devices.

Wearable devices with sensors and software can collect and analyze user data, sending
messages to other technologies about the users with the aim of making users' lives easier and
more comfortable. Wearable devices are also used for public safety -- for example, improving

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first responders' response times during emergencies by providing optimized routes to a location
or by tracking construction workers' or firefighters' vital signs at life threatening sites.

In healthcare, IoT offers many benefits, including the ability to monitor patients more closely to
use the data that's generated and analyze it. Hospitals often use IoT systems to complete tasks
such as inventory management, for both pharmaceuticals and medical instruments .

Smart buildings can, for instance, reduce energy costs using sensors that detect how many
occupants are in a room. The temperature can adjust automatically -- for example, turning the
air conditioner on if sensors detect a conference room is full or turning the heat down if
everyone in the office has gone home.

In agriculture, IoT-based smart farming systems can help monitor, for instance, light,
temperature, humidity and soil moisture of crop fields using connected sensors. IoT is also
instrumental in automating irrigation systems.

In a smart city, IoT sensors and deployments, such as smart streetlights and smart meters, can
help alleviate traffic, conserve energy, monitor and address environmental concerns, and
improve sanitation.

IOT Enabling Banking

Billions of devices are connected to eachother, and in doing so, become an intelligent system of
systems. When these intelligent devices and systems share data on the cloud and begin to
analyse, they can transform our business, our lives, and our world in countless ways.

Customers use smart devices for accessing data, which allows banks to provide a complete view
of customer finances in real time. Banks can anticipate the needs of the customers through data
collected and offer solutions and advice that can help customers and take sound and smart
financial decisions. In this way, the “bank of things” can become powerful facilitator to increase
customer loyalty, and in turn, bring more business to the tank.

In the world of interrelated things, banks are communicating with customers, offering them
advice via their cell phones. A similar approach can be taken with regard to the spending habit
of the customers. These are multiple ways for banks to connect with their customers – by
offering advice and rewards in other areas of life. This in turn will increase customer loyalty.

Benefits of IoT in banking services

One of the most important benefit of IoT in banking sector is providing rewarding, easy to
access services to both credit and debit card customers. Banks can analyse the usage of ATM
kiosks in specific areas and increase/decrease the installation of ATMs depending upon the
usage volume. Along with this banks can use IoT data in bringing on-demand services closer to
customers by providing kiosks, and increase the accessibility of services to customers.

The customer data available through IoT will help banks identify their potential customers
business needs, their value chain – like suppliers, retailers, distributors – and also gain customer

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insights. Customer information will also help banks to provide value-added services, financial
assistance, and customized products to ensure win-win situation for both parties.

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines,
especially computer systems. These processes include learning (the acquisition of information
and rules for using the information), reasoning (using rules to reach approximate or definite
conclusions) and self-correction. Particular applications of AI include expert systems, speech
recognition and machine vision.

AI can be categorized as either weak or strong. Weak AI, also known as narrow AI, is an AI
system that is designed and trained for a particular task. Virtual personal assistants, such as
Apple's Siri, are a form of weak AI. Strong AI, also known as artificial general intelligence, is an AI
system with generalized human cognitive abilities. When presented with an unfamiliar task, a
strong AI system is able to find a solution without human intervention.

Because hardware, software and staffing costs for AI can be expensive, many vendors are
including AI components in their standard offerings, as well as access to Artificial Intelligence as
a Service (AIaaS) platforms. AI as a Service allows individuals and companies to experiment with
AI for various business purposes and sample multiple platforms before making a commitment.
Popular AI cloud offerings include Amazon AI services, IBM Watson Assistant, Microsoft
Cognitive Services and Google AI services.

Types of artificial intelligence

Arend Hintze, an assistant professor of integrative biology and computer science and
engineering at Michigan State University, categorizes AI into four types, from the kind of AI
systems that exist today to sentient systems, which do not yet exist. His categories are as
follows:

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Type 1: Reactive machines. An example is Deep Blue, the IBM chess program that beat Garry
Kasparov in the 1990s. Deep Blue can identify pieces on the chess board and make predictions,
but it has no memory and cannot use past experiences to inform future ones. It analyzes
possible moves -- its own and its opponent -- and chooses the most strategic move. Deep Blue
and Google's AlphaGO were designed for narrow purposes and cannot easily be applied to
another situation.

Type 2: Limited memory. These AI systems can use past experiences to inform future decisions.
Some of the decision-making functions in self-driving cars are designed this way. Observations
inform actions happening in the not-so-distant future, such as a car changing lanes. These
observations are not stored permanently.

Type 3: Theory of mind. This psychology term refers to the understanding that others have their
own beliefs, desires and intentions that impact the decisions they make. This kind of AI does not
yet exist.

Type 4: Self-awareness. In this category, AI systems have a sense of self, have consciousness.
Machines with self-awareness understand their current state and can use the information to
infer what others are feeling. This type of AI does not yet exist

Examples of AI technology
AI is incorporated into a variety of different types of technology. Here are seven examples.

• Automation: What makes a system or process function automatically. For example,

robotic process automation (RPA) can be programmed to perform high-volume,
repeatable tasks that humans normally performed. RPA is different from IT automation
in that it can adapt to changing circumstances.
• Machine learning: The science of getting a computer to act without programming .
Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that, in very simple terms, can be thought
of as the automation of predictive analytics. There are three types of machine learning
algorithms:
• Supervised learning: Data sets are labelled so that patterns can be detected and
used to label new data sets
• Unsupervised learning: Data sets aren't labelled and are sorted according to
similarities or differences
• Reinforcement learning: Data sets aren't labelled but, after performing an
action or several actions, the AI system is given feedback

Machine vision: The science of allowing computers to see. This technology captures and
analyzes visual information using a camera, analog-to-digital conversion and digital signal
processing. It is often compared to human eyesight, but machine vision isn't bound by biology
and can be programmed to see through walls, for example. It is used in a range of applications
from signature identification to medical image analysis. Computer vision, which is focused on
machine-based image processing, is often conflated with machine vision.

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 • Natural language processing (NLP): The processing of human -- and not computer --
language by a computer program. One of the older and best known examples of NLP is
spam detection, which looks at the subject line and the text of an email and decides if
it's junk. Current approaches to NLP are based on machine learning. NLP tasks include
text translation, sentiment analysis and speech recognition.
• Robotics: A field of engineering focused on the design and manufacturing of robots.
Robots are often used to perform tasks that are difficult for humans to perform or
perform consistently. They are used in assembly lines for car production or by NASA to
move large objects in space. Researchers are also using machine learning to build robots
that can interact in social settings.
• Self-driving cars: These use a combination of computer vision, image recognition and
deep learning to build automated skill at piloting a vehicle while staying in a given lane
and avoiding unexpected obstructions, such as pedestrians.

AI applications
Artificial intelligence has made its way into a number of areas. Here are six examples.

• AI in healthcare. The biggest bets are on improving patient outcomes and reducing
costs. Companies are applying machine learning to make better and faster diagnoses
than humans. One of the best known healthcare technologies is IBM Watson. It
understands natural language and is capable of responding to questions asked of it. The
system mines patient data and other available data sources to form a hypothesis, which
it then presents with a confidence scoring schema. Other AI applications
include chatbots, a computer program used online to answer questions and assist
customers, to help schedule follow-up appointments or aid patients through the billing
process, and virtual health assistants that provide basic medical feedback.

• AI in business. Robotic process automation is being applied to highly repetitive tasks

normally performed by humans. Machine learning algorithms are being integrated into
analytics and CRM platforms to uncover information on how to better serve customers.
Chatbots have been incorporated into websites to provide immediate service to
customers. Automation of job positions has also become a talking point among
academics and IT analysts.

• AI in education. AI can automate grading, giving educators more time. AI can assess
students and adapt to their needs, helping them work at their own pace. AI tutors can
provide additional support to students, ensuring they stay on track. AI could change
where and how students learn, perhaps even replacing some teachers.

• AI in finance. AI in personal finance applications, such as Mint or Turbo Tax, is

disrupting financial institutions. Applications such as these collect personal data and
provide financial advice. Other programs, such as IBM Watson, have been applied to the

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 process of buying a home. Today, software performs much of the trading on Wall
Street.

• AI in law. The discovery process, sifting through of documents, in law is often

overwhelming for humans. Automating this process is a more efficient use of time.
Startups are also building question-and-answer computer assistants that can sift
programmed-to-answer questions by examining the taxonomy and ontology associated
with a database.

• AI in manufacturing. This is an area that has been at the forefront of incorporating

robots into the workflow. Industrial robots used to perform single tasks and were
separated from human workers, but as the technology advanced that changed .

Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is the technology that expands our physical world, adding layers of digital
information onto it. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), AR does not create the whole artificial
environments to replace real with a virtual one. AR appears in direct view of an existing
environment and adds sounds, videos, graphics to it.

A view of the physical real-world environment with superimposed computer-generated images,

thus changing the perception of reality, is the AR.

The term itself was coined back in 1990, and one of the first commercial uses were in television
and military. With the rise of the Internet and smartphones, AR rolled out its second wave and
nowadays is mostly related to the interactive concept. 3D models are directly projected onto
physical things or fused together in real-time, various augmented reality apps impact our habits,
social life, and the entertainment industry.

AR apps typically connect digital animation to a special ‘marker’, or with the help of GPS in
phones pinpoint the location. Augmentation is happening in real time and within the context of
the environment, for example, overlaying scores to a live feed sport events.

There are 4 types of augmented reality today:

1.) Markerless AR
2.) Marker-based AR
3.) Projection-based AR
4.) Superimposition-based AR

How does Augmented Reality works?

What is Augmented Reality for many of us implies a technical side, i.e. how does AR work? For
AR a certain range of data (images, animations, videos, 3D models) may be used and people will
see the result in both natural and synthetic light. Also, users are aware of being in the real world
which is advanced by computer vision, unlike in VR.

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AR can be displayed on various devices: screens, glasses, handheld devices, mobile phones,
head-mounted displays. It involves technologies like S.L.A.M. (simultaneous localization and
mapping), depth tracking (briefly, a sensor data calculating the distance to the objects), and the
following components:

• Cameras and sensors - Collecting data about user’s interactions and sending it for
processing. Cameras on devices are scanning the surroundings and with this info, a
device locates physical objects and generates 3D models. It may be special duty
cameras, like in Microsoft Hololens, or common smartphone cameras to take
pictures/videos.
• Processing - AR devices eventually should act like little computers, something modern
smartphones already do. In the same manner, they require a CPU, a GPU, flash memory,
RAM, Bluetooth/WiFi, a GPS, etc. to be able to measure speed, angle, direction,
orientation in space, and so on.
• Projection - This refers to a miniature projector on AR headsets, which takes data from
sensors and projects digital content (result of processing) onto a surface to view. In fact,
the use of projections in AR has not been fully invented yet to use it in commercial
products or services.
• Reflection - Some AR devices have mirrors to assist human eyes to view virtual images.
Some have an “array of small curved mirrors” and some have a double-sided mirror to
reflect light to a camera and to a user’s eye. The goal of such reflection paths is to
perform a proper image alignment.

Augmented Reality Devices

Many modern devices already support Augmented reality. From smartphones and tablets to
gadgets like Google Glass or handheld devices, and these technologies continue to evolve. For
processing and projection, AR devices and hardware, first of all, have requirements such as
sensors, cameras, accelerometer, gyroscope, digital compass, GPS, CPU, displays, and things
we’ve already mentioned.

Devices suitable for Augmented reality fall into the following categories:

• Mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) – the most available and best fit for AR
mobile apps, ranging from pure gaming and entertainment to business analytics, sports,
and social networking.
• Special AR devices - designed primarily and solely for augmented reality experiences.
One example is head-up displays (HUD), sending data to a transparent display directly
into user’s view. Originally introduced to train military fighters pilots, now such devices
have applications in aviation, automotive industry, manufacturing, sports, etc.
• AR glasses (or smart glasses) – Google Glasses, Meta 2 Glasses, Laster See-Thru, Laforge
AR eyewear, etc. These units are capable of displaying notifications from your
smartphone, assisting assembly line workers, access content hands-free, etc.
• AR contact lenses (or smart lenses) - taking Augmented Reality one step even farther.
Manufacturers like Samsung and Sony have announced the development of AR lenses.

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 Respectively, Samsung is working on lenses as the accessory to smartphones,
while Sony is designing lenses as separate AR devices (with features like taking photos
or storing data).
• Virtual retinal displays (VRD) - creating images by projecting laser light into the human
eye. Aiming at bright, high contrast and high-resolution images, such systems yet
remain to be made for a practical use.

Applications of Augmented Reality

1. Data Visualization

Being able to visualize data is an important tool traders use to help them make important
decisions about wealth management, especially as the financial industry becomes more
complex and there is more data to analyze. AR and VR add to this experience and make it easier
and faster to visualize and organize large amounts of data. Salesforce uses Oculus Rift to create
an immersive 3D environment for analyzing data. Fidelity Labs, a part of Fidelity Investments,
has also taken advantage of the technology behind Oculus Rift. They created a virtual world
called “StockCity” where stock portfolios are turned into a virtual 3D city, where investors can
immerse themselves in the data. Also read: Futures be augmented of virtual with AR/VR

2. Virtual Trading

Some companies are making trading a virtual experience by creating virtual reality workstations
for trading. Citi uses Microsoft HoloLens to give traders Holographic Workstations. This type of
workstation offers 2D and 3D elements that add to the bank’s existing processes. Comarch uses
virtual reality in their wealth management software to give users better access to algorithms
and trading tools

3. Virtual Reality Payments

Some companies are even making payments a virtual experience. MasterCard has partnered
with Wearality to create a world where consumers can make purchases without leaving the
virtual world. They have a virtual reality golf experience called ‘Priceless’ and players are able to
buy clothing in the virtual world, without having to do anything offline.

4. Security

In order to create a more secure customer experience, biometric security could be introduced in
an AR system that could then connect with a VR world. These could be used to access VR bank
services, make ATM transactions, or make payments.

5. Financial Education

For both employees and customers of financial institutions, education is important for
understanding changes in financial systems. AR and VR have huge potential for teaching people
new information in the VR Finance.

6. Customer Service

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Many financial institutions are also using AR and VR to help improve the experience of their
customers. Many banks have AR apps that help customers find the nearest banks and ATMs.
When in a city, they can scan the area with their phones and see real-time information about
location, distance, and services at nearby banks.
Some real estate firms have apps that allow customers to pass by and scan houses with their
phones or tablets to get more detailed info about the property. Advanced options that we may
see soon are mortgage calculators and 3D interiors in the AR environment.

7. Virtual Branches

Digital-only banks and mobile banks are already here. But someday soon we may be able to go
to a virtual bank. If customers are not able to visit a physical branch location for whatever
reason, there will soon be given the possibility to go to a virtual branch. The hope is that these
branches will be able to provide the same services but exclusively in a VR environment. Not only
is this experience helpful to customers, but it also reduces costs for banks as they no longer
need to invest in physical locations.

8. Recruitment and Training

In order to provide high-quality services to customers, financial institutions need to make sure
they are recruiting top talent and training all employees to give them skills that will help them
do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Some banks are using a VR experience to show tech
recruits how innovative and tech-savvy the bank is. Potential employees, as well as current
employees, use this platform to form teams and create apps that will help the bank’s customers.

9. Customer Acquisition

Millennials are an often talked about generation, as they have grown up in a very different
world then their parents or grandparents. Because they are a generation that has grown up with
technology, they view many systems differently than other generations. In fact, according
to figures from the Millennial Disruption Index, 73% of Millennials are looking to Google, PayPal,
and Apple for financial products, as opposed to local banks. 33% feel that banks will not be
necessary in the near future. Banks and other institutions looking to appeal to his group as well
as the generations that follow are incorporating more technology, including AR and VR, into
their systems in order to attract and retain customers.

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Machine Learning
Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to
automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine
learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it learn for
themselves. As it is evident from the name, it gives the computer that which makes it more similar to
humans: The ability to learn. Machine learning is actively being used today, perhaps in many more
places than one would expect.

Machine Learning Methods

• Supervised machine learning algorithms

• Unsupervised machine learning algorithms
• Semi-supervised machine learning
algorithms
• Reinforcement machine learning
algorithms

Applications
Marketing

“75% of enterprises using AI and machine learning enhance customer satisfaction by more than
10%.”

“3 in 4 organizations implementing AI and machine learning increase sales of new products and
services by more than 10%. “ - According to Capgemini.

Measuring marketing’s many contributions to revenue growth is becoming more accurate and real-
time thanks to analytics and machine learning. The following are 10 ways machine learning is
revolutionizing marketing today and in the future:

1. 57% of enterprise executives believe the most significant growth benefit of AI and machine
learning will be improving customer experiences and support.
2. 58% of enterprises are tackling the most challenging marketing problems with AI and machine
learning first, prioritizing personalized customer care, new product development.
3. By 2020, real-time personalized advertising across digital platforms and optimized message
targeting accuracy, context and precision will accelerate.
4. Analyze and significantly reduce customer churn using machine learning to streamline risk
prediction and intervention models.
5. All marketers are increasingly relying on machine learning to define more competitive,
contextually relevant pricing. Machine learning apps are scaling price optimization beyond
airlines, hotels, and events to encompass product and services pricing scenarios.
6. Using a concerted approach to applying AI and machine learning across a retailer’s value chains
has the potential to deliver a 50% improvement of assortment efficiency and a 30% online sales
increase using dynamic pricing.

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7. Machine learning is streamlining creation, fine-tuning and revenue contributions of up-sell and
cross-sell strategies by automating the entire progress.
8. Lead scoring accuracy is improving, leading to increased sales that are traceable back to initial
marketing campaigns and sales strategies.
9. Identifying and defining the sales projections of specific customer segments and microsegments
using RFM (recency, frequency and monetary) modeling within machine learning apps is
becoming pervasive.
10. Optimizing the marketing mix by determining which sales offers, incentive and programs are
presented to which prospects through which channels is another way machine learning is
revolutionizing marketing.
ANALYZING CUSTOMER CHURN BY USING AZURE

Finance

Leading banks and financial services companies are deploying AI technology, including machine
learning (ML), to streamline their processes, optimise portfolios, decrease risk and underwrite loans
amongst other things. Due to the high volume of historical financial data generated in the industry,
ML has found many useful applications in finance. The following are some of the current applications
of machine learning in finance:

1. Portfolio Management – Robo-Advisors: provides automated financial guidance and service.

They provide portfolio management services that use algorithms and statistics to automatically
establish and manage the investment portfolio of a client

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2. Algorithmic Trading: is the use of algorithms to conduct trades autonomously. It’s mostly hedge
fund managers that make use of automated trading systems and so make use of machine
learning in finance. It allows traders to automate certain processes ensuring a competitive
advantage.
3. High-Frequency Trading (HFT): Machines in charge of HFT is nothing new. During 2009-2010,
anywhere from 60% to 70% of U.S. trading was attributed to HFT. Some of the biggest players
include companies like Tokyo-based Nomura Securities, Virtu Financial, Two Sigma Securities,
Citadel Securities, Tower Research Capital and DRW, but there are many more operating in
financial markets worldwide.
4. Fraud Detection: Fraud is a massive problem for financial institutions and one of the foremost
reasons to leveraged machine learning in finance. This is because ML systems can scan through
vast data sets, detect unusual activities, (anomalies), and flag them instantly. ML is also the
perfect candidate to tackle the problem of false positives, which is something that happens
regularly in finance.
5. Loan/ Insurance Underwriting: ML algorithms can perform the same underwriting and credit-
scoring tasks that took thousands of human hours to do in the past. Computer engineers train
the algorithms to spot all manner of trends that might influence lending or insurance decisions.
6. Risk Management: Financial markets are increasingly using AI and ML systems to leverage
current data to spot trends and better predict looming risks. Dataminr and Alphasense are
examples of companies that employ these advanced technologies to help financial and other
institutions manage risk.
7. Chatbots: ML has breathed new life into human-to-machine interaction which can be highly
frustrating for humans. Thanks to robust natural language processing engines and the ability to
learn from previous interactions, ML-based chatbots are able to quickly and accurately resolve
customer queries.
8. Document Analysis: The ability of ML systems to scan and analyse legal and other documents at
speed, helps banks to meet with compliance issues and combat fraud. JP Morgan is a forerunner
in applying machine learning in finance. The company is investing heavily in technology to
automate processes – its technology budget is $9.6 billion.
9. Trade Settlements: The use of machine learning cannot only identify the reason of the failed
trades, it can analyse why the trades were rejected, provide a solution and also predict which
trades may fail in the future. BNY Mellon has implemented robotic process automation software
which allow them to perform research on the failed trades, identify the problem and apply a fix.
10. Money-Laundering Prevention: If money laundering was a country it would be the fifth largest
economy in the world. Banking giant HSBC plans to incorporate machine learning technology
into its infrastructure in a bid to combat money laundering. The AI software collects internal,
publicly-existing and transactional data from a client’s broader network in an attempt to spot
money laundering signs.
11. Future Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Finance: Sentiment analysis lets companies
understand what people are saying, and importantly, what they mean by what they’re saying.
Where humans often trade on intuition, ML algorithms have so much information at their
disposal, they don’t need intuition.

Operations
Machine learning makes it possible to discover patterns in supply chain data by relying on algorithms
that quickly pinpoint the most influential factors to a supply networks’ success. Key factors
influencing inventory levels, supplier quality, demand forecasting, procure-to-pay, order-to-cash,

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production planning, transportation management and more are becoming known for the first time.
The ten ways machine learning is revolutionizing supply chain management include:

1. Machine learning algorithms and the apps running them are capable of analysing large, diverse
data sets fast, improving demand forecasting accuracy.
2. Reducing freight costs, improving supplier delivery performance, and minimizing supplier risk are
three of the many benefits machine learning is providing in collaborative supply chain networks.
3. Machine Learning and its core constructs are ideally suited for providing insights into improving
supply chain management performance not available from previous technologies.
4. Machine learning excels at visual pattern recognition, opening up many potential applications in
physical inspection and maintenance of physical assets across an entire supply chain network.
5. Gaining greater contextual intelligence using machine learning combined with related
technologies across supply chain operations translates into lower inventory and operations costs
and quicker response times to customers.
6. Forecasting demand for new products including the causal factors that most drive new sales is
an area machine learning is being applied to today with strong results.
7. Companies are extending the life of key supply chain assets including machinery, engines,
transportation and warehouse equipment by finding new patterns in usage data collected via IoT
sensors.
8. Improving supplier quality management and compliance by finding patterns in suppliers’ quality
levels and creating track-and-trace data hierarchies for each supplier, unassisted.
9. Machine learning is improving production planning and factory scheduling accuracy by taking
into account multiple constraints and optimizing for each.
10. Combining machine learning with advanced analytics, IoT sensors, and real-time monitoring is
providing end-to-end visibility across many supply chains for the first time.

Information Technology
The applications of ML in IT are immense as it nearly impacts each and every impact of our day to
day life. Some utilities include:

• Traffic Alerts
• Social Media
• Transportation and Commuting
• Products Recommendations
• Virtual Personal Assistants
• Self- Driving Cars
• Dynamic Pricing
• Google Translate
• Online Video Streaming
• Fraud Detection

The above list is just the tip of the iceberg and not exhaustive. For more details on ML and its
applications please refer to the below link: https://www.ubuntupit.com/top-20-best-machine-
learning-applications-in-real-world/

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Examples of Machine Learning
IBM
IBM’s Watson’s been following self-learning behaviour models and has done everything from
diagnosing certain types of cancers more effectively than oncologists, writing songs, and producing
movie trailers.

In the case of cancer treatments, Watson can read half a million medical research papers in 15
seconds and was trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York to be able to suggest diagnoses
and treatments to doctors.

Amazon
On the retail side, everything from product recommendations to supply chain, forecasting, and
capacity planning runs on machine-learning, while programs like Macie and Glue that scan for
sensitive data breaches and perform data cleansing, respectively. Of course, let’s not forget Alexa,
Prime Air, and Amazon Go, which all function through AI algorithms, while rumours of an AI fashion
designer are feeding the Amazon AI flame.

Google
Google was one of the pioneers of machine learning with suggested searches and ever-evolving
search ranking algorithms. Google’s Machine Intelligence efforts have focused on deep learning,
which involves multiple layers of neural networks—built to simulate human thought processes—that
allow Google’s technology to process data more thoroughly.

Google’s taking image recognition a step further with Image Enhancement, which fills in missing
details in images with high-resolution information. In short, it can fill in details in pixelated images,
making “zoom and enhance” a reality.

Salesforce
Salesforce has named it’s AI Einstein. It stretches across their cloud services, from sales to
marketing, services, community, and apps, powering nearly every part of their product with
machine-learning algorithms.

Einstein lives within a set of services within their Customer Success Platform and provides
customized models to every customer, then adjusts with every customer interaction and additional
piece of data it receives. Einstein is designed to automatically discover relevant insights, predict
customer behaviour, recommend next actions to users, and automate tasks, like logging customer
data, capturing sales activity, scoring leads, delivering content, and messaging customers when
they’re most likely to engage.

Netflix
The online streaming giant announced an AI algorithm called Dynamic Optimizer to analyse each and
every frame of video in each of its roughly 13,000 titles it streams and compresses it without
sacrificing image quality.

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Blockchain

Blockchain technology is not a company, nor is it an app, but rather an entirely new way of
documenting data on the internet. The technology can be used to develop blockchain applications,
such as social networks, messengers, games, exchanges, storage platforms, voting systems,
prediction markets, online shops and much more. In this sense, it is similar to the internet, which is
why some have dubbed it “The Internet 3.0”.

The information recorded on a blockchain can take on any form, whether it be denoting a transfer of
money, ownership, a transaction, someone's identity, an agreement between two parties, or even
how much electricity a lightbulb has used. However, to do so requires a confirmation from several of
devices, such as computers, on the network. Once an agreement, otherwise known as a consensus,
is reached between these devices to store something on a blockchain it is unquestionably there, it
cannot be disputed, removed or altered, without the knowledge and permission of those who made
that record, as well as the wider community.

Rather than keeping information in one central point, as is done by traditional recording methods,
multiple copies of the same data are stored in different locations and on different devices on the
network, such as computers or printers. This is known as a peer to peer (P2P) network. This means
that even if one point of storage is damaged or lost, multiple copies remain safe and secure
elsewhere. Similarly, if one piece of information is changed without the agreement of the rightful
owners, there are countless other examples in existence, where the information is true, making the
false record obsolete.

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WHY IS IT CALLED “BLOCKCHAIN”?

Blockchain owes its name to how it works and the manner in which it stores data, namely that the
information is packaged into blocks, which link to form a chain with other blocks of similar
information.

It is this act of linking blocks into a chain that makes the information stored on a blockchain so
trustworthy. Once the data is recorded in a block it cannot be altered without having to change
every block that came after it, making it impossible to do so without it being seen by the other
participants on the network.

Normally, each block contains the data it is recording, for example a transaction like 1 token being
sent from Alice to Bob, as well as timestamps of when that information was recorded. It will also
include a digital signature linked to the account that made the recording and a unique identifying
link, in the form of a hash (think of it as a digital fingerprint), to the previous block in the chain. It is

this link that makes it impossible for any of the information to be altered or for a block to be
inserted between two existing blocks. In order to do so all following blocks would need to be edited
too. As a result, each block strengthens the previous block and the security of the entire blockchain
because it means more blocks would need to be changed to tamper with any information.

When combined, all of these create an unquestionable storage of information, one that cannot be
disputed or declared to be untrue.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger, which simply means that a ledger is spread across the network
among all peers in the network, and each peer holds a copy of the complete ledger.

Distributed ledgers have 3 key attributes:

• Recorded: stored information is time-stamped

• Transparent: anyone can see the ledger of transactions.
• Decentralized: the ledger exists on multiple computers, often referred to as nodes.

WHO CREATED BLOCKCHAIN?

The first recorded mention of blockchain technology came in a document, or whitepaper, published
in 2008 by the mysterious founder or founders of Bitcoin, only known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Speculation about the true identity of this undeniably brilliant coder has continued to this day, with
Nakamoto claiming in early correspondences to be a man living in Japan, born on 5th April 1975.

It is also worth knowing that Satoshi Nakamoto did not build every aspect of blockchain from
scratch. In fact, none of the technologies used in blockchain were particularly new and had been
around for several years. However, it is when they are used in combination with one another that
they create the revolutionary offering that is blockchain technology.

Some key attributes of Blockchain are which proves that blockchain is better than traditional
systems of ledger information keeping:

1.) Peer-To-Peer: No central authority to control or manipulate it. All participant talks to each
other directly. This allows for data exchange to be made directly with third-parties
involvement.
2.) Distributed: The ledger is spread across the whole network which makes tampering not so
easy.

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 3.) Cryptographically Secured: Cryptography is used for the security services to make the ledger
tamper-proof.
4.) Add-Only: Data can only be added in the blockchain with time-sequential order. This
property implies that once data is added to the blockchain, it is almost impossible to change
that data and can be considered practically immutable. We can say it has:
“The right to be forgotten or right to erasure” defined here.
5.) Consensus: This is the most critical attribute of all. This gives blockchain the ability to update
the ledger via consensus. This is what gives it the power of decentralization. No central
authority is in control of updating the ledger. Instead, any update made to the blockchain is
validated against strict criteria defined by the blockchain protocol and added to the
blockchain only after a consensus has been reached among all participating peers/nodes on
the network.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

1.) A node starts a transaction by first creating and then digitally signing it with its private key
(created via cryptography) . A transaction can represent various actions in a blockchain.
Most commonly this is a data structure that represents transfer of value between users on
the blockchain network. Transaction data structure usually consists of some logic of transfer
of value, relevant rules, source and destination addresses, and other validation information.
2.) A transaction is propagated (flooded) by using a flooding protocol, called Gossip protocol, to
peers that validate the transaction based on preset criteria. Usually, more than one node are
required to verify the transaction.
3.) Once the transaction is validated, it is included in a block, which is then propagated onto the
network. At this point, the transaction is considered confirmed.
4.) The newly-created block now becomes part of the ledger, and the next block links itself
cryptographically back to this block. This link is a hash pointer. At this stage, the transaction
gets its second confirmation and the block gets its first confirmation.
5.) Transactions are then reconfirmed every time a new block is created. Usually, six
confirmations in the a network are required to consider the transaction final.

Applications of Blockchain:

HEALTHCARE:

Blockchain Technology has the potential to disrupt the healthcare industry’s centralized operations,
opening the door for optimized business and service delivery. Healthcare is incredibly data heavy,
and when critical information becomes lost in the shuffle, it can dramatically alter patient outcomes.

The flaws mainly rest in the health institution’s inability to create linear information stores for
patient data that would allow for fast and easy information sharing and improved patient access.
Central administration becomes moot in a decentralized tech landscape, all users take equal
ownership and have equal access to information without sacrificing security.

Here are the potential ways blockchain integration could revolutionize the healthcare industry:

• Interoperability: More sophisticated and robust APIs could allow for Electronic Health
Record (EHR) interoperability, meaning, that health information systems can work together

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 across organizational boundaries to deliver more advanced and effective healthcare
interventions.
• Improved Data Stores and Analytics
• Immutability: When a single immutable document exists for every patient, the data is then
tamper-proof, and accuracy is guaranteed
• Tighter Security: Decentralized data storage and payment platforms are automatically more
secure by nature of their design.
• Reduced Costs: Blockchain technology works to streamline expensive multi-step processes.
In the case of healthcare, there are endless bureaucratic hoops patients and providers jump

through to implement even the most basic healthcare intervention successfully. Eliminating go-
betweens and unnecessary steps that separate patients from receiving timely and effective care will
additionally work to reduce costs.

• Faster Care Delivery: Decentralizing the healthcare industry can help reduce delays for both
patients and providers. When data is made more available and shared on a public ledger,
and the referral process between primary care doctors, health insurers, and specialists
becomes abridged, patients can receive care faster.
• Transparency: When all actors in the healthcare industry have equal access to tamper-proof
information on the blockchain, there is a surge in transparency.

KYC/IDENTITY:

Blockchain technology provides the ideal engine to power digital identities. While digital identities
are emerging as an inevitable part of our connected world, how we secure our online information is
coming under intense scrutiny. The identity management industry and really any service that
requires users to provide personal data could improve their current models by introducing
blockchain infrastructure. Cryptography can be used to separate data from identity. Through this
separation, companies can obtain the data they need while still preserving user privacy. This creates
a win-win situation for both user and provider.

INTERNET-OF-THINGS

Centralized services might be working for now, but they are not a sufficient long-term IoT solution to
support device design of the future on a massive scale. Moving data and backend services away from
centralized servers will be the key to IoT capabilities reaching their full potential in a secure way.

Decentralized IoT will make device connectivity and data storage trustless through nodes that can
operate without a centralized authority. A distributed model is more efficient, secure, affordable,
and will unlock even unforeseen residual benefits for IoT that have yet to be predicted.

Here is a list of the top benefits of decentralizing IoT:

• Improved Security: Blockchain offers devices unparalleled security infrastructure that blows
cloud-based storage out of the water.
• Tamper-Proof Data: Decentralized applications carry a much lower risk of falling victim to
tampering and fraudulent activity. Because distributed ledger technology (DLT) uses

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 asymmetrical cryptography to timestamp and immutably store transaction data and other
related information on the ledger.
• More Affordable: When security vulnerabilities are removed through placing IoT on
distributed networks and storing data via distributed ledger technology and blockchains, IoT
becomes more affordable.
• Trustless: Trust between all parties and devices using IoT will use the distributed ledger to
verify and smart contracts to automate, never having to place trust in a centralized service
provider or other actors to store data or be in control of their device connectivity.
• Autonomy: Blockchains enable smart devices to act independently and self-monitor.

SUPPLY CHAIN:

Deploying Distributed Ledger Technology can improve supply chain management in countless ways.
Supply chain management, as we have already noted, requires intensive data coordination. When
critical information is disorganized, difficult to share across multiple locations, and payment
processes are slow, decentralization is a beacon of hope for alleviating these paint-points. The flaws
of the supply chain management web 2.0 systems we love to hate can be integrated onto the
blockchain or a distributed ledger for fast and easy information sharing, counterfeit prevention, and
enhanced customer experience.

Here are some of the main benefits of decentralizing supply chain management using distributed
ledger technology and blockchains:

• Traceability and transparency

• Real-time tracking
• Faster transactions
• Trustless Chain
• Eliminates fraud and error
• More secure
• Reduced carbon footprint
• Cheaper

Digital Marketing
What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with
customers where they spend much of their time: online. From the website itself to a business's
online branding assets -- digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond -- there's
a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of "digital marketing."

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports
their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can
support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.

A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from
a new ebook the business recently created. The company's social media marketer might then help
promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business's social media accounts.

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Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the ebook
more information on the company. We'll talk more about these specific digital marketers in a
minute.

Examples of Digital Marketing Tactics:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the process of optimizing your website to "rank" higher in search engine results pages,
thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that
benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics.

There are a number of ways to approach SEO in order to generate qualified traffic to your website.
These include:

On page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on all of the content that exists "on the page" when looking
at a website. By researching keywords for their search volume and intent (or meaning), you can
answer questions for readers and rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) those
questions produce.

Off page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on all of the activity that takes place "off the page" when
looking to optimize your website using inbound links, also known as backlinks. The number of
publishers that link to you, and the relative "authority" of those publishers, affect how highly you
rank for the relevant keywords.

Technical SEO: This type of SEO focuses on the backend of your website, and how your pages are
coded. Image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization are all forms of technical SEO
that can increase your website's loading speed -- an important ranking factor in the eyes of search
engines like Google.

2. Content Marketing
This term denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand
awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. The channels that can play a part in your
content marketing strategy include:

• Blog posts
• Ebooks and whitepapers
• Infographics
• And other digital content.

3. Social Media Marketing

This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand
awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business. The channels you can use in social
media marketing include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC)

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PPC is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked.
One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ads, which allows you to pay for top slots on
Google's search engine results pages at a price "per click" of the links you place. Other channels
where you can use PPC include:

• Paid ads on Facebook: Here, users can pay to customize a video, image post, or slideshow,
which Facebook will publish to the newsfeeds of people who match your business's
audience.
• Twitter Ads campaigns: Here, users can pay to place a series of posts or profile badges to
the news feeds of a specific audience.
• Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Here, users can pay to send messages directly to specific
LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.

5. Affiliate Marketing
This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting
someone else's products or services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include:

Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program.

Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts.

6. Native Advertising
Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a
platform alongside other, non-paid content. BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are a good example, but
many people also consider social media advertising to be "native" -- Facebook advertising and
Instagram advertising, for example.

7. Email Marketing
Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used
to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people toward the business's website.

8. Online PR
Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and
other content-based websites. It's much like traditional PR, but in the online space. The channels you
can use to maximize your PR efforts include:

Reporter outreach via social media: Talking to journalists on Twitter, for example, is a great way to
develop a relationship with the press that produces earned media opportunities for your company.

Engaging online reviews of your company: When someone reviews your company online, whether
that review is good or bad, your instinct might be not to touch it. On the contrary, engaging
company reviews helps you humanize your brand and deliver powerful messaging that protects your
reputation.

Engaging comments on your personal website or blog: Similar to the way you'd respond to reviews
of your company, responding to the people who are reading your content is the best way to
generate productive conversation around your industry.

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Other Concepts
• Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to the software that serves to automate your basic marketing
operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do
manually, such as:

• Email newsletters.
• Social media post scheduling.
• Lead-nurturing workflows: Generating leads, and converting those leads into customers, can
be a long process. You can automate that process by sending leads specific emails and
content once they fit certain criteria, such as when they download and open an ebook.
• Campaign tracking and reporting: Marketing campaigns can include a ton of different
people, emails, content, webpages, phone calls, and more. Marketing automation can help
you sort everything you work on by the campaign it's serving, and then track the
performance of that campaign based on the progress all of these components make over
time.

• Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing refers to a marketing methodology wherein you attract, engage, and delight
customers at every stage of the buyer's journey. You can use every digital marketing tactic listed
above, throughout an inbound marketing strategy, to create a customer experience that works with
the customer, not against them. Here are some classic examples of inbound marketing versus
traditional marketing:

• Blogging vs. pop-up ads

• Video marketing vs. commercial advertising
• Email contact lists vs. email spam

• Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing strategy is the series of actions that help you achieve your company goals through
carefully selected online marketing channels. These channels include paid, earned, and owned
media, and can all support a common campaign around a particular line of business.

What is the role of digital marketing to a company?

Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in
real time. If you've ever put an advert in a newspaper, you'll know how difficult it is to estimate how
many people actually flipped to that page and paid attention to your ad. There's no surefire way to
know if that ad was responsible for any sales at all.

On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the ROI of pretty much any aspect of
your marketing efforts, including but not limited to:

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Website Traffic

With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your
website's homepage in real time by using digital analytics software.

You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they were using, and where they
came from, amongst other digital analytics data.

This intelligence helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time on,
based on the number of people those channels are driving to your website. For example, if only
10% of your traffic is coming from organic search, you know that you probably need to spend
some time on SEO to increase that percentage.

With offline marketing, it's very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand
before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing,
you can identify trends and patterns in people's behavior before they've reached the final stage
in their buyer's journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract
them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.

Content Performance and Lead Generation

Let’s consider the example of an offline product, like a brochure. The problem with this is that
you have no idea how many people opened your brochure or how many people threw it straight
into the trash.

Instead consider having the brochure on your website instead. You can measure exactly how
many people viewed the page where it's hosted, and you can collect the contact details of those
who download it by using forms. Not only can you measure how many people are engaging with
your content, but you're also generating qualified leads when people download it.

Attribution Modeling

An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows
you to trace all of your sales back to a customer's first digital touchpoint with your business.

This is called attribution modeling, and it allows you to identify trends in the way people
research and buy your product, helping you to make more informed decisions about what parts
of your marketing strategy deserve more attention, and what parts of your sales cycle need
refining.

Cyber Security
Cyber security is the body of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect
networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access. In a

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computing context, the term security implies cyber security. And the most problematic element
of cyber security is the quickly and constantly evolving nature of security risks. Ensuring cyber
security requires coordinated efforts throughout an information system. Elements of cyber
security include:

• Application security
• Information security
• Network security
• Disaster recovery / business continuity planning
• End-user Practice correction and educating them.

Cyberspace is particularly difficult to secure due to a number of factors: the ability of malicious
actors to operate from anywhere in the world, the linkages between cyberspace and physical
systems, and the difficulty of reducing vulnerabilities and consequences in complex cyber
networks. Of growing concern is the cyber threat to critical infrastructure, which is increasingly
subject to sophisticated cyber intrusions that pose new risks. As information technology
becomes increasingly integrated with physical infrastructure operations, there is increased risk
for wide scale or high-consequence events that could cause harm or disrupt services upon which
our economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans depend. In light of the risk and
potential consequences of cyber events, strengthening the security and resilience of cyberspace
has become an important homeland security mission.

Analytics
What is Analytics?

Analytics is an encompassing and multidimensional field that uses mathematics, statistics,

predictive modeling and machine learning techniques to find meaningful patterns and
knowledge in recorded data.

Today, we add powerful computers to the mix for storing increasing amounts of data and
running sophisticated software algorithms – producing the fast insights needed to make fact-
based decisions. By putting the science of numbers, data and analytical discovery to work, we
can find out if what we think or believe is really true. And produce answers to questions we
never thought to ask. That’s the power of analytics.

Why is Analytics Important?

From the first known population data collection project by the Swedish government in 1749, to
Florence Nightingale recording and analyzing mortality data in the 1850s, to British scholar
Richard Doll’s tobacco and lung cancer study in the 1950s, the analysis of data has fueled
knowledge discovery for hundreds of years.

Each of the above scenarios required an answer to a heretofore unanswerable question. In the
1700s, the Swedes wanted to know the geographical distribution of their population to learn

38
the best way to sustain an appropriate military force. Nightingale wanted to know the role that
hygiene and nursing care played in mortality rates. Doll wanted to know if people who smoked
were more likely to suffer from lung cancer.

Each of these pioneers knew that instinct wasn’t good enough. Analysis of data can uncover
correlations and patterns. There’s less need to rely on guesses or intuition. And it can help
answer the following types of questions:

• What happened?
• How or why did it happen?
• What’s happening now?
• What is likely to happen next?

With faster and more powerful computers, opportunity abounds for the use of analytics and big
data. Whether it’s determining credit risk, developing new medicines, finding more efficient
ways to deliver products and services, preventing fraud, uncovering cyberthreats or retaining
the most valuable customers, analytics can help you understand your organization – and the
world around it.

Popular Analytical Methods:

There are three predominant types of analytics in use today.

• Descriptive statistics - Descriptive statistics have been around the longest. Remember
the Swedes in 1749? Tabulating population counts was an early foray into descriptive
analysis – the summary of collected data points. These are the models that will help you
understand what happened and why. There are still plenty of descriptive analytics in use
today – everything from how many clicks a page receives to how many units are
produced vs. how many are sold.
• Predictive analytics - Predictive analytics has surged in popularity. The desire to predict
customer behavior has been a main driver. Increased computing power with the ability
to run hundreds or thousands of models quickly – and widespread adoption of
predictive techniques like support vector machines, neural networks and random
forests – are bringing predictive analysis to the forefront of many organizations. These
models use past data and predictive algorithms to help you determine the probability of
what will happen next.

https://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/what-is-predictive-
analytics/#applicationsofpredictiveanalytics

• Prescriptive analytics - Prescriptive analytics is the newest kid on the block. Knowing
what will happen and knowing what to do are two different things. Prescriptive
analytics answers the question of what to do by providing information on optimal
decisions based on the predicted future scenarios. The key to prescriptive analytics is

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 being able to use big data, contextual data and lots of computing power to produce
answers in real time.

Data Analytics Tools

1.) R Programming
2.) Tableau
3.) Python
4.) SAS
5.) Excel

Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from social media websites and analysing
that data using social media analytics tools to make business decisions. The most common use
of social media analytics is to mine customer sentiment to support marketing and customer
service activities.

This is considered the basic foundation for enabling an enterprises to:

• Execute focused engagements like one-to-one and one-to-many

• Enhance social collaboration over a variety of business functions, such as customer
service, marketing, support, etc.
• Maximize the customer experience

Social media is a good medium to understand real-time consumer choices, intentions and
sentiments. The most prevalent application of social media analytics is to get to know the
customer base on a more emotional level to help better target customer service and marketing.

The initial step during a social media analytics program is to figure out which business objectives
can gain an advantage from the data that is collected and evaluated. Standard goals include
maximizing business earnings, decreasing customer service expenditures, obtaining feedback on
services and products, and enhancing public opinion about a business division or specific
product. As soon as the business goals are determined, key performance indicators (KPIs) to
perform objective evaluation of the data must be outlined.

The advantages of implementing social media tools include:

• Competitive Advantage: SMA tools allow the organizations to gain a competitive edge
over their competitors by facilitating a much better comprehension of their brands. This
usually includes an understanding of how the customers make use of particular services
or products, what issues are faced by the customers while using these services or
products, and getting to know how customers' views about a particular company or
product.

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 • Learn From the Customers: In many cases, customers may have effective solutions for
some of the issues faced by an organization. For example, if a product is in the market
without proper documentation, the chances of use errors increase. Some users may
solve these problems through trial-and-error, and then post their findings in forums,
which can help the company determine whether better documentation is required, and
what users really need to know.
• Improve Products and Services: This is the key goal of SMA. There are countless tweets,
blogs, comments and complaints regarding products and services. This huge volume of
information contains consumer sentiments that can be used to evaluate users'
experience with a particular product or service. This information can then be used to
help companies perform better.

What is Big Data and why is Big Data Analytics important?

We live in a data-driven world. In fact, the amount of digital data that exists is growing at a rapid
rate, doubling every two years, and changing the way we live. The term "big data" refers to
digital stores of information that have a high volume, velocity and variety. Big data analytics is
the process of using software to uncover trends, patterns, correlations or other useful insights
in those large stores of data.

The Big Data technologies and initiatives are rising to analyze this data for gaining insights that
can help in making strategic decisions. The Big Data analytics is indeed a revolution in the field
of Information Technology. The concept evolved at the beginning of 21st century, and every
technology giant is now making use of Big Data technologies. The primary focus of the
companies is on customers. Hence the field is flourishing in Business to Consumer (B2C)
applications. We can divide the analytics into different types as per the nature of the
environment.

We have three divisions of Big Data analytics: Prescriptive Analytics, Predictive Analytics, and
Descriptive Analytics. The importance of big data analytics can be explained using the following
four perspectives:

• Data Science Perspective

• Business Perspective

• Real-time Usability Perspective

• Job Market Perspective

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Big Data Analytics and Data Sciences
The analytics involves the use of advanced techniques and tools of analytics on the data
obtained from different sources in different sizes. Big data has the properties of high variety,
volume, and velocity. The data sets come from various online networks, web pages, audio and
video devices, social media, logs and many other sources.

Big Data analytics involves the use of analytics techniques like machine learning, data mining,
natural language processing, and statistics. The data is extracted, prepared and blended to
provide analysis for the businesses. Large enterprises and multinational organizations use these
techniques widely these days in different ways.

Data analytics involves qualitative as well as quantitative techniques to improve business

productivity and profits. The data analytics tools are used by researchers, analysts, and
engineers for business organizations to access the data efficiently.

There are special analytics tools that use these techniques to analyze the data sources for fresh
insights. The data is usually real-time data produced at a huge scale. This data is unstructured,

42
and the tools help to capture this data and store it for analysis. Hence the big data and business
analytics tools are very advanced.

These tools can be two types: Storage and Analysis Big Data analytics tools. Some of these data
analytics tools include Apache Hadoop, Hive, Storm, Cassandra, Mongo DB and many more.

Businesses and Big Data Analytics

Big Data analytics tools and techniques are rising in demand due to the use of Big Data in
businesses. Organizations can find new opportunities and gain new insights to run their business
efficiently. These tools help in providing meaningful information for making better business
decisions.

The companies can improve their strategies by keeping in mind the customer focus. Big data
analytics efficiently helps operations to become more effective. This helps in improving the
profits of the company.

Big data analytics tools like Hadoop helps in reducing the cost of storage. This further increases
the efficiency of the business. With latest analytics tools, analysis of data becomes easier and
quicker. This, in turn, leads to faster decision making saving time and energy.

Real-time Benefits of Big Data Analytics

There has been an enormous growth in the field of Big Data analytics with the benefits of the
technology. This has led to the use of big data in multiple industries ranging from

• Banking

• Healthcare

• Energy

• Technology

• Consumer

• Manufacturing

There are many other industries which use big data analytics. Banking is seen as the field making
the maximum use of Big Data Analytics.

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The education sector is also making use of data analytics in a big way. There are new options for
research and analysis using data analytics. The institutional data can be used for innovations by
technical tools available today. Due to immense opportunities, Data analytics has become an
attractive option to study for students as well.

The insights provided by the big data analytics tools help in knowing the needs of customers
better. This helps in developing new and better products. Improved products and services with
new insights can help the firm enormously. This may help the customers too as they get better
offerings satisfying their needs effectively.

All in all, Data analytics has become an essential part of the companies today.

Job Opportunities and Big Data Analytics

With huge interest and investment in the Big Data technologies, the professionals carrying the
skills of big data analytics are in huge demand. The organizations pay attractive incentives and
packages for qualified professionals. The IT professionals like engineers and data administrators
can learn the analytics tools for a promising career.

In different domains of industry, the nature of the job differs and so does the requirement of
the industry. Since analytics is the emerging in every field, the workforce needs are equally
enormous. The job titles may include Big Data Analyst, Big Data Engineer, Business Intelligence
Consultants, Solution Architect, etc.

What Does Data Scientist do?

Data Scientists perform an exploratory analysis to discover insights from the data. They also use
various advanced machine learning algorithms to identify the occurrence of a particular event in

44
the future. This involves identifying hidden patterns, unknown correlations, market trends and
other useful business information.

Roles of Data Scientist

What do Big Data Professionals do?

The responsibility of a big data professional lies around dealing with huge amount of
heterogeneous data, which is gathered from various sources coming in at a high velocity.

Big data professionals describe the structure and behavior of a big data solution and how it can
be delivered using big data technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Kafka etc. based on
requirements.

Roles of Big Data Professional

What does a Data Analyst do?

Data analysts translate numbers into plain English. Every business collects data, like sales
figures, market research, logistics, or transportation costs. A data analyst’s job is to take that
data and use it to help companies to make better business decisions.

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 Roles of Data Analyst

Benefits of Big Data Analytics

Organizations decide to deploy big data analytics for a wide variety of reasons, including the
following:

• Business Transformation: In general, executives believe that big data analytics offers
tremendous potential to revolution their organizations. In the 2016 Data & Analytics
Survey from IDGE, 78 percent of people surveyed agreed that over the next one to three
years the collection and analysis of big data could fundamentally change the way their
companies do business.

• Competitive Advantage: In the MIT Sloan Management Review Research

Report Analytics as a Source of Business Innovation, sponsored by SAS, 57 percent of
enterprises surveyed said their use of analytics was helping them achieve competitive
advantage, up from 51 percent who said the same thing in 2015.

• Innovation: Big data analytics can help companies develop products and services that
appeal to their customers, as well as helping them identify new opportunities for
revenue generation. Also in the MIT Sloan Management survey, 68 percent of
respondents agreed that analytics has helped their company innovate. That's an
increase from 52 percent in 2015.

• Lower Costs: In the NewVantage Partners Big Data Executive Survey 2017, 49.2 percent
of companies surveyed said that they had successfully decreased expenses as a result of
a big data project.

• Improved Customer Service: Organizations often use big data analytics to examine
social media, customer service, sales and marketing data. This can help them better
gauge customer sentiment and respond to customers in real time.

• Increased Security: Another key area for big data analytics is IT security. Security
software creates an enormous amount of log data. By applying big data analytics
techniques to this data, organizations can sometimes identify and thwart cyber attacks
that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

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Big Data Analytics Challenges
Implementing a big data analytics solution isn't always as straightforward as companies hope it
will be. In fact, most surveys find that the number of organizations experiencing a measurable
financial benefit from their big data analytics lags behind the number of organizations
implementing big data analytics. Several different obstacles can make it difficult to achieve the
benefits promised by big data analytics vendors:

• Data Growth: One of the biggest challenges of big data analytics is the explosive rate of
data growth. According to IDC, the amount of data in the world's servers is roughly
doubling every two years. By 2020, those servers will likely hold 44 zettabytes of digital
information. To put that in perspective, that is enough data to fill a stack of iPads
stretching from the earth to the moon 6.6 times. Big data analytics solutions must be
able to perform well at scale if they are going to be useful to enterprises.

• Unstructured Data: Must of the data stored in an enterprise's systems doesn't reside in
structured databases. Instead, it is unstructured data, such as email messages, images,
reports, audio files, videos and other types of files. This unstructured data can be very
difficult to search—unless you have advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. Vendors
are constantly updating their big data analytics tools to make them better at examining
and extracting insights from unstructured data.

• Data Silos: Enterprise data is created by a wide variety of different applications, such as
enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, customer relationship management (CRM)
solutions, supply chain management software, ecommerce solutions, office productivity
programs, etc. Integrating the data from all these different sources is one of the most
difficult challenges in any big data analytics project.

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 • Cultural Challenges: Although big data analytics is becoming commonplace, it hasn't
infiltrated the corporate culture everywhere yet. In the NewVantage Partners Survey,
52.5 percent of executives said that organizational hurdles like lack of alignment,
internal resistance or lack of coherent strategy were preventing them from using big
data as widely as they would have liked.

Big Data Analytics Trends

What's coming next for the big data analytics market? Experts offer a number of predictions.

1) Open Source

As big data analytics increases its momentum, the focus is on open-source tools that help break
down and analyze data. Hadoop, Spark and NoSQL databases are the winners here. Even
proprietary tools now incorporate leading open source technologies and/or support those
technologies. That seems unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

2) Market Segmentation

Plenty of general-purpose big data analytics platforms have hit the market, but expect even
more to emerge that focus on specific niches, such as security, marketing, CRM, application
performance monitoring and hiring. Analytics tools are also being integrated into existing
enterprise software at a rapid rate.

3) Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

As interest in AI has skyrocketed, vendors have rushed to incorporate machine learning and
cognitive capabilities into their big data analytics tools. According to Gartner, by 2020, almost
every new software product, including big data analytics, will incorporate AI technologies. In
addition, the company says, "By 2020, AI will be a top five investment priority for more than 30
percent of CIOs."

4) Prescriptive Analytics

Fueled by this rush to AI, expect companies to become more interested in prescriptive analytics.
Seen by many as the "ultimate" type of big data analytics, these tools will not only be able to
predict the future, they will be able to suggest courses of action that might lead to desirable
results for organizations. But before these types of solutions can become mainstream, vendors
will need to make advancements in both hardware and software.

Refocusing on the Human Decision-Making?

As machine learning improves and becomes a table stakes feature in analytics suites, don't be
surprised if the human element initially gets downplayed, before coming back into vogue.

Two of the most famous Big Data prognosticators/pioneers are Billy Beane and Nate Silver.
Beane popularized the idea of correlating various statistics with under-valued player traits in

48
order to field an A's baseball team on the cheap that could compete with deep-pocketed teams
like the Yankees.

Meanwhile, Nate Silver's effect was so strong that people who didn't want to believe his
predictions created all sorts of analysis-free zones, such as Unskewed Polls (which, ironically,
were ridiculously skewed). Many think of Silver as a polling expert, but Silver is also a master at
Big Data analysis.

In each case, what mattered most was not the machinery that gathered in the data and formed
the initial analysis, but the human on top analyzing what this all means. People can look at
polling data and pretty much treat them as Rorscharch tests. Silver, on the other hand, pours
over reams of data, looks at how various polls have performed historically, factors in things that
could influence the margin of error (such as the fact that younger voters are often under-
counted since they don't have landline phones) and emerges with incredibly accurate
predictions.

Similarly, every baseball GM now values on-base percentage and other advanced stats, but few
are able to compete as consistently on as little money as Beane's A's teams can. There's more to
finding under-valued players than crunching numbers. You also need to know how to push the
right buttons in order to negotiate trades with other GMs, and you need to find players who will
fit into your system.

As Big Data analytics becomes mainstream, it will be like many earlier technologies. Big Data
analytics will be just another tool. What you do with it, though, will be what matters.

Example of Data Analytics

Coca-Cola

Product development

Coca Cola is known to have ploughed extensive research and development resources into artificial
intelligence (AI) to ensure it is squeezing every drop of insight it can from the data it collects.

Fruits of this research were unveiled earlier this year when it was announced that the decision to
launch Cherry Sprite as a new flavour was based on monitoring data collected from the latest
generation of self-service soft drinks fountains, which allow customers to mix their own drinks.

Healthy options

The company combines weather data, satellite images, information on crop yields, pricing factors
and acidity and sweetness ratings, to ensure that orange crops are grown in an optimum way, and
maintain a consistent taste.

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The algorithm then finds the best combination of variables in order to match products to local
consumer tastes in the 200-plus countries around the world where its products are sold.

Social data mining

Coca Cola closely tracks how its products are represented across social media, and in 2015 was able
to calculate that its products were mentioned somewhere in the world an average of just over once
every two seconds.

Knowing this gives insight into who is consuming their drinks, where their customers are, and what
situations prompt them to talk about their brand. The company has used AI-driven image
recognition technology to spot when photographs of its products, or those of competitors, are
uploaded to the internet, and uses algorithms to determine the best way to serve them
advertisements.

Netflix Recommendation System

With over 100 million subscribers, the company collects huge data, which is the key to achieving the
industry status Netflix boasts. Whenever you access the Netflix service, their recommendations
system helps you find a show or movie to enjoy with minimal effort.

The likelihood that you will watch a particular title in the catalogue is estimated based on a number
of factors including:

• your interactions with the service (such as your viewing history and how you rated other

titles),

• other members with similar tastes and preferences on the service

• information about the titles, such as their genre, categories, actors, release year, etc.

To best personalize the recommendations following factors are considered:

• the time of day you watch,

• the devices you are watching Netflix on, and

• how long you watchddx

All of these pieces of data are used as inputs that are processed in the algorithms. The
recommendations system does not include demographic information (such as age or gender) as part
of the decision making process.

To improve the recommendation system, feedback from every visit to the Netflix service is collected
used to and continually re-train the algorithms with those signals to improve the accuracy of their
prediction of what you’re most likely to watch.

UOB bank from Singapore

UOB bank from Singapore is an example of a brand that uses big data to drive risk management.

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Working with Cloudera, UOB has a big data platform that gives business staff and data scientists
faster access to relevant and quality data for self-service analytics, machine learning, and emerging
artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Thousands of files - from transaction, customer, trade, deposit,
and loan systems – are loaded into the Cloudera platform every day. The platform currently supports
approximately 2 petabytes (PB) of data.

Results

• A new recommendation engine increased conversion rates with the ability to understand
lifestyle preferences and deliver personalized offers and recommendations to millions of
customers and merchants
• Advanced AML detection capabilities help analysts detect suspicious transactions earlier
based on hidden relationships of shell companies and high-risk individuals
• Customer analytics insights enable corporate relationship managers to better understand
global client networks and identify new revenue opportunities.
• A market sentiment solution that uses natural language processing to analyze more than six
years of investment analyst reports, helping executives better understand analyst sentiment
and predict potential questions and opportunities as they prepare for briefings

Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods

Amazon knows the online customer backwards and forwards, but when it comes to understanding
the brick-and-mortar shopper, they lack insight. Amazon didn’t buy Whole Foods for the business -
they bought it for the data.

What exactly is in the Whole Foods data that Amazon would want? Answer: Grocery buying habits
and patterns. Preferences. Correlations between purchases of different products and even different
categories.

With massive amounts of data from Whole Foods shoppers, Amazon will ultimately be able to tailor
the grocery shopping experience to the individual. Amazon has already mastered the process of
upselling, i.e. offering additional items that go with the items the consumer is looking to buy. With
consumables like groceries, Amazon will know when you run out of cereal and will present you with
the offer to buy more at precisely the right time. Alternatively, the new box of cereal may just show
up at your door at the moment you take that last bite.

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