What Should Data Scientists Know?

Are there really 28,504 data scientist positions posted on the recruiting site Dice.com? That’s the number that comes up when you search for “data scientist,” but that incorporates listings that include both words, together or not. According to Dice, the number at any given time is actually more like 150.
Even so, it’s a desirable job. After all, no less than the Harvard Business Review, back in 2012, dubbed the position of data scientist as the sexiest job of the 21st century. As Wired noted the following year, “Nate Silver’s eerily accurate election predictions and Paul DePodesta’s baseball-revolutionizingMoneyball techniques” made celebrities of math nerds. Just a week or so ago, Mashable called it2015’s hottest profession.
In a stunning collision of increased demand and diminished supply, though, a couple of weeks ago CNBC’s Nyshka Chandran cited data from both McKinsey and IDC showing there will be horrific shortfalls in the number of data scientist candidates available. Forbes columnist Louis Columbus, looking at where big data jobs will be in 2015, used data from Wanted Analytics and reached similar conclusions.




Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardbaldwin/2015/01/05/what-should-data-scientists-know/?ss=data-companies

The Dark Side Of Open Data: It's Not Only How Much You Publish, But How And Why

A few days ago, the World Wide Web Foundation established by Sir Tim Berners-Lee released the second edition of the Open Data Barometer, a report on the impact and prevalence of open data initiatives around the world. Turns out the UK government is the “most transparent” in the world, when it comes to public access to official data, with US and Sweden in second and third place respectively.
That’s fantastic, isn’t it? Opening the data (which already belongs to the public, as it is produced with taxpayers’ money) can expose corruption and abuse, provide new insights on sensitive topics, help engage citizens in important debates, improving, in the end, the overall quality of democracies. So, kudos to the British and God forgive the Kenyans, whose country has fallen from to 22nd to 49th in the Barometer’s rankings. Shame on them. Or, at least, that’s how the prevailing narrative goes.
There’s undoubtedly a lot of truth in this position. Transparency can help keep public servants, or evenprivate companies accountable for what they do. However, the very idea that data can be a tool of change highlights the fact that it is not “neutral”. The release has an impact on society and the kind of impact it has depends a lot on the way it’s done, by whom and for what reasons. The concept that the more you release, the more you benefit, while not wrong, might at least be a little simplistic.


Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2015/01/27/the-dark-side-of-open-data-its-not-only-how-much-you-open-but-how-and-why/?ss=data-companies

Gartner Predicts Three Big Data Trends for Business Intelligence

Big data has given businesses a window into valuable streams of information from customer purchasing habits to inventory status. However, internal data streams give only a limited picture, especially with the growth of digital business.

Three trends Gartner has identified describe information’s ability to transform business processes over the next few years.

Our predictions include:

No. 1: By 2020, information will be used to reinvent, digitalize or eliminate 80% of business processes and products from a decade earlier.As the presence of the Internet of Things (IoT) — such as connected devices, sensors and smart machines — grows, the ability of things to generate new types of real-time information and to actively participate in an industry’s value stream will also grow.

Source:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2015/02/12/gartner-predicts-three-big-data-trends-for-business-intelligence/?ss=data-companies

Hitachi Pentaho Acquisition Shows the Power of the Data Supply Chain

Hitachi Data Systems announced today it was purchasing Pentaho, the open source data integration and analytics company, in a move that shows the growing importance of technology to support data supply chains.

James Dixon, cofounder and CTO of Pentaho who coined the term “data lake”, and the rest of the crew at Pentaho have pursued a focused vision based on a core belief in value of open source technology and excellent execution of the open core model for capturing license revenue. By creating a system for data integration, adding components for visualization and management, but at the same time not ignoring basic food groups such as reporting, Pentaho is a key technology for integrating many different sources of data.

As Hadoop rose in importance, Pentaho was one of the first companies to allow developers to bypass map/reduce programming and instead use visual modeling of data transformations to transform large data sets in Hadoop.

Now, Hitachi Data Systems will be able to use Pentaho for the glue to hold together and integrate the massive web components it brings to its Social Innovation Strategy.

The press release announcing the deal noted that “Seamless integration of solutions for big data requires capabilities in several areas, including deep domain expertise, analytics technology, and an end-to-end platform. Hitachi is entirely unique in its ability to deliver on all of these elements.”

Source:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2015/02/10/hitachi-pentaho-acquisition-shows-the-power-of-the-data-supply-chain/?ss=data-companies

Evaluating the MapR Vision: Big Data Architecture as a Product

Early adopters want tools, but the bulk of the market wants products. Big data doesn’t change this principle. It is natural that in the early stages the raw power of tools should be celebrated. That explains the justified excitement about the potential of Hadoop and its surrounding ecosystem. But for the world to embrace big data, we need products.

The question is what kind of products will be built? Who will they be designed to serve? How well will they fit? To build a product, you must make choices about what is configurable and what is not. Where and how you allow degrees of freedom is crucial to the fit of the product to your intended market segments.

The ideal of course is to be able to deliver a product and a set of configurations that makes it work just like the customer wants. If you get this right you can serve many different markets by offering different configurations.

In its announcement on 2/18, MapR made a strong statement about its vision of the right product to support use of big data in the business world. MapR’s product is its platform, a set of integrated technologies that can be configured to meet various needs. MapR’s platform supports development, so in that sense, it can be thought of as a tool, but it also integrates a variety of technologies in a way that implies the kind of applications needed to make big data valuable. In this way, MapR’s platform is a product. Here’s what they offer:

Source :

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2015/02/20/evaluating-the-mapr-vision-big-data-architecture-as-a-product/?ss=data-companies

Code on the Strip

Visual Studio Live! is hitting the open road on the ultimate code trip to help you navigate the .NET Highway.

Our first stop is Las Vegas, situated fittingly near Historic Route 66. Developers, software architects, engineers, and designers will cruise onto the Strip for five days of unbiased and cutting-edge education on the Microsoft Platform. Explore hot topics like Visual Studio 2013, ASP.NET, JavaScript, Cross-Platform Mobile, Data Management, HTML5, and so much more.

Code with .NET gurus, test-drive ideas with industry experts, and get top-of-the-line advice from Microsoft insiders in workshops, 60+ sessions and fun networking events – all designed to make you better at your job.






BONUS CONTENT: Modern Apps Live! will be a part of Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas at no additional charge. This unique conference has a single focus: building a modern app from start to finish.

Code on the Strip — register before February 25 and receive $300 off your registration!


Source:
http://vslive.com/events/las-vegas-2015/Home.aspx