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International Business Machines‘ (NYSE:IBM) return to growth after five years of declining revenue has been driven by a few different things. A weakening U.S. dollar has boosted the top line thanks to currency translation effects, the continued double-digit expansion of IBM’s growth businesses has offset slumping sales in some legacy businesses, and the launch of the newest z14 mainframe system has provided a boost to the hardware business. The timing of the new mainframe system was just about perfect, coming when IBM absolutely needed to prove that it could grow. A 71% jump in mainframe sales during the fourth quarter of 2017 was enough to push IBM’s total revenue, adjusted for currency, about 1% higher. Momentum continued for the mainframe in the first quarter of 2018 with 54% growth, but currency-adjusted total revenue was just about flat. Unfortunately, this strong mainframe growth probably won’t last. The initial spike in sales following a mainframe launch typically gives way once that launch is lapped. The z14 started shipping toward the end of the third quarter of 2017, so the second half of 2018 will likely feature a mainframe headwind that will test IBM’s ability to produce revenue growth. The mainframe cycleIBM refreshes its mainframe lineup every few years. The z14 was announced in July 2017, about two and a half years after the launch of the z13. Each new mainframe triggers some existing customers to upgrade. This creates a swell in mainframe sales, often lasting a few quarters. After that initial surge, mainframe sales start to slump as the launch is lapped. That slump lasts until the next mainframe refresh, which starts the process over again. Article Credit: The Motley Fool Share this:The post 1 Headwind IBM Will Face This Year appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/1-headwind-ibm-will-face-this-year/ Business success is all about speed: The fast eat the slow. The software agility and technology disruption, demand end results that have World class quality by on-boarding DevOps. The IT department in each Organization strives to build new capabilities with high expectation and results. Though, in recent years the IT Industry has made remarkable progress with achievements in technology innovations, the quality of the applications serving the industry still needs improvement. Many IT projects run inefficiently, slip implementation deadlines, causing outages during and after implementation being cost ineffective. DevOps is a Lean-Agile discipline that extends software development life cycle to address such inefficiencies. DevOps aims to change and improve the relationship between development and IT operations. It advocates better communication and collaboration between these two business units. DevOps PrincipleThe DevOps principle address a cultural change in the way things work during the pre-production and post-production in the deployment or code promotion environment. This cultural change, is not a new concept. It is just that the rapid development takes place with the aim to modernize, automate, and connect the entire process covering infrastructure and application to be outage free with improved quality. Impediments in the JourneyAll business ends up with an hand-off. The hand-off adds business value in the form feedback from the customer that comes as a learning for business partners and vendors to improve the product/business. Today, most business delivery uses Agile methodology from development till deployment process. Many impediments in the journey are due to lack of involvement of potential resources/departments in the delivery process, right from the account management, business analyst, Technical Architects, Designers, Developers, Testers, QA, release engineer, infrastructure engineers, and deployment engineers. Where does DevOps fit?DevOps helps to build smooth transition between the Development and the Operations to have better collaboration, communication, trust. This eliminates the friction and builds the trust between the development and the operations. What are the consequences?All software development starts with a requirement or enhancement/bug fix that ends up into production. The new features, enhancements are utilized by end customers and comes back as feedback. The feedback helps us to improve. DevOps tries to improve the way software hand-off works. DevOps tries to reduce the rework involved during the different stages of the software delivery and the overhead that might occur. Results from the consequencesWe can discuss how rework occurs with an example, Imagine the build that is ready to be tested by the QA. The QA team takes three days to provision environment, deploy and get the build tested. Here, the developer has to wait three days to hear from the QA about their test results. The test results lead to some bug fixes. The developer had to rework after three days on the same code to fix bug. Coming to the discussion of overhead, this can occur when the developer writes introductions for the QA about how to deploy the code the QA environment or spend hours to deploy the code to the development environment, then it is an overhead. Is it Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment?The idea of continuous delivery and continuous deployment is not staying in silos. But, to have shared idea. If you break things while moving fast, then fix it quickly. The actual delivery of software into production quickly without errors to deliver business value is supported by continuous deployment. The key idea by doing things faster and fixing things quickly is shorten the time to market. What does faster time to market result?The shorter time to market means delivery of software products to the end users. This results in rapid feedback or updated to the software products. This idea of continuous delivery allow software product industries to address the incompetence between the different teams such as development, QA, and operations. This reduces the cycle time and address wasteful practices in an end-to-end development process. What adoption is required for having effective DevOps?The following adoption builds an effective DevOps solution: Have reliable process that repeats: DevOps team focus on bringing together the development, QA and deployment teams that work in silos. Though, these teams already have expressed the objective of repeatable process, they result in three different processes to get their code into the correct environments such as development, staging, user acceptance test (UAT), and production. With an effective adoption of continuous delivery by bringing the teams together will result in a continuous process. Maximum Automation: Automation helps to simplifies things, removes human errors, and makes development, testing, and deployment faster. The constant criticism about production outbreaks are due to poor code quality and not as a result of deployment or configuration. By automation, an effective continuous integration can be built into the system. If the code breaks a build or if a new code fails, the feedback is notified immediately so that the proper action is taken before the broken code affects the other code. Mature organization, automate the CI build process by build tools to have continuous build in a single day, which paves the way for a continuous delivery (CD). The adoption that these organizations have made after many challenges is having addressed the components of CD across QA and Operations. Having a foolproof Version Control System: The Version control system(VCS) plays a strategic role to reduce the time to recover. When a failure is identified, it is easy to roll back to the last working state. Big organizations to mid-size-business (MSB) groups must take advantage of having an effective VCS to have control by proper maintenance and governance of source code. To address the continuous build model, all changes are merged to the trunk daily and made common to have a executable build, which is versioned in the VCS. The adoption that successful organizations have taken is versioning all project and source codes from one end of the Application Life cycle Management (ALM) to the other. Practice brings Perfection To err is human, lengthy process and steps are prone to vulnerable to failure or confusion. The adoption taken here is to practice things continuously till they get easier and this demands combination of reward and criticism that has to be tackled. Collaboration and Effective Communication Collaboration and effective communication lay the objective of taking the software into production in shorter cycles after breaking the silos and integrating teams. If development is continuous, deployment increases. If continuous development is integration all the way to release, then successful software to production rate increases. Share this:The post On-boarding DevOps appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/on-boarding-devops/ Get Better Todd Davis review – It may seem obvious, but every meaningful relationship, whether it’s personal or professional, requires a fundamental set of attributes, such as trust, credibility, and considerateness. But that’s only the foundation of what it takes to build and nurture a healthy relationship. Open-mindedness and our general attitude toward those around us is just as important. In this article, you’ll find a toolbox full of tips and ideas that you can immediately start using to create a healthier work environment. With these tools, managers will be better equipped to build strong teams, not to mention construct safe and comfortable places where employees feel respected and appreciated. And any employee eager to improve relations with coworkers can use them, too. It can happen to anyone: you think you have a complete understanding of something – and then, one fateful day, you discover that you had it all wrong. Each of us experiences the world in a different way, but sometimes we get stuck seeing the world from a point of view that has room for only one truth. As a result, we adopt standard perceptions about ourselves and about others, and we begin to believe that this perception is the only reality. You might get stuck thinking thoughts, such as, “I’m just not good enough,” “I’ll never change,” “My coworker is lazy” or “My friend is thoughtless.” Here’s a common scenario: a coworker approaches you, saying that he’s frustrated with another colleague because he thinks that she’s so slow and lazy that she’s going to cause everyone to miss their deadlines. This is what the author, Todd Davis, was confronted with when his colleague Jon came to him with his concerns about their coworker Isabel. Now, Jon wanted Davis to talk to Isabel because Jon believed that he wasn’t a “people person.” So, in Jon’s case, we have someone who believes himself to be bad at dealing with others and perceives Isabel as being slow and plodding. This is his truth, but it doesn’t have to be. The better mindset is to reject narrow viewpoints about yourself, others and the world.It’s your responsibility to take stock of your beliefs. Keep an open mind and hold yourself accountable for any narrow-minded perspectives you might have about yourself. The world or the people in your life. You should also stay open to the perspective of others. The author reminded Jon that he was a good husband and father. Therefore, he likely isn’t so bad at communicating, and if he put his mind to it, he could probably have a productive conversation with Isabel. Perhaps he wasn’t as inept around people as he’d long believed. Jon eventually realized that he’d unfairly labeled Isabel as slow and lazy, without taking the time to talk to her about it or understand her work ethic. Here’s another unfortunately common scenario: A rude customer complains and you lose your temper, firing off a curt email in reply. After some time passes, you cool off and realize how badly you reacted. In situations like these, we have a tendency to let outside factors, over which we have no control, dictate our mood and feelings. For example, how would you react if you found out that a colleague had been secretly working on a competing project behind your back? Surely, you can imagine how this external event might result in your feeling brimful of bitterness the next time you saw the person. When Todd Davis was a young recruiter. He hired a new colleague who managed to negotiate a salary that was far higher than his own. Davis was infuriated that his boss had approved this decision. Which made him feel as though his work were being undervalued and unappreciated. For days, he complained to friends and family while feeling unmotivated and in the dumps. This is a common reaction to unpleasant external events, but there’s a far better way to deal. And the first step is to stop and quietly take a moment to reconsider the situation. Pausing is a great way to stay in control of your mood and feelings. When you allow yourself to calmly stop and think about what’s happening. You give yourself the time to develop a more nuanced understanding of the situation. With calm reflection. You can begin to understand your feelings and why you’re tempted to react in certain ways. Which can lead to better solutions than casting yourself as the victim. After days of complaining, Davis finally paused to consider the situation and he came up with a much better response. He thought to himself, “Why not talk to my boss and ask for a raise?” Sure enough, his boss was receptive to the idea of raising his salary. As long as Davis worked a bit faster on his recruitment tasks in the future. So remember to cool down, breathe and take five minutes to think things over. You’ve probably heard about how important trust is to any successful relationship. It’s true – if people don’t think you’re credible, chances are they won’t have much respect for you. So the challenge is…….. To Read Get Better Todd Davis review (summary) sign up to Blinkist for free (Click here) Ever read 4 books in one day?The post Get Better Todd Davis review (summary) appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/get-better-todd-davis-review-summary/ Will International Business Machines manage to pull off a convincing recovery that some loyal Big Blue bulls suggest? Once the kingpin of the technology universe, IBM has become a lumbering monolith whose stock has lagged behind its more spirited and sprightly peers, such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Currently trading at $145 a share, shares of IBM are way down from its high of $215 in 2013, and is also below its 52-week high of $179. So is there a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel for IBM? Surprisingly, a number of devoted IBM believers remain undeterred in their optimism that hope definitely exists for the long-awaited IBM turnaround. So what’s holding it up? But there are also disbelievers who are as spirited in their disenchantment, who doubt that an IBM recovery is coming anytime soon. One major reason for IBM’s travails is competition has been surprisingly fierce in the ever-expanding technology space. “IBM competes in several concentrated and rapidly evolving markets, and faces competition from cognitive solution vendors, global business, and technology service vendors and systems vendors,” notes Arvind Ramnani, equity analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. But even as he maintains a rating of “sector weight” on the stock, Ramnani argues that as IBM continues to transition its business model, “the pronounced near-term weakness could be an opportunity for patient investors.” He puts the stock’s “fair value” at $160 a share, based on 11 his 2019 earnings projection of $14.44 a share. IBM’s revenue growth in 2018 is positive and continues to be on a double-digit growth pathway, Ramnani points out in a recent note to clients. He sees IBM revenue growth continuing to accelerate in 2018 an 2019. Nonetheless, he also points to certain risks that weigh on the stock, among them his contention that IBM failed to commercialize a “consistent stream of timely innovations” that Ramnani believes may adversely affect the company’s brand image, market share, and profit margins. Even so, there are several IBM bulls who are still steadfast in their support of the stock, emphasizing that IBM is certainly in a better position now than in the prior year. The big question that investors are asking, however, is whether IBM’s efforts to reposition its business will pay off — and when it will come to fruition. Share this:The post Why IBM Is An Attractive Turnaround Bet appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/why-ibm-is-an-attractive-turnaround-bet/
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Privacy & Cookies Policy Go to Source The post Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/who-will-fix-our-internal-banking-mess-tsb-hires-ibm-amid-online-banking-woes/ The annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York is usually a place where Wall Street’s best hedge fund managers and investors present their top stock picks—from Amazon to Valeant Pharmaceuticals. And for the first time in the event’s 23-year history, one of those investors used the Sohn conference stage Monday to recommend a certain digital investment: Bitcoin. John Pfeffer, a partner at his London-based family office Pfeffer Capital, is not only betting on Bitcoin, but giving it a bold price target of $700,000—about 75 times the current Bitcoin price of nearly $9,500. While Pfeffer did not put a time frame on his prediction, his target exceeds even optimistic forecasts from other influential investors such as venture capitalist Tim Draper, who earlier this month predicted the Bitcoin price would reach $250,000 by 2022. “Bitcoin is the first viable candidate to replace gold the world has ever seen,” Pfeffer, a former partner at private equity firm KKR, told the crowd at the Sohn Investment Conference at New York’s Lincoln Center. “So if Bitcoin becomes the dominant non-sovereign store of value, it could be the new gold, or new reserve currency.” Pfeffer’s math works like this: First, he assumes that Bitcoin can logically replace all of the gold bullion currently held by private investors—in other words, the gold bars that people keep in a safe-deposit box or bury in their backyard, simply as a way to park their money in something more dependable than paper. (The gold bars in this example are also what’s known as a “store of value.”) “Bitcoin is vastly easier to store and secure,” Pfeffer said. The current value of all privately held gold bullion is about $1.6 trillion, according to Pfeffer. Assuming there will be 18 million Bitcoins in circulation by the time the cryptocurrency fully replaces gold bullion (about 17 million Bitcoins have been produced so far, out of the maximum 21 million that can exist), the implied value of a Bitcoin would then be $90,000. This is Pfeffer’s most conservative scenario, which he gives 8% odds of coming to fruition. But Pfeffer has even higher hopes for Bitcoin—that it could eventually be to central banks what traditional foreign reserve currencies are today. (From euros to Japanese yen, governments hold foreign cash to pay down international debts and complete other cross-border transactions.) “It’s imaginable that Bitcoin displaces some form of reserves over time,” Pfeffer said at the conference. Share this:The post Why an Investor Is Predicting Bitcoin Could Hit $700,000 appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/why-an-investor-is-predicting-bitcoin-could-hit-700000/ We all need leading indicators to try and predict the future. For me, for Bitcoin and altcoins, an important one is the swings in value of mining rewards. I consider the 1080ti GPU from Nvidia as the benchmark altcoin mining hardware for anyone mining altcoins. While ASICs demand awe, GPUs are the smart way to get into mining – low risk and frankly fun. With an ASIC you buy a dodgy piece of fire hazard equipment, that is only good for one or perhaps two algos, that eats electricity, devalues before your eyes and might be ‘bricked’ by the time you get it. With a GPU, you get a piece of kit you can sell tomorrow to gamers, that can mine a universe of old and new coins, doesn’t sound like a jet engine which will probably damage your hearing and get you cited by the city. [Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.] GPUs are the sweet spot for amateur miners and the 1080ti is the sweet spot amongst the GPUs. Nvidia hate miners but I’m sure they secretly like the giant price premium they have created for their equipment. It can’t be bad for their brand that people will pay hundreds of dollars more for a 1080ti GPU. A few weeks back a 1080ti was earning as much as $8 a day. This meant a miner could get their investment back in under four months. Happy days. Bitcoin had bounced from around $6,000 to $10,000 and rewards for mining had doubled. Then general mining rewards started to dive, and then so did Bitcoin. A 1080ti hit $1.40 a day in mining rewards before they began to rally alongside the cryptomarket. The climb has taken the daily mining reward to a current $2.40 a day. Often changes in mining rewards lead the Bitcoin price and as such are a very useful indicator of what will happen next in cryptocurrency prices. In a market as volatile as the cryptos a trader needs all the indicators they can get and the closer they are to the basic demand and supply fundamentals the better. Share this:The post Mining Rewards Show You What The Bitcoin Price Will Do appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/mining-rewards-show-you-what-the-bitcoin-price-will-do/ Adaptive Insights recently announced the integration of its Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud with NetSuite ERP. The combination of data from NetSuite ERP and Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud gives customers the requisite insights for making better and faster decisions. The Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud’s integration with NetSuite ERP uses open APIs and is built, owned, supported, and maintained by Adaptive Insights. The integration enables customers to utilize all their data in NetSuite ERP to effortlessly develop plans as well as reports with Adaptive Insights. Furthermore, the Business Planning Cloud facilitates importing an expanded set NetSuite standard and custom dimensions, thus giving customers access to a wider group of operational and financial data to enable users across the entire organization. This, in turn, facilitates deeper analyses, reports, and richer plans that driver more informed decision-making. Tom Bogan, CEO, Adaptive Insights, said, “Planning is where strategy and execution meet; in developing a plan, you figure out how to execute your business strategy. A smooth and efficient planning process, informed by data about current business performance, is key to being able to make timely decisions. That’s why companies that want business agility are moving to companywide business planning, and why they’re integrating functional planning into our Business Planning Cloud. We pioneered cloud planning for finance and NetSuite pioneered cloud ERP. Together these purpose-built cloud platforms offer companies an integrated platform that enables far more business users to plan, analyze performance, and speed their decision making—and that’s a true competitive advantage today.” Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud Makes Its Way to France Besides that, the company recently also announced the introduction of Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud in France. Adaptive Insights noted that France constitutes one of its core markets and that it will continue to invest in support, services, and sales resources to meet growing demand in the region. Adaptive Insights has established a team in-country, which includes a new channels director to oversee its French partner sales operations. The French channel network currently includes partners such as Censio, Alsight, Iena, Generation Conseil, ViaReport, and Kelerian Group. Share this:The post Adaptive Insights Integrates Business Planning Cloud with NetSuite ERP appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/adaptive-insights-integrates-business-planning-cloud-with-netsuite-erp/ The rise in predictive analytics is revolutionising the insurance industry by enabling savvy insurers to predict risk Dramatic advances in artificial intelligence and machine-learning technologies have accelerated the ability of insurers to predict risk. Algorithms can find trends and patterns that help forecast the probability of a risk situation occurring again. By utilising internal and external data sources, algorithms are selected according to how a specific model fits with the insurer’s data. This model is applied to predict or detect the likelihood of an event happening, such as a person needing medical attention abroad for travel insurance or a house flooding for home insurance. Insurance and assistance provider The Collinson Group uses a variety of predictive analytical tools to flash through terabytes of data to find variables, some of which it hadn’t considered, to help predict customer risk and purchasing behaviour. With this technology, the company is able to identify fraud and the different networks of fraudsters acting in the market, as well as increase its understanding of customers, and ultimately tailor its offering to provide them with better products and services. “Predictive analytics has enabled a more scientific approach to analysis, allowing us to analyse more data in little or no time, and to explore parameters and factors we could not have identified with the human eye,” says Jean Ortiz-Perez, the company’s head of analytics. “The concept and objective of what we do have not changed, but the mechanisms and techniques are now much more sophisticated.” The role of predictive analytics in insurance can actually be traced back two or three decades in the area of natural catastrophes and climate. Analysis of 50 years of data on hurricanes, for example, has proven extremely powerful in terms of helping insurers to predict future hurricane behaviour and its likely impact. However, this has required a large amount of human input and oversight. More recently property and liability insurers have been playing catch-up with the life insurance sector, where a rich trove of available data, including longevity, gender, country and quality of life, has allowed for clearer analysis and confident predictive outputs. The rapid evolution of machine-learning capability and the wider availability of data through connected devices are now set to make the use of predictive analytics ubiquitous across the industry. And to accelerate the necessary collection of data, new health insurance models are emerging that actively link premiums to analytics. Share this:The post Predictive analytics power cyber-insurance industry appeared first on Statii News. from http://news.statii.co.uk/predictive-analytics-power-cyber-insurance-industry/ |
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