When your customers value your business propositions, what should be the next is the question to be asked to every business entrepreneur today.  As per the recent survey, 80% of you do, but only 8% of your customers actually come back to you and agree that you provide superior value.

Now it’s not going to help you out as it is a sad state of affairs, for you and for your customers too. It’s self-evident that great customer satisfaction drives customers loyalty as well a wish to repeat your business levels to more or to next stage; this will, in turn, help you to grow fast and more generously with expected revenues.  Best example:  When you follow up on your sales leads and identified by your loyalty surveys that your revenue increases of more than you expected.

Since we know that everyone today is more cautious about keeping their date safe, collecting it, or using it to improve and maintain their customer relationship for as long as they can. But, back then there are still constraints on server and storage capacity, which leads to lack of high-scale software tools, limited companies’ ability to understand their customers.

Today, all that has changed, using the resources are available in the cloud, but how far, as you know that virtually unlimited amounts of cheap storage, complicated analytics, and gadget learning, to name a few is possible now to gain of detailed and actionable insights as never before; and you can truly know our customers.

Take an example: A famous sports franchise captures every interaction the championship team has with its fans from the website to online merchandising to mark on social feeds and grabs more attention towards its brands.

If you want to implement such advanced techniques to your business growth then there are tools available in the market such as Dynamics Online, Dynamics Marketing, Microsoft Office 365 and Power BI for Data Visualization.

Many businesses do not use application analytics for improving their customer relationships. According to Forrester, it’s more likely to use analytics first and foremost to monitor and improve the performance of your applications.  That’s a good thing to do- but if performance is all you need to monitor, as you are leaving your money on the table; make sure that your priorities in digital marketing must include by improving your customer engagement, your customers wants, which makes you too easy the work and measure convenience, personalization and trust.  

Successful companies including your competitors are increasingly aware that they are all inevitably becoming software and analytics companies.  All the data is in use or the data they collect from their customers can be analyzed to maximize your relationship and of course your profits. That means that software which is not ready must become a core competency for your company.

MARC ANDREESSEN famously remarked as venture capitalist a few years ago marked — Software, is “eating the world.”

The value proposition of Cloud computing — the delivery model for digitalization and innovation has evolved from cost reduction and scalability to mobility and cognitive computing.  However, the other benefit is a path to improve customer loyalty using cognitive services through a cloud to create personalized promotions and interactive customer support.

This thinking has extended the idea of a cloud assessment beyond traditional and advanced IT analytics that aimed to improve the customer experience and expectations. The purpose of this customer-centric approach is not which cloud is the best fit for any application; instead, it should, which cloud is the most innovative in adding to hosting services.

The cloud suitability assessment in traditional approach is to evaluate the IT systems using prearranged criteria and to identify the best suitable cloud hosting environment. By implementing such environment you can evaluate cost reduction, agility, scalability, and flexibility. However, such assessments often result in creating a hybrid cloud (private and public) for enterprise-level customers.

While based on every organization’s IT need and policies, it is crucial to tailor assessment criteria which are typically included on latency (performance), accessibility, hardware dependency, data security/privacy and demand certainty. Thus, the end result is to migrate your application to the cloud, but that is not enough to be competitive in many markets today.

However, these assessments are like foundations to new analysis which aims to transform traditional IT systems into cloud-based systems to enhance the customer based services. 

This new cloud assessment requires added evaluation criteria’s, such as cross-platform compatibility, integration involvedness, open technologies, and cognitive computing applicabilitys. These criteria’s can overlap with architectural design principles, and enable innovative services through IT systems running in the cloud.

Here are some questions that may help you to make out any gaps and achieve your innovative goals that go beyond legacy cloud migration.

• Is the cloud environment hypervisor sceptic to application portability?
• Is the cloud environment able to exchange in that it uses open technologies as OpenStack, Cloud Foundry or Spark?
• Will cognitive computing help you learn imperceptible patterns and enhance your services?
• Can the application architecture be converted into microservices with REST APIs; so each service can be separately updated as well as scale out on demand?
• Can APIs for multiple applications and services be centrally managed in the cloud?

This comprehensive assessment will make your systems or applications land in a cognitive ready cloud environment so you can speed up the design and implementation phase to innovative services.

The potential for these services is every time unlimited, so you need to consider the new insights made possible by cognitive computing. With the help of cognitive services process, you can see the tremendous amount of structured and unstructured data generated by billions of mobile devices every day.

It’s time to go beyond migrating your applications and systems into the cloud, and also look into its readiness for innovations how cloud and cognitive services could revolutionize your customer experiences.  By doing so you could drive your digital transformation.

• Diigo, Pocket, Evernote and Delicious are some of the famous bookmarking websites that allow the users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes to specific highlights.  You can access to these WebPages anywhere and on any device.  By using, Diigo you can create your own personal library. Diigo is the preferred tool for educators.

• Diigo allows you to highlight the paragraphs and picture clips while you are reading.
• You can bookmark any page in your “virtual” library or online archive, even PDFs or videos.Add your own tags to search for information later.
• You can add your entire school or class in Diigo as a group, and share the resources as needed.For example, a physics class might share its content, online lessons, or practical assignments.

• Use a reader to subscribe to blogs.  You can do this through Google reader; as it allows you to manage multiple subscriptions to blogs; and you have easier access to new research.  You can also use an application like Yahoo News Social or Scribd to publically share what you read with others.
• Start your own platform. Consider establishing a blog site using Word Press or blogger.com.  A blog provides a worldwide platform to share your views, ideas and plans of education. Spread your passion and find kindred spirits, from there you can start develop lasting connections and plan new projects.  Make good followers and follow your fellow bloggers, as they will appreciate the time you put into creating significant materials. Your ideas can be then be re-shared as a link.
• Make use of Social Networks. Start sharing your ideas or content on Twitter first. You can use of technology and change anything using it, but Twitter is the most commonly used community among academics for expanding professional learning networks. Whereas,   LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ also provide access to different types of networks; but they are into more connecting professionals, family and friends rather than learning. However, you can use other tools to further expand and manage your network, such as Skype and Google tools. Many new platforms are emerging so stay connected to the current trends or be active participate of social media news sites like, Mashable, BBC, ToI, etc.

• Power your role, by introducing new topics, write-ups and by empowering your global learning; as ‘Individual Learning’, sheds some light on learning roles. Consider your learning style when designing a specific approach to your learning network:

• Advance your learning by writing a blog.
• Be a reflector; learn by reviewing situations, and post opinions to articles.
• Prefer to learn by researching information and data, such as by creating a model.
• Pragmatist-Apply learning to real situations, such as by creating a project that uses PLNs in the classroom.

According to Wikipedia, professional learning network role can include, “searcher, assemblator, designer of data, innovator of subject matter, and researcher”.

• Aggregate resources together. Applications like Flip Toast and Hoot Suite allow you to merge all of your social media accounts into one interface. You may want to play around with different types of portals until you find the one that is right for you. Map out an organized plan for using your PLN. There is a great chart of resources for mapping out your PLN plan on this blog.
• Take a free course to learn about PLNs. MOOCs are Massive Online Open Courses that are free to the public.  For instance, this course complete with handouts shows you how to establish a PLN.  You learn actively by taking small steps to create your PLN, such as creating a blog, twitter account, and content.
• Stay current with new tools. For example, try Pearltrees. This is one of my favorite new tools for PLNs.  Pearltrees is basically a visual organizer for your links.  Pearls are collaborative and public.  You can add pearls as you browse and share them with others on Twitter and Facebook.  Customize your experience.   There are many specific tools on different applications that allow you to customize and organize your PLN to fit your own needs.  Chrome and Windows 8 have several free applications that are worth trying.
• Simplify logins. You can speed up the log in process by installing a Password management application.  To further simply your PLN, use Google to keep a shared document drive, email, chat, and Google+ networking in one place.
• Establish a classroom learning network. Share your own expertise with other educators on a website or blog.  Create a class website or teach students how to create their own PLN. You might want to design a classroom project that relies on using one aspect of PLNs.  Doing so allows you to learn new ways to use PLNs. A YouTube video, The Networked Student, does an excellent job of explaining how a student might engage in a PLN. Teach students how to establish a PLN in small steps.  For instance, they might use Google scholar to research a paper or share ideas on Google Hangouts.

Professional learning Network is a powerful change agent. And in today’s world an online professional learning network is indispensable.  Technology allows easy access to an unparalleled network of professional resources. Growing your network can lead to opportunities for professional growth and help change the future of education.

Big or small, companies today are finding different ways to capture and use more data. Almost everyone agrees to this that Big Data has taken the business world by storm. But what’s next?  What are the technologies which will develop around it?

Or Will data continue to grow; and can it become a relic as quickly as the next trend — Cognitive Technology? Fast Data? - appears on the prospect. Let’s look at some of the predictions from the foremost experts in the field, and how likely they are to come to pass and see how the push to make big data more mainstream and stronger in 2016. 

• Volume of Data will grow. There’s absolutely no question that companies will continue generating larger and larger volumes of data, particularly considering the number of handheld devices and Internet-connected devices are expected to grow exponentially by 2020.
• Ways to examine data will advance. Though SQL is still the standard, Spark is rising as a paired tool for analyzing and will continue to grow, according to analysts.  
• More tools for analysis. Microsoft MSFT +2.24% and Salesforce are recently announced features to let non-coders create apps to view business data, furthermore the tech experts are on developing more tools.
• Regulatory analytics will be built in to business analysis software. As per IDC predictions half of all business analytics software will be integrated to the intelligence by 2020.
• Real-time streaming insights into data will be the certifying the data winners moving forward according to Forrester. There will be huge growth as many users will want to be able to use data to make decisions in their real time with programs like Spark and Kafka.   
• Device learning is going to be top strategic trend for 2016, according to Gartner predicts, we can see more that of device learning; as it will become the necessary element for data preparation and predictive analysis in businesses to move forward.  
• BD will face vast challenges around privacy, especially with the new privacy regulation introduced by the European Union. Companies and businesses will be forced to address the ‘gaint in the room’ around their privacy controls and procedures. Gartner predicts that by 2018, more than 50% of business ethics violations will be related to Data.
• Companies will look for a Chief Data Officer. As per Forrester the future businesses will be in need of a CDO; who will see a rise in prominence in the short term. But again for certain types of businesses and even generational differences will see less need for them in the future.
• Independent agents and things will be the huge trends; Gartner includes that robots, autonomous vehicles, virtual personal assistants, and smart advisers will the future trends.  

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• Data staffing shortages will grow from analysts and scientists to include experts and architects in Data Management according to IDC.  
• BD talent crunch may ease; as companies employ new strategies and the International Institute for Analytics predicts that organizations may increase their recruiting and provide internal trainings to get their personnel problems solved.
• Data-as-a-service model is on the scope. Forrester suggests that after IBM, more businesses will attempt to monetize their Data.
• Cognitive technology will be the new buzzword for many businesses in future, the link between cognitive computing and analytics will become identical in much the same way that businesses now see similarities between analytics and Big Data.
• Companies and Data businesses will grow; according to Forrester more companies and businesses will attempt to drive value and revenue from their data.  
• Businesses using their data will see billions in productivity benefits; according to International Institute for Analytics this will happen over their competition not using data by 2020.
• Fast Data and Actionable Data is going to replace Big data; some of the experts say that  argument is that big isn’t necessarily better when it comes to data, and that businesses don’t use a fraction of the data they have access too. Instead, the idea suggests companies should focus on asking the right questions and making use of the data they have — big or otherwise.

Time will only tell which of these predictions will come to real pass and which will merely pass into darkness. But the important takeaway will be all about Big data that is only going to get bigger and every business for and into data and for those companies that ignore it will be left further and further behind.  

Challenge

Corporate leaders recognize that market growth is dependent on customer-centric service delivery models which demand rapid delivery of high-quality software systems. However, there are no specific theories to measure the readiness of the organizations to adopt DevOps culture. Today’s customer has become smart, and Organizations are changing their stance for faster application delivery to live up to the customer expectations. But, organizations encountering with operations, process, and development, will in turn heap up challenges in terms of aligning with governance and strategy.        

Assessing success in a business context is acute, but because DevOps isn’t a formal framework, organizations can still have little way of guidance to assess its efficiency. But this can be a little delicate activity when organizations try to measure systems which are output-based or used on some metrics or methods that incentivize behaviors counter to a DevOps culture.       

Why DevOps?

So far it was assumed that DevOps isn’t easy and it can be a struggle to manage and implement it productively. Today there are several approaches made it easy for the organizations that are looking towards adopting DevOps. Through DevOps Assessments Program Organizations can identify, manage, and implement DevOps principles productively.  DevOps has demonstrated serious effectiveness for accelerating software development and rationalizing the interaction of operations and quality assurance (QA) departments. DevOps imposes demands that every organization needs to be ready to address.    

Opportunity

When adopting DevOps, organizations should consider new approaches identifying and implementing DevOps assessment program. Since DevOps is all about building a robust culture to enhance IT service deliveries, this will include deliberation for actionable metrics that are open, transparent and promote collaboration. DevOps is undoubtedly an extension of agile and lean principles. It is a revolution resulting in an evolution of agile that extends the practice of agile development for speedy delivery. From the formation of ideas or concepts to production and overcome the obstacles of the walls between operations, development, and business via co-operation & collaboration practices.    

Let us look at some assessments which help organization for DevOps Transformation

Assessment I: Does DevOps bring value to the business? 

Implementing DevOps practices will certainly bring value to the businesses as this can be a buying point where organizations are leaning towards implementation of DevOps. This is because the software development cycles take years of coding and testing before releasing their product and requires a lot of resources to bring the required output of a product. But, what if when sales are not guaranteed and issues such as defects and bugs are raised once the product is out. Such issues will definitely hit the success of the product and ROI.  This is where the implementation of DevOps principles can answer to the above-mentioned issues.

Assessment II: Is IT flexible enough to support DevOps?

When DevOps is included to a new development cycle, it works differently and supports the developers and Quality departments and drives the resources on a much faster schedule to test and support each new release. To make sure the process runs all smooth, IT Companies must install the latest versions of software releases on one or multiple servers in the data or cloud centers, and interconnecting storage, performance monitoring, supporting databases, and other resources.

The IT corporations should thoroughly evaluate the application requirements, and approve the infrastructure and servers, and perform the deployment for the approved product. Such firm processes work well when the organization's staff works on occasional software releases.

Assessment III: Is the company large enough for DevOps?

To implement DevOps principles an organization should be capable enough to support the processes, tools, and the resources to keep DevOps productive. Balancing the resources and demands of the project can be difficult for small businesses at the initial point. However, Small businesses can often outsource the application development or invest in applications like Salesforce rather than in-house CRM package.

Organizations with 50 to 250 may not be able to adopt DevOps principles. Whereas, Organizations with more than 1,000 employees may have more advantages.

Assessment IV: Knowing Organization’s DevOps strategy?

DevOps is a mix of people, tools, and processes. It is not an exercise or an event to implement it successfully with one software, tool or a plan taken out from a book.   

With a comprehensive DevOps assessment and supporting tools, organizations adopting DevOps can:

• Quickly measure and establish clear business terms with effective DevOps processes like continuous delivery and parallel development methods

• Support cross-functional teams around business value conception and continuous development

• identify capacity gaps and initiate the remediation policies to achieve targets and goals

• Eliminate existing practices that counter a strong DevOps culture to prevent the flow value to the businesses and customers

Conclusion

Every company has its own approach towards adopting DevOps and implementing.  Adjusting and adapting the people, tools and processes to meet the organization's unique goals is the main aim to adopt DevOps. In this process of adopting DevOps, hiring developers who are familiar with DevOps workflows & cycles, organize IT staff capable of accommodating dynamic release schedules, implementing a suite of tools facilitate collaboration between developers, QA, and IT and applying strong business management that can drive DevOps adoption.

Today’s corporates often evaluate DevOps potential and insert it by slow degrees, developing proficiency and skills with teams working on small and less prioritized projects. Then they steadily involve these skills and tools to work on critical projects over time to bring the overall success of the product or software.