“Analysis” is arguably the tech buzzword of the day for businesses.
Summer’s over. Everyone who is still in school has gone back to focusing on their studies. If you have kids in college, they may be taking some analytics classes—maybe topics about data mining, predictive modeling, data visualization, or business statistics.
A quick search of available college classes turned up course titles such as Machine Learning and Optimization in Analytics, Social Network Analytics, Web Analytics, Data Management and Visualization in Analytics, and Computational Techniques for Large Scale Data Analysis.
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
If you’re racking your brain to think back to your own college days, you’re trying too hard. What I’m talking about should come up easily in recent memory. Think “Watson.”
All of those course titles represent things a Watson app or service can do for you. You don’t have to spend a whole semester learning how to do it yourself.
Of course, you do need to learn just what the heck Watson is and what it can do. That in itself could be a whole college course (or two), but we’ve been coaching you through the topic for many months now, and we’ll continue to do so. This month in MC Press Magazine, we have three Watson articles for you. Steve Pitcher explains that Watson isn’t just for the big companies; there’s plenty that SMBs can leverage and take advantage of. For example, consider John Ghrist’s article. This month he’s focusing on the supply chain and revealing the multitude of Watson products designed just for that. And as Dave Shirey points out, you don’t need to buy any specific Watson product to get the results you need. Instead, you can integrate Watson APIs into your own apps, and Dave will tell you how to get started.
As always, MC Press Magazine also brings you an exclusive article you won’t find anywhere but here. This month, Rafael Victoria-Pereira expands on the analytics theme by giving you the next article in his Big Data series. This one is an introduction to the Hadoop framework.
The other articles in this issue of MC Press Magazine include Carol Woodbury’s perspective on “fake news,” but she’s looking at it from an IBM i security point of view. We also have Joe Pluta showing you how to load an array in a way you may never have thought about. And Aaron Bartell continues to educate you about the increasingly popular Node.js programming language. This month, learn how to authenticate with IBM i credentials in a Node.js application using the Hapi framework.
Rounding out this month’s lineup, let’s circle back to the topic of college students. Brian May is especially fond of them. He finds that they make wonderful interns at his company. He’ll tell you why you should analyze the advantages and consider giving students the opportunity to join your team.
By the way, did you ever see the movie Analyze This? Gotta love Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal. They’re both brilliant, and they’re both in this movie!
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn: