Part -1:
Watson Wins Jeopardy, Leaving Human Champions in its Silicon Dust
Data analytics have interesting applications. Here is one famous example of data analytics in action. Watson is a computer system created by a team of 25 IBM scientists over four years. In 2011, Watson competed against Ken Jennings for Brad Rutter on the game show Jeopardy (see Figure 1.5) in a three-day tournament and won. Watson received the clues as electronic texts at the same time they were made visible to Ken and Brad. Watson would then parse the clues into different keywords and sentence fragments in order to find sta-tistically related phrases. Watson won by using its ability to quickly execute thousands of language analysis algorithms simultaneously to compile potential answers and determine its level of confidence in any given answer.
Questions 1. Explain how Watson figured out the most likely response to win the tournament.
Questions 2. View the IBM demo, "Turning insight into outcomes," at ibm.com/smarterplaneilusien/business_analyticilarticle/ outperform_with_smarter analytics.html.
Figure 1.5 Using data analytics, Watson beats Ken and Brad playing Jeopardy.
Questions 3. Discuss how companies in various industries are using the insights from analytics to achieve significant outcomes in cus-tomer satisfaction and retention, operational efficiency finan-cial processes, and/or risk, fraud, and compliance management.
Part -2:
In 2011, the U.S. government issued the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy that describes cloud computing as a:
profound economic and technical shift (with) great potential to reduce the cost of Federal Information Technology (IT) systems while . . . improving IT capabilities and stimulating innovation in IT solutions.
The strategy is designed to facilitate federal agencies' adoption of cloud computing, support the private sector, and improve the information available to decision makers. The chart in Figure 1.7 shows the government estimates shifting $20 billion of IT spending to cloud computing from its current environment. The benefits of the shift are listed in Figure 1.8.
Questions
1. Why did the federal government shift to the cloud?
2. What external pressures are motivating the shift to cloud computing?
3. What three types of benefits did they expect?
4. In your opinion, was this shift to the cloud a smart decision for taxpayers? ExplainIT at Work H
Radical Change in Opportunities to Gain a Competitive Advantage
Part - 3:
The Information Age is in its second half, according to Gartner, Inc., which differs significantly for the first half. In the Information Age's first 80 years, the primary focus was the technology itself. This led to enormous growth and profits for IBM, Microsoft, and other giant IT providers. To a large extent organizations gained competitive advantages from access to ITs from these providers: for instance, by investing more capital in IT or by having better skills at installing IT in their businesses. The opportunities to gain a competitive edge in these ways don't exist anymore.
Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow predicted:
In the second half of the age, as technology becomes ubiq¬uitous, consumerized, cheaper and more equally available to all, the focus for differentiation moves to exploitation of the technology and to the information it processes.
It is already noticeable that the great fortunes of the sec¬ond half of the age are being made by companies like Google and Facebook, which are not traditional makers of technology.
In this period, the majority of companies that enjoy com-petitive advantage will gain it from a differential ability to see and exploit the opportunities of new kinds of information (Gartner, December 2011)
Despite the weak and uncertain economic situation, no dra-matic cuts to enterprise IT budgets were expected through the mid-2010s. Budgets are being scrutinized closely, and companies have conservative business plans, but IT investments are looked at as critical for ongoing business success.
Questions and Online Activity
1. Explain the differences in the first and second halves of the Information Age, according to Gartner.
2. Register for a free account at gartner.com. Search for the latest webinar on hot IT trends, such as The Gartner Hype Cycle Special Report. Watch the webinar. In a report, identify the title and URL of the webinar; then describe three important trends and their impacts that were covered in the webinar.
Part - 4:
Finding Qualified Talent
Managers at a global energy services company could not find or access their best talent to solve clients' technical problems because of geographic boundaries and business unit barriers. The company's help desks supported engineers well enough for com-mon problems, but not for difficult issues that needed creative solu-tions. Using Web technologies to expand access to experts worldwide, the company set up new innovation communities across its business units, which have improved the quality of its services.
Dow Chemical set up its own social network to help managers identify the talent they need to cany out projects across its diverse business units and functions. To expand its talent pool, Dow extended the network to include former employees and retirees.
Other companies are using networks to tap external talent pools These networks include online labor markets, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and contest services, such as InnoCentive that help solve business problems.
- Amazon Mechanical Turk (https://aws.amazon.com/mturld) is a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. Their web service enables companies to access a diverse, on-demand workforce.
- InnoCentive (https://www.innocentive.com/) is an "open inno¬vation" company that takes R&D problems in a broad range of areas such as engineering, computer science, and business and frames them as "challenge problems" for anyone to solve them. It gives cash awards for the best solutions to solvers who meet the challenge criteria.
Sources: Compiled from McKinsey Global Institute (mckinsey.com/ insights/mgLaspx), Amazon Mechanical Turk (aws.amazon.com/mturk/), and InnoCentive (lnnocentive.com/).
Questions and Online Activities
1. Visit and review the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site. Explain HITs. How do they provide an on-demand workforce?
2. Visit and review the InnoCentive web site. Describe what they do and how.
Part - 5:
Cloud Computing Is Changing the Nature of Jobs
Cloud computing is not only driving changes in organizations, it is also changing the nature of jobs-not only within the IT department-but throughout the enterprise as well.
IT Takes on More Strategic and Executive Roles
For chief information officers (C10s) and other chief executives, cloud-driven changes reflect the more strategic role IT plays in set-ting the direction of businesses. For businesses, cloud storage, services, and other computing arrangement have led to more reli-able and predictable supporting IT.
IT and other managers recognize that the best and most cost-effective solutions-including IT solutions-are those that may have been built, tested, and verified elsewhere.
Being able to identify and leverage from a public cloud or company-owned data centers is becoming a key part of IT lead¬ers' responsibilities. The ability to introduce and develop valuable cloud computing engagements or infrastructure may even be the career path to the corner office, according to a study from CA Technologies (ca.com/). About 54% of 685 CIOs surveyed, believe that cloud computing has enabled them to spend more time on business strategy and innovation. Approximately 71% who have adopted cloud computing see their position as a viable path to pursue other management roles, compared to only 44% of non-cloud adopting CDs.
Growing Demand for Cloud Professionals and Managers
Because of the shift to the cloud, there is growing demand for pro-fessionals and managers who are more focused on business devel-opment than they are in application development. There are greater opportunities for enterprise architects, cloud architects, cloud capacity planners, cloud service managers, and business solu¬tions consultants. Jobs being created may not always bear the term cloud in their titles, but doud is at the core of their job descriptions.
Cloud-Related Job Descriptions-a few examples
Here are two excerpts from the titles and descriptions posted on online job sites. Notice that each job deeply engages the person with business strategy or operations.
- Cloud Computing Architect Serves a critical role to drive the architect/design and implementation for [our) cloud-based solu-tions. Interact effectively with CTO, product manager, and engi-neering managers to drive an optimized solution under known constraints. Provide innovative idea or direction to our product.
- Lead Software Developer-Cloud Computing Focused: This position is a great opportunity for someone who is motivated by building high business value applications and working with smaller teams to directly influence company growth.