You have to love technology, like the cloud. It’s always changing and improving. There is always another new jargon or new tech concepts that come out. Each one has a business problem to solve. Each innovation improves on existing technology.
Cloud is no longer just a buzzword
A few years ago, cloud computing was nothing more than a buzzword. IT experts were still trying to understand issues, such as security and availability, when you use these services. A lot of security-related fake news went around. It was so bad that people even questioned when big companies migrated to the cloud.
Over time, however, it became apparent that cloud computing is here to stay. It proved its value to businesses. Security myths were busted. Today, cloud computing is everywhere and used by the world’s top companies. Instead of fighting over whether to use a particular cloud service provider, board rooms are now abuzz with multi-cloud strategies,
What’s next?
The prevalence of the cloud has given rise to two new tech areas: artificial intelligence and machine learning. Technology and business leaders are looking to use these technologies to monetize their data, increase profitability, and gain a bigger share of the market.
Each one of these businesses would like to see artificial intelligence provide them an edge over their competitors. Or help them manufacture new or better products. Furthermore, they like to use it to help with their business decisions.
Not everyone is sold on machine learning and artificial intelligence, however. There are those who just do not see any value in these technologies. Some people may not be familiar with these terms at all, often using them interchangeably. What’s gloomier is that some companies do not even realize that they are sitting on a gold mine. They have chunks and chunks of data that they are generating, storing, and wasting money on. These data can provide them with a treasure trove of insights. But they do not even use it.
Getting valuable insights from raw data
If you think about it, you can liken raw data to oil, while insights and business information can be likened to petrol. You can certainly get gold nuggets of business information from the data you already have.
How do you do this? You can make use of data visualization or analysis tools. Some software you can try includes AWS Quick Sight, Microsoft Power BI, or Tablue, among many others. Some of these tools are on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning you only pay for the resources you actually use.
These tools can show you valuable insights into your operations. What’s more, you can use it in a lot of areas, not just in management. For instance, your company’s sales data can help improve inventory and marketing systems. It can also help your purchasing department do their jobs. So looking at your sales will not only help managers and sales staff but also at least three other departments in the process.
The tools that you have for artificial intelligence and machine learning can also unearth new trends that you might not have considered before. These tools can analyze data and present it in a form that you can easily understand.
While data visualization tools cannot fully replace cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, there are a lot of benefits to using them. For one, it can help decision makers settle issues and decide on business models, areas of focus, and others.
Photo courtesy of IBM Research.
