Ace Data Corporate Film premieres at CIO Power List event in Lonavla.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GdVcTCwNBQ

Predictive Analysis used by Insurance Companies

All businesses are run at a risk. Risk is the way business is managed. Every decision an organization takes impacts the risks an enterprise can withstand like the risk of customer defecting, of not responding to an expensive glossy mailer or offering a huge retention discount to a customer who was not leaving even otherwise and in turn missing out on a critical customer who leaves.

The data driven means to compute risk of any type of negative outcome in general is predictive analysis. Insurance companies have used this very well. Insurance companies are augmenting their practices by integrating predictive analysis in order to improve pricing and selection decisions. 

The actuarial methods that enable an insurance company to conduct its core business perform the very same function as predictive models: Rating customers by chance of positive or negative outcomes. Predictive modeling improves on standard actuarial methods by incorporating additional analytical automation, and by generalizing to a broader set

Processing Big Data

While many think it is difficult to manage data beyond a volume, technologists don’t agree with this. Newer technologies keep coming in to handle and process large volume of data. Consider Google search. While you are typing what you want to search, it starts autocompleting for you and starts showing you results as well.

All this is done by using clusters of servers at the backend. Data that goes in is processed by these servers so you get a good pool of processors and memory to take it in. Further to this, the storage network used behind to read/write this data offers a huge choice.

If it is a file based data, you can go for a sale-out NAS. If you have to handle block level data, scale-out SAN options are available. To help the really heavy databases, pure Flash based storage is now available.

Flash based storages help achieve upto a few million IOPS especially when they perform on inline deduplication done in the memory. Scale out storage there ensures that adding more capacity automatically gives you more memory to handle the new IOs and deduplication help control the requirement of storage since it could otherwise go for a big on budget.

Cloud Makes Enterprise Class Applications Affordable

Cloud computing has made it very easy for even startup organizations to get the benefits of enterprise class products without the need to implement huge infrastructure and bother about managing it.

Consider starting up your new venture and needing an ERP for a 5 user organization. It would not be very easy decision and for long the organization would run along on spreadsheets and Word documents to take care of their sales planning, purchase, invoicing etc.

With cloud computing gaining momentum, leading enterprise class ERP softwares are available on the Cloud. This means that even a small organization does not need to spend on the application and the hardware infrastructure behind it. No infrastructure means no maintenance as well. No technical team required to take care of operations. Add to this the flexibility of using an application customized for your specific needs and paying on a per user basis. This means your cost increases only when more users get added.

Apart from ERP, other professional applications like mailing and backup are also available on similar basis. Startups and SMBs should consider evaluating Cloud service providers for their basic needs to enjoy the benefits of Enterprise Class Applications at a low cost.

Cloud for Better Management

One big benefit that cloud computing brings in is the hands-off management for the technology user and the internal IT team. When you are hosting applications in-house and build your own infrastructure, you need a lot of expertise in managing the same. You need to have a dedicated application & database manager who is well-qualified to handle this portfolio.

For a large enterprise this may not be a challenge, and they can take care of the staff augmentation challenges. For SMBs though, this could be a big concern. It is for this reason most of them are not able to leverage the benefits of enterprise applications.

Getting the same application on the Cloud brings in the management components with it. A good service provider will ensure that your applications are taken well care of and they are up and running 24x7 with optimal performance. An exceptional service provider would even have a disaster recovery site to ensure smooth operations even if his own Cloud Data Center poses any threat or challenge.

Using Cloud for Disaster Recovery

The base premise of disaster recovery is the way you handle your business in case your primary business site meets a disaster. In my opinion, disaster recovery can be considered as an IT subset of the overall Business Continuity Planning including non IT factors of business as well.

When an organization chooses to host applications on cloud, it automatically gets into the first level of disaster recovery. The application along with all its data is already in a remote data center and the loss of your primary business premise does not affect access to applications and data. They can still be accessed from any other computer and internet connection.

You can also opt for a disaster recovery site for your service provider. This could add to the budget but ensures your data safety and continuity even if their data center is in trouble.

For a low cost disaster recovery option, Ace Data Abhraya would be the right choice for organizations where investment in full online disaster recovery site is still a long way to go. Ace Data Abhraya offers unique backup propositions wherein your backed up data can be used remotely in the event of a primary site disaster, while it continues to offer all the benefits of daily backups which are compressed and deduplicated on-premise to minimize the load on the bandwidth.

In the coming days, we would explain how using Ace Data Abhraya in different deployment scenarios helps organizations achieve disaster recovery for their critical data.

Cloud Eases out Infrastructure Deployment

Remember those old days of the need to have your own computers and servers depending on what you want to do. I have seen many programmers not getting enough resources for practicing and enhancing their skills due to constraints related to the infrastructure requirement.

Cloud computing has brought a paradigm shift into this. Getting IT infrastructure has become so easy today using the backend virtualization techniques. Sitting in your living room, you can now order for a new server online and pay by your credit card on a periodical rental system. You can choose flexible configuration and operating system licensed along with it. Once your task is over, you can choose to discard this server and stop paying further. This is not same as rental server since you are not getting anything physical with you and you do not need a mini Data Center to host it.

The configurations could be flexible and enhanced on-the-fly without waiting for a delivery cycle.

For developers, even the development platforms and respective licenses can be obtained the same way making it easy for them to use a platform. This is not only good for SMBs and IT organizations, it is good for students as well.

Is Virtualization the driving factor for Cloud Computing?

Virtualization has been prevalent for decades in various forms. In the recent times, virtualization of servers and desktops over x86-platform has made a significant change in the way IT was being used. Virtualization gives you the flexibility of using multiple virtual servers created out of dynamic resources from a few physical servers. Resource allocation and re-allocation is very convenient, and most of the functions happen online. Most of these functions can be automated based on usage pattern.

For technologists finding ways of sharing resources, virtualization came up as a blessing. Cloud computing allows different organizations/departments to provision and utilize virtual servers for their own individual use while residing on the same physical hardware. The physical hardware hosted at a service provider’s Data Center allows access to different virtual servers separately.

Virtualization platforms have in-built auto-provisioning, security features and billing systems which charge based on periodic usage. Many service providers have developed web based self-service portals that allow users to create and use their own servers without any external intervention.

So sit back and create your own server with custom configuration and reap the dual benefits of virtualization and cloud computing.