Why It’s Time To Rethink Your Hospital’s Technology
Hospitals have never promoted a technology forward environment. Is it time for a change? I say yes. With the rise of consumer knowledge through social media, consumers can easily search around for the best price and products. This is no different when it comes to dealing with a hospital. Old IT systems in hospitals today are outdated and lack innovation. We’ve heard some ideas of disruptive innovations when it comes to hospitals in class, but what could a hospital gain from changing its systems to be more productive? What type of changes do you feel would be too drastic that the healthcare industry may not need?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/athenahealth/2015/04/13/why-its-time-to-rethink-your-hospitals-technology/
Amazon Launches Machine Learning-As-A-Service
Amazon Web Services is now really starting to utilize it’s EC2 cloud, offering additional services to customers while the company is taking more steps to bring those services closer to the enterprise IT department. What causes the disruption here is that now in some cases, the services offered duplicate or even start to replace some of the older IT functions. Amazon has been steadily expanding what can be done with its cloud computing platform, claiming to have added 516 new features in 2014. One of the most interesting that I have read about was one introduced at its Amazon Summit in San Francisco and is a service not likely to be found in existing IT departments: machine learning.
There are many of cloud providers out there, but some give you a lot more to work with on top of the infrastructure than others, and that is what machine learning differentiates by. Gartner’s lead cloud analyst Lydia Leong said it another way: “IT organizations cannot treat infrastructure-as-a-service providers like commodities. In the process of explaining how Amazon is different, it was announced that Amazon’s latest figures for growth in 2014 stand at: Data transfers in its storage services are up 102% in 2014 over the prior year; EC2 compute activity is up 93%.
In short according to Amazon: Amazon Machine Learning is a managed service that analyzes a user’s historical data to look for patterns and deploy predictive models. It can examine customer data and find patterns of likely customer turnover or churn. It can find typical issues in customer support. It can isolate and detect the patterns of problem transactions. Machine Learning is used to make 50 billion predictions a week on Amazon.com. Now it is making the Machine Learning API and developer’s guide in the form of wizards available as another Amazon service. It will truly be interesting to see how businesses will take machine learning and make it their own in the future. It has clearly given Amazon a positive leverage to insight in their customers, so watching how other businesses will utilize the infrastructure will be ver thrilling.
To read more on the technology visit http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/amazon-launches-machine-learning-as-a-service/d/d-id/1319868
Peer-to-Peer Wireless Is Increasing Competition Worldwide
Most places around the United States have an incredibly limited number of ISP’s from which to choose their internet service. This means that a few big players control the pricing and the actual content that passes through their bandwidth. However, in a number of other countries including Spain and Uganda, private companies and individuals have worked on peer-to-peer networks that provide fast internet while usurping the prices of enormous corporations. This technology could disrupt the internet service provider market by providing a similar service at a substantially lower price. If so, this would cause current players in the market to actually compete instead of largely just divvying up the service geographically. This would also result in a significant step for net neutrality proponents because big ISP’s would no longer be able to monitor data so closely.
How else do you think that delivering internet through a peer-to-peer connection might affect the market? Do you see any negatives?
Marketing your startup
Marketing for a startup can be challenging. According to this article, marketing success is determined by combining the right channels of marketing content and PR. Before starting to market a new startup it is important to develop a marketing strategy to build a foundation. The following things need to be handled first. Choose a market, define keywords, define success, set core metrics, estimate conversion rate, and setting a budget.
Next is using the social media outlets that work best for your company and using them effectively. This is the most common way used today to try and reach people. I am sure that most of us will be implementing some use of social media with our applications. When using social media you want to focus on these things: Choosing the right social media networks, defining the best times to post, using a keyword list, creating and using an influence list, and setting up a blog.
PR also play a huge role in releasing a startup. Knowing what to say, when to say it, and who to say it to are the main focuses of PR. When dealing with PR within your company remember to: Create meaningful position statements, define your startup sensitivities, identifying the right writers for a media list, creating a press kit, and reaching out to journalists.
Once the PR is handled you want to start to think about the content creation. Although, we will not formally go into content creation, the rest of the article talked about content creation. When creating content for marketing you startup[ remember to: Create a topic list, know what types of content to publish (Newsletter, video, webinar, etc.), have guest blogging, and capture emails.
Now your marketing strategy is in full effect. Also, down the road think about testing and iteration. Your company can set up analytic tools, measure against benchmarks, and brainstorm creative new ideas You may want to also think about what successful startups have already done drive success. Focus on selling the solution, having a compelling story , and using all of your resources.
Has your group been using any of these tools when focusing on the marketing side of our project? I know we are not formally marketing our products, but some of these things come in handy when developing a marketing strategy.
Article: The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing
Cloud computing brings changes for IT security workers
IT security experts are struggling to compete with cloud computing. Because of the low cost and expertise received from vendors like Google and Amazon, security professionals are failing in determining configuration management processes. Configuration management means recording and updating data for software and hardware to know which applications are used on computers. This is difficult because it requires understanding what employees do in an organization, and why certain technologies are used to operate in the business. Since this is a difficult process and not all IT departments are aligned with the business, enterprises are turning to cloud providers who have a better understand for a lower price. Security professionals need to create a business case to gain support on using in-house employees instead of a vendor to combat this threat. The article recommends talking about how much money can be saved from removing software that is not part the configuration plan. If this trend continues, IT and enterprise computing could turn into a commodity and simply outsourced, which means less control and less peace of mind for the business.
How else do you think security professionals can compete against these vendors? Do you think that IT has a threat to be turned into a commodity?
Incredible article by TechCrunch that talks about the disruption of many industries through virtual reality. With the rise of Oculus Rift, Google Glass, and many more, virtual reality can serve the purpose of fully immersed movie theatre entertainment to an extremely interactive video game experience. The article also talks about Audio Reality, and gives some suggestions to what industries that it could be applicable to in the future (I will leave that to you guys to read about their suggestions).
Additionally, with Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus Rift and Google’s “Google Glass”, what do you think could be disrupted by these tech giants? Do you think the technology is ready for a full VR experience, and if so do you think VR is the future?
IBM to Invest in IoT
IBM will invest $3 billion over four years to create an Internet of Things business unit. The focus of the unit will be on travel, logistics, insurance, public utilities, transportation, and retail. IBM plans on partnering with other companies for this project, such as AT&T and semiconductor companies. IBM also started that they are going to work with engine manufacturer, Cummins, to collect real time data on products. Whirlpool is also working with IBM to better predict when appliances need servicing. Additionally, police departments in Durham, NC and Memphis, TN use IBM products to target crime hotspots. The IDC estimates that there will be 28 billion IoT devices by 2021.
Do you agree that IBM should partner with other companies?
Do you think that IBM is too late, or are they entering the market at the right time?
Deloitte Threatened by Disruptive Innovations
This is a really short and informative article based on how big corporations like Deloitte view new and disruptive competitive risks and opportunities. They are crafting effective strategies around four dimensions you will find in the article, which could be used within our capstone projects.
Take a look and see….Deloitte
Big Bang Disruption
How Innovations Become Better And Cheaper
In this Forbes article, the authors Paul Nunes and Larry Downes expand on the idea of disruptive innovation and talk about Big Bang Disruption. The key difference between the two is that Big Bang disruption does not follow conventional strategic paths or normal patterns of market adoption. Big bang disruptions experience dramatic market adoption right off the bat and cause unintended collateral damage to incumbent businesses. The defining characteristic of a Big Bang Disruption is that from the moment of introduction, it is better and cheaper than the traditional product and services it replaces, and leads to sudden abandonment of the old for the new. One example that they use throughout the article is the smartphone and how it disrupted books, video cameras, papers, wristwatches, cash registers, day timers, wallets, keys, newspapers and magazines, pocket calculators, and many more. Can you think of any other products that resulted in Big Bang Disruption?
Delphi’s Autonomous Audi — Is the future within reach?
In this article by Car and Driver, Delphi, a car tech company that recently finished the first cross-country autonomous rode trip using a specialized Audi SQ5 is on display. The Audi, which was fitted with a variety of Delphi tech and a wild paint job, traveled over 3,400 miles and drove itself for 99% of the time, according to the company. That means that only approximately 35 miles out of an entire coast-to-coast road trip were controlled by a human. However, aside from the…unique…exterior color scheme, there were very few cues to tip anyone off that this is a self-driving car. This proof-of-concept Audi shows that driverless tech is, in my opinion, on the verge of mass deployment in the automotive industry. I think this tech will eventually disrupt existing insurance underwriting practices and government regulations the most. For insurance companies, a variety of parameters for how premiums are assessed (driver experience, age, etc.) will have to be reexamined in the wake of this new autonomous tech, potentially altering their bottom line. Do you think there are industries that will be disrupted in different ways?
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