WSO2: Open Source Enterprise Application Integration in the Cloud

WSO2: Open Source Enterprise Application Integration in the Cloud

WSO2 is a notable Enterprise Application Integration & Cloud vendor. They are notable not just because of what they do, but also because of how they do it. WSO2 offers an integrated platform featuring an Enterprise Service Bus and solutions that span Identity, Governance, Business Process Management, API Management, Big Data Analytics and Cloud. And […]

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Hadoop World vendor announcements and impact on Accessibility, Scalability and Security

Hadoop World vendor announcements and impact on Accessibility, Scalability and Security

This week the world’s biggest event for all things Hadoop takes place, the Strata and Hadoop World conference. Vendors announce and showcase new releases and features in their offerings, and Gigaom covered the extensive array of news. Let’s try to decipher them and see their impact in terms of Hadoop distributions Accessibility, Scalability and Security. […]

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The evolution of Retail and what to do with your Big Data

The evolution of Retail and what to do with your Big Data

SPS Commerce is one of the biggest vendors in the retail domain. They act as a clearing house for retailers, connecting them with vendors. The recently published Gigaom report 2nd generation cloud architecture triggered their interest and we had a chat, and here are some of the thoughts and lessons on retail that came as […]

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Data Modeling for APIs. Part 5: Modeling vs. Meta-Modeling

Data Modeling for APIs. Part 5: Modeling vs. Meta-Modeling

Recently i was involved the creation of a data model for a project in the Energy domain. As this was an international, multi-partner project with many stakeholders and respective components, a dillema emerged for debate: to model, or to meta-model? We use this occassion as an example to mention the pros and cons for each […]

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RDF on Hadoop and Schema on Read vs. Schema on Write

RDF on Hadoop and Schema on Read vs. Schema on Write

One of the challenges for any Big Data solution is dealing with scale, and RDF stores are no exception: going for billions of RDF triples (the equivalent of rows in the SQL world) is not trivial. Hadoop on the other hand is great at scaling out on commodity hardware, which is a feature every MPP […]

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SPARQL City and Benchmarks

SPARQL City and Benchmarks

We have written in the past about SPARQL, Hadoop and benchmarks. In this post, we take a look at a company that combines all of these subjects, SPARQL City, on the occasion of the results they released after subjecting their product, SPARQLVerse, to the SP2 benchmark. This year’s NoSQLNow conference was colocated with SemTechBiz, providing […]

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Intellectual property thoughts: on Ideas and Patents

Intellectual property thoughts: on Ideas and Patents

Recently we have seen 2 US court rulings that could bring on important changes in intellectual property, one related to Patents & Ideas and one to Copyright & APIs. Even though at first it may seem this is only relevant for the US, as anyone who has ever been involved in IT Entrepreneurship can tell […]

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Personal Data from the Source: How and Why Consumers and Marketers Can Connect

Personal Data from the Source: How and Why Consumers and Marketers Can Connect

We saw in the previous posts a couple of examples of online marketing gone wrong. The common thread for these examples, and others like them, is the desire marketers have to reach out to new audiences – which is perfectly normal. But in many cases what they are doing is using a new medium – […]

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Online Marketing and Data Protection: Dos, Don’ts, and a hint for a way forward

Online Marketing and Data Protection: Dos, Don’ts, and a hint for a way forward

We have seen how marketing campaigns can backfire when common sense and CRM – MDM are missing from the mix. To err is human of course, so we should be forgiving both as IT professionals and as consumers, provided that we see tangible recognition of errors and a commitment to make amends. In this post, […]

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The wrong strategy, the wrong way: cold-calling your way to marketing, technical and business failure

The wrong strategy, the wrong way: cold-calling your way to marketing, technical and business failure

Do you think cold-calling still works? Trying to sell random stuff to random people on the phone is not exactly the most unobtrusive, effective or sophisticated strategy. It’s the kind of thing I would expect and advise especially technology companies to stay away from, for a number of reasons. This is an account of the […]

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