Danny Karam

What’s next in Big Data? As the number of connected devices continues to skyrocket, generating growing terabytes of information, organizations have only begun to tap Big Data’s potential. Discover examples of how this is happening right now—from new revenue streams for Telcos to improved care and cost efficiencies in healthcare—and how partnerships, open access to information and ongoing experimentation like hackathons will be imperative to future innovation.

An engineer’s day of shopping turns delightful, a young boy conquers his academic challenges, and traffic apps steer a family around road construction and an ambulance to a car accident in record time. Meanwhile, a Ministry of Health analyst helps the city avert an epidemic that would have harmed them all. See how Smart Cities services make this and more possible through the hypothetical experiences of one group of residents.
All around us, people are living increasingly digital lives. By… عرض المزيد

An engineer’s day of shopping turns delightful, a young boy conquers his academic challenges, and traffic apps steer a family around road construction and an ambulance to a car accident in record time. Meanwhile, a Ministry of Health analyst helps the city avert an epidemic that would have harmed them all. See how Smart Cities services make this and more possible through the hypothetical experiences of one group of residents.
All around us, people are living increasingly digital lives. By 2020, the number of mobile-cellular subscriptions will nearly equal the number of people on our planet. Concurrently, cities are growing at a rapid pace: by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in a city, spurring a range of economic, social, and environmental challenges for municipal governments.

Digitization—specifically the creation of Smart Cities—presents a powerful opportunity to address the challenges of urbanization and enhance how citizens live within cities. What might this look like? Snapshots follow of a hypothetical two days in a city’s digital life. عرض أقل

As the embrace of technology changes how people perceive and experience life, digitization presents a powerful opportunity to enhance how they live within cities. As a result, governments and city officials are building “Smart Cities” by leveraging latest technologies supported by next-generation city-wide infrastructure to better engage with their citizens. Success in Smart City development, however, demands a phased, holistic, citizen-centric approach

City governments can respond to the challenges of urbanization by taking a “digital city” approach, which involves using advanced infrastructure and solutions to deliver improved city services. This will allow them to provide services for more people, encourage economic growth, and implement environmental sustainability.

The business world is moving faster and becoming more global, more mobile, and more digitized, thanks in part to a new generation of tech-savvy employees. To make the most of these trends, organizations need to take a more strategic approach to how they design and organize the workplace.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has
successfully joined the social media revolution. With a cohort
of young adults who are both multilingual and technologysavvy, the region has seen a significant rise in social media
applications and networks, whether for social, commercial, or
political purposes. The private sector is making diligent use of
social media to reach key audiences and improve brand and
marketing efforts.
Many regional governments, however,… عرض المزيد

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has
successfully joined the social media revolution. With a cohort
of young adults who are both multilingual and technologysavvy, the region has seen a significant rise in social media
applications and networks, whether for social, commercial, or
political purposes. The private sector is making diligent use of
social media to reach key audiences and improve brand and
marketing efforts.
Many regional governments, however,
have only recently started to engage
their constituents through social
media, and this engagement is mostly
reactive in nature. Although today’s
social media users expect engagement
that is transparent, crowd-sourced,
and responsive, government engagement often tends to be static and
slow, and is at times unable to gather
user input properly. If governments
hope to be heard by their constituents, particularly the one-half to onethird of MENA populations that are
under 25 and frequently glued to their
mobile phones, they will need to learn
the language of social media.
The region’s governments and
other public-sector players have an
opportunity to catch up with the
private sector in this regard but must
adopt a three-pronged approach to
the challenge. First, they must create
a social media strategy integrated
with all of their traditional media
efforts. Second, they must develop
the capabilities to deliver social
media services successfully to
constituents across many areas. And
third, they must ensure that their
social media strategy and offering
make room for future progress,
evolution, and growth in a way
that allows for the best possible
interaction with constituents. عرض أقل

The advent of Web 2.0 allowed users to go beyond the passive consumption of Web content, enabling them to participate fully in the actual generation of content on any number of new media. This shift has been a huge boon to businesses, allowing them to mine rich veins of data about the online behavior and activities of consumers, thus boosting both online sales and Web marketing efforts. Yet the next stage of the Web is already on the horizon, and it will offer an entirely new level of… عرض المزيد

The advent of Web 2.0 allowed users to go beyond the passive consumption of Web content, enabling them to participate fully in the actual generation of content on any number of new media. This shift has been a huge boon to businesses, allowing them to mine rich veins of data about the online behavior and activities of consumers, thus boosting both online sales and Web marketing efforts. Yet the next stage of the Web is already on the horizon, and it will offer an entirely new level of connectivity, communications, and information on customers, including their attitudes and preferences.
Web 3.0—what we call the Transcendent Web—has four key elements: The Social Web will greatly enhance the capabilities of social networking, allowing for more powerful search, location, recommendation, and similar services. The Semantic Web will connect all the Web’s data and information much more closely, enabling contextually based search and research. The Internet of Things will let Web-connected machines of all kinds communicate with each other and with us, creating a rich flow of data about their location and status. And thanks to advances in Artificial Intelligence, all this information can be aggregated and analyzed to further refine search, recommendations, and other kinds of information filtering. The result for users will be a far more personalized online experience; companies will benefit through a much greater flow of data they can apply to product development, marketing and sales, daily operations, and more.
Fulfilling the promise of the Transcendent Web will take time. But every company should be planning for its arrival by opening business systems to the increased flow of data, investigating new data management and tagging techniques, and developing the skills and capabilities that will be needed when the Transcendent Web becomes a reality. عرض أقل

Private corporations and the public sector are facing increasing pressures to reduce their carbon emissions and energy bills, driven by enforced legislation and regulation, increasing energy costs, and, perhaps as important, a constantly growing demand from customers for more sustainable operations and products. In focusing on carbon reduction related to IT departments, many companies respond by attempting relatively simple fixes—for example, by cutting data center energy usage or reducing the… عرض المزيد

Private corporations and the public sector are facing increasing pressures to reduce their carbon emissions and energy bills, driven by enforced legislation and regulation, increasing energy costs, and, perhaps as important, a constantly growing demand from customers for more sustainable operations and products. In focusing on carbon reduction related to IT departments, many companies respond by attempting relatively simple fixes—for example, by cutting data center energy usage or reducing the number of PCs in the organization. Those are important steps, but not nearly enough to create a sustainable environmentally conscious program. Instead, top corporate management working with CIOs should develop a robust, comprehensive, and holistic green IT model that leverages technology to minimize the carbon footprint of the entire organization. Such a program would view environmental sustainability as a business strategy, driving eco-friendly approaches throughout the organization to improve business operations, better preserve the environment, enhance productivity, and cut costs at the same time. عرض أقل

Companies operating in the information, communications, and technology (ICT) sector have a unique opportunity to trigger significant environmental benefits, not only by upgrading their operations but also by developing greener products and services for their clients. If the sector seizes this opportunity, it can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an amount equivalent to five times the carbon footprint of the ICT sector itself, with significant economic upside. So far, however, the ICT sector… عرض المزيد

Companies operating in the information, communications, and technology (ICT) sector have a unique opportunity to trigger significant environmental benefits, not only by upgrading their operations but also by developing greener products and services for their clients. If the sector seizes this opportunity, it can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an amount equivalent to five times the carbon footprint of the ICT sector itself, with significant economic upside. So far, however, the ICT sector has largely failed to achieve meaningful consensus on how best to address its myriad challenges. Continuing with this fragmented approach could harm the sector’s prospects for a compelling and beneficial contribution to the environmental agenda and could even limit growth. Worse, it could leave ICT companies in the position of reacting individually, and defensively, to patchwork regulatory measures imposed by governments.
To rise to the occasion, ICT companies will need to overcome several challenges, most notably the lack of a metric that can quantify their overall environmental efforts on behalf of clients. To date, there are many ways to measure the results of internal initiatives, but none that evaluates the net effect of ICT products and solutions leveraged specifically to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions for their customers. ICT companies will also need to take internal measures—such as designating champions for sustainability, setting aside budgetary resources, and devoting more R&D assets to green innovation—and reach outside their organizations by collaborating more with academic institutions and regulators. عرض أقل

As public and private organizations around the world seek to limit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental impacts, information technology (IT) stands to make a significant contribution. Addressing the direct environmental by-products of IT use is one way that green IT solutions can help organizations reduce these emissions and address sustainability concerns. But an even bigger opportunity lies in helping other industries in their response to climate change. IT solutions… عرض المزيد

As public and private organizations around the world seek to limit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental impacts, information technology (IT) stands to make a significant contribution. Addressing the direct environmental by-products of IT use is one way that green IT solutions can help organizations reduce these emissions and address sustainability concerns. But an even bigger opportunity lies in helping other industries in their response to climate change. IT solutions can eliminate or otherwise redirect business activities that generate emissions. The need for increased efficiency and automation is spurring demand for IT equipment and services. As IT procurement officials and other IT practitioners seek to fill this demand, employing green IT strategies will help move their organizations that much farther down the path to realizing their objectives for environmental responsibility and sustainability. عرض أقل