June 13, 2020 by Walter Steward

Common Issues When Working with Remote Developers

Well, in my opinion, working from home is an ideal way to secure a work-life balance as well as comes with a great many advantages. However, doing so does not mean you won’t face some challenges as a remote professional. I think, just as working in an office has a unique set of challenges, some work challenges as a remote employee can also pop up.

Working

I have come up with some common challenges you might face while pursuing your remote culture:

Have a look:

1. The problem in maintaining engagement and focus

Well everyone knows that working from home is a wonderful arrangement for those who want to escape the daily commute and I think it’s a sheer wastage of time commuting daily on the road traveling if you can work from home. However, being away from your responsibilities would also hamper the quality of work you are doing. So I think the solution to this problem can be, starting your day off with meditation or yoga to promote focus and mental engagement. It is believed that these kinds of services provide readily available options to start your day with meditation, which can help with mental clarity and stress release.

2. Know how to deal with distractions

Distractions come with the territory when you work from home. I can easily get distracted. Once I had got an unexpected call from an unknown number and at that time I was on a very important point; after which I got distracted. Then to overcome this problem I had a direct discussion with my spouse and children about disruptions during work hours. Obviously, working from home is likely a significant benefit to my family, but I have to be very sure to set boundaries.

3. Always keep your morale up

Working from home means there may be no regular high-fives from your manager or teammates for a job well done. I did a lot of hard work but in return, I was never appreciated by my boss. Although you should always maintain good relations with your co-workers, otherwise you may feel isolated and there can be an occasional dip in your morale. To overcome this kind of relationship with my boss I tried to talk with my boss about my regular check-ins and expected him to give regular feedback for my work.

4. Finding a creative outlet

I feel that as a work-from-home professional, finding a creative outlet is an important key to keeping your mind active. In my opinion, the sky’s the limit to promote a higher level of creativity. Do something totally unique, such as joining a painting or photography group or trying a creative activity that aligns with your career. If you’re a writer, consider taking creative writing classes. The convergent side of your brain is working all day and needs some divergent activity to feel balanced and productive.

5. Effective management of your time and efforts

I believe that whatever time I am giving to my work, it should be totally qualified and well maintained for the kind of work which I am offering to my organization. This way the time that I am giving to my work will be valued and applauded. Hence, Working from home will mean that you’ll have to manage your own timeline and be responsible to meet deadlines without reminders from co-workers. Depending on your personality, time management can be one of the most common workplace challenges as a remote employee. Use time management tools and apps to use your time most effectively.

6. Hone your skills

Every person is equipped with some of the other skills. Depending on the role you’re working from home, you may have to ensure your own career advancement by improving your skills on your own. If your employer doesn’t offer internal opportunities for advancement like mine or provide ongoing training, then find classes in your field that you can attend. Now, you may immediately feel that the solution to this challenge could be costly. However, there are many no-cost professional courses you can start with.

7. Working on your communication skills

Believe me, when I was going for my first job interview, I was totally nervous and when I met the employer, I fumbled a lot. But that’s okay for your first one. For further interviews, you must require a significant amount of remote communication, whether that’s with your immediate supervisor, your team, or your clients.

As a remote employee, you’ll likely use a variety of communication tools to meet with your colleagues. If you’re challenged by expressing yourself verbally, it’s time to get some help with that. There are many reasons for this challenge, and one reason could be that you’re an introvert. I was also an introvert until I completed my first internship of six months. Introverts tend to communicate better in writing than they do verbally.

No matter what the reason, search for courses available in communication skills, group work and networking, persuasion and motivation, and others to improve your communication skills.

June 11, 2020 by Walter Steward

How to Develop an Android App from Scratch

Develop Over the past few years, mobile has overtaken desktop in terms of usage. As a result, for businesses, the focus has shifted to developing mobile apps. The idea is to engage users, and only companies that do so can survive in a highly competitive environment that exists today. Mobile app design is an extremely complex process that involves a significant investment, months of development and complex project management.

Develop

Whether one decides to build an app in-house or outsource it to a mobile app development company, it’s crucial to ensure that the work is carried out by an expert or a team who knows how to build an app that is secure, robust and scalable.

Of course, this is easier said than done. When looking for app development there are several factors that need to be assessed to ensure that the project goes as per plan. We have outlined a step-by-step approach that can be used for reference:

Step 1: Clearly define the objective

The first step is to define what the app intends to achieve. Will it focus on enhancing customer experience or is it being developed with the intention of generating additional sales? Once the main objective is defined, it becomes easier to proceed with the finer details of what is expected from the app.

For example, if the app is focused on improving customer engagement, once the objective is defined, you might need to ask questions such as how the app can achieve it, and what features need to be incorporated for the expected result.

Step 2: Define the scope of the app

At this stage, it’s time to decide on how to make an app functional and to select the features it should include. The most efficient way one can achieve this is by jotting down answers to questions such as:

Will the app have e-commerce integration?
How can users get questions answered (chat feature/contact us/FAQs)?
How will the user share information with his social networks?
How can the company inform the user about new products?
How will it help a user to be more productive?

Step 3: How to build an app that is better than the competitors’ apps

Whether it’s to enhance customer experience or improve business performance, for the app to be successful, it should be better than the competition. Analyze competitors’ apps to see what can be done better or if there are any additional features or functionality that your app can offer.

Step 4: Create Wireframes and Use Cases to develop an app

Now, it’s time to get started with creating a skeleton framework that lays down the visual guide to the flow between various functionalities and features. Start by defining each goal and understand the use cases or user’s thought processes for each task performed on the app.

Step 5: Testing the wireframes

Before the actual build begins, it’s vital to test the wireframes to verify the flow and ascertain whether there are any hindrances to the user experience. During the process of app development, reputable development companies employ software to assist with the testing, and the flow is shared with all the team members to test the ease of use as well as the intuitiveness of the app.

Step 6: Revision and retest

Based on the feedback from the initial testing the wireframes should be updated to eliminate redundancies. Additional testing is recommended to ensure that the flow is smooth and error-free. The process of revision and testing might require a few iterations until the app is ready for development.

Step 7: Decide on the development

Before the actual build process commences, it’s essential to map out the path for developing the app. Scalability is an important factor to include at this stage so that it becomes easier to add functionality or features at a later stage without having to go back to rebuild from scratch. The two major decisions one needs to take are:

What language to use for coding?
What mobile app development platform to use for creating the app?

When deciding how to make an app, the decision about coding will depend on whether to build for a specific operating system. In the case of native app development, separate development paths will be needed for making the app available on the Apple and Google Play stores. If a hybrid framework is used, the same code can be used for different operating systems.

The app development cost will also influence the decision regarding the development path. Native development creates more robust and stable apps, but it can take more time to develop. A reputable mobile app development company will usually outline the pros and cons of each development path to make it easier to make a decision that has a long-term impact.

Step 8: Building the app

This stage involves the actual building of the app, which is a collaborative effort between the developers and designers. A template needs to be chosen to enhance the display of the app. Besides this, plugins need to be added to improve the features of the app and to make it more user-friendly. The most significant element in this stage is the design of the home screen to ensure that the app is easy to navigate.

Step 9: Check the app in a real-world scenario

Once the development of the app is complete, it’s time to test it once again to see how it performs in a real-world situation. It’s important to go through this process, even if the app has gone through several retests during wireframing to ensure that it is free from bugs that can deter a pleasant user experience.

Most of the reliable mobile app development companies insist on at least ten rounds of testing, which includes internal tests among the design and development team as well as external tests among an unbiased sample set. The latter is especially important as it can help to pinpoint user experience issues that the developers or the team are unable to detect due to their familiarity with the development steps.

Step 10: Launching the app on the store

Once the testing is complete, the mobile app is ready to be submitted to the chosen app stores. Before this, it’s essential to ensure that all the necessary compliances are in place, whether it is related to security protocols or GDPR regulations. The launch of the app also requires publicity in the form of email marketing to existing customers, updating the information on the website and promoting the app through social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

June 10, 2020 by Walter Steward

Steps to Successful Software Project Delivery

Successful software projects to be delivered within the stipulated frame of time needs a lot of effort to do so. Thus, it would always be a very good idea to go step by step for the successful completion of software delivery in the best possible way.

Successful

Now, there are a number of members of the software project delivery team who want to know how to develop a software project step by step. To make it easier for them.

Here we have listed the top ten important steps for successful software delivery.

1. Know Exactly What You are Building

The first step towards a successful software product delivery process is to know exactly what you are building. Many times, it happens that the software projects start at a risk with very little idea as to what would be the end result. Thus, this is an extremely crucial step for understanding what you are ultimately willing to achieve.

Accordingly, it is required to gather the requirements and you need to start strong with the documented business requirements along with the functional specifications.

2. Defining Success is Important

The next step to be undertaken in the software delivery model is the criteria of user acceptance. The key to successful software project delivery and client satisfaction is delivering what they exactly expect. So, this is a clear definition of what success is all about.

So, here your software development team should be clear as to what is the purpose of the project, how it can be measured and what end result this project would be providing. When you are able to answer these questions, you will certainly be on the way to successful software delivery.

3. Resource Matching

The third step is matching resources which is quite crucial at the time when you want to build your team depending on the skills that are necessary for completing the project successfully. It is also very important to form the team as per the need in the software process management.

Finally, you need to identify any gaps if present and mitigate the same with required training as well as coaching of the members of the team.

4. Holding a Kick-Off

Kickoffs are really great in this regard. After you have gathered the efficient and effective team members make proper introductions.

You need to go on with the methods of communication, review all of the requirements, devise a plan of work & schedule and ultimately identify any issues that are required to be resolved. Doing all these would help in the overall software implementation processes.

5. Breaking Down the Whole Projects in Smaller Projects

Defining and communicating the approach to software process management is essential. It would be a very good idea to create projects within the project. It would be ideal to create some time-bound segments in the projects which are to be achieved.

So, when you ensure that the large project is broken down into a simple series of small projects, it becomes easier to accomplish by the team members.

6. Know the Team’s Expertise

The overall success of software delivery depends on the team of experts that you are dealing with. It is quite obvious that all members of the team would not have the same expertise and skills. Thus, it becomes extremely important to know the individualized skillset of each of the members of the team.

This would be of great help in transferring the particular sets of work to the members who are experts in that field. This would not only get the work completed faster but also in the best possible way.

7. Utilization of software and Tracking Tools

The use of software and some effective tools for tracking is of immense importance to keep an eye on each of the components of the projects.

So, when you are able to monitor all of the components such as status, updates, conversations, progress and a number of others, you have a clear idea about the present status of the software delivery model which you are planning to build.

8. No Changes in the Direction

For successful software delivery, it is extremely important not to change the direction that is the project scope. Scope changes can cause a negative impact and can derail the momentum of the team.

Thus, it is required to identify as well as document what the change is along with the identification of ways to make the team refocus such that there is no wastage of efforts and minimize the negative effects.

June 8, 2020 by Walter Steward

How Ionic Framework Benefits App Development?

There is a sudden increase in the number of hours an individual spends on their mobile phones on a daily basis. It is important to ensure that it is productive so that users will have a good experience and return to use the application. Mobile Application development companies should focus on leveraging the hours spent by individuals on mobiles. Gradually, businesses can target this and create interactive applications for users to utilize.

Framework

Application Development revolves around proper frameworks and techniques that engineers use while designing an application. The framework that the app developer chooses could be the reason the app becomes a success or a failure. It thereby becomes mandatory to pick the most suitable and highly efficient framework.

Here are a few benefits of a popular framework, Ionic that is used for mobile app development.

What is ionic network?

Ionic is an open-source HTML5 improvement structure for building cross platform mobile applications. WebView, a mobile platform is used by Hybrid applications. Hybrid applications present various additional features compared to other basic applications in terms of improvement speed and platform support.

Ionic applications are designed utilizing HTML, Javascript, and CSS. Ionic can be considered as a UI structure that handles UI interactions of applications having sophisticated designs and support for native mobile components. Ionic gives importance to the UI structure, final look of an application.

1.Ionic Framework is FREE and Open Source

Ionic Framework is totally free and Open Source to use. The total source code is accessible on GitHub. Being open source, there is such little obstructions to passage. Anyone around the globe can begin making Mobile Apps with A thought, A PC and an Internet association. With incredible structures like Ionic gave free, nearly anyone can make things that can transform them and the lives of others.

2. Based on Angular

If you have used Ionic, you would have figured out by now that it is based solely on the AngularJS structure. Fundamentally, Ionic broadens Angular with features to design user friendly mobile applications with Angular. AngularJS is one of the most famous JavaScript systems being used today and is sponsored by Google.

3. Huge designer network

It is a difficult task to open source profitable framework that truly runs on installments however the ionic network is entirely immense and dynamic on social stages, for example, blog entries, discussions and remarking to address the potential issues looked by the engineers while utilizing the structure for the versatile application advancement. Much the same as Linux, ionic has gained notoriety for hearty programming which is known to numerous however comprehended by just a couple.

4. Plugins controlled by Cordova

Cordova modules are the best piece of Ionic application improvement. This component opens up to the entryway of utilizing local gadget capacities past the accessibility to simply unadulterated web applications. With the utilization of Cordova modules, you can approach logs, battery, geo area, camera and substantially more. This improves your application’s general execution. Best of all, you can profit this by composing and adding scarcely any straightforward codes to your application advancement.

5. Reusable codes

The reusability of the code is utilizing the highlights of a current programming to build a new programming with solid yield and slight changes. The Android and iOS application designers do this to benefit comparable highlights in various applications.

6. Simplicity of testing

The analyser can without difficulty run the content using Cordova directions for both iOS and Android platforms. The simplicity of investigating the protracted codes is given by the ionic structure and the analyser can basically open chrome or safari to test an application’s genuine presentation on iPhone and Android telephone.

7. Low App Project Costs

The process of creating 2 separate applications for iOS and Android platforms, bugfixing in 2 repos is time consuming and costly, you can solve this issue with the use of Ionic. All development should be possible from one spot using a similar code, similar language and by the same designer! Even if 70-80% success rate can emerge from focussing on various stages this could be a feasible cross platform venture.

June 6, 2020 by Walter Steward

The Best Private Search Engines Developed

Private Search engine is one of the most popular innovations in the internet world. They offer you the info you want within a few seconds. They are coded programs that create an open source for cyber-attacks.

Private

You want to use an unnamed search engine if you save your privacy close.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is one of the most popular and secure private search engine that does not track your hunts while providing you a boosted search experience. It’s mainly built for people who like to continue private and bring instant outcomes without modified ads on the search sheets. This search engine supports 15M+ searches in a day.

BitClave

Bitclave is another private search engine developed with blockchain to protect your online movement. This is a dispersed search engine which stretches users the obtainability to select which data they can give to their supporters. Man-in-the-middle attacks are incredible since you interconnect directly with the supporter. In short, your secrecy is valuable to them and they offer you a friendly user interface. Bitclave is a safe, secure and user-friendly search engine.

Swisscows

Swisscows is a private search engine based in Switzerland, formed by Hulbee AG. A vital variance from another search engine, however, is a semantic search engine. It uses machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to develop the framework of a user’s search. As a result, Swisscows, offers outcomes that study to reply to your queries — a cool search tool.

Startpage

Startpage offers Google-quality search results but with full confidentiality protection. Naturally, Startpage acts as an intermediate. Using Startpage the searching information are collected from Google, you get related information for what you search in google, Startpage creates the request on your behalf and proceeds the same search outcomes to you without bargaining your secrecy. Startpage also provides an ‘anonymous view’ for the websites in its search information. If you are using incognito search engine once you enter on a website your details tracked by the website trackers.

Searx

Searx is an open-source metasearch engine that collects results from other search engines while also regarding user secrecy. One unique feature of Searx is that you can run your instance. The disadvantage with your instance, however, is that your search results won’t be assorted with other users. Searx is open source and existing on GitHub. Another great feature of Searx is that it is very customizable. You can change accurately what search engines Searx gives results from in the user required area. You can also narrow down results with different categories – it’s all under your control.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a developer in the group of private search engine that enables the user with reliable results. It contains some categories associated with algorithms, calculations, techniques. It takes the suitable input, searches the result from these types and makes the user fulfillment by giving reliable information. While, the Wolfram Alpha delivers the internet users by trust their information secure by the third force, who are stressed to consequence the methodical results. To avoid this desecration, Wolfram Alpha is being used as it wedges the unofficial access.

Qwant

Qwant is one of the most popular privacy-focused search engines after DuckDuckGo. It verifies impartiality, confidentiality, and digital freedom while you search for approximately on the Internet. If you expected privacy-oriented search engines typically incline to bid a very unplanned user experience, you need to review after frustrating out Qwant. This is a very active search engine with trending themes and news sections planned very well. It includes all the news, social feeds, images and web resources on the topic you search.

Search Encrypt

Search Encrypt is a private search engine that allows a unique way to privacy. It was mainly created to protect your information. Search encrypt defend your privacy by encoding your search entry, history, and news. So if you look at your search history, you will see that your search queries are encrypted. After 20 minutes of laziness, your Search Encrypt search result pages pass away — so no one will ever know what search terms you entered. It combines AES-256 encryption with Safe Sockets Layer encryption. It also uses the Perfect Forward Secrecy method to ensure that a new key is generated for each session. If a session key that is used in data transmission is compromised, it can reveal only the data of that key alone. So, if an attacker manages to get to know a session key, it cannot be used to decrypt your previous sessions

Hulbee

Hulbee is a private search engine that offers continuous searches and does not track your search history. Hulbee delivers intelligent data yet never evaluates or stores its search information. Your searches are all encoded for security compared to middleman attacks and data leakages. Among its choices: choosing a county for most related search results and even lets you ‘clear your action’ to avoid leaving any tracks overall.

MetaGer

MetaGer is an open-source metasearch engine based in Germany, which gets search outcomes from Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, and others, as well as consuming its web crawler. It is a fascinating project, which started in 1996, and is now operated by a non-profit foundation in Germany called SUMA-EV (Association for Free Access to Knowledge).

Mojeek

Unlike some of the other private search engine on this page, Mojeek is a true search engine with its crawler. In an open Reddit discussion, Mojeek demanded to have indexed 2.3 billion pages, intending to double that by the end of the year. For those who want thorough search independence from the corporate data monoliths of Google and Bing, Mojeek offers an interesting intention.

Peekier

Peekier is a new private search engine. There is not enough information about this service presently available for me to give it a proper assessment. It is worth declaring, however, because of the attractive and ground-breaking way that it displays search results. In a field were where, if we are honest, most search engines look attractive similar, it is great to see a dissimilar approach.

Oscobo

The Oscobo was established with the individual purpose, to defend a user’s obscurity while searching. Oscobo is allowed to be the top private search engine for the motive that of its size to not track a user’s data, unlike general search engines. As specified previously, it doesn’t track and neither does it save logs of info.

Yippy

With Yippy, you can by finger filter the properties category-wise and flag any unsuitable result. Dissimilar some engines, Yippy permits searching for many kinds of contented including web, pictures, news, jobs, blogs, government data, etc.

June 3, 2020 by Walter Steward

How to Build a Development Team & Project?

Project A group of professionals who are put together to work on a common software development project can be called a software development team. Sounds similar to a no-brainer. Still, there are lots of drawbacks you can fall into if you don’t know the right formula to build a development team.

Project

Before we present it to you, let’s think through the main question, which starts with why.

Strong Cooperation – Cooperation is the act of functioning with others and acting together to accomplish a job. A talented team figures out ways to solve interpersonal issues and get work done. They are willing to support each other at work.

Commitment – In a strong team, all members create a commitment to common project intentions. They care and take responsibility for their work, and the team’s work. Each colleague works with great effort, and others do the same.

Effective Statement – A key factor in the successful performance of a team is communication. Members speak up and explain their concepts clearly and logically so that they can know each other.

Sharing – In a Team, each associate has his own strong and weak opinions. In a good team, members are eager to share information, knowledge, and experience to skill up each other

How to Build and Manage an Effective Team?

Build a development team is a process that needs the two parties to surpass the above contests for the project to commence and proceed well. This is possible when the client — developer association remains mutual and beneficial. This should be based on three things which include understanding, trust, and cooperation from the start which is the hiring process that should involve:

– Develop Human Resource Plan

– Build the Project Team

– Manage the team

– Spotting motivated people

Hire Some Senior Developers

A highly efficient software development group demands at least one senior developer, however ideally you should have two or more. While a senior developer’s wide knowledge and experience will undoubtedly cost a lot more, the enhanced efficiency and quality they bring to a project creates the price tag worthwhile.

Get a Lead

No matter what the size of your team is, never ignore the essential to have a tech lead controlling the whole process. Not only should this person know how to run a software dev team, but also understand the business aims of a client. Tech leads have the power to take any engineering approach they consider reasonable to hit project milestones.

Learn To Delegate.

Your job is essentially to make sure that your team can do theirs. Once you’ve fixed goals and guiding principles, let the team members do their thing. Delegate authority and deliver access to tools to build a development team.

Track Progress.

The thing is, when people like what they do, they tend to get carried away. Your task is to monitor improvement and make sure the project stays on track. Provide a means to share concerns, and discuss the project’s position regularly. This way, you’ll see if the team is in work well or if you have to re-assign roles. Though, let the team overcome the obstacles on their own – under your guidance. Dealing with dilemmas in a group brings any team closer together and build self-confidence among team members.

Establish Development Values and Best Practices

Once you have all your new hires in place, you have to lay the foundation for their work inside the organization. Therefore, it is serious to build development team and best practices before the team writes a single line of code.

Each individual will have their style when it comes to things like naming conventions and organization, so setting values early on can help negate all over the place development process. Whether standards are based on external best practices or established through internal consensus, it is important the standards be thoroughly documented and followed by all team members. This approach creates cohesion now and allows new software engineers to seamlessly integrate into the team at a later date.

Help Developers Grow Professionally

Attracting software engineers is a challenge, but retaining them is even more difficult. The job market is extremely competitive, and competitor companies will every time be trying to poach your top talent. Substituting lost team members is time- and resource-intensive, and it can lead to delays in project delivery and increased costs, so it is in your best interest to retain as many developers as possible.

June 2, 2020 by Walter Steward

How to Improve Big Data Quality for Bigger Enterprise Insights

Enterprise We’re dealing with more data in the enterprise than ever before. Headlines blare that “data is valuable” but, that’s only true if the information you have got is of high quality. The question becomes, how do you know if you have high-quality data?

Enterprise

This post explores the concept of big data quality and why it is a challenge, why the enterprise needs big data quality, and what solution you can use to ensure the quality of big data.

What is Big Data Quality?

Data quality refers to six dimensions of information:

Completeness: The information is comprehensive
Consistency: Representations of an item match across all data stores
Unique: A piece of information is one-of-a-kind
Valid: Information matches the rules specified for it
Timeliness: Information is up-to-date and ready for use
Accuracy: Information is correct

Not all of these dimensions will necessarily apply to your data. For example, you might not need data to be complete, yet you always need it to be accurate and timely.

“Big data quality,” then, refers to the data quality dimensions your big data possesses. Today, the importance of big data quality has risen because of big data’s prevalence.

Why Is Big Data Quality Important?

Big data quality matters because so many organizations use big data to make decisions. It can come from so many sources, in so many formats, with so many rules applied to it previously, it is not always trustworthy. In fact, only 35 percent of senior executives have a high level of trust in the accuracy of their big data analytics.

Imagine you are deciding whether to expand into a new market. You have garnered information about your potential customers, market conditions, regulations, etc. but you don’t know how old your data is. If it is out of date, you don’t know if you’re making the right decision or not. When you are sure of your big data quality, you can trust your decisions.

Precisely’s Trillium Quality: Improving Your Big Data Quality

Precisely’s Trillium Quality enables you to improve your big data quality. It provides data profiling and data quality at scale to meet big data management challenges. Trillium Quality quickly and natively connects to data sources to execute data profiling tasks, as well as visually create and test data quality processes that you can deploy and run directly within big data platforms (either on-premises or in the cloud).

This solution includes robust data profiling capabilities that allow users to select, connect, and run data profiling on big data sources in a few steps. You can also uncover defects, evaluate data relationships across sources (drilling down to any detail), and annotate findings.

May 31, 2020 by Walter Steward

Data and Analytics Should Be a COVID-19 Priority

Data and analytics should remain an enterprise priority despite the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent report from 451 Research. In their Market Insight report, “Amid Coronavirus Uncertainty, Analytics Should Remain an Enterprise Priority”, 451 Research referenced recent surveys, including their Budgets and Outlook 2020 survey, to make some inferences we thought we’d share with our readers. Data

They revealed that 53% of respondents referred to data and analytics tools and platforms as the “technology with the greatest game-changing potential over the next three years.” (For those that are curious, machine learning/AI came second, followed by containers/container management, software-defined infrastructure, and serverless computing.)

Furthermore, the report explains why there is such high regard for data and analytics:

“While 83% of all respondents agree that their organization’s data platform/analytics initiative(s) to date have been successful, that figure rises to 95% of the most data-driven companies (those making nearly all strategic decisions based on data), compared with 59% of the least data driven.”

451 Research’s report further validates what Pepperdata has long known: the use of data and analytics is a key differentiator between leaders and laggards across multiple industries.

Enterprises directly affected by the pandemic, such as travel and tourism, events and hospitality, and offline retail (excluding grocery), will need data monitoring and analytics intelligence to help them develop contingencies for both business survival and evolution to address emerging opportunities.

For businesses in sectors like financial services, grocery, online retail, utilities, telecommunications, and manufacturing, an increased use of analytics software and services will greatly enhance their understanding of evolving customer behavior, supply chain changes, and workforce planning and management.

Finally, the “frontliners”—government, education, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and research—are expected to accelerate their investments in both existing and new data and analytics projects. These projects will assist them in understanding and modeling infection patterns, developing vaccines and treatments, recognizing the repercussions, and ultimately learn from them.

Data and analytics play a huge role in these current circumstances, and with that comes the need to ensure optimum, cost-efficient performance on those critical big data analytics stacks.

This is where Pepperdata can help. Unlike other APM tools that merely summarize static data and make big data application performance recommendations in isolation, Pepperdata delivers complete system analytics on hundreds of real-time operational metrics continuously collected from applications as well as the infrastructure — including CPU, RAM, disk I/O, and network usage metrics on every job, task, user, host, workflow, and queue.

Pepperdata products help you achieve big data success by providing real-time, 360° views of both your platform and applications with continuous tuning, recommendations, and alerting. This ensures optimal performance whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Enterprises are rethinking almost everything due to this crisis, but the importance of analytics shouldn’t be questioned. As the 451 Research report proves, being more data-driven helps companies improve existing products and services, as well as develop new ones. Additionally, this best practice also lowers costs. Now it’s just a matter of ensuring your big data applications run smoothly.

Are you working with big data analytics and want to experience firsthand how Pepperdata delivers the complete observability needed to make your big data and analytics perform at its best? Sign up for a free trial here.

May 28, 2020 by Walter Steward

An Introduction to Warehouse Management

In the most basic terms, warehousing is figuring out where and how to store your products (or their components) before they’re needed for assembly, store display, online purchase, or another final destination.

Many third-party logistics companies specialize in handling shipping, warehousing, and delivery for other brands, allowing those teams to focus on other things, such as product development. However, many smaller businesses still handle their own inventory and warehousing.

Warehouse

Regardless of your company’s size or industry, it pays to be thoughtful about warehousing practices. Better warehouse management will allow you to maximize the storage space you have available and minimize the effort it takes to find items again when you need them. These benefits go on to speed up operations, improve customer experience, and yield more valuable insights for managers — all of which boost revenue and dramatically cut storage-related costs over time.

The Primary Tasks of Warehouse Management

Warehouse management consists primarily of the following tasks — and you’ll need processes, procedures, and protocols for each of them.

Receiving – Establish how your products will be accepted into the warehouse and how you’ll keep records of what came in and when it came in.
Stowing/Putaway – This step of the warehousing process should determine exactly how and where certain items should be stored within the warehouse.
Picking – What are the procedures by which your staff will locate and retrieve the products when they’re needed? How will they keep a record of the fact that they retrieved each item and each group of items for an order?
Checking/Verification – Do you want your staff to verify or check their item against the order, or make sure that product is intact or acceptable before it’s moved along to its final destination?
Packing and Shipping – You’ll need standard procedures for how products should be packed up and labeled when it’s finally time to move them along.

Introducing WHM Software

Of course, most companies don’t keep track of their inventory and supplies manually anymore.

There are plenty of web-based software programs built specifically to make this work easier for companies of all sizes. Warehouse management software, or WHM, can come packaged into more complex ERP software or supply chain management software designed for the needs of logistics companies.

WHM software leverages the power of scanners and barcodes to automate inventory tracking, which makes every step of the warehousing process faster and more accurate. Employees scan inventory as it comes in and gets put away, and the software keeps track of each item’s location within the warehouse so it’s easy to find later.

In fact, smaller companies that don’t need a huge warehouse for their storage may be able to get by with inventory management software alone. Inventory management software assigns tracking numbers (stock tracking units, or SKUs, can help track things like price, color, style, brand, gender, type, and size) to inventory. Employees can scan items by SKU as they’re received and as they move through the facility. Retailers use inventory management software to alert them to when their stock is running low and they need to order more.

Inventory management software also makes it easy to print shipping labels when it’s time to move an item to its final destination.

WHM software usually includes some of these inventory tracking features, and in other cases, a company may opt to use both inventory management software and WHM software.

WHM software tends to include some valuable features that go beyond what inventory software can do on its own, such as:

Warehouse design – Users may be able to use these programs to lay out their warehouses, including allocating bin and shelf space.
Staff management – Because employees are using the software to scan inventory items throughout the day, these programs can also give users a good sense of what employees are working on. This data can help administrators plan workloads and staff schedules.
Inventory storage conditions – Some WHM software can also track how goods are stored, including any conditions or processes required for the optimal storage of certain products.
Equipment management – Some systems integrate with software that tracks the use of the equipment used in warehouses, such as forklifts, packaging machines, and conveyor systems.

All of today’s best web-based software (inventory management, warehouse management, supply chain management, or all of the above), includes access to helpful reports and digital dashboards.

For example, data from WHM programs can give users real-time snapshots of the warehouse floor, and can alert them to potential risk or compliance issues.

Tracking Other Warehouse Comings and Goings

Inventory, staff, and equipment aren’t the only things within your warehouse to track with software. You should also be monitoring and keeping records of visitors, whether your warehouse is attached to your front office, in a completely separate building, or is simply an “employees only” storage area within your retail establishment.

Tracking visitors is always a best practice for safety and liability. Plus, visitor data can help on an administrative level to assess what people need when they visit your facility.

However, in some cases, monitoring the people who come in and out of your warehouse can also be a legal requirement.

For example, food and beverage manufacturers need to make sure that only authorized people gain access to their facilities in order to comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Logistics providers who are C-TPAT compliant also must limit the people who can access their facilities. And any company that manufactures or produces dangerous or sensitive products, such as those important to national security, is likely subject to a host of regulations about how this material should be stored.

To make sure that visitors are properly credentialed and don’t wander into any space where they’re not permitted, try using a visitor management system like The Receptionist for iPad.

May 26, 2020 by Walter Steward

Track the best out of Content Management system

In a world of Content Management System (CMS) There are plenty of CMS software tools are getting introduced, each has it’s own ideal individuality and specifications so the user will go to the CMS where their requirements meet its specifications.

Content

Sometimes the choice of choosing platforms will have a contradiction which slows down the site performance so the developer should be picky about choosing their CMS based on the site requirement. So it’s all depends on the choice of choosing CMS which will lead the site to be effective and also will result in increasing the site performance.

Which is more SEO friendly?

If we compare it between Squarespace and WordPress, We Would recommend you WordPress!. why because if you go by Squarespace you must have experienced a problem when you try to migrate your content into another service?. What will happen to your content in case if you are in a need to migrate it to another service?. When you start reading a migration policy of it, it’s quite scary!. you will be limited to your downloads, not all of your content can be downloaded and you will not be allowed to export your images as well.
That is the foremost reason why we recommend WordPress. Since It’s open source software you completely own your content. Your pictures will be on your server, your database will be accessible to you. So the migration will not be difficult for you If you want to move the content elsewhere or your WordPress is no longer maintained.

Which is most Secured CMS?

In general, Drupal has high-level of security standard with a dedicated security team which will use set of protocols and series of responsibility for handling issues in an effective way. Comparatively drupal has meticulous coding standards where the complete system is designed to ensure the codes which access the database is decontaminated or not.

Track the best CMS for blogs?

Undoubtedly WordPress! WordPress is specially built for blogging system. It has all tools to help us in creating and categorizing the blogs. When we talk about the traffics WordPress sites generating more traffics than the other CMS sites and that is why WordPress is termed as pretty SEO friendly.

Find effective CMS to create online marketplace

WordPress along with the woo e-commerce plugin is one of the best combinations and most used CMS platforms to develop online marketing websites. Since woo commerce plugin has more customized and personalized settings, which will give you a great experience of developing e-commerce sites.

Most of the web service providing companies are effectively making use of this Content Management System(CMS).

Colan InfoTech is a fast growing mobility consulting and solutions enterprise with global clients, numerous portfolios and niche competencies. We focus on web servce providing and making mobility a game changer for corporations and clients. We are enthusiastic about developing sites and apps that look incredible, engage the consumer, and deliver tangible ROI.