Is Big Data right for your business?

Today, you can find “news” about Big Data just about everywhere. It’s being talked about in print magazines, newspapers, and all over the web. But, with so much news out there, how can you know if Big Data is right for your business, and, if so, how you should implement?

First, you need to have a working understanding of what Big Data is, and not the popular Cliff Notes version of the definition either. We’re talking about a real, working understanding. Big Data is a term used to describe technologies that allow companies to parse and catalogue datasets that are far too large to manage with conventional data gathering and mining tools.

One popular myth about Big Data is that it has only been around for “a couple” of years. Not so. In fact, major industries such as healthcare and entertainment have been using Big Data to “crack the code” for their production and marketing departments for years. So, we now have several years of a working understanding of how Big Data can work, and a proven track record in several major industries.

What IS true about Big Data is that many companies have just begun to take a serious look at it over the past two years. The world, we all realize, is changing. Smartphones are changing the way people use the internet and that, in turn, is changing how people shop, how they interact, and how they make the majority of their day to day decisions.

It’s a quantum leap forward in a short period of time, and that has many people wondering, and not a few CEOs worried. Is it too early to buy-in for their business, or, if they wait too long, will they be left behind, sacrificing market share to a more daring competitor? This conundrum is, in many ways, not unlike questions technology has forced on businesses before.

In the early days of computing, many companies wondered if they should jump on board, or keep doing things the old fashioned way. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Then, Jeff Bezos came along with an idea that became Amazon. Many companies, particularly in the publishing and entertainment industries, laughed him off the same way record companies scoffed at iTunes. Again, we all know how that turned out.

Bottom line? You will not know if Big Data will work for you unless you dig in, take it very seriously, and do what you can to learn all you can.

Source:http://www.jewocity.com/blog/is-big-data-right-for-your-business/12331

Bitcoin Mining Company CoinTerra Enters Cloud Mining

Amid rapid changes in the bitcoin mining industry, another bitcoin miner is going into the cloud.

CoinTerra on Monday announced that it will begin offering cloud-based mining services to its customers, becoming the second big miner this month to make the move. As the price of bitcoin has tumbled, it has become increasingly difficult to profitably mine bitcoin, a problem for the miners and the companies catering to them.

As more miners come aboard, the bitcoin algorithm automatically adjusts its difficultly higher. This has sparked an arms race, with miners deploying increasingly powerful computers to stay on top. That has led to a rising spiral of costs. It’s reached the point where it’s become cost-prohibitive for people to mine on their own. Cloud mining, where miners buy contracts from companies like CoinTerra and PeerNova, is emerging as a cheaper option.

CoinTerra, founded nearly a year ago,  will be selling one- and two-year contracts for a range of mining power, from 200 gigahash (small) up to one petahash (big), as well as continuing to sell mining rigs. “We’re catering to basically the entire spectrum out there,” CEO Ravi Iyengar told BitBeat. Through the mining rigs it sells, CoinTerra comprises about 15% of the total mining output, the company said, and it expects to maintain that market share.

As bitcoin has grown, the”hash rate,” a measurement of mining power, has skyrocketed. In September 2013, the entire mining network reached the 1 petahash/second rate, a multiple of 40 times higher than in January 2013. Now CoinTerra will be selling 1 petahash contracts. It’s gotten so big, it’s harder to mine profitably on anything but a very large scale. CoinTerra itself saw sales drop 30% in April. Thus the move into cloud mining.

In the early days of the cryptocurrency, it was possible to mine using desktop computers. As it grew, CPUs gave way to graphics cards, which gave way to generic chips modified for mining, which gave way to chips programmed for a single task called ASICs. It now takes machines with multiple dedicated chips to mine profitably, and increasingly even that kind of computing power doesn’t provide a sufficient return on the investment, given the falling price of bitcoins, the increasing size of the mining community, and the concurrent increasing energy demands, which has emerged as a major roadblock. “Space and power is a big issue,” Mr. Iyengar told BitBeat. “The power required is unlike any other server industry.”

CoinTerra is leasing space at several data centers in the U.S., he said, and has some plans to build its own data center.

The upheaval has resulted in a string of problems for the industry, from bankruptcies to delivery delays to lawsuits. KnCMiner has had problems with deliveries, and branched out into selling rigs that mine for altcoins rather than bitcoin. Butterfly Labs is involved in several lawsuits, and a startup called HashFast Technologies (which is also involved in a lawsuit) on Monday announced that it laid off 50% of its staff. Washington-based Alydian simply went bankrupt as the cloud-based mining business it built couldn’t keep up with the increasing power demands.

“A lot of people got into this space in the mad gold rush,” Mr. Iyengar said, “here you’re trying to combine hardware and software and the whole supply chain associated with a server market.” He likened it to trying to combine Intel, Microsoft, and Dell.

The total computing power is rising at such an exponential rate, that machines have a short productive lifespan. Even a delay of a month or two between the time a customer places an order and the time the machine arrives can severely cut into profits.

Thus the move into the cloud. CoinTerra joins the recently formed PeerNova in offering cloud services.

Source:http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/12/bitcoin-mining-company-cointerra-enters-cloud-mining/