Wumdrop's MOBILE solution delivers a victory at the Entrepreneur SmartCamp Cape Town!
Congratulations to Wumdrop for winning the SmartCamp Cape Town competition!
This year's event in Cape Town had 5 outstanding startups competing for the win. Each startup had very different and unique solutions that included scalable transactional monitoring, ecommerce store builder, mobile identity, and even a micro-radar so a bicyclist can track automobiles for increased safety. I'd say the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cape Town is producing some very creative startup solutions!
Wumdrop's mobile solution allows you to request shipping service at the click of a button. No more waiting in lines at the post office or shipping kiosk! What's so impressive about their solution is that it furthers the notion of mobile solutions making daily tasks easier and faster to complete. This is a great resource for business and personal use!
And a big shout out to Tech4Africa! SmartCamp Cape Town ran in partnership with Tech4Africa. Every time they are involved in a SmartCamp event, it is huge success for everyone! So THANK YOU to Tech4Africa!
London Welcomes Business Tech Trends! What are the European differences?
I will be in London this week for the Entrepreneur County event entitled "Follow the Entrepreneur!"with Julie Myers as well as spending a few days at Shoreditch ... especially highlighting some Europe differences of our Business Tech Trend Study.
So in prep for Europe, I wanted to know the specific differences that we were seeing in Europe! Here's the highlights! As a reference, European companies make up 47% of those who contributed to the study (primarily from UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia)
Differences:
• Social adoption is lower in Europe:
64% of European enterprises have deployed social (vs. 70% of non-Europe enterprises)
• Plans for increasing Big Data and Analytics investment are lower:
66% of European enterprises are planning to increase investment over next 2 years, vs. 75% non-Europe
• Europeans report having the needed cloud skills needed:
63% Europe vs. 56% non-Europe
• European companies are less likely to be engaging academia and clients as a partner:
73% use for activities, vs. 81% of non-European enterprises
79% use clients for activities, vs. 84% of non-European enterprises
• They are less likely to use analytical insights in their decision making:
30% Europe vs. 43% non-Europe (vs. 7 in 10 Pacesetters)
• And Finally, European enterprises are less likely to report gaining major competitive advantage from their initiatives in these areas:
- Mobile: 66% in Europe gain major comp. advantage (vs. 77% non-Europe)
- Social: 63% in Europe (vs. 77% non-Europe)
- BDA: 65% in Europe (vs. 82% non-Europe)
- Cloud: 67% in Europe (vs. 82% non-Europe)
While here I found this cool app as well -- for seeing the sights ..not that I will get to this trip but it is a fascinating app!
Googling Around London [Infographic] by the team at Cheapflights
IBM Navigator on Cloud: Try it for 30 days to Manage your content
Did you know that 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are created every day? And, that as much as 80 percent of that data is comprised of unstructured content such as contracts, claims forms, and permit applications.
The explosion of content, and more importantly new forms of it including tweets and posts to social media, has increased the need to use any type of information from nearly any source.
IBM Navigator on Cloud, available on the IBM Cloud marketplace and built on SoftLayer’s Cloud platform, is a SaaS offering that can help all businesses gain value from a huge amount of content. You can even interface to IBM Navigator on Cloud via open APIs. In addition to being a secure, scalable and reliable platform, IBM Navigator on Cloud is also easy to use and delivered through a modern user experience.
IBM Navigator on Cloud has put IBM as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. Also, the leading analyst firm IDC, for the 8th consecutive year, ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for content management. It's a great tool to use and manage your content and files!
To learn more about IBM Navigator on Cloud, check out the video below! You can also try IBM Navigator on Cloud for a 30-day trial period.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrSgbNtsoH8&w=560&h=315]
Pacesetters are 2X more likely to leverage a Start-Up Partner for Innovation
To get the full study: ibm.biz/IBMBTT14
TGIF! Pacesetters place big bet on "analytics" - Register for the Watson Beta!!!
I love being able to snap a picture of a check with my smart phone and magically deposit the money into my bank account. No more sitting in a long line of cars to deposit a check or worrying about misplacing that tiny piece of paper! Big data and analytics has made this service possible for financial institutions, large and small, to make available to their customers.
Last week, during our Business Tech Trends webcast, Don Hopper of Fiserv, a provider of information management and electronic commerce systems, shared two reasons why big data and analytics is fuel for his clients:
- Small and midsize financial institutions can now leverage insights that traditionally were only available to large financial institutions. Analyzing the data allows them to increase revenue and build stronger customer relationships.
- Financial institutions can now more effectively manage mobile and digital channels, like remote deposit services, while analyzing how to increase its adoption.
Hear more from Don, as well as others, in our replay of the Business Tech Trends webcast.
Don't miss out on this great opportunity for you to be part of the Watson Analytics Beta. This solution enables your business to put predictive capability into the hands of your business leaders like CMO, CHRO, and CSO.
You are invited to sign up for the Watson Analytics Beta Program. The time is now!
What kind of ideas for solutions do you have? What insights do you have to share? The 2014 Business Tech Trends study captured a tremendous amount of data. There are more insights than we could include in the Business Tech Trends study. And we're making it available to you!
Here's an opportunity for you to join us for our Bluemix JAM, download the data from the Business Tech Trends report, create your own Bluemix app with the data, and then share your cool insights with us!
Insight Robotics douses out the competition, wins SmartCamp China!
Insight Robotics douses out the competition, wins SmartCamp China!
Every summer in the United States, it seems like there are more and more forest fires. Literally thousands of forestland acres are lost each summer season! It always makes me wonder, "Can't we do better?"
Last week's SmartCamp China winner has a great solution for fighting forest fires, called Insight Computer Vision Wildfire Detection System. Insight Robotics uses thermal imaging sensors and advanced artificial intelligence vision technology to quickly locate a forest fire, giving first responders a jump at extinguishing the flames. So precise is their solution that is can spot fires as small as an area of 2m x 1m within 5km radius!
And that's not all it can do! Insight Robotics also says that their solution can be used in a variety of ways for undeveloped terrain, including the monitoring of illegal logging and large city parks.
Now that's what I call a smarter solution! Congratulations to Insight Robotics!
Citizen developers drive more innovation for Pacesetters!
You've probably heard the term “citizen developer,” but have you considered using citizen developers as a partner resource? Robin Jones' quote from our Business Tech Trends webcast provides a great example of the influence citizen developers can have, even with large companies like Esri.
Citizen developers are creative hobbyists who build business applications for fun. It's not their day job, and they typically don't have the budget for expensive tools to help them build. https://ace.ng.bluemix.net Bluemix is a great example of a powerful, inexpensive tool for mobile app development. That's why Bluemix is such a game-changer!
In fact, Pacesetters are twice as likely to leverage citizen developers!
You might not expect to see a partnership between a citizen developer and a booming enterprise. However, our http://ibm.biz/IBMBTT14 Business Tech Trend study shows that citizen developers are not only partnering with enterprises, they are influencing the way companies like Esri are developing products, shaping APIs, and writing their business models!
On the webcast last week, Robin explained it like this. She said that citizen developers are extremely creative at pulling together multiple “best in class” systems and leveraging free and open source tools. When Esri, a provider of geographic information systems software, provides open source tools for citizen developers to use, the results are a whole new understanding of the tools and how they can be used!
For more awesome insight from Robin and our other partners who participated in last week's Entrepreneur Huddle, http://ibm.biz/biztechhuddle register for the replay now!!
Trends on Social ! Pacesetters are more than 6X more to use social to improve experience
We just published our new Business Tech Trend report with over 1400 decision makers. From this report, take a look at gains in Social deployment over the last 2 years. It is up 106%
Then we studied the Pacesetters. Pacesetters are those who have dedicated their competitive focus through technology and are seeing better business value.
But what I find most exciting -- is the way these Pacesetters are using Social. They 6X more likely to use Social for communication and to improve client experience. In addition, they use social 3X more than those laggards for expanding into new segments and markets.
Please join us on the Entrepreneur huddle to learn more! https://ibm.biz/techhuddle
The 3 key take aways to help You become a pacesetter are:
- Understanding the Pacesetters secrets. Download the picture book: https://ibm.biz/IBMBTT14
- Leverage the data in the study and experiment Developing an App on Bluemix : https://ibm.biz/biztechjam
- Register now for Watson Analytics Beta! This solution brings predictive capability to the non techy! http://www.watsonanalytics.com