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How to Decide if PostgreSQL is the Right Reporting Database for You

October 22, 2018 Sisense

Pour out a little liquor for the days of one-parent hierarchical databases.

We’ve come a long way.

These days, there’s no shortage of dynamic DBMS tools. But when talking open source, Postgres will undoubtedly dominate the conversation. It’s regarded by many as the best wrench in your database toolkit. Period.

Still, every business is different, and you have to choose the reporting systems that are right for you. So is Postgres the way to go when you’re after BI, analytical or operational reporting? Let’s delve into that.

Think of this as your guide — or rather cheat sheet — covering the basics of what to consider before going all in for PostgreSQL reporting.

(Are you team MySQL? Check out our all-points rundown on the pros and cons of using MySQL for analytical reporting.)

Start by taking a hard look at your 3Vs.

Variety. What types of data are you working with?

One of the many benefits of PostgreSQL is that it works with a huge variety of data, including some pretty handy advanced types like ‘array’ which can enable quick, ad hoc aggregation in query results, and of course native data types, allowing you to build your own.

Both of these can be a BIG help in analytics and reporting, allowing you to swiftly retrieve relevant data.

Postgres still falls a little short in types like currency, images and music, but these are already on their radar and we wouldn’t be surprised to see them in the next update.

But if the majority of your data is qualitative stuff, such as text, image-heavy articles, and social media posts, think twice before relying solely on Postgres for your reporting needs. You could, for example, keep PostgreSQL as your database and use a free reporting tool that was built to handle qualitative data, such as Atlas.ti or QDA Miner Lite.

Quick Caveat: Regardless of your current variety types, this is an area to watch closely. As the number of data sources continues to grow across organizations of all shapes and sizes, variety will become more and more crucial for intelligent reporting.

Sound like you?

If your organization is poised for major growth across multiple data sources, you’ll want to set up a reporting platform that can quickly perform cross-database queries on a variety of data types, and easily scale as you grow. Sisense was built to handle fragmented datasets, and of course, we recommend it as a great option if you’re looking at high growth in the near future.

Live for today, plan for tomorrow.

Which brings us to our next, and possibly the most talked about V.

Volume. How much data does your BI rely on?

Even before PostgreSQL 9.5, the DBMS was widely praised for its ability to handle extremely large datasets.

But there were clear limitations to the amount of data it could process before performance took a hit.

Those are largely problems of the past and Postgres deserves massive kudos for its big data upgrades. Its improved scalability makes it a great option for business analytics of all sizes.

Still, it’s worth remembering that at its core, Postgres is a relational database. It wasn’t initially built for big data.

So it’s understandable that issues still pop up, even since the latest features were added, including rapid analogous table growth of up to terabytes in size, which can lead to other problems such as slower query performance and indexing.

And of course, bloat. Even simple maintenance tasks like vacuum can take way longer than they should.

This is a small price to pay for the kind of benefits you get with Postgres and these issues can easily be mitigated through custom configuration of data architecture, performance tuning and table partitioning. And of course, it has a fantastic community and support team to help you handle any speedbumps.

But at the end of the day, optimization hacks take time and manpower — luxuries that not all organizations have.

If you’re like most users with moderate data usage, don’t even worry about it.

You should have no problem using Postgres for reporting and analytics. Postgres generally provides fast and stable query performance and can quickly access up to a terabyte on a single instance.

On the flipside, if you have a smaller (or growing) team in need of big data insights, Postgres isn’t a cure-all.

Even with the advanced big data features (which include the well-needed BRIN indexing and abbreviated keys for faster sorts, as well as the TABLESAMPLE SQL clause for accessing huge tables without a lot of sorting), companies with very high volume and velocity will still need to work in tandem with Hadoop or enable NoSQL.

If that sounds like you, you may want to skip the time spent troubleshooting and lighten the load with a BI tool like the Sisense Postgres Connector, which pulls the relevant data incrementally and then transforms, analyzes, and stores it on a 3rd party server of your choice, on-premises or in the cloud.

This is a great option if you’ve got large or fast-growing data.

The last thing your people want to be doing in the busiest of business times is waiting around for answers.

And speaking of time management, let’s talk…

Velocity. How fast does your business move?

How fast will you need to generate, deliver and accumulate data? And through how many data sources?

If you have a need for speed, plus a variety of fast-growing data, you may end up outgrowing Postgres for your reporting needs. Not because it’s a bad tool. (Au contraire, it’s a phenomenal tool!)

But it was built to satisfy the needs of the masses.

Even if you have the time and budget to custom configure both your data architecture and hardware to get max power out of PostgreSQL reporting, you’ll still want personalized, that cater to your specific business needs.

There is great power in visualization.

AnalyticsWeek’s Jelani Harper hits it right on the head:

“Actually deriving insight from integrated data (including unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data) is largely attributed to data visualizations. Many solutions enable users to customize dashboards that reflect any number of sources, their integration, and metrics employees can intuitively configure. Truly competitive platforms offer these capabilities with existing dashboards pliable by conventional point and click methods. The result is less dependence on IT to create visualizations, expedient time to both insight and action, and meaningful integration of sources to truly inform decision-making.”

If you want the kind of quick, actionable insights that keep you ahead of the competition (and trust me, you do want that), you’re going to need a level of customization that can’t be found in off-the-shelf Postgres reporting.

The good news is there’s an abundance of great systems that can offer this kind of insight, all while working seamlessly with Postgres.

Summary

Let’s wrap up with a rundown of the pros and cons of using Postgres for reporting. For many, the benefits of using Postgres for both database and reporting far outweigh the risks. But you’re not ‘most’. You’re you. So think about what you really need your business analytics to do, then set up your reporting to support that (not the other way around).

Pros:

Works with a huge variety of data
Fast and stable query performance
Handles extremely large datasets with ease
Any issues can be solved through custom configuration, optimization hacks or software
Excellent support community

Cons:

Room for improvement with qualitative data management
Can become slow when dealing with really big data

Next Steps

Learn more about our reporting tools for Postgres, see a few dashboard templates or check out our data visualization toolkit.

Tags: Databases | Postgres

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Blog – Sisense

A Little Girl Who Loves Her Cat

October 21, 2018 Humor

Cat who loves its human.

MakXm77 A Little Girl Who Loves Her Cat
“Cute kids. Get a human they said. It would be fun they said.”
Image courtesy of https://imgur.com/gallery/yv5EC9o

New White Paper! 50 Years of Mainframe Sorting Innovation from Syncsort

October 21, 2018 Big Data

Griffin Binko

October 20, 2018

Over the past 5 decades the focus for the mainframe has been on bigger, faster, cheaper processing power. This is no surprise considering the technology advancements that have occurred. The enormous water-cooled S/370s with only megabytes of real storage housed in raised floor environments and taking up a huge physical footprint have been replaced by very small, exponentially faster systems, supporting terabytes of real storage and a variety of applications. Our latest white paper, “50 Years of Mainframe Sorting Innovation from Syncsort,” takes a look at some of the advancements of the last 50 years.

Traditional batch and online processing has grown into mobile and web-based multi-platform applications with transactions that still rely on critical mainframe services. The volume, variety, and velocity of how data is created, used, and managed within organizations has driven technology changes -however sorting remains a critical function in most data processing applications.

Take a look at some of the innovations in Syncsort MFX® over the past 50 years, and how they have exploited technology advancements on the IBM z platforms and z/OS, to help mainframe organizations enhance, perform and reduce cost.

Download the white paper today!

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Syncsort Blog

Compassion in World Farming takes its mission global with NetSuite

October 21, 2018 NetSuite

Animal welfare charity leads global movement for a more ethical and sustainable food supply

SUITECONNECT LONDON—October 18, 2018—Compassion in World Farming, a global charity committed to improving the welfare of farm animals, is rolling out Oracle NetSuite to support its goal of providing everyone with healthy food that doesn’t involve cruelty, doesn’t involve suffering and doesn’t destroy the planet. With NetSuite, Compassion has a unified and flexible business platform to standardise operations in seven countries and support its rapid global expansion.

Established in the 1960s by UK dairy farmer Peter Roberts, Compassion has grown from a back room protest into a powerful global movement that has improved conditions for more than one billion animals in seven countries. To continue to drive profound and enduring advancements in farm animal welfare across the world, Compassion needed a modern business platform that could quickly and cost-effectively support its global expansion. After careful evaluation, Compassion selected NetSuite to support its expansion into India, Africa and South America as it seeks to improve standards for 1.5 billion farm animals over the next five years.

“Our ultimate aim is to completely eradicate factory-based farming by helping businesses make the right decisions and inspiring changes to farming law,” said Nick Dugdale, international financial planning and analysis manager, Compassion in World Farming. “As a fast-growing and influential worldwide movement present at many key decision-making forums from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization, our campaigns have helped drive legislative change around the welfare of animals, but we always want to achieve more. To support our goal of improving standards for every farm animal in every country, we selected NetSuite.”

NetSuite supports Compassion’s ambitious international strategy and gives it a real-time, consolidated view into its financial information, which allows the NGO to account for increased income globally, and track donations in a transparent manner, on a single system. Compassion has already adopted NetSuite in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and USA and plans to go live with NetSuite in France, Italy and Poland by the end of 2018.

“NetSuite allows us to adopt one way of doing things, globally, without losing the localization we need on a country-by-country basis, which is really critical to our strategy,” said Dugdale. “Prior to migrating to the cloud with NetSuite, we used a different system in each of our seven countries, but now we can quickly and efficiently set up shop in a new market at a fraction of the cost.”

NetSuite is a staunch supporter of non-profits and social enterprises globally, regardless of their ability to pay. Compassion is currently benefitting from Suite Donation and Suite Pro Bono, programmes that provide non-profit and social enterprise customers with Oracle NetSuite technologies, along with coaching and support from NetSuite employees, who provide their time and expertise to help organizations accelerate their social impact.

“Compassion in World Farming is a powerful global movement that is doing exceptional work to create a more humane world for farm animals,” said Nicky Tozer, EMEA VP, Oracle NetSuite. “With NetSuite’s global capabilities, Compassion can take its campaign to even more countries and be fully up-and-running from day one.”

About Compassion in World Farming

Compassion in World Farming was founded in 1967 by a British dairy farmer who became horrified at the development of intensive factory farming. Today Compassion is the leading farm animal welfare organization dedicated to ending factory farming and achieving humane and sustainable food. With headquarters in the UK, Compassion has offices across Europe, in the US, China and South Africa. To find out more about Compassion in World Farming visit: www.ciwf.org

About Oracle NetSuite
For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organizations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 15,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.

For more information, please visit http://www.netsuite.com.

Follow NetSuite’s Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

About Oracle
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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How to set SPO Functionality for the Account Entity – Step By Step Instructions

October 21, 2018 CRM News and Info

How to set SPO Functionality for the Account Entity – Step By Step Instructions

SharePoint Connection Setup

In CRM – Settings> SPO Configuration>SharePoint Connection Tab
In this example the SharePoint Document Library is Accounts.

The connection settings above should correspond to the SharePoint URL format of the Document Library – Accounts, as in this image

Add SPO functionality to CRM Entity

After creating successful connection to the Document Library in SharePoint, the next step is adding SPO functionality to the Account entity.

Click tab: Add SPO functionality to CRM Entity, and then click the button with same label.

Select Entity: Account

Add metadata from CRM entity view: select existing view or create custom view that includes all the fields in the Account entity and related entities to Account, to be used as metadata. In this example we created a view called “SPO View”, and it includes the metadata relevant to documents uploaded from Account entity to SharePoint, including one field (Contact’s Email) from the Contact entity which is related to the Account entity.
Select the “Required” option next to the metadata field that is mandatory in SharePoint. At initial settings stage, and testing, do not use the “Required” option (unselect all).

Select step 4 to store documents in folders within the “Accounts” document library.
The folder name is a selected field from the account entity like “Account Name” or “Account number”. We recommend selecting a field that is unique and always contains data.
Click Submit to complete this process.

Configure metadata columns in SharePoint

Account Name – Single line of text
Account Number – Single line of text
Description – Multiple lines of text
Contact – Single line of text
Email – Single line of text
Credit Limit – Currency
Payment terms – Choice (menu to choose from). Enter the picklist options from CRM as menu options in SP column

Modify the view to show relevant columns only. Set up filters, sorting and other available features to make it a “friendly” view for SharePoint users.

Test uploading document to SharePoint

Open an Account record in CRM. From the toolbar (in more …. functions) click the button Dynamics SPO and select to upload document from hard disk. Select document and upload. The document is now uploaded to a folder in the Accounts document library. The folder name is the content of the field selected as folder name (in this example it is Account Name), and it is saved with metadata from the CRM record.

NOTE: each time document is uploaded to SharePoint a new SPO Error is created. Use Advance Find to find the last created record, in case you wish debugging failed document upload.

Add sub-grid in Account pointing to documents uploaded to SharePoint

Open the Account’s form editor.
Click: Insert>Sub-grid
Enter: sub-grid unique name
Enter: sub-grid label
From Data Source select:
Records: Only Related Records
Entity: account (account)
Default View: Active SP Organizers
Click: OK

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Eye Floaters No More Review

October 21, 2018 Humor

The Eye Floaters No More program is a digital guide that shows you how to cure eye floaters the natural way. The reason you’re reading this is probably because you were searching for a natural solution for eye floaters (also called eye flashes). Truthfully, it’s not easy to find helpful reviews online that give an objective assessment of a product. In most cases, what you’ll find is pure marketing hype. So in this review, you will learn what Eye Floaters No More is all about in an objective assessment so that by the time you go to the official website to purchase your digital copy, you’ll be confident of what you’re getting.

Eye Floaters No More Review Eye Floaters No More Review

What Are Eye Floaters?

Eye floaters are tiny spots that occur in your field of vision. Specifically, they are deposits that form in the eye’s vitreous jelly. Eye floaters appear as floating black spots that move when the eyes are moved. They are particularly noticeable when you stare at a bright object. Although they may not have a significant effect on your sight, they can be very annoying. Sometimes, a particularly large eye flash may blur your vision with a subtle shadow. Although some people ignore eye floaters and choose to live with them, they may become benign eye floaters, thus more bothersome. As we age, the vitreous substance in your eyes starts to become lighter (turn into liquid form). Normally, vitreous has a jelly-like texture, but when it starts to turn into liquid, collagen fibers in that substance start to bind together and then move continuously within the vitreous cavity. These will appear as floaters that create shadows on the retina. Eye floaters may be made worse by disease and other conditions, such as nearsightedness, diabetic retinopathy, adverse effects of cataract surgery, and eye trauma, among others.

Eye Floaters No More

The Eye Floaters No More system shows you how to completely eliminate these annoying floaters that could potentially disrupt your vision. What’s more, the system shows you how to tell whether or not your eye floaters are a sign of a more serious condition. Obviously, the earlier you detect a serious eye condition, the better chances you have for rectifying it. Moreover, eye floaters may get worse with time, but this system will show you how to prevent more floaters from forming as time goes by.

This is the gist of the Eye Floaters No More system – to cure and prevent eye floaters. The most important thing is that it is an entirely natural method that is sure to rid eye flashes if applied correctly. The natural method is explained in clear step-by-step instructions using materials that are easily accessible at home.

Here is exactly what the Eye Floaters No More system will show you:

You will learn tips of how to naturally eliminate and prevent eye floaters and the terrible effects they can bring when staring at a bright object.
The system will show you how to permanently prevent eye floaters from developing again once they have been eliminated.
You will learn how to discern whether your eye floaters signify an underlying condition that needs immediate attention.
Get Rid of Eye Floater

In addition to that wealth of knowledge, when you purchase the system, you’ll have access to a support system that’s ready to answer all your queries and provide assistance when dealing with your eye floaters.

You also get two additional guides as a bonus when you purchase this system. The first guide is called Vision Without Glasses, a guide that shows you how to correct your vision naturally and you’ll never need glasses or surgical procedures. The second bonus guide is called Stress No More, a guide that will show you how to eliminate stress caused by conditions in daily life or even caused by the eye floaters.

Advantages And Benefits

Well, this review wouldn’t be complete without highlighting the strongest points that make this system worthwhile.

The biggest benefit of the Eye Floaters No More system is that it contains purely natural methods of rectifying eye floaters. Normally, people with problematic eye flashers may be recommended for surgery or other risky procedures. You’ve probably heard of laser procedures for eliminating eye flashes. Although they may be effective, the chances for adverse effects are very high too, and you may need more than one procedure to see improved results. However, this system eliminates the need for laser and surgical procedures at a very small fee compared to what you pay for surgery.

Another advantage is that the system is used at home and the methods are self-applied without help from a doctor or eye specialist. This will not only save you money that you’d have spent on trips to the eye specialist, but also saves you a lot of time.

Also, you can start applying the methods as soon as you download the eBook guide. You can access the digital guide from any computer connected to the Internet and immediately start applying the methods using home materials.

Many users have reviewed the system positively, so it helps to know that the guide you’re about to start using has been prove through real use.

The guide comes with a money back guarantee of eight weeks, so you can be sure that your money doesn’t go in vain.

What Users Say
The numerous positive user reviews that this system has received are the strongest confidence boosters for purchasing this system. Certainly, you wouldn’t buy something that was being scorned at by previous users. Most people that have used this program like the safety and simplicity that it provides. Any product that deals with health issues must be safe enough to be trusted by users.

Final Remarks
The Eye Floaters No More system is a solid, natural way of eliminating eye floaters. It is suitable for people who have annoying eye floaters but are not comfortable with alternatives such as surgery, or simply can’t afford it. Eye Floaters No More will enable you regain your vision and live out your old age with eye problems.

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D365 In Focus: Start Creating Reports with Power BI [VIDEO]

October 21, 2018 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In this short demo video, our Power Platform Capability Manager takes a common scenario – a sales team using Dynamics 365 and a service team using Excel – and shows how Power BI can pull all that data into a single view for actionable and interactive insights. Check it out!

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PowerObjects- Bringing Focus to Dynamics CRM

AI In The Real World: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Part 2)

October 21, 2018 BI News and Info

Part 2 in a 2-part series. Read Part 1.

Part 1 in this series examined different points of view on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence (AI). Part 2 explores the topic further.

Social and cognitive biases that are accidentally or intentionally introduced by the human engineers who code the algorithms can be detrimental to the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). For example, there have been job-screening systems that use AI to suppress female candidates for certain jobs, simply based on historical hiring data. Clearly, the algorithms that code how human decisions should be made are still not immune from gender bias, which may occur in the workplace or the developers’ human values.

Potential consequences of AI as a service

The way AI will automate enterprise IT jobs could be affected by issues such as having a male-dominated workforce designing the algorithms, a lack of female data scientists, or intersectional thinking when developing algorithms. AI as a Service (AIaaS), where a third party offers AI, can also result in economic and social consequences. There may be implications if a true AIaaS offering was available to just anyone. Social tensions and questions of work productivity with humans can be intense within an AI economy.

The next generation of AIaaS companies are poised to raise many different challenges regarding economic policy. AI certainly has made life easier for humans, but if an algorithm goes wrong, results can end in fatalities, lost revenue, racism, and more.

Yet there still is not much overall that can be done to curb every risk and privacy issue. Today, more and more robots and machines can solve problems with highly complex data, learn, perform, and perfect specific tasks. As AI’s growth and innovation spread globally, and as companies continue generating interest based on its initial success, business leaders continue with the hard work of aggressively rolling out AI deployments organization-wide.

Security concerns and employee misgivings

Security concerns when AI is used in applications also have potential unanticipated risks, and in some cases, engineers themselves do not even endorse them. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that a group of influential software engineers from Google’s cloud division refused to create a security feature called the “air gap” for the military. An air gap is a network security measure employed through one or more computers ensuring that a secure computer network is physically isolated from unsecured networks. According to Bloomberg, “the technology would assist Google in winning over sensitive military contracts.”

Rebellion among employees has grown tremendously with technology companies in Silicon Valley. Employees expressed their “black box’ method” concerns to Google in a company letter. “This plan will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent. Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust,” the employees stated. “This contract puts Google’s reputation at risk and stands in direct opposition to our core values. Building this technology to assist the U.S. Government in military surveillance – and potentially lethal outcomes – is not acceptable.” Bloomberg last week reported that Google has dropped out of competition for the contract.

Bear in mind that reasonable explanations for all the different stakeholders are critical within the IT enterprise when working with advanced AI algorithms and applications. For developers, automated decision-making can be altogether inscrutable. Within the DevOps environment, many enterprise organizations have moved away from the IT back-room maintenance model into a development cycle of customer-facing apps. High security risks can be replicated with automated tasks and as a result, spread by robots or machines.

Differing points of view: threat or opportunity?

Enterprise organizations are both underprepared and unaware of these types of potential vulnerabilities arising from DevOps. The CyberArk Threat Landscape report suggests that organizations risk having their new apps blocked unless they look at security at code level from the get-go. When purchasing any apps that incorporate AI elements, security should be a top priority. With any layer of cloud, safety and security should be built in. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning approaches are all fundamentally different ways to program computers. For the public, it’s only human nature to distrust what one cannot understand, and there is still a great deal of AI and ML models underlying applications that are not yet clear. It’s pertinent that trust remains key.

If business leaders and technology experts have their way, artificial intelligence will likely transform our world. Yet at the same time, these same individuals cannot decipher what the transformational effect will lead to. Choosing sides has proven to be a complicated process. Governance in AI creates many challenges, with regulators fearing our world will be controlled by robots.

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking stated that there may even be a “robot apocalypse.” He feared consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans, believing there is no real difference between achievements by a biological brain and achievements by a computer. AI superiority is a known fear. “It would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate,” he said to the BBC in 2014. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.” At the Centre for the Future of Intelligence AI event, Hawking said, “In short, the rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which.”

Realizing value with awareness of risks

Enterprises worldwide are just beginning to realize the real value of artificial intelligence. According to Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, artificial intelligence remains one of the most promising higher-level machine-learning services. Speaking at GeekWire’s Cloud Tech Summit, Russinovich said, “Companies are taking advantage of AI and ML to automate processes and get insights into operations that they didn’t have before.”

As applications evolve in an AI environment, application and adoption growth of machine learning and AI techniques will deliver greater opportunities. AI algorithms in enterprise IT have the power to create as well as the power to destroy. The potential uses are limitless, but so are the unintended consequences, and mistakes in this space can land any enterprise IT business in the headlines.

For more insight, check out a recent study from the Economist Intelligent Unit that uncovered how some companies are “Making the Most of Machine Learning: 5 Lessons from Fast Learners.”

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Digitalist Magazine

Google Play offline peer-to-peer installs prevents malicious Android apps from spreading

October 21, 2018 Big Data

In developing countries, mobile data is often expensive — not to mention tough to come by. That’s why peer-to-peer software sharing apps, which enable smartphones to transfer updates and files offline via Bluetooth or ad hoc Wi-Fi connections, have proliferated. But they’re not a particularly secure way of doing business — without internet-connected malware-scanning tools to fall back on (except for Google Play Protect), you have to take offline hosts at their words. It’s an unattractive proposition considering that, according to Google, Android devices that download apps from third-party sources are 9 times more likely to be compromised.

That’s why Google late last year introduced a new information layer for Android app files (APKs) — security metadata — that lets devices quickly determine whether an app has been modified or manipulated in any way, even offline. Starting today, offline peer-to-peer installs are launching in beta.

Developers don’t need to lift a finger. When a user shares an app via partner tools like SHAREit, Google Play — Android’s app store — will be able to determine its authenticity by reading a portion of the APK Signing Block, and even add shared apps to a user’s library. Additionally, it’ll manage app updates when the device comes back online.

Support for more peer-to-peer app partners, including Files Go by Google and Xender, will launch in the coming weeks.

“This will give users more confidence when using Play-approved peer-to-peer app beta partners,” wrote James Bender, product manager for Google Play, in a blog post. “This is an important step that improves the integrity of Google Play’s mobile app ecosystem. Offline Play peer-to-peer sharing presents a new distribution opportunity for developers while helping more people keep their apps up to date.”

The announcement follows on the heels of Google Play security enhancements Google announced in December 2017, which saw a migration from 32-bit apps and libraries to 64-bit and new requirements around recent Android API levels.

In March, Google released its Android Security 2017 Year in Review, which revealed that 60.3 percent of potentially harmful apps (PHAs) were detected via machine learning. Detection is performed by Google Play Protect, a service enabled on over 2 billion devices (running Android 4.3 and up) that automatically reviews more than 50 billion apps each day.

Play Protect’s reviews led to the removal of nearly 39 million PHAs in 2017, Google said.

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Black Friday/Cyber Monday Is Coming – and It's Only the Beginning

October 20, 2018 CRM News and Info

Are you a retailer trying to get ready for the 2018 holiday season? Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Just kidding. Sort of.

I could just sit here and share yet another checklist to remind you of all the standard e-commerce table stakes you need to master. Things like load testing, inventory monitoring and management, mobile site optimization, security compliance, paid ads, email drip campaigns, social media campaigns and customer support.

However, what I really want to do is help you get ready for Cyber Monday 2019. And 2020. And 2025. And all the shopping days in between.

Where to begin? Let’s take a long, hard look at your commerce infrastructure.

Big doorbuster sales may be the bread-and-butter strategy for your standard Black Friday weekend, but if you’re looking for long-term success, you’ll need to think beyond new features and promotions. You’ll need to make sure your commerce platform is capable of carrying your storefront into the future, where the world of e-commerce (and commerce in general) moves at a rapid, and accelerating, pace.

Can your commerce platform get you where you need to go? If you suspect the answer is no — don’t panic! Following are four major insights on development, internationalization, channels and data that will help you get ready for the future.

1. Continuous Improvement Allows for Flexibility

Amazon’s dev team deployed new code to production at an average rate of once every 11.6 seconds, Director of Platform Analysis Jon Jenkins
revealed at a Velocity Conference talk in 2011. What does this mean in layperson’s terms? It means that the folks at Amazon continually have been building new functionality, updating existing features, A/B testing, and fixing bugs to gradually improve their product and overall customer experience. That’s why they have such phenomenal business results.

If you’re looking to get ready for the future, you’ll want to make sure your org supports this technology-first approach to development. By merging small amounts of code frequently,
continuous integration allows dev teams to write better code, be more productive, ship faster, and respond to customer experience requests quickly.

Through
continuous deployment (or to a slightly lesser extent, continuous delivery), teams then can automate building, testing and deploying so that software continues to be released in short cycles, allowing for incremental updates.

Smaller, frequent updates offer flexibility, but they also offer the opportunity to build toward a big update without having to shut your entire site down. I recently got an email from a major retailer saying, “…we are about to code freeze for November.”

If your site is on code lockdown for two months before the holidays (that’s 16 percent of the entire year, by the way) because you don’t feel confident that your infrastructure and software can handle changes without crashing, you are falling farther behind every day. The Amazon Effect is real.

2. Tap Into New Markets by Going International

Optimizing your site for international markets means more than simply using a currency converter, or setting up international shipping options. It means personalizing your e-commerce content, defining your targeted products, and tailoring your sales strategy to specific regional markets.

If you’re a clothing retailer looking to tap into new markets, you’ll want to be strategic about the types of merchandise you market to consumers. Different types of messaging resonate with different kinds of people living in different places. Is a casual register more appropriate, or should the voice stick to being formal?

Likewise, a shopper in a sunny suburb in the U.S. has entirely different needs from a shopper living in a rainy city in the UK. It’s not just about localization. Internationalization requires considering new promotions that resonate with new markets, like
Singles Day in China. It also means accommodating shoppers in countries who primarily browse on their mobile devices, or in offline mode.

With new markets come new sales strategies. You’ll want to make sure your commerce platform can accommodate different exchange rates and taxes (e.g. value added tax), and you’ll also want to be flexible with how your reporting interprets conversion. As for shipping, you’ll want to set up the proper rules for international shipping so that shoppers don’t get blindsided by high shipping costs.

E-commerce is commerce, and commerce is global. If you can’t accommodate, respect and support the needs of your international neighbors, your conversion rates will suffer. Amazon gets this. Fortunately, there are commerce platforms out there with the technology to support internationalization. For retailers looking past the next big hit or sale, it’s worth checking out.

3. Omnichannel Reflects How Shoppers Actually Buy

It’s a bit of a buzzword now, but there’s a reason why omnichannel is so widely discussed in commerce. Savvy shoppers no longer make their purchases through one point of sale alone. Now, the customer journey may consist of several touchpoints, which may begin in-store, continue to a marketplace site accessed on a mobile app, and finally end on a desktop computer.

That’s why it’s essential for retailers to offer as seamless an experience as possible for shoppers, so that they can experience the best of the brand consistently as they continue down the channel stream.

Unfortunately, the troubling reality is that many retailers struggle with offering this seamless experience. That’s often because there’s no single source of truth for their data — not for inventory, not for customer data, not for traffic, user experience or marketing metrics.

Imagine running an online storefront that doesn’t share data with its Amazon marketplace storefront, its brick-and-mortar locations, or anything else. If the online storefront inventory runs out of shirts on Cyber Monday, that site isn’t selling more shirts. Meanwhile, in the backroom of a physical store five miles away, hundreds of shirts sit there, in stock, ready to be shipped.

Omnichannel requires customization. It requires a flexible infrastructure that won’t break when you try to launch a new loyalty program, a mobile POS, or a new fulfillment option like in-store pickup. In return, it provides retailers with a holistic view of data across channels. Imagine how nice it would be to have a centralized place to monitor and manage every order, shipment and conversion.

4. Real-Time Data Is Everything

I’m just going to put it bluntly: If your data isn’t connected in real time to what’s happening with your store, you’re flying blind.

When it comes to big shopping events like Cyber Monday, there’s no time to lose. With the major influx of traffic, sales and support inquiries, you’ll need to be on top of things as they come, second-by-second. Even relatively straightforward functions like inventory management can be hopelessly bungled if you have to wait for your system to generate an overnight cron job just to know what’s in stock.

Through algorithmic real-time data, retailers immediately can spot trends as the promotion carries on. They can use those trends to predict behavior and make timely decisions to provide a greater shopper experience, resulting in greater conversion.

Is one product type converting poorly compared to other products? Play with pricing. Is it receiving zero conversions? There may be a problem with its checkout CTA. This type of instantaneous dialogue simply would not be possible in a static model.

So how can retailers employ real-time data? Again, it all goes back to infrastructure. You’ll want to make sure your infrastructure is
event-driven and has the ability to retain and analyze data. Consider looking into NoSQL databases like
MongoDB, which account for many types of data schemas in real time.

In conclusion, do what you need to do to get through this holiday season, of course. Check off all those essential table-stakes items. Batten down the hatches! Once you’ve recovered from the frenzy of this year’s short-term promotions, though, it’s time to think about your long-term goals.

Rethink your development process. Make sure it’s flexible and allows for continuous improvement. Tap into new international markets. Reflect how shoppers actually buy, then establish a single source of truth for data. Last but not least, always maintain a real-time dialogue with your customers.

I hope this holiday season is successful beyond your wildest dreams. I also hope that when the rush is over, you’ll take a deep breath, reflect on how it all went, and ask yourself: Can this commerce infrastructure get us to where the market will be next year? Five years from now? Ten? If you don’t like the direction you’re headed, the best time to begin the process of making a course correction is now.

Sara%20Hicks Black Friday/Cyber Monday Is Coming and It's Only the Beginning
Sara Hicks is cofounder and CEO of
Reaction Commerce, the fastest-growing open source commerce management platform used by modern retailers.

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Black Friday/Cyber Monday Is Coming – and It's Only the Beginning

1. Continuous Improvement Allows for Flexibility

2. Tap Into New Markets by Going International

3. Omnichannel Reflects How Shoppers Actually Buy

4. Real-Time Data Is Everything

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