Michael Reali

Blog #3

            The world we live in is getting more and more advanced by technology. Technology changes all the processes, like marketing and communication for improving the hospitality industry. Big data tools are evolving more quickly than the people and organizations using them. This is big news for people in the hotel industry because it’s a totally a digital world we now live in.

            The industry will use big data to transform the way various properties market to business and travelers having a new system. However the major decision is if the information about the individual travelers and groups are worth the cost of analyzing and dissecting that data to store it. As we mentioned in class, about knowing if the information is useful or not. They would have to take into account the value, cost, and risk.

            This would be a major breakthrough into the marketing aspect of the industry. The definition of marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including advertising. The big data would be revolutionary because it would give the option to translate and deploy targeted marketing campaigns on behalf of international hotel chains and boutique resorts. This would start a new way of deciding where to stay for a vacation for an individual or a big group. Professionals could provide you with more information about who is staying at the hotel and see if its something the person is interested in.

            The process would include the ability to customize always like your own profile. It would know the individuals digital profile “so to speak; to know when, where, and why to reach this guest or that traveler; to know how to have a sustained conversation with a current or prospective vacationer, according to that man’s proclivity toward sightseeing or that woman’s preference for in-room dining”. This would be a groundbreaking way of communication. However, according to Orielly article, the tools are more advanced than the organizations using them.  It’s not surprising that the technology of big data has evolved more rapidly than the organizational structures, but didn’t think it was going to be a gap that would slow down the process.

            The big data will set a trend to all other industries and will give the hospitality industry an advantage compared to the rest. I believe, it would also, boost the economy and strengthen tourist sites, restaurants, and things around hotels.  

http://www.dataversity.net/298989-2/

http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/09/big-data-culture-gap-technology-advancing-more-quickly-than-people-and-processes.html

“How Big Data and Analytics Are Changing Hotels and The Hospitality Industry”

“How Big Data and Analytics Are Changing Hotels and The Hospitality Industry”

            Technology is constantly improving to help companies and sectors increase profits and enlarge their customer numbers. An article in Forbes written by Bernard Marr, “How Big Data And Analytics Are Changing Hotels And The Hospitality Industry”, tells readers how Big Data helps hotels and the hospitality sector, which has millions of travelers a day, understand exactly who they want to stay at their hotel and what they should do to increase their performances.

            This article distinguishes many remarkable points. For example, surprisingly a business does not look at a customer who spends a lot of money at once, but customers who are frugal. The customer who is spending a lot of money at once is mostly likely going into retirement and will not be spending a lot forever. The frugal customer however, if happy, will more likely return when on business trips and therefore have a longer value. One example is Red Roof Inn because they realized that having a hotel by an airport can increase customers. Just by checking the weather to predict any flight cancellations the marketing team works to make sure customers see their hotel when stranded. Another example, is how Starwood Hotels and Resorts dictate their room pricing by analyzing weather reports to see how much a customer will be willing to stay in the Caribbean or vacation area. Starwood Hotels and Resorts has been able to increase revenues by almost 5%.

            After reading this article, I am impressed with how the hotel and hospitality sector are able to increase their customers. However, I am still left with some questions and thoughts I felt this article missed. Can Big Data create an oligopoly? Gary Hawkins a writer of the Harvard Business Review article, “Will Big Data Kill All But the Biggest Retailers?” believes that since not all retailers have the resources to keep up, soon there will be less and less competition. Also, if one lives in a warm area and wants to go to the Caribbean does that mean they do not get as good as a price as someone living north of them? If that is I think that seems unfair. Lastly, will hotel loyalty programs still be as effective? There are many sectors using Big Data, and I look forward to seeing how the hotel sector will excel in enticing customers to stay at their chains.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/01/26/how-big-data-and-analytics-changing-hotels-and-the-hospitality-industry/#4c8f0ce14b39

https://hbr.org/2012/09/will-big-data-kill-all-but-the

Senate says IRS must better protect taxpayer data

            The United States Senate has expressed their concerns regarding the database security of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) because of stolen taxpayer data reported last May.  Due to these discoveries, the Senate feels that the American taxpayers have been failed by the companies and policymakers that they rely on to protect them.

            Cybersecurity is an essential part of keeping yourself safe from being hacked and issuing personal information on the Internet or any technological platform.  However, to have an increasingly persistent issue of cybersecurity within a government company rises many concerns.  The IRS stated that the breach discovered last May affected more than 700,000 taxpayer accounts and lasted over the months of January 2014 to May 2015.  The weak security displays that the IRS is not keeping up-to-date on technology patterns and methods of hacking government systems to protect this data.  Without proper cybersecurity skills the IRS will continue to lose American taxpayer accounts to hacker and this will eventually lead to the highest forms of identity theft, fraud, and much more.

            When tax season roles around, American use many different methods of completing their tax returns in order to get them in before April 15, which includes using private tax preparers.  Currently private tax preparers are not regulated by the Internal Revenue Service in any way.  However, the Senate believes that these accountants and tax preparers need to be under the authority of the IRS to ensure quality of tax returns, but to mainly provide the ultimate sense of security from any avenue that a taxpayer files their taxes each year.  By having each tax preparer and the IRS be on the same page, it will help Americans regain confidence in our legal and government system after the breach.

            Since the breach reported last May illustrates weak security, the Government Accountability Office has made 94 recommendations between August 2014 and March 2016 in order to help secure taxpayer data.  These recommendations can transform and revolutionize the way the IRS secures their files and data of taxpayers and other financial information that comes into their possession.  Taxpayers are trusting the United States government with personal data that can, if put in the wrong hands, can severely damage their lives. The IRS needs to reevaluate their current methods and programs while seriously considering and implementing the recommendations of the GAO.

            Three things that the article does not touch upon are how the IRS plans to fix this problem of continuous hacking, what their current security method entails, and why it took so long for them to detect the hacking and stolen tax data for over a year and a half.  I believe these three aspects are important to understand in order to fully grasp how the IRS is attempting to protect our personal data that is now susceptible to hackers jumping at the opportunity to steal American taxpayer information.

Work Cited

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/04/12/senators-say-irs-must-better-protect-taxpayer-data/82951942/ 

"Intel-backed Collaborative Cancer Cloud expands to include two more universities"

Intel has announced recently that it's Collaborative Cancer Cloud (CCC) is a step further towards a worldwide roll-out with two more universities joining in on its project. The CCC is a project to put data on cancer diagnosis's of millions of patients into a database that doctors can use to identify patterns for different kinds of cancers and to be able to pinpoint appropriate treatments.

One of the things mentioned in the article is why it is so important to do this and why it could save a cancer patient's life. In the article, Joe Gray, who is from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) said that, "the difficulty researchers face when trying to achieve this is the fact cancers are “remarkably heterogeneous”, said Gray, which is why they are using cloud to effectively create a global database of information that can be drawn on for diagnostic purposes" (Donnelly). In other words, each cancer diagnosis has its own unique problems and complications associated with the individual that it was diagnosed in. Therefore, this makes it important to have a database where doctors and researchers can identify patterns in a sample of millions of cancer diagnoses in order to come up with a treatment for the patient quickly. Mr. Gray went on to further say that, "we need to have a database we can use to compare our individual cancer. To have enough statistical power to identify relevant patterns, we’re going to have to compare our cancers to samples from millions of patient to really make this precise" (Donnelly).

An issue that was brought up in the article was the issue of the use of big data and how there are many logistical problems to overcome with using the amount of big data that these databases are planning on using. What they want to be able to do is have machines that screen for the cancer and then automatically upload the data to a database in which they can analyze the data there. As the article explains it, "[the] patient would undergo a biopsy, have the information gleaned from that immediately analysed and swiftly compared with other samples to establish how best to treat it" (Donnelly). This all has to be done very quickly. Joe Gray stated that, "we can't take months and months to do this. We have to be able to render a decision in a few days, and our goal by working with Intel is to do all that in a day [by] 2020" (Donnelly).

In order to get the computing power they need to do this, "CCC is taking a cloud-based approach to managing this data[...]" (Donnelly). The storage needed to do this will be gigantic and so to combat this, CCC is using the computing power, storage, and capabilities of the cloud to store, analyze, and retrieve data for doctors and researchers. "Rather than trying to centralise the data[...]" (Donnelly), they will use the cloud to, "seamlessly send our compute to the data" (Donnelly).

Article: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450280580/Intel-backed-Collaborative-Cancer-Cloud-gets-one-step-closer-to-worldwide-rollout

Quick Access to Databases to Improve the MLB

Technology has had a huge impact on almost every aspect of life. One aspect that it has recently become apart of is sports. A few years ago it entered the world of football with the use of tablets on the field. These tablets use large databases to analyze player matchups and play calls all through out the game to help the coaches make the best possible decisions. This deal is worth 400 million dollars over four years. This will benefit the MLB as well as Apple with the improvement of the game as well as increased revenues for Apple.

            This technology has now entered the world of baseball. The MLB has agreed a deal with apple to equip every team with Ipads to use on and off the field. These Ipads with use data from online databases that will help the managers and coaches make game time decisions. These Ipads will be equipped with an app called MLB Dugout that will contain all of the data that any team will ever need. These tablets will come in handy in situations such as, “when a relief pitcher comes in, when a pinch hitter comes up, when the game changes in unexpected ways, that’s when it will be really useful”(Teufel 1). That statement came from a first hand coach; the third base coach for the New York Mets.

            This new technology doesn’t just replace paper with an Ipad, it makes the Ipad much smarter than paper could ever be. For example, if a new pitcher comes into the game and he is warming up. The on deck batter does not have time to go into the locker room to watch videos of past at bats and learn information. With the use of paper and binders he can maybe get a quick tip or two before he gets up to bat. With the use of the Ipads, players can now watch videos right in the dugout and learn a vast amount of information right before he gets up to bat.

Not only will this benefit the MLB but it will also benefit Apple’s sale of the Ipad. The viewing of baseball is in the multi millions and has a vast market. With everyone watching the games and seeing the use of the Ipads by their favorite coaches and players they will want one as well. Apples sales of the Ipad should increase greatly with the use of them in the MLB.

            In my opinion I think this is a great situation. Everyone benefits on paper form this deal. The players and coaches will be able to preform better and make smarter decisions. On the other hand Apple will expect to see and increase in sales and revenues from the Ipad. Now we just have to sit back and watch baseball and hopefully watch the benefits of this new deal.

Works Cited

1) Olivarez-Giles, Nathan. "Baseball's Latest Recruit Is an IPad." WSJ. N.p., 29 Mar. 206. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

Who To Trust?

Federal Reserve Officials Don't Trust U.S. Economic Data

The article I chose to blog about explains how Fed officials and their staff are dismissing large amounts of the most recent economic data because they view it as ‘unreliable.’  What makes them feel as though this data is ‘unreliable’?  Who can/should we trust?

San Francisco Fed’s chief of research, Glenn Rudebusch, told Reuters, an international news agency, in an interview on Friday that they did not trust the most recent economic data and would no not consider such in future economic statistical predictions.  “First-quarter will be weak, but we think that it is not representative of the underlying strength of the economy.” It is hard to say whether the Feds can be trusted since dismissing a bunch of potentially useful data cannot always go over lightly. This is because if the Feds ‘simply’ dismiss a bunch of data, it will cause a hiccup in the data analysis calculations.  This could cause an economic turn as it would be harder for investors, businesses and households to plan for the central bank’s next interest-rate move (Fortune).  This analysis should give them a pause in relying on the data for key decisions (NBR).  The article mentions how “That’s a huge problem because it relies on the figures to set interest rates.” (Fortune). 

There is always a twist in a scenario like this.  The article mentions how disagreement in data interpretation has not been a recent issue.  “The disconnect between what the GDP data says and how Fed staffers and policymakers read it is not a new problem for the Fed, which has endured several years of weakness” (Fortune).    Because this so-called ‘disconnection’ has been a repeating occurrence, it shows how difficult is it conclude the ‘right’ decision since the truth is never addressed.

Since there is uncertainty within the data system, it is hard to say which decision is best.  If we delete data, it will take away a chunk of entries, but if we keep the data and it ends up being unreliable, our system will have incorrect data entries.  I personally think it would be worst to keep the data in the system and it be unreliable than to just delete the data at the beginning to avoid any incorrect entries.  It is hard to say what the best decision is, but I think the Fed’s are worth trusting.

This article emphasizes the importance of proper data keeping.  Because there is so much data packed into such an amount of memory, disrupting even a small portion of data can make a big different in analytic calculations.  This article mainly focuses on how predictions made by statisticians, investors, businesses and households would be skewed if Fed officials dismiss most recent economic data just because it is ‘unreliable’. Because this article overlooked this, we will never know what exactly is making the Fed’s feel as though this data incorrectly displays the activity of the economy.

Primary Source:

http://fortune.com/2016/04/13/federal-reserve-economic-data/

http://nbr.com/2016/03/24/cnbc-analysis-dont-trust-those-gdp-numbers/