SigmaWay Blog

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are a major consideration for any fixed income portfolio and offer a wide diversification and higher returns. There are many types of REITs available but we will have a look here at some of them. Approximately 24% of REIT investments are in shopping malls and freestanding retail. This represents the single biggest investment by type in America and is known as Retail REITs. REITs that own and operate multi-family rental apartment buildings as well as manufactured housing or the residential REITs are mostly urban centered. Healthcare REITs invest in the real estate of hospitals, medical centers, nursing facilities and retirement homes. The success of this real estate is directly tied to the healthcare system. Office REITs invest in office buildings and they receive rental income from tenants who have usually signed long-term leases. Approximately 10% of REIT investments are in mortgages. Here investing in mortgages instead of equity does not imply that they are risk free. The bottom line is REITs, like every other investment in 2008, suffered greatly. But despite this, they continue to be an excellent addition to any diversified portfolio. Read more at: : http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/10/real-estate-investment-trust-reit.asp

The growth of e-commerce in present times has been a cause of worry for many analysts and they proclaim that traditional "bricks and mortar" shopping was going to extinct. But a new study shows the traditional shopping is still alive and well for many Americans. According to new study by global consulting firm A.T. Kearney, consumers continue to flock to physical retail locations and are actually crucial in generating online sales for retailers. According to the study, 90% of all U.S. retail sales conducted last year was done in a physical store versus only about 9% done online. Moreover, 95% of sales were accounted by retailers with bricks and mortar presence. Kearney noted that stores make a significant contribution to generating sales, even if the transaction is eventually done online. Through the five stages of a retail transaction - Discovery, Trial & Test, Purchase, Delivery or Pickup, and Returns - at some point along the chain, the majority of consumers will use a physical store. One could be in smaller mall operators. While Simon is the largest owner, smaller firms like CBL & Associates Properties Inc. (CBL), Macerich Co. (MAC) have all experienced faster funds-from-operations (FFO) growth than their bigger rival. The bottom line is Bricks and mortar stores aren't dead or even dying. Not by a long shot. For investors, that mean the owners of shopping malls, power centers and other retail real estate are in a prime position to continue paying strong dividends for years to come. Read more at: : http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/080614/why-bricks-and-mortar-retail-remains-solid-bet-spg-cbl-mac-amzn.aspx

One may think how anyone can make a profit by issuing credit cards. Lending money to people up front, so they can buy what they want to with it, then 30 days to pay it back without interest. But the contradiction is with a market valuation of about $133 billion and profit margins at 42%, Visa has proven that extending credit to consumers and assuming they'll be irresponsible is as gainful an industry as any. The process involved in the Visa model is: Bank X distributes its Bank X Visa cards to accountholders, who now have the convenience of not having to carry wads of bills for every commercial transaction. Now the banks start charging 14% or 19% or 24% interest which keeps adding to its total revenue. Visa, in the form which it is today would not have existed if people bought only what they could afford and saved for their large purchases. If you pay your Visa bill entirety every month, it costs your financial institution to accommodate you. They'll lose money on the deal. On the other side if you incur a balance and add to it with each pay period, you'll be contributing to a scenario whereby Visa's stock price has not only tripled over the past three years, but remains well shy of an ambitious one-year target estimate. Read more at: : http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/080714/how-visa-counts-your-credit-card-balance.asp

Communication has evolved a lot since the discovery of telephones. The invention of smartphones and OTT (over the top) messenger apps, along with the emergence of social networks, have changed the face of communication. At the same time, improvements in collaborative technologies have sent video-conferencing through the early motions of commoditization, making it a reality for businesses of all sizes. Now the time has arrived to move from Unified Communications to Universal Communications. While unified communications has been focused on integration and streamlining of all the communication and collaboration tools within a business; universal communications is about making communications possible anywhere, between anyone and nearly across any device. The main factors driving the emergence of Universal communications are changing work life balances, social networking, and constantly improving devices, changing uses of synchronous vs. asynchronous and mainstreaming of the cloud. Read more at:

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/perspective/297528/journey-unified-universal-communications

Many instant messaging technology platforms are available today such as WhatsApp, WeChat, BBM, iMessage, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Skype which are targeted for consumers. Microsoft Lync, Cisco Jabber, etc are generally for the enterprises and have a cost linked with them. The global market is forecasted to grow from USD 267 million in 2005 to USD 1.2 billion in 2014, for enterprise instant messengers. Instant messaging by nature encourages people to be brief and to the point, which saves time. Apart from saving time, another benefit is the positive impact it has on geographically separated offices. It helps in bridging locations, encouraging new global business structures. Replacing phone calls with instant messaging also reduces cost. Many felt that instant messaging was less intrusive than a phone call due to the ability to see if a co-worker was busy or not prior to sending a message. Instant messaging also enhances the ability to multitask. IM has started to change the dynamics of Indian enterprises and helped to increase the efficiency and productivity. Read more at:

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/perspective/297504/instant-messengers-changing-dynamics-indian-enterprises

What are the problems faced when migrating multiple IT services to the cloud?  Inconsistent service attributes: Service attributes include security, reliability, availability, scalability, quality of service (QoS), support, and service level agreements (SLAs).  They determine how well a service will perform and how much time and energy will be required. Crosstalk: This can happen when multiple services compete for the same resource, such as bandwidth or network router processing power. Cloud services money pit: Each cloud service provider must charge a minimum monthly fee to cover its infrastructure costs which becomes excessive as the number of services and the number of providers increases. User friction frown: While single sign-on can alleviate a small portion of the redundant task "friction" caused by multiple IT services, keep in mind how much aggravation your users may experience. However moving to cloud computing can lower capital expenses, lower onsite management and upgrade costs, global service consistency, virtually unlimited scalability, and better support for remote and mobile workforces. Read more at :

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/297554/headaches-multiple-cloud-services

Nowadays bridges are not inspected visually but by teams of engineers who dangle beneath the bridge on cables or look up at the bridge from an elevated work platform because it has a few problems associated with it like it is a slow, dangerous, expensive process and even the most experienced engineers can overlook cracks in the structure or other critical deficiencies. the process comes with a lot of loopholes. A new detection system has been developed by Babak Moaveni, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts School of Engineering, smart sensors which are attached permanently to bridge beams and joints, can continuously record vibrations and process the recorded signal. Changes in the vibration response can signify damage, he says. A wireless system that would use autonomous flying robots (quad-copters) to hover near the sensors and collect data while taking visual images of bridge conditions, is also being developed. The drone-like robots would transmit data to a central collection point for analysis by Moaveni in collaboration with Tufts Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Usman Khan. Read more at:

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/297556/iot-prevent-bridges-collapsing

Many companies have a huge capacity for making money though they have a small clientele. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is unusual among the largest companies in the United States ranked by market capitalization. Their profit margins are small, but their stocks are expensive. It is one of those companies which tries to do something novel and thinks of its impact on finances later on. So, the answer to the question on how Amazon makes money is simple. Revenue is only a part of profit and Amazon's most profitable endeavor to date is something blessedly low-tech - the one-price shipping of Amazon Prime. Amazon has redefined commerce for the whole world and has leveraged itself to a position of market dominance. With unparalleled convenience and receptive customer service, Amazon seems bound to continue its prosperous growth in its third decade of existence and beyond. Read more at: : http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/060914/how-well-all-be-amazoncom-customers-eventually.asp

Most of us do not think too much about retirement though we change our jobs and careers many times. But when we reach our midlife it is the time for us to get organized. The first step is to locate what you have and search for all assets scattered as they might add to the retirement funds. Also, locate your lost records especially if you have moved a lot. For any policy purchased earlier find out how much cash value is in the policy, if any, and the amount of its death benefit; whether it is still in force or how much it will cost to reinstate it if it has lapsed. Find your misplaced saving bonds, bank accounts and safe deposit boxes. It's worth checking with Social Security to make sure earnings from all your jobs are factored into your benefits. Then determine your objectives, organize your assets and future plan is ready. To know more, follow Mark P. Cussen (financial author)'s article link: http://www.investopedia.com/university/consolidating-your-retirement-money/

Today's databases should be flexible and should be able to deliver extreme performance and handle humongous data volumes. So database architects have come up with NoSQL, NewSQL alternatives to relational database management systems (RDBMS). In order to choose among these three, there has to be a fundamental understanding of all the three technologies. RDBMS can handle thousands of transactions per second but the new face of online transaction processing (OLTP) in scenarios such as real-time advertising, fraud detection, multi-player games, and risk analysis, to name a few, involves close to a million transactions per second -- a pace that traditional RDBMS has problem in dealing with. These problems can be addressed by NoSQL and NewSQL. NoSQL database management systems store data in a variety of formats. Most NoSQL products discard ACID performance to achieve data storage flexibility. NewSQL, retain both SQL and ACID, but they overcome the performance overhead of RDBMS. In order to choose the type of database the following questions have to be answered-To what extent do you rely on data in terms of storage, processing, and analysis? How important are the scale, flexibility, and performance aspects of a DBMS? What is your level of investment in incumbent technologies? Read more at:

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/297462/choose-nosql-newsql-rdbms

There has been a transformation in the lighting industry it is moving from fluorescent to LEDs. The Internet of Things is helping the lighting industry. Increasing efficiency in lighting would save billions of dollars as lighting consumes 461 billion kWh of electricity in a year. LEDs can provide that efficiency, along with a number of other benefits. Energy efficiency is the main force behind the industry wide transition to LEDs. Initial cost of replacing may be high but in the long run it will save substantial amount of money. This problem of high initial cost has been addressed by companies like Philips, by offering lighting-as-a-service. Philips covers the initial installation costs. But offering lighting-as-a-service for something like a commercial building creates challenges as lighting is metered with other equipment in the building  and it is difficult to measure the amount of power light is actually consuming and making cost benefit analysis somewhat  speculative. All the problems associated with lighting can be addressed with the help of Internet. One way to solve the problem is to use Power over Ethernet (PoE) networks, where the Ethernet switch provides a centralized environment where metering and monitoring can take place. Read more at:

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/297464/iot-enables-lighting-service

Big data enables understanding of complex customer sentiments and intent which improves service management. Today it is easier to process customer sentiments and intents through social media and develop social customer relationship management or social CRM. To make this effective it is important to capture the natural language knowledge and rapidly and securely making those insights available to tye best pay off channels. 

This podcasts bring together customer analytics services provider Attensity, with its natural language processing technology, and HP Vertica with Big data analytics capabilities to explain how effectively listen to social Web and rapidly gaining valuable insights and actionable intelligence.

Some participants are Howard Lau, chairman and CEO of Attensity, and Chris Selland, vice president of marketing and business development at HP Vertica. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardener, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

more at: http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/80826.html

The genuine number of likes measures the success of a brand. Most of the time users are forced to like pages for getting access to apps and games. So it is important that when someone likes a page he does that genuinely so that facebook gets a “quality connection”. Thus brands no longer would be able to force users to like their pages and thus this would be a positive change for brands and agencies as well. As users are shifting towards mobile facebook the “like gate” strategy of making users like pages forcefully won’t work anymore and now brand need to provide stronger reasons to users for liking their page. Thus a genuine relationship is created. Now it should be more important to reach out to customers that count than counting customers.

This strategy would provide grace period for adjusting and affects local marketers mostly. Brands should pamper their customers than just feeding them up with incentives. They should have a long term strategy than a tactical one. Marketers should not only cherish the number of fans but also engage more with each piece of content.

read more at: http://www.marketing-interactive.com/facebook-initiates-new-policy-for-genuine-fans/

Unless cyber bullying is resolved and removal of objectionable content is done, major social media websites and apps are going to get a check from an Australian government official. They might also be named and shamed if they do not act properly. An e-safety commissioner is to be appointed by Paul Fletcher, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Communications, who will be the central point of contact for children, parents and law enforcement agencies. He would also fly regularly overseas to establish informal relationships with people. He would be given the responsibility to travel when any new site is made and make them understand that they might be told to take out objectionable posts if they do not fulfil their expectation.

The sites must have complaining schemes for objectionable content and terms of use defining cyber bullying. Education should be given against cyber bullying. Several sites have objected to the appointment of an e-commissioner because that might threaten free speech and claimed that industry oversight might serve the purpose better. Read more at: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/were-watching-you-social-media-sites-face-being-named-

Big Data is about making something out of enormous and high speed structured data as well as unstructured data, but most organizations do not have a business case for the use of Big Data and invariably, a not so conducive culture to leverage Big Data technologies. The main area of focus in India seems to be-Real Time Reporting on Transaction Systems. Through the partitioning/ clustering, distributed computing and in-memory processing methods, Big Data can run high quality real-time reports, with the ability to drive additional queries. But it will be not be the best use case for Big Data. If we focus on this use case, Information Technology will just end up being a cost center. Big Data investments should address either the fraud prevention story that helps the bottom-line, or the customer offer story that helps the top line of a company. The immediate need however is to get the data fixed to achieve the goal. Data quality continues to remain a huge challenge across more than 80 percent of the mid and large organizations. Read more at:

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/perspective/297428/companies-artists

Ever since the video gaming industry has entered the online space, this fast-paced industry is almost bursting. Bringing in about $20 billion of revenue a year in the U.S. market alone, this industry is now scaling new heights with vast data out-pours and advances in big data analytics. In the world of online and offline video games, joystick movements and every interactive step is a source of valuable data-points, which can deliver fascinating solutions for enhancing gamer experience and increasing revenue streams. The world of games is like any other form of entertainment-it requires addictive rewards to make the gamers come back again and again. According to reliable market reports, a large, video-game manufacturer has the potential to generate around 50 terabytes of data each day. In US, the gaming industry is certainly bigger than the movie industry in terms of revenue generation. Now that this prolific industry is rapidly embracing big data technologies, the industry is expected to make waves in novel methods of customer engagement, optimized and targeted advertising, and enhance the end-user experience.

Read more at: http://www.mapr.com/blog/big-data-revolutionizing-video-game-industry#.U-d_4vmSxvM

Malware and cyber-attacks have become increasing concerns among companies. Many of them struggle to predict and mitigate threats, which can spring and evolve quickly. Companies also have some concerns about the physical security of their infrastructure. The result is that they are in search of more comprehensive resources to address these challenges. Big data analytics, particularly when they are coupled with machine learning, represent a logical solution because it allows companies to consider multiple threat scenarios and determine the best response. 

In today’s complex network environments, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and other cyber threats eradication may be accomplished by getting intelligence from data providers. 

For these cyber threats, appliances should be monitoring threat feeds from trusted providers for indicators of compromise (IOCs), including big data feeds like domain name systems (DNS) feeds, command and control (C2) feeds, and black/white lists, in order to correlate and hunt threats in a data set and recommends six steps to combat the potential threats.

Read the article at: http://www.darkreading.com/analytics/6-tips-for-using-big-data-to-hunt-cyberthreats/a/d-id/1278970

Big data has been big news in the travel industry for a few years now. It offers the chance for travel companies to increase the number of sales and improve the travel experience of customers. While big data is a vast, complex challenge for many organizations, it is one of the key factors driving the evolution of the travel industry today and for the foreseeable future. Airlines, hotels, cruise companies, travel management, railways and travel agencies have an opportunity to improve their business and the customer experience by effectively handling the big data at their fingertips. That's not to say it is easy to collect, identify and analyze all of the bits of disparate data types that comprise big data. Travel companies can make better decisions based on the data aggregated from their customers to personalize services like travel booking to make them easier to navigate. For many years, CRM systems have allowed companies to create relevant, targeted marketing campaigns. Big data, however, uses customer information to create a truly personalized service. It allows travel websites to recommend a specific hotel to a specific user based on their previous holidays, requirements and preferences.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2014/04/30/how-big-data-is-transforming-the-travel-industry/

Cloud CRM software is a serious business investment in today's competitive environment. Out of 5279 CRM buyers 68 percent were either use non-industry specific software or manual methods like spreadsheets and paper notes to manage customer relationships. Commercial CRM is preferred to a proprietary solution. It was discovered that 9 percent customers wanted a cloud based CRM and a majority wanted to evaluate best of breed solutions over an integrated suite. Sales force automation was the top best of breed buyers and integrated suite. Nine percent wanted an integrated suite or even multiple applications. 

CRM software should have a good long run sustaining contact management as having a 360 degree view helps increase cross sell and upsell opportunities. It should have a good note taking capability for tracking customer information. Integrating with third party systems is also important. The reporting and analytics feature is also useful for staying informed and is advantageous to both customer and the organization and dashboards help getting a single view of activities.

Sales force automation was the best requested CRM application among integrated suite and best of breed buyers representing 76 percent of companies evaluating best of breed solutions and nearly 75 percent of people interested into integrated suites. 

Read more at http://www.business-standard.com/article/management/top-trends-in-crm-software-purchases-114080300625_1.html 

The dependence of organizations on software have increased over the decade, so reducing bandwidth and maximizing data through software integration for optimal process has also become necessary. Thus CRM and telephony are the most widely used tools today. The phone/CRM scenarios are: 

No integration:  if one enters the name and phone number of the person in the CRM software and then call the person by phone then the conversation gets automatically recorded and can be used for future review purpose.

Partial integration: if the phone system is partially integrated with the CRM then one call within the CRM platform and the phone calls get automatically logged.

Full integration: it is applicable for both incoming and outgoing calls. When a call comes the number is searched in the CRM database and then for a new number a CRM lead is offered. And for old number the call gets diverted to the responsible staff who identifies the call records and details.

Options available for phone and CRM integrations are: 

Trough CRM software with integrated telephony such as Bitrix24 which is free and TalkDesk does not require any set up.

Otherwise the existing CRM can be used if it is of Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics and readymade integration with IP telephony providers such as RingCentral or RingDNA can be used. Read more at:  http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/telephony-crm-match-made-heaven-0946844#!bwfcpF