Human Capital Management (HCM)

Human Capital Management (HCM)

Human capital management (HCM) is an approach to employee staffing that perceives people as assets (human capital) whose current value can be measured and whose future value can be enhanced through investment. The term human capital management can be controversial because the word "capital" has an impersonal connotation, implying that employees are simply an expensive operating cost that should be minimized whenever possible. A responsible human capital management strategy, however, is built upon the understanding that an organization's employees are its most valuable asset -- and spending time and energy on keeping records that allow managers to effectively manage staff development and promote employee engagement will help the organization achieve both its short and long-term monetary goals. Successful human capital management requires a lot of documentation and HCM software can streamline and automate many of the day-to-day record-keeping processes. When an organization evaluates an HCM system investment, it must weigh the benefits of a standalone HCM approach against those of an all-in-one enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite that includes HCM modules. In a large enterprise, having one integrated platform with a single database for everything can save on the cost of maintaining and upgrading individual software applications and application program interfaces (APIs). In a small or midsize company, however, it may just be easier to manually enter the same data into multiple systems.

Cloud Backup

Cloud Backup

Cloud backup, also known as online backup, is a strategy for backing up data that involves sending a copy of the data over a proprietary or public network to an off-site server. The server is usually hosted by a third-party service provider, who charges the backup customer a fee based on capacity, bandwidth or number of users. Online backup systems are typically built around a client software application that runs on a schedule determined by the level of service the customer has purchased. If the customer has contracted for daily backups, for instance, then the application collects, compresses, encrypts and transfers data to the service provider's servers every 24 hours. To reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed and the time it takes to transfer files, the service provider might only provide incremental backups after the initial full backup.

Sock Puppet Marketing

Sock Puppet Marketing

Sock puppet marketing is the use of a false online identity to artificially stimulate demand for a product, brand or service.  The false identity is called a sock puppet. A primary goal of sock puppet marketing is to increase sales by posting positive comments about a product, service or brand on web sites. Alternatively, a sock puppet might be used to post negative comments that denigrate a competitor. Sock puppet marketing and sock puppetry in general are unethical. When exposed, sock puppet marketing can damage the reputation and brand of a product or service.

Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic pricing, also called real-time pricing, is an approach to setting the cost for a product or service that is highly flexible. The goal of dynamic pricing is to allow a company that sells goods or services over the Internet to adjust prices on the fly in response to market demands. Changes are controlled by pricing bots, which are software agents that gather data and use algorithms to adjust pricing according to business rules. Typically, the business rules take into account such things as the time of day, day of the week, level of demand and competitors' pricing. With the advent of big data and big data analytics, business rules can be crafted to adjust prices for specific customers based on criteria such as the customer's zip code, how often the customer has made purchases in the past and how much the customer typically spends.

Wireshark

Wireshark

Wireshark is an open source network forensics tool for profiling network traffic and analyzing packets. Such a tool is often referred to as a network analyzer, network protocol analyzer or sniffer. Wireshark is a popular tool for testing basic traffic transmission, analyzing bandwidth usage, testing application security and identifying faulty configurations. The tool is quite versatile, allowing network administrators to examine traffic details at a variety of levels. Because Wireshark is open source, its filters can be tailored to the unique needs of a specific enterprise network.

Big Data Management

Big Data Management

Big data management is the organization, administration and governance of large volumes of both structured and unstructured data. The goal of big data management is to ensure a high level of data quality and accessibility for business purposes. By examining data from a variety of sources -- including call detail records, system logs and social media sites -- a company can gain insight into what business processes need improvement and how to gain a competitive advantage. As part of the process, the company must decide what data must be kept for compliance reasons, what data can be disposed of and what data should be kept for in-memory analysis. The process requires careful data classification so that ultimately, smaller sets of data can be worked with.

Application Delivery Controller

Application Delivery Controller

An application delivery controller (ADC) is a network device that manages client connections to complex Web and enterprise applications. In general, a controller is a hardware device or a software program that manages or directs the flow of data between two entities. An ADC essentially functions as a load balancer, optimizing end-user performance, reliability, data center resource use and security for enterprise applications. Typically, ADCs controllers are strategically placed to be a single point of control that can determine the security needs of an application and provide simplified authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA). An ADC can accelerate the performance of applications delivered over the wide area network (WAN) by implementing optimization techniques such as compression and reverse caching. With reverse caching, new user requests for static or dynamic Web objects can often be delivered from a cache in the ADC rather than having to be regenerated by the servers.