Welcome to the wonderful world of Silverlight, Microsoft's platform for building Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The earliest versions of Silverlight focused on rich media, interactivity, and animation. Now Silverlight has gotten down to business with new features geared towards making business application development faster and easier. Of course, you still have access to all the graphics and…
This book will dive into a diverse set of real-world scenarios to deliver sample business solutions that can serve as the foundation for your own solutions. It draws from the author's extensive experience with SharePoint to leverage the platform's underlying services to provide solutions that can support social collaboration, content and document management, as well as project collaboration. Ea…
Whether you work for a Fortune 500 corporation, a small company, a government agency, or a not-for-profit organization, if you’re reading this introduction the chances are you use Microsoft Excel in your daily work. Your job probably involves summarizing, reporting, and analyzing data. It might also involve building analytic models to help your employer increase profits, reduce costs, or mana…
It’s an old, tired joke among people in the armed services that “military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.” And yet, intelligence in the mili- tary sense — accurate, timely information that can help produce an effective strategy — is more important these days than ever before. As organizations continue to pursue their goals in an economy that seems more like a battle- field, …
How do people really learn? The answers and theories are endless. They include ideas ranging from genetic imprinting to osmosis and modeling and emotional intelligence. Brain research is voluminous in the 21st century. For now, though, please ask yourself: How do I learn? Isn’t that an interesting question? And, what do you learn? Do you learn infor- mation from reading, watching videos, usin…
Increasingly, organisations are taking a holistic approach to managing risk and this represents both a challenge and an opportunity for health and safety professionals. If you’re unfamiliar with the principles and language of business risk management (BRM), you may be marginalised and left behind. If you understand and apply its principles – and can communicate with other business disciplin…
Welcome to Information Systems for Business and Beyond. In this book, you will be introduced to the concept of information systems, their use in business, and the larger impact they are having on our world.
IBM Cognos 10 BI is the leading performance management tool, which enables users to monitor, measure, and manage corporate performance at a glance. With its dashboard capabilities, users can assemble and organize data in personalized dashboard views to support different decision-making requirements.
I have a passion for frameworks. In more than 20 years as a professional developer, I’ve never worked on a computing platform that did everything I needed it to do to build applications productively. The Microsoft .NET platform is wonderful, but it doesn’t always do quite what I want or need. To address those needs, I’m always looking for tools and frameworks, and sometimes I end up creat…
Countless scholars and practitioners over the years have attempted to legitimize the field of public administration, make sense of the so-‐called public administration dichotomy, and to reinforce or erase the connections between public administration and its more popular and more perhaps more heartless sibling, business administration.
This book has been written for business owners and managers who want to refine the accounting and financial operations of their companies. It provides detailed information about how to run these operations, track cash flows, conduct analyses, analyze key financial information, create a corporate risk management strategy, and manage tax liabilities—in short, all of the key accounting and finan…
This may seem like a strange way to start a tech book—but you really, really need to read this book. Let us explain. We’ll start with a little bit about ourselves and why we needed this book. I’m Dave, the developer. I’ve been obsessed with Microsoft Web Application technolo‐ gies since I was 16 years old. It began with the beta of classic ASP and Access 2.0 to be exact. Since then, I…
This is not a book about algorithms, nor is it a replacement for a book about algorithms. We deliberately avoided an algorithm-centered approach. We believe there is a relatively small set of fundamental concepts or principles that underlie techniques for extracting useful knowledge from data. These concepts serve as the foundation for many well- known algorithms of data mining. Moreover, these…
Evenasthesestageshaveprogressedrapidlyoverthepast20years, the enabling technologies have changed more quickly. Information technology (IT) evolution is now measured in terms of “Internet time” as fourth-generation hardware, software, and network system technologies are deployed. Ubiquitous access to information at any time, in anyplace, andin any wayis expectedas aroutine practicethat provi…
Business intelligence (BI) means different things to different people. For some, it means advanced analytics. For others, it is self-service report creation. A few see it as a prelude to Big Data. For many users, however, BI is much more accessible than any of these things. It is quite simply the regular production of clear and meaningful reports and dashboards that translate data into actionab…
Talking after the meeting, Sue and Sally realize they need to explore the intersection among Big Data, mobile and cloud, and business intelligence (BI) so they can propose a solution that will engage the organization in these technologies. They ponder this intersection knowing that the budget process is about to be upon them. They need to jump- start their understanding so they can justify thei…
Alex’s clients include the U.S. Coast Guard (he helps keep its leadership training innovative and at the forefront of management practice) and a lengthy list of companies, government agencies, nonprofit boards, and more. He’s helped the U.S. Senate work on its collaborative problem-solving skills and brought new assessment tools to the finance department of the City of New York. His creativ…
The level of debate and confusion in many areas of our lives makes many things hard to see, yet also makes one thing perfectly clear. The intensity of debate and confusion are proof in them- selves that big changes are under way. We have arrived at what has been variously called a ‘‘tipping point’’ or an ‘‘inflection point’’ or a ‘‘perfect storm.’’ Tried-and-true formul…
Making a website using the Squarespace platform is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to create a professional, polished website in a short amount of time. However, starting any website project without doing the groundwork can lead to confusion, missed deadlines, and just plain bad websites. This chapter covers everything you need to do before you even sign up for Squarespace to en…
statistics are not popular. one might even say they are disliked. not by statisti- cians, of course, but by the millions who have to cope with the steady flow of statistics supporting all kinds of assertions, opinions, and theories. received wisdom harrumphs, “You can prove anything by statistics”—and then sneers, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” my sympathies do not lie with thes…
Business intelligence, including reporting and analytics, is essential to an organization’s survival and growth. Understanding your data and turning it into actionable insights is the key to sustaining and growing your business. As companies recognize this need, the employees that facilitate these insights, also known as “data scientists,” are highly sought after across the board. Microso…