The business intelligence, automation, and enterprise application landscape is changing dramatically. In the previous incarnation of enterprise technology, line-of-business owners were forced to choose between pre-baked commercial off the shelf (COTS) software, which was difficult to customize and often did not truly meet the business’s unique needs, or custom solutions that (though flexible and often tailor-made to the business needs of the moment) cost more and were far riskier to develop and deploy. Furthermore, certain classes of applications do not […]
We’re fascinated by the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence and the truly transformative opportunities it offers our customers. We’ve been digging deep into machine learning, computer vision and other AI capabilities for quite some time now, and believe they will grow into a significant part of our business. We’re not alone: IDC predicts 75 percent of developer teams will include cognitive and AI functionality in one or more applications this year. To assist companies looking to build an AI-focused practice, Microsoft recently […]
Recently we collaborated with Microsoft and Prospect Silicon Valley (ProspectSV) on a project to assess the viability and value of several Azure services. Specifically, we were asked to demonstrate how the cloud-based platform could be used to retrieve, store, visualize and predict trends based on data from multiple sources. In order to demonstrate these capabilities, we built an ASP.NET MVC application leveraging the following Azure components: Azure App Services Azure Machine Learning Azure Power BI Embedded Azure Storage Figure 1: […]
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (DC) are rapidly becoming an integral part of software development. These disciplines can play a significant role in building stable release processes that help ensure project milestones are met. And in addition to simply performing compilation tasks, CI systems can be extended to execute unit testing, functional testing, UI testing, and many other tasks. This walkthrough demonstrates the creation of a simple CI/CD deployment pipeline with an integrated unit test. There are many ways […]
Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite provides a seamless transition from raw data to intelligence: Real, meaningful data for real, meaningful business decisions. With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), the need for real-time processing and data analytics has become paramount. As a part of the Cortana Intelligence Suite, Microsoft offers Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) as a fully-managed cloud service for analyzing complex event and data streams at near real time.
Business leaders are constantly looking at how they can use the underwriting process to improve profits. What if insurance underwriters or the underwriting processes could look into the past at a more detailed level and predict exactly how a risk would perform in the future? What If underwriters were provided with a solution that would provide meaningful insight into customers’ risk characteristics? Data analytics, data mining and predictive modeling can provide this ability to enhance business processes and improve profits […]
“Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby and Cindy go to a movie and sit next to each other in six adjacent seats. If Marcia and Jan will not sit next to each other, in how many different arrangements can the six people sit?” – GMAT Sample Question Thankfully my standardized test-taking days are far behind me, but this kind of problem is typical of what one might find on an advanced level standardized test math section. It also so happens to be […]
Custom application development is one of AIS’ many strong suits, and we’re constantly expanding our repertoire. Recently we successfully delivered a custom-designed scorecard and dashboard, as well as a SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) data cube, which provided self-service Business Intelligence for one of the nation’s leading pain medication monitoring organizations. Ameritox’ senior management required a user-friendly solution that was consumable on a variety of mobile devices like Apple iPads and other tablets. Our experience in Microsoft BI, .NET development […]
After watching demos on Power View I was excited to begin using the tool, as we recently configured SQL 2012 SSRS and PowerPivot with SharePoint 2010 for an internationally-focused client. But after playing around with my PowerPivot model in Power View, I realized the Map chart type that I had been so looking forward to using…was not available. Turns out we had installed SQL 2012 but not SQL 2012 SP1. Power View gets a number of important upgrades in SP1, including much-needed […]
Visio is a product that all of us in the business solutions world should eventually master. Graphics make very complex information easier to convey and grasp quickly. At this year’s SharePoint Conference, the Visio product team outlined some of the updates they’ve made during the Office 2013 release cycle. The updates for the Office 2013 release center on three major themes: More Professional, Easier Collaboration and Powerful Platform.