For the uninitiated, one exabyte is 1bn gigabytes.

Some of this material is traditional structured data, such as store point-of-sale information, bank cash machine transactions or mobile phone records. But much of it is unstructured information gleaned from non-traditional sources such as blogs, Facebook posts, tweets, email messages, smartphone apps, electronic sensors, pictures and YouTube video clips.

This high velocity, high volume and high variety make big data difficult to interpret using traditional database and data analytics

But by combing through it with more sophisticated data analytics tools and techniques such as in-memory computing, it can provide companies with a better understanding of their customers and partners. It can help them spot trends in near real time, make more accurate forecasts and adjust their operations quickly to changing demand or new business opportunities.

A company that operates a retail website can use big data to understand site visitors’ activities, such as paths through the site, pages viewed and comments posted. This knowledge can be combined with purchasing history. From this, the company gains a better understanding of customers and can fine-tune offers to target their interests.

Since companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook pioneered the collection, processing and analysis of big data, it has become one of the hottest trends in corporate information technology alongside cloud computing, mobility and enterprise social networking.

In engineering and manufacturing, for example, companies are finding new opportunities to predict maintenance problems, enhance manufacturing quality and manage costs using big data. In healthcare, there are new opportunities to predict and react more rapidly to critical clinical events, resulting in better care for patients and more effective cost management.

Many retailers are already using big data analytics to improve the accuracy of forecasts, anticipate changes in demand and then react accordingly.

In the financial services sector, most investment banks still rely on overnight batch data to make trading decisions. This means their risk management models constantly rely on out-of-date data. By using big data analytics in real time, banks can make better trading and risk decisions, safeguarding them against the threat of collapse and, subsequently, protecting the financial markets.

All of this happens on the go – business data are refreshed every five minutes and both managers and operations experts monitor reports via their PCs and mobile devices.

It is not just big companies that are using big data. As McLaren’s Formula One cars speed round the track they send a stream of data back to the team that are processed and analysed in real time using SAP’s Hana in-memory technology. Hana uses sophisticated data compression to store information in Ram, which is 10,000 times faster than hard disks, enabling analysis of the data in seconds rather than hours.

This real-time analysis of car sensor data is compared with historical data and predictive models, helping the McLaren team to make immediate proactive corrections, avoid costly, dangerous incidents and win races.

By harnessing big data, organisations can improve operational efficiency, reduce data management costs and better manage brands and customer relationships. But some IT leaders and analysts warn that few organisations are equipped to capitalise on the business value of big data, and that by neglecting to adapt effectively to big data, organisations also invite unforeseen cost, complexity and risk.

Every company has big data in the future and if you avoid this new development then you have nothing to lose but your customers and your business.

Firstly, as everyone points out, the device is tiny – it really does look like a miniaturised traditional motherboard sat blinking away on my desk (or perhaps a computer viewed from a distance!). Although I am running it headless (with just an ethernet cable and power), initial bring up is certainly easiest with a screen and keyboard connected.

Speed-wise the R-Pi is no demon, and the approximation of being similar to a 300MHz Pentium does seem to be reasonable. Running some old benchmark code I had, it took the Pi roughly 6-8 times as long to complete compared to my dual-core 1.8GHz desktop. Whilst this might seem somewhat slow, and the memory limited, compared to some (expensive) embedded/development boards I have worked with in the past the R-Pi is very well resourced.

Flipside data is building and investing in long-term partnerships and we are confident that you will want to work with us so we are offering a test drive one of our solutions.  This allows you a way into our great products and services without the initial commitment of a contract.

We are a hosting and data centre company specialising in providing services to digital media, e-commerce and business apps sectors. We provide an excellent service and are flexible to our customer needs but also give exceptional value for money.

Why engage with Flipside data?

• Firstly our mission statement is “Whatever it takes”, this is what our business is built upon.
• Secondly we listen to our clients and consult with them when building solutions.  Typically we provide a tailored service,  providing a range of dedicated and managed service models with the flexibility of giving you what you need, in a bespoke manner.
• Flipside in-house skills are not just hosting, servers and networking. We have experts in CMS, Sharepoint, Mobile applications, Windows applications, ASP.net, Flash, PHP, VB, HTML, W3C, SQL and Migrations.

In an ever-competing world our service, quality and cost effectiveness gives  you that competitive  edge allowing you to deliver to your specialist markets.

Ensuring they are remembered for generations to come

At the Dedication and Unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial on 28 June 2012, the RAF’s last flying Lancaster will end the minute’s silence with a flypast, dropping a million poppies over the Memorial to ‘salute’ the 55,573 men who gave their lives while serving in Bomber Command. The Poppy Salute Appeal will let the public show their support for the Memorial by donating a handful of poppies.

A strong but flexible provider

The solution needed to be up and running for the launch event and accommodate the variable demands in the site traffic. Flipside Data needed to offer a solution for optimum performance and reliability when the appeal received International coverage from TV, Radio, Newspapers and online.

Flipside data designed and delivered a very robust and flexible hosted server solution that catered for the short term requirement but also the continued support.

To lend your support, please buy a poppy or simply make a donation

Sadly, in the latest CentOS/RedHat release, Exim is no longer available as a standard package, but as with most pieces of Linux software, it’s still only a few commands away. If you want to install Exim to use, or just to try, all you need do is:

Install the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository:

wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm
rpm -i epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm

Install the Exim package

yum install -y exim-mysql

Disable Postfix (the default MTA)

service postfix stop
chkconfig postfix off

Set Exim as the default MTA

alternatives --config mta

And finally start Exim

chkconfig exim on
service exim start

You should now be running Exim, and probably want to visit the official documentation site.

Outside these regions, eCommerce is growing even faster, representing an important growth opportunity for brands and retailers. Moreover, commerce capabilities in all regions must increasingly extend and integrate across customer touchpoints to support changing customer expectations, which means that eCommerce will affect the entire business. 

Flipsidedata has a strong record working with companies with a large web presence who utilise the internet to raise business and product awareness plus insure the delivery of robust hosted eCommerce solutions.

We have experience in delivery of successful technology strategy to identify appropriate and relevant solutions and to develop system architectures that are rational and effective at meeting business, customer experience, and technology goals. 

Technology strategy means having successful commerce projects that require in-depth knowledge as well as extensive experience implementing and integrating commerce solutions into overall technology ecosystems.  

Flipsidedata is flexible in the service offered from a dedicated model, so providing the base infrastructure and maintaining the network, servers and storage to  fully managed technology services. We deliver complex and evolving systems that must be robust, secure, available, and high-performing. These  type of business-critical applications do require seamless failover and disaster recovery.  

Flipsidedata in-house skills are not just hosting and networking. We have experts in CMS,  Sharepoint, mobile application, Windows application, ASP.net , Flash, PHP, Visual Basic, HTML, W3C , MySQL, MS SQL, Migrations and Augmented Reality.

 We have the ability to support a large range and complex solutions plus working with clients across different verticals including Retail, Financial, Automotive, Leisure, Gaming and Educational. 

To summarise working with Flipsidedata, you are partnering with a focused, dedicated and professional service provider.

restorecon -R -v /root/.ssh

Local proactiveness with professional corporate service.

Here are some good reasons you should use us:

Top Technical Staff

You had me at ‘hello’. We take time to hire, train and retain the best people in the business. Well-Qualified. Professional. Friendly. Our people are usually the first thing mentioned when our clients say what they like about Flipside Data

Great Location

We’re just off the M25, M3 and A3. So we’re near to Gatwick and Heathrow airports. What’s more, our London rail links mean we’re easy to get to without the risk profiles and costly overheads of Central London colocation providers.

Great Connectivity

Our data centre has multiple carriers and providers on-net with diverse access points to the datafloor, something usually only seen in major London data centres, available here at a fraction of the price. We also have our own resilient fibre network to other data centres giving you fast, reliable connectivity and access to hundreds of other carriers.

Nice Building

Our data centre is clean, well lit and spacious. And we have a dedicated build room with spare parts and a toolkit that your technicians may find handy at 3am on a Sunday morning. There’s a bright idea.

Easy Parking

If you’re used to high cost car parks, long walks and watching out for pesky parking attendants, you can relax. We have plenty of on-site parking and no time limits on visits. We’ll even help you unload.

24×7 Access

When we say we’re open 24 x 7 x 365, we mean it. You’re welcome any time.

Green Credentials

We’re investing heavily in reducing our carbon footprint. Cold aisle containment is already installed along with LED lighting. And we’re now in the process of installing eco-friendly cooling.

Security

With 24×7 manned security, access-controlled doors and full building CCTV you can rest assured your critical equipment is in a fully secure data centre. And our security staff will happily go the extra mile to make your visit more comfortable.

Pay only for what you need and have the capacity to expand.

Every customer is unique and we can tailor our solutions to suit your needs.

We provide a range of dedicated and managed servers plus the flexibility of giving you what you need. Even the ability to add or subtract services as your requirements change.

We can provide a dedicated support team who become an addition of your own IT department, getting to know your solution intimately.

With the fully managed options we can be responsible for supporting more than your technology 24x7x365 – implementing, configuring, deploying, scaling, updating, patching and monitoring your IT infrastructure.

We are also responsible for acting proactively to identify, consult and address emerging issues and opportunities.

Flipside Data gives you best of breed flexible hosting capability, delivering the following benefits to your business.

With cost efficient with the freeing up of time and resource for IT staff,  also be able to consolidate IT infrastructure, save power and be greener.

If its hardware support, OS support, Database support, security and networking, backing up of your data  and applications, we can be on hand when needed.