The terms'data science' and'analytics' have had a great surge in usage for a long time now. Data has become the driving force of all established companies these days. In this ever-evolving sector of technology, success and failure stories are found daily. But only a few of them are as inspiring as the story of Ankush Bhandari, a tiffin service provider who became a data scientist. Ankush Bhandari completed his Master in Economics at Fergusson College, Pune, and started his entrepreneurial venture – Kaivalya Foods – as a tiffin service provider.

At the start of the year, I was part of a panel that aimed to offer career guidance to graduating students at a local secondary school in Singapore. The panel dished out the usual advice about the need to have passion, work hard, and always strive to do better. A student then posed a question that struck a chord: "How can I ensure the skills I learn in school will not be obsolete by the time I enter the workforce?" These students were no older than 16 or 17 years and, if they took the typical route to university, would not begin life as working adults for at least another five to seven years. With technology changing so rapidly these days, it might very well be possible their course modules would no longer be relevant by the time they graduated.

What if police departments in cities and towns across the United States could use the cloud to get a real-time view of crimes that were occurring? And what if they could leverage data to better predict when and where certain kinds of crimes might happen? That's the vision Microsoft thinks could be just around the corner. The software giant, which has been ramping up its Azure cloud services business as more applications flow into the cloud, is hoping that cloud tools can help transform the way city governments tackle public safety. The City of Chicago is already experimenting with the technology.