But what does "data monetization" really mean, how do you do it, and more importantly, who in the organization owns the job of "data monetization"? The role of Chief Data Officer (CDO) would seem to be a godsend to answer the data monetization challenge. They should be the catalyst in helping organizations to become more effective at leveraging data and analytics to power the digital transformation. However, all is not well in the world of the CDO. Many organizations appoint a CDO with an Information Technology (IT) background – the same background and experience as the Chief Information Officer (CIO).

As we end 2017, I'm tired of writing "lecturing" blogs about what organizations should be doing to master data monetization in order to power their business models and achieve digital transformation. While the objective of every organization should be to master big data and data science (artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning) to drive "data monetization," let's take a breath and have some fun. My recent ankle surgery afforded me the opportunity to binge watch "Game of Thrones." As I watched the impending battle between the White Walkers and humanity, I couldn't help but identify a number of lessons that we can learn from Jon Snow's battle with the leader of the White Walkers…and the power of Valyrian steel! Game of Thrones and data, not exactly two things you think are in harmony, but this is where I find myself.

Throughout history military leaders have suffered through the "fog of war," where they desperately sought answers to six key questions: These "unknowns" impacted the strategies and tactics military leaders employed. Their time and energy as leaders were heavily focused on defending themselves against these unknowns. But while military leaders of the past were limited by human constraints of perception and location, that's no longer the case today. With sensors, wireless networks, mobile technologies and analytics and artificial intelligence the "fog of war" can be greatly reduced. Precise real-time data from around the globe can be instantly aggregated, analyzed and results reported.

In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Raju Shreewastava, founder of Big Data Trunk, provided a fun and simple way to introduce Machine Leaning to anyone and everyone. He solved a machine learning problem and demonstrated an easy way to be able to do machine learning without even coding. Speaker Bio Raju Shreewastava is the founder of Big Data Trunk (www.BigDataTrunk.com), a Big Data Training and consulting firm with offices in the United States. He previously led the data warehouse/business intelligence and Big Data teams at Autodesk. He is a contributing author of book on Azure and Big Data published by SAMS.

In a world where the internet rules all, where 94% of business buyers conduct online research, and where e-commerce sales are poised to fall between $427 billion and $443 billion by the end of this year, we think it's safe to say that your website is a vital part of your business strategy. Whether you're a B2B company, a local business, or an e-commerce site, digital presence is key to maintain in your drive towards success. CloudExpo DXWorldEXPO have announced the conference tracks for Cloud Expo 2018, introducing DXWorldEXPO. DXWordEXPO, colocated with Cloud Expo will be held June 5-7, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, and November 6-8, 2018, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with the introduction of DXWorld Expo within the program.

The Internet of Things will challenge the status quo of how IT and development organizations operate. Certainly the fog layer of IoT requires special insights about data ontology, security and transactional integrity. But the developmental challenges are the same: People, Process and Platform. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Craig Sproule, CEO of Metavine, demonstrated how to move beyond today's coding paradigm and shared the must-have mindsets for removing complexity from the development process, accelerating application delivery times, and ensuring that developers will become heroes (not bottlenecks) in the IoT revolution. Speaker Bio Craig Sproule is the CEO of Metavine where he is responsible for the company's vision, product development and customer success.

Quantum Computing is becoming quite the hot topic lately. With research being done by Google, IBM, Microsoft, universities, and a number of other players, it's looking this is really going to happen. In fact, Google may just be weeks away from announcing the Quantum Supremacy milestone. If you aren't familiar with the concept of Quantum Supremacy yet, it's basically the point where a quantum computer can complete a computation in a short time where a classical computer can't complete it at all. While there are some simple quantum computers out there right now (you can try out IBM's via the Q Experience), this will be a big deal. I'm pretty sure it's not even for myself, but I am interested in the technology so I am intrigued to learn more. The point of this post isn't to teach you all of the details about quantum computing (because I am far from qualified to do that). It's to teach you some of the basic concepts you should go learn about and point you to resources on where to learn more. For my current limited quantum computing knowledge, I have learned from resources from Wikipedia, IBM, and Microsoft.

The hotel and hospitality industry, enabled with advanced technology and more collaboration with associated businesses, will see some important trends in 2018 as hotel brands reinvent themselves to cater to a new type of clientele. Millennial guests will dominate the landscape, and reshape the industry with demands for more automated options and conveniences and the ability to do everything from a smartphone, and hotels - eager to deliver more conveniences to this younger audience - will forge closer alliances with retailers and community destinations. Hotel guests will place increasing priority on booking rooms that are totally connected, fully automated, and with an ability to seamlessly check in, check out, and access services, all through a smartphone app and without the need for human interaction. Human travel agents have long since gone out of style, and online booking platforms provide a more convenient and often less expensive option. "In 2018, we will continue to see hotel booking platforms continue to advance," said Chris Rivett, travel expert at HotelsCombined.com.

Will I ever understand the nuances of the advanced analytics landscape? Well, maybe the better question is will the advanced analytics landscape ever stop changing? The advanced analytics landscape, into which I include Deep Learning (DL), Machine Learning (ML), Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), seems to be in a constant state of evolution. New advanced analytic algorithms and tool sets seem to be coming out of every university, every startup, every digital media company and every technology company. And many of these new advanced analytic algorithms and tool sets are open source, which means that they are available for others to build upon.

Gemini is Yahoo's native and search advertising platform. To ensure the quality of a complex distributed system that spans multiple products and components and across various desktop websites and mobile app and web experiences - both Yahoo owned and operated and third-party syndication (supply), with complex interaction with more than a billion users and numerous advertisers globally (demand) - it becomes imperative to automate a set of end-to-end tests 24x7 to detect bugs and regression. In their session at 21st Cloud Expo, Jenny Hung, E2E Engineer Manager at Yahoo Gemini, Haoran Zhao, Software Engineer at Oath Gemini, and Lin Zhang, Software Engineer at Oath (Yahoo), described the technical challenges and the principles they followed to build a reliable and scalable test automation infrastructure across desktops, mobile apps, and mobile web platforms on the cloud. They also shared some best practices for advanced automated testing of web and mobile applications. Speaker Bios Jenny Hung manages Yahoo Gemini ad platform end-to-end (E2E) engineer team.