Brazilians paid $289 on average for smartphones in 2014

Summary:There has been a 28 percent increase in spending in relation to the prior year - and the market will continue to grow despite the current recession, says research

By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

Brazilians are spending more on smartphones and sales have gone up - and the local market will continue to grow even though the country is facing a recession, according to recent research.

Last year, consumers in Brazil have spent an average of R$900 ($289) in smartphones in 2014, up from R$700 ($225) in 2013.
The main reason for the 28.4 percent increase is the need to stay connected round the clock, according to a survey by Qualcomm and Brazilian polling firm Ibope Inteligência.
Some 26 percent of Brazilians currently own a smartphone, according to the survey. 2002 consumers of various social backgrounds were polled for the survey across all regions of Brazil.

All of the Brazilian smartphone users surveyed have Internet access and 80 percent use 3G or 4G services. Some 60 percent of smartphone users access the web through prepaid Internet services.
Out of those polled, 80 percent check their smartphone for notifications every half an hour, while 36 percent do so every five minutes.

According to a separate study by IDC, 54,5 million smartphones were sold in Brazil during 2014, a 55 percent increase on 2013.
The analyst's prediction for 2015 is that the market will grow 16 percent, with 63,3 million devices sold despite the country's challenging economic climate.

Recycling toilet waste and four other Israeli answers to California’s drought

As the Golden State dries up, it could learn a lot from desert-ringed but amply-watered Israel
For help facing its worst drought in centuries, California should look to a country that beat its own chronic water shortage: Israel.

By Ben Sales, Times of Israel

Until a few years ago, Israel’s wells seemed like they were always running dry. TV commercials urged Israelis to conserve water. Newspapers tracked the rise and fall of the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s biggest freshwater source. Religious Israelis gathered to pray for rainfall at the Western Wall during prolonged dry spells.

However, the once perpetual Israeli water shortage appears to be mostly over. California’s water supply, meanwhile, is at record lows, prompting restrictions on household use and leading farmers to deplete the state’s groundwater reserves. From water recycling to taking the salt out of the plentiful seawater, here are five ways that Californians can benefit from Israel’s know-how.

1) Israeli cities recycle three-quarters of their water.

Israeli farms don’t just use less water than their American counterparts, much of their water is reused. Three-quarters of the water that runs through sinks, showers, washing machines and even toilets in Israeli cities is recycled, treated and sent to crops across the country through specially marked purple tubes. According to the Pacific Institute, which conducts environmental research, California recycles only 13 percent of its municipal waste-water.
Israel also encourages recycling by giving reused water to farmers tax-free.
“If you take water from the city you don’t pay a tax, but if you have a well and you take that water you pay a lot of money for every cubic meter,” said Giora Shaham, a former long-term planner at Israel’s Water Authority. “If you’re a farmer in Rehovot and you have water that doesn’t cost money, you’ll take that water.”

2) Israel gets much of its water from the Mediterranean Sea.

Israelis now have a much bigger water source than the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Kinneret: the Mediterranean Sea. Four plants on Israel’s coast draw water from the sea, take out the salt, purify the water and send it to the country’s pipes — a process called desalination.

The biggest of the four plants, opened in 2013, can provide nearly 7 million gallons of potable water to Israelis every hour. When a fifth opens as soon as this year near the Israeli port city of Ashdod, 75 percent of Israel’s municipal and industrial water will be desalinated, making Israelis far less reliant on the country’s fickle rainfall.

Desalination costs money, uses energy and concerns environmental activists who want to protect

California’s coast and the Pacific Ocean. One cubic meter of desalinated water takes just under 4 kilowatt-hours to produce. That’s the equivalent of burning 40 100-watt light bulbs for one hour to produce the equivalent of five bathtubs full of water.

But despite the costs, San Diego County is investing in desalination. IDE Technologies, which operates three of Israel’s four plants, is building another near San Diego, slated to open as soon as November. Once operational, it will provide the San Diego Water Authority, which serves the San Diego area, with 50 million gallons of water per day.

“It’s a carbon footprint, but the technology is advanced enough that the cost of the process is lower than it used to be,” said Fredi Lokiec, IDE’s former executive vice president of special projects. “The environmental damage done because of a lack of ability to provide water to residents and agriculture because of the drought, because of overdrawing of groundwater, also has a price.”

3) Israelis irrigate through pinpricks in hoses, not by flooding.

No innovation has been more important for Israel’s desert farms than drip irrigation. Most of the world’s farmers water their crops by flooding their fields with sprinklers or hoses, often wasting water as they go. With drip irrigation, a process pioneered in Israel 50 years ago, water seeps directly into the ground through tiny pinpricks in hoses, avoiding water loss through evaporation.

Four-fifths of all water used in California goes to agriculture, and California’s farmers have been draining the state’s groundwater as rain has stopped falling. But as of 2010, less than 40 percent of California’s farms used drip irrigation, according to the Sacramento Bee.


Netafim, a leading Israeli drip-irrigation company, says the practice cuts water use by up to half. Netafim spokeswoman Helene Gordon told JTA that 90 percent of Israeli farms use drip irrigation.

“It can’t be that there’s such a huge water shortage, and they’re talking about a shortage of drinking water, and on the other hand they pour huge amounts of water into the ocean that could be used for agriculture,” said Avraham Israeli, president of the Israel Water Association, which advises Israeli water companies on technology development.

4) Israel’s government owns all of the country’s water.

Israel treats water as a scarce national resource. The government controls the country’s entire water supply, charging citizens, factories and farmers for water use. Residents pay about one cent per gallon, while farmers pay about a quarter of that.

In California, though, many farms drill from private wells on their property, drawing groundwater as rain has thinned. Some have even begun selling water to the state. State regulations to limit groundwater use, signed last year, won’t be formulated until 2020.

“Technology is not good enough,” said Eilon Adar, director of Ben-Gurion University’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research. “You have to change some of the regulation. You have to impose more limitations on water. California’s local consumers have to give up some of their rights.”

Adar and Israeli, however, both noted that adopting Israeli-style regulations in California would be near impossible, as some of California’s water rights holdings are more than a century old.

5) Water conservation is drilled into Israeli culture.

When an ad appeared on Israeli TV in 2008 showing a woman whose body crumbled to dust because of that year’s water shortage, a parody Facebook group suggested skin lotion. But the ad was just the latest iteration of an Israeli ethos to save water wherever possible.

Kids are taught to turn off faucets and limit shower time. Israelis celebrate rain — at least at first — rather than lamenting it. Lake Kinneret’s daily surface level shows up alongside weather reports in the paper.

Israelis’ close attention to rainfall and drought comes from an education and culture that teaches them the importance of every drop in an arid region. With no end in sight for California’s drought, Adar said Californians would do well to adopt a similar attitude.

Overcharged On Car Repairs? New App Engie Takes The Stress Out Of Repairs, Saves Money

Have you ever suspected, like most of us do, that you might be overcharged by your car repair shop? A new car maintenance app that detects car problems – and the exact cost to repair them – could save car owners hundreds of dollars. Engie, a smartphone application launched in Israel last year, is hoping to disrupt an industry that has barely changed over the past century: auto repair shops.
By NoCamels

According to a customer survey conducted by research firm Harris Interactive, a whopping 66 percent of car owners believe they’ve been ripped off by a repair shop; overall, 72 percent of car owners said they get anxious about the cost of repair.         The app is connected to the on-board car computer, and sends the owner notifications about issues and problems. The owner can then get price quotes from mechanics in his or her area. After identifying the problem, the application invites nearby auto repair shops to bid for the repair job. CEO Yarden Gross tells NoCamels that Engie’s app can detect 60-70 percent of auto problems. Ultimately, Engie founders want to create an empowered driving community, one that would shop around for the best price through their app.

17,000 users within 6 weeks 

Launched in December 2014, six weeks later the app had over 17,000 users. Engie’s service, which works with a bluetooth-enabled, on-board diagnostics device (which is separate from the app), interprets the codes from the car computer to inform the driver about everything from engine problems to maintenance updates to their true gas mileage. Engie provides users with the device for free, charging $5 for the shipping.

Waze founder provides seed money, mentorship

Gross, CMO Gal Aharon and CTO Alon Hendelman met at a boot camp-like summer program at the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at the IDC in Israel in 2014. They brainstormed for months with mentor Uri Levine – co-founder of navigation app Waze (which sold to Google for $1.1 billion in 2013), until one morning the check-engine light in Gross’ car turned on. He dutifully headed to a nearby auto shop and by the time he arrived at the meeting with his team, he was frustrated and angry. Then, the idea for Engie was finally born. Soon after, Levine provided seed money for the young company.

   

It is no coincidence that Engie’s office is located in a scruffy neighborhood in Tel Aviv, full of car dealerships and auto-repair shops; by locating next door to their potential affiliates, the company was able to get 15 mechanic shops on board in just a few weeks. “It actually saves the mechanic a lot of time, arguments and frustration, because even if he does his job correctly, customers often think he’s messing around with them,” Aharon tells NoCamels. “We’re not replacing the mechanic, he’s still going to do his job, but we’re going to help him.” 

“Better than mechanics”

The app, currently available only on Google Play for the Israeli market (the iPhone app is set to come out in a couple of months), asks the user to enter the car model and year, from which it matches the model specifications. Upon detecting a problem, the driver is able to scroll through a list of prices for various parts and services. Want original or aftermarket replacement parts? Do you go to a dealership-approved auto shop, or a general one? All options are available.

However, the app is not flawless. The car tested by NoCamels was a few hundred kilometers short of its recommended oil change at 45,000 km. Most maintenance guides prompt you to schedule a check based on either mileage or time – usually whichever comes first – but Engie appears to lack the time interval option, which is one of its shortcomings.   On the other hand, the clean interface of the app is one of its charms. As Aharon says, it’s designed to “simplify the data and the services to make something that me, you and my grandmother will all understand and could use in a simple and intuitive way.” 

The company, six employees and growing, is now working on an English language application for global markets. The next version is expected to have a different design and more features than the current one. In 8-10 months, Engie expects it will handle car repairs, but it will also cater to second-hand sales, with an app that will transfer the car’s digital history. “Mechanics are plugging into the same computer we are, and their process is very similar to ours. The advantage is that we have a lot of data from many cars, and we’ll be able to have a much better diagnostic system than the mechanics.”

To keep the app and device free for their users, Engie will charge the auto shop with the winning bid a 10 percent affiliate fee. However, this early in the game, that model is not yet in operation, but the management insists it is fully committed to free services for users. “We are consumer-oriented; the whole focus of the company is on the consumer, the mechanic is just the service-provider”, Yarden tells NoCamels. Regarding the company’s finances, the management confirmed that Engie is currently in the midst of a Series A Round of funding, but declined to give any details about valuation, investors or on how much they have managed to raise so far.

A Sea of IT Opportunities in the Brazilian Healthcare Industry

Changing demographics and technological advances are creating major opportunities for IT service providers in Brazil’s healthcare market.
By Izabela Januario, IT Research Analyst, Frost & Sullivan

The healthcare industry has an intrinsic connection with population growth. Throughout history its development has been affected by disease burden, demographics and other factors, and today is no different. Important trends such as the inversion of the age pyramid – with an ever increasing volume of elderly population – and the growing incidence of chronic diseases will challenge health institutions with rising care costs and declining profit margins.

According to Frost & Sullivan’s Mega Trends in Latin America, almost 70 million people in the region will be over 60 years old by 2020. This trend could see regional healthcare expenditure rise to US$580 billion this year. By 2018, Brazil in particular will have to deal with almost 52 million people suffering from obesity and 32 million people diagnosed with diabetes. Hypertension, the most prevalent chronic disease in Brazil, will affect 24% of the population. As you can imagine, these trends have in the mid-to long-term the potential to completely reshape the way healthcare is provided in Brazil.

Besides the population changes, there are also social trends affecting the Brazilian healthcare industry.  Frost & Sullivan expects that by 2025 there will be 1.3 billion connected devices in Latin America. This connected era is creating a new type of patient: the engaged patient. Nowadays Brazilians are using online search tools, mobile apps and wearable devices to increase their awareness about their own health conditions. These informed individuals have a different profile and do not want to simply have doctors’ appraisal; they want to understand and participate in the care process. The surge of this new patient profile is driving Brazilian healthcare institutions to look into patient engagement, thus treating them more as a customer than just a patient.

Along with the aforementioned trends that are slowly affecting the Brazilian healthcare industry, care institutions already have to deal with daily challenges, such as the need to increase process efficiency and control, expand care reach to a wider population, reduce institutions’ costs and provide affordable care.

IT Penetration in Brazil’s Healthcare industry

Technologies will play a major role in this complex scenario and will become a key ally of Brazilian healthcare institutions. Besides care technologies such as electronic medical records (EMR) – a market that will reach US$336 million in Brazil by 2018 – new technologies coming directly from the IT world have a huge potential in the Brazilian industry.

Technologies such as social media and video conferencing are progressively gaining space in the Brazilian healthcare industry. Both technologies can support care process and expand knowledge for population and physicians. While social media creates networks of patients/doctors and allows them to share experiences and increase their findings about diseases, video conferencing has been used to support students of medicine, as they can remotely watch live surgeries by specialists, as well as facilitate collaboration during research and support remote consultations.

In Brazil, remote consultation can only be used in the form of a second doctor (or specialist) appraisal to support an in-site doctor in the diagnostic. Some Brazilian hospitals and universities are already implementing video conferencing, which is the case of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) that has implemented an immersive room from Polycom to enhance medical student surgery training. Another example is the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in São Paulo, which uses Cisco’s mobile healthcare telemedicine solution, developed for remote consults, virtual care and medical education. The technology provides communication between the intensive care unit and emergency room at the Dr. Moysés Deutsch Municipal Hospital and the Telemedicine Center at Albert Einstein, both in São Paulo, to assist seriously ill patients if no specialists are available at the public unit or if a second opinion is required.

Mobility Makes the Biggest Impact

Although the mentioned technologies have huge potential to improve care, so far the big star in IT in healthcare has been mobility. Mobile health has been a trendy topic for a few years, and this hype can be justified not only because of its benefits, but especially because of its huge potential reach. On the healthcare institutions side, mobility can facilitate hospital’s staff access to content, including drug reference and medical calculators, as well as providing enhanced and simplified care when integrated with EMR. Due to its costs, mobile adoption is happening mainly in leading hospitals in Brazil, such as Nossa Senhora das Graças (Porto Alegre), which implemented Microsoft tablets equipped with a hospital information system (HIS) from TOTVs, a large Brazilian software provider. The tablets, integrated to the hospital’s applications, are enabled to better track medication and vital information about patients using digital records as well as to improve processes reliability and enhance patient care.

While there are possibilities for mobile technologies in health institutions, it is in the customer side that we may expect a major change. Applications dedicated to monitor health conditions, vital signs, diets and exercises have been adopted on a wide scale and can strongly benefit remote monitoring. In fact, to boost the creation of applications, including healthcare ones, the Brazilian Ministry of Communication funded the INOVaps program that rewards the 25 most innovative public utility applications.

Mobile phones can also be used to support care and increase knowledge in remote areas, where health services coverage is still poor. For example, Telefonica Vivo has created the Vivo Ligue Saúde service which, for just US$2 a week, provides emergency and preventative guidance via mobile phone, with weekly healthcare tips through text messages. The service already has 2.2 million clients.

Big Data Remains Under-Explored

Much has been said about the big data trend, with magazines, newspapers, IT and non-IT websites presenting it as a hot topic – and it really is. However in Brazil the spread of awareness regarding big data benefits is only recent and companies from all industries are therefore still in the process of

understanding how to implement it and what return on investment they will get from its application. For the healthcare industry, although big data benefits can be multiple – such as the identification of recurrent clinical pictures and effective treatments or the enhancement of prevention with genomic analytics – Brazilian hospitals have not yet started integrating big data solutions. Thus, this market needs still to be conquered by IT companies.

The mentioned technologies, together with holography and3D bio-printing, among others, are expected to nurture big enhancements in health processes. As the Brazilian healthcare industry is taking its first step towards a predictive, participatory and personalized care, the space for IT players in this market is tremendous.

April Newsletter - Israeli Water-Tech

The Israeli water industry is today recognized as a global leader in the water arena thanks to breakthrough technological innovations in areas such as desalination, drip irrigation and water security.

Israeli Water-Tech is Vega’s topic of the month.
You can find a brief summary with few highlights of our monthly technical review at Page 3, and few examples of Israeli solutions for this topic at Page 5. For a full coverage of this topic please refer to the Full Article published at our Blog.

Israel advanced water technology

Overview

Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has placed great emphasis on maximizing its water supply, famously turning much of its arid land into fertile agricultural soil. Indeed, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, declared the goal of “making the desert bloom” as one of the central themes of the new nation, believing it could be one of its main contributions to the world.

Thus, water technologies have been a national priority in Israel since day one. This emphasis has proven itself in one of the world’s most efficient and innovative water systems.

Since its founding, Israel has been coping with water scarcity and has been treating the subject as a national priority. As more and more countries around the world begin to confront the real issues of global warming and water scarcity, many are turning to Israel, which has developed novel solutions. Israel's success in answering the country's water needs stems from its ability to incorporate an extensive variety of solutions under multiple constraints.

The Israeli water industry is today recognized as a global leader in the water arena thanks to breakthrough technological innovations in areas such as desalination, drip irrigation and water security.

Achievements - Fast Facts

ï  Israel, with an 80% water recycling rate, is the world's leading country in water recycling. The second largest water recycler in recent years has been Spain, with a rate of 18%.

ï  Israeli-invented drip irrigation helped achieve 70%-80% of water efficiency in agriculture, the highest rate in the world.

ï  Israel’s total water consumption has remained nearly the same since 1964, in spite of a growing population and agriculture. This feat has been enabled through improved efficiency and technological innovation.

ï  Israel has achieved the highest ratio in the world of crop yield per water unit.

ï  Israel is home to the world's largest seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants, annually producing 140-150 million m3 at the low cost of approximately $0.52 per m3 of water, the most cost-efficient of its kind in the world.

ï  Over 35% of Israel's drinking-quality water now comes from desalination. Meanwhile, desalinated water accounts for around 80% of total domestic water use in Israeli cities.

Israeli Water-Tech

Israeli Water- Tech is based on the belief that the Israeli water and renewable energy sectors have the talent and capability to be strong growth industries for the country, and to play a major part in establishing the “Next Generation Oasis” for the world’s rising needs.

This is a national program led by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, and is supported by a number of additional government agencies.

Israel Water-Tech helps to advance the water renewable energy sectors by supporting academia and research, encouraging implementation in the local market, and by helping Israeli companies succeed in the international arena.

Areas of Expertise

ï  Water resources management: first to adopt a comprehensive approach on a national scale; today it is one of the main sources of water agriculture in the country.

ï  Irrigation solutions: highest ratio of crop per water unit (Water for agriculture)

ï  Purification & reclamation: countless innovative breakthroughs

ï  Desalination: the most economical in the world

ï  Water treatment:  recycle , drinking, watering

ï  Water safety and security: applying years of experience in the field of security and defense to counter a new threat.

ï  Water IT and communications

For more ...... See Vega's April  Newsletter

Brazil speeds up IPv6 roll out

Summary:The country's telecoms agency announced a set of measures around the implementation of the new Internet protocol.
By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

The Brazilian telecommunications agency Anatel announced that Internet operators will provide IPv6 addresses to consumers from 1 July as part of a set of initiatives to move faster to the new standard.

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses in Brazil announced last June, local policymakers have increased

the pressure on network operators to migrate quickly to IPv6, the next-generation protocol for Internet networking.

The adoption of the new protocol in Brazil will take place in a way that is "transparent to the user" and the two protocols will still coexist, Anatel said. The agency has also put together a working group to oversee the migration.

From July, all new users must have an IPv6 address provided by Internet operators. Those still using IPv4 devices will also be entitled to apply for a public IP that isn't shared with other users.

The rising tides of big data, video, and cloud computing are driving tremendous demand for faster and more efficient networks. We delve into how things like software-defined networks (SDN) and new wireless technologies are enabling business transformation.

As well as solving the issue of IPv4 address exhaustion, IPv6 adds a number of additional features in areas such as mobility, auto-configuration and overall extensibility, supporting a much wider range of devices that can be directly connected to the Internet.

As part of the new migration push, Anatel is also requiring IPv6 addressing for all new Internet-enabled devices manufactured and sold in Brazil from 2016 - before reaching final consumers, such products require Anatel's technical certification.

In Brazil, some 68 percent of providers have migrated to IPv6, according to data from NIC.br, the body that oversees the distribution of Brazil's IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. But client equipment such as modems and routers still needs to be upgraded, so that will require a gradual transition that should be ongoing until 2018.

Currently, Brazilian organizations can only get a maximum of 1024 IPv4 addresses every six months. This comes from the 2 million addresses which will be used to support the transition to IPv6. After that, there will be one final allocation of 2 million IPv4 addresses that can be provided to new companies in limited batches.

Companies have been dragging their heels on the issue of IPv4 exhaustion for years. According to Anatel, what has been hampering progress of the IPv6 migration in Brazil is the chicken-and-egg situation between operators and content generators - Internet portals, social networking platforms, search engines - over who should start migrating to the new protocol.

With the new deadlines, the agency believes that the deadlines imposed to the providers will mean that content generators will start working on it.

Currently, major Internet players such as Facebook and Google already operate with IPv6 content, as well as local companies such as portals UOL and Terra.

Israel advanced water technology

Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has placed great emphasis on maximizing its water supply, famously turning much of its arid land into fertile agricultural soil. Indeed, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, declared the goal of “making the desert bloom” as one of the central themes of the new nation, believing it could be one of its main contributions to the world.

Thus, water technologies have been a national priority in Israel since day one. This emphasis has proven itself in one of the world’s most efficient and innovative water systems.

Since its founding, Israel has been coping with water scarcity and has been treating the subject as a national priority. As more and more countries around the world begin to confront the real issues of global warming and water scarcity, many are turning to Israel, which has developed novel solutions. Israel's success in answering the country's water needs stems from its ability to incorporate an extensive variety of solutions under multiple constraints.

The Israeli water industry is today recognized as a global leader in the water arena thanks to breakthrough technological innovations in areas such as desalination, drip irrigation and water security.

Achievements - Fast Facts

• Israel, with an 80% water recycling rate, is the world's leading country in water recycling. The second largest water recycler in recent years has been Spain, with a rate of 18%.
• Israeli-invented drip irrigation helped achieve 70%-80% of water efficiency in agriculture, the highest rate in the world.
• Israel’s total water consumption has remained nearly the same since 1964, in spite of a growing population and agriculture. This feat has been enabled through improved efficiency and technological innovation.
• Israel has achieved the highest ratio in the world of crop yield per water unit.
• Israel is home to the world's largest seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants, annually producing 140-150 million m3 at the low cost of approximately $0.52 per m3 of water, the most cost-efficient of its kind in the world.
• Over 35% of Israel's drinking-quality water now comes from desalination.  Meanwhile, desalinated water accounts for around 80% of total domestic water use in Israeli cities.

Big Data trends in Brazil for 2015

Summary:Non-techies come to the rescue, "Big Data washers" will continue to proliferate 

By Thoran Rodrigues for Brazil Tech 

Until quite recently, many people in Brazil didn't know what Big Data was. Until 2013, the year Big Data went mainstream, there was very little understanding about the concept of data analytics and its applications, the technologies behind it and the companies that operated in this space.

With growing interest in the topic and expanding media coverage, understanding grew and because of this, 2014 has been a year of widespread local experimentation, pilot projects and proofs of concept. Many of the largest companies experimented with the concepts and technologies, either internally or by hiring external help, and the demand has only been growing.

However, just as with every other emerging technology, there is still a lot of uncertainty and confusion related both with the underlying concepts of Big Data and the potential applications and benefits that it can bring. Actually, many people still have a hard time agreeing on what exactly Big Data is.

In this environment of high demand coupled with uncertainty, some noteworthy trends have arisen and will be shaping the evolution of the market in 2015:

Non-techies will help fix the skills gap

To realize all the potential of Big Data projects, it is not enough to have professionals that are skilled on the technical tools. To achieve results, they must also have a good understanding of maths and statistics, as well as deep business knowledge. This combination of skills is what characterizes a data scientist, or a data science team - and the demand for this kind of professionals has never been greater.

The lack of qualified professionals to work on Big Data projects in Brazil is one of the main problems companies face when starting analytics projects, and also the reason why consultants active within that field have no shortage of work these days.

Many of the top universities in Brazil have been trying to address the Big Data skills gap by launching new executive or part-time courses focused on teaching the basics of data analysis, and updating their CVs accordingly. Many companies have also been investing in training in a more focused manner to better respond to these issues.

One very interesting trend here is that much of the Big Data-related training is being offered to professionals who do not have an IT background, but rather a statistics or math background.

This indicates that the market appears to have decided that it is more productive to teach those who already understand data analysis how to work with the tools they need to handle Big Data, than to teach data analysis to those who already understand the technical side.

So it is fair to say that there's a huge opportunity for companies focused on training and education to provide courses for the market. There is also a lot of space for companies to provide tools for handling Big Data that anyone, regardless of their tech proficiency, can use.

"Big Data Washers" shall proliferate

Just as the advent of cloud computing brought about the "cloud washers" - companies that simply slapped the cloud computing label on whatever software or solutions they already had - today we are witnessing the rise of "big data washers" in Brazil: companies that are labelling their solutions "Big Data" regardless of whether they deliver on that promise or not.

While this is a common trend for any emerging technology that hits the mainstream, it seems to be happening even more in the Big Data space in this market. Part of the problem is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding it.

The lack of consensus and definitions then enables companies to rebrand their products as so-called Big Data offerings without giving customers a clear way to differentiate between the serious companies and those that are less so.

A lot of this relabeling also happens internally. Many companies, especially large corporations in the telecom and financial services verticals, have been claiming to have always worked with Big Data, that this is just a new name for the work they already did.

It is true that these companies might have been handling massive amounts of data for quite some time, but volume alone is not enough to label a dataset as Big Data.

Unfortunately though, not everyone understands this difference.

This trend will definitely continue to be seen in Brazil over the next year, as the large interest of the market on Big Data creates an incentive for solution providers and IT shops to jump on the bandwagon. Growing understanding and wider dissemination of information may help reverse it, but here in Brazil there is still a long way to go.

Focused vendors will succeed

Big Data is already a huge market, accounting for several hundred million dollars of IT spending in Brazil alone. Today, most of this money is going to technology companies from outside Brazil (infrastructure or basic application providers, such as Amazon and Cloudera), or to large consulting firms who are implementing projects.

The local companies having the most success and experiencing faster growth in the Big Data market are those who sought a particular Big Data problem and developed a product that solves that problem in its entirety. Such companies handle data collection, analysis and processing themselves, delivering the final result of the process to clients, instead of a series of technologies that can be applied to that problem.

Companies might have been handling massive amounts of data for quite some time, but volume alone is not enough to label a dataset as Big Data

Why is that approach unique? Because it presents more valuable learnings to companies wanting to dabble with Big Data: finding a problem and focusing on solving it from start to finish means you are much more likely to succeed, rather than simply experimenting with tools and technologies applied to regular data.

Big Data is still very much a nascent market in Brazil, and it is expected to grow tremendously over the next few years. 2015 will be a year where the first movers of the market will start to shift from proofs of concept to production-oriented projects. This will present an excellent opportunity for local and international companies, meaning that the data analytics market in Brazil is definitely one to watch this year.

São Paulo city government trials Big Data to improve public transport

Summary: A project in partnership with the World Bank wants to take bus management at the Brazilian capital to the next level
By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

The city government of São Paulo is carrying out trials to improve the management of the local bus fleet of 15,000 vehicles by using data analytics.
Financed by the World Bank, the project is using technology supplied by Google-backed US startup Urban Engines, which provides both operators and officials of São Paulo's transport authority

SPTrans with a comprehensive view of the buses and their ridership on a real-time basis.

Bus management in São Paulo is a resource-intensive exercise: to find out whether buses are on time, as well as the number of passengers riding on each journey and other operational details, the city relies on the data gathered by thousands of transport authority agents. That information takes time to be processed and decision-making - such as penalties applied to bus companies failing to deliver - is consequently delayed.

The dashboard produced by the Urban Engines system is fed with travelcard and GPS equipment data gathered from July to September 2013 and provides minute-by-minute information of where buses are located, vehicle capacity and how many passengers have boarded in each stop.
According to Urban Engines, the service provided to SPTrans is a "space-time" engine - a platform architected to process many billions of movement data points and provide a granular level of insight to improve urban mobility.

"As people and objects move through cities generating data in unprecedented volumes, Urban Engines' space-time engine can help cities and other customers optimize operations and provide better experiences using analytics derived from this "Internet of Moving Things," a company representative said.

Work with SPTrans around the mapping, visualization, reporting, and analytics of bus fleet was carried out over a sample period of "several months," according to Urban Engines. The total cost of the trial and the full-scale project is not being disclosed, but the company says its pricing is based on a software-as-a-service model "and scales with the needs of the organization."

If the transport authority considers data analysis necessary to improve bus management in the city, a procurement process will follow. Going forward, the idea is to work with data that is a couple of weeks' old.

The São Paulo city government has been trying to use technology to improve urban mobility, with recent initiatives such as hackathons focused on developing applications focused on the provision of public transport, as well as a fleet of new Internet-enabled buses.

How Israeli Desalination Technology Is Helping Solve California’s Devastating Drought

By Betty Ilovici, NoCamels

Four years of devastating droughts in California have pushed cities and counties in the Golden State to seriously consider turning to the one drinking source that is not depleting anytime soon – seawater. With the Pacific Ocean abutting their shores, water desalination may be the much-needed solution for Californians. But desalination has its disadvantages, the chief ones being the high costs and the potential environmental damage.

To address these challenges, California is turning to the world leader in cutting edge desalination technology – Israel. A $1 billion desalination project is already underway in San Diego County – which will be the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere – and Israeli engineers have been called in for their expertise.


Currently under construction in Carlsbad, 35 miles north of San Diego, the plant could potentially provide Californians with 54 million gallons of water a day. The plant is using technology Israelis have been using for years, reverse-osmosis, which involves forcing seawater through a film with tiny holes that allow only water molecules to pass through, while the larger salt molecules cannot.



“A complete game changer for desalination in the US”

2014 was California’s third driest year in 119 years and according to the US Geological Survey; it was also the warmest year in recorded history, leading California to declare a drought state of emergency last year. Earlier this month, another frightening figure was published: The California Department of Water Resources measured the statewide water content of Sierra snowpack (which provides about one-third of the water used by California’s cities and farms) at 5 percent, the lowest level since 1950. In response, the governor recently announced mandatory State-wide water cutbacks.

Despite this, the Golden State has only a handful of small desalination plants. But with the help of Israel Desalination Enterprises (IDE Technologies), the $1 billion desalination plant San Diego is due to become reality next year. According to IDE – which is also working on desalination projects in China, India and Australia – the Carlsbad project is a “complete game changer for desalination in the US.” This project is expected to provide clean water to 300,000 people and generate roughly $50

million annually for the regional economy. “The plant overcame significant practical, regulatory and economic hurdles to deliver a cost-effective and environmentally friendly water supply,” IDE said.

Critics of the reverse-osmosis technology have claimed that it is too costly and requires too much energy, making it environmentally damaging. But IDE Technologies says its production costs are among the world’s lowest and that it can provide an average family’s water needs for roughly $300-$500 a year. Israel’s largest desalination plant, for example, sells desalinated water to the Israeli government for about 60 cents per cubic meter, which is lower than traditional water purification methods. Using highly efficient pumps, the plant also consumes less energy than similar desalination stations around the globe.



Necessity is the mother of invention

Israel, a land that is two-thirds arid, has long been forced to come up with creative ways to conserve, recycle and desalinate water. The country has become a leader in the field of water preservation, coming up with industry-changing technologies such as drip irrigation in 1964. In fact, the serious attention Israel has paid to its water supplies means that the country now has a water surplus – a first in its history. About 40 percent of Israel’s tap water is desalinated sea water – a figure expected to reach 50 percent by 2016 – and so is a large part of the water for agriculture.

And with an estimated 1.8 billion people around the globe who don’t have adequate access to clean water, desalination technologies developed in Israel are in high demand.



Israelis quench the thirst of Marshall Islands residents

In the Marshall Islands, for example, an island country located near the equator in the Pacific Ocean with a serious shortage in drinking water, Israeli company GAL Water Technologies has introduced a one-of-its-kind emergency water purification vehicle, called the GalMobile. According to the

company, the main challenge when large scale natural disasters or terrorist attack strike, is lack of fresh clean water in the first 72 hours. The GalMobile is then highly efficient as a self-contained automatic vehicle that can connect to any possible water source – like rivers, lakes, oceans, brackish water and wells – and produce drinking water at WHO water standards.

For the past two decades, GAL has also provided water treatment technologies on a humanitarian basis to African nations.


But despite its past achievements, Israeli desalination technology will largely be measured on the success in San Diego. If that reverse osmosis plant achieves its goals, we can expect to see many more Israeli engineers educating the world about the benefits of water desalination.

M-commerce adoption in Brazil gathers momentum

Summary:Purchasing via mobile and tablet devices in the country is above world average, says PwC.

By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech 

Mobile commerce take-up is gathering momentum in Brazil, with a significant increase in the number of consumers using mobile devices to purchase products and services seen in the last couple of years.

Some 54 percent of the 1,000 Brazilian consumers polled by PricewaterhouseCoopers between August and September 2014 have purchased something via their mobiles or smartphones and 51 percent have done so via a tablet device.

Out of these consumers, 31 percent buy items through their mobile devices at least once a month, up from 17 percent seen in the research carried out in the previous year, according to PwC.

This compares to an average of 48 percent of 18,068 consumers polled across 18 other countries - including United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Japan and Australia - who bought items with their mobile devices.

According to the Total Retail report, m-commerce in Brazil has been boosted by consumers aged between 18-24: some 60 percent of consumers within that age bracket have purchased something via their phones, compared with 40 percent of consumers older than 24.

Separate research by consulting firm E-bit indicates that while mobile commerce continues to grow in Brazil, it is still a small slice of the online commerce pie: purchases made through smartphones and tablets represent only 9.7 percent of all e-commerce transactions processed in Brazil during 2014.

Top 20 Importing Companies In Brazil

Brazil was known for having a positive trade balance, but over the last few years, the country has been experiencing the opposite trend. In the following article we will take a look at the top 20 importing companies in Brazil.

By Marcelo Possato, The Brazil Business

Overview

According to the World Trade Organization, Brazilian imports amounted to more than BR 110 billion in the first semester of 2014. Despite the decrease in relation to the previous year, when the import rate reached BR 118 billion in the first semester, the value remains considerably high. Brazil was 21st in the worldwide ranking of importers last year.

By the end of 2014, Brazil had a deficit of BR 4 billion in the trade balance, what is uncommon for the country, which had an average of BR 19 billion of surplus between 2009 and 2013.

The top 20 Importing Companies in Brazil

All the companies that appear on this list have a revenue higher than BRL 100 million per year. The following ranking published in 2014, is based on data byMinistério do Desenvolvimento, Indústria e Comércio Exterior, which is the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.

1. Petrobras - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 16,43% Petrobras is the largest oil company in Brazil. The main shareholder of the company is the Brazilian Government
2. Samsung Eletronica da Amazônia- Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 1,72% Samsung is a subsidiary of the South Korean company. The company operates in the field of information technology, telecommunications and household appliances
3. Braskem S/A- Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 1,18% Braskem is the largest chemical company in Brazil
4. Cisa Trading S/A - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 1,11% Cisa is related to aeronautics in Brazil. The company operates in many areas such as automotive, aeronautic, cosmetic, pharmaceutical and technological
5. Toyota do Brasil - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 1,09%, Toyota is a subsidiary of the Japanese company The company imports cars and car parts
6. Embraer S.A -  Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 1,02%, Embraer is a Brazilian conglomerate that manufactures aero-planes. The company is ranked 4th amongst the producers of airplanes worldwide
7. LG Electronics of Brazil -  Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 1,00%, LG Brasil is a subsidiary of the South-Korean company. The company imports electronics parts
8. Ford Motor Company Brasil Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,87% Ford is originally from the United States. The company imports cars
9. Flextronics International Tecnologia Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,85% Flextronics is originally from Cingapura and manufactures electronic products
10. Yara Brasil Fertilizantes S.A - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,67% Yara is originally from Norway but merged in 2013 with Brazil´s Bunge (another fertilizer manufacturer) creating Yara Brasil Fertilizantes. The company imports fertilizers and chemical products
11. Volkswagen do Brasil - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,62%, The company imports cars from Germany
12. Syngenta Proteção de Cultivos Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,58%, The company operates in agribusiness Syngenta imports chemical products and seeds
13. GE Celma Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,57%, GE Celma is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro and the company’s core business is the repair and sales of aircraft turbines in Brazil and worldwide
14. General Motors do Brasil Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,55%, GM has continued to be the 3rd best-selling car brand in Brazil during the last 3 years, The company imports cars from USA
15. Basf S.A - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,53%, Basf imports chemical products from Germany, The company owns Suvinil, the largest Brazilian paint manufacturer
16. Bayer S.A - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,47%. The company operates in both the chemical and pharmaceutical fields, but also works with innovative materials, health care and agribusiness. Bayer imports chemical and technological products from Germany
17. Renault do Brasil S.A - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,46%. The company imports cars from France
18. Fiat Automóveis Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,46%, Fiat imports cars from Turin, Italy. It is the leader in Brazil in terms of car sales volume
19. Mercedes-Benz do Brasil Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,45%, Mercedes-Benz imports cars from Stuttgart, Germany
20. Fertilizantes Heringer Ltda. - Participation in the Brazilian trade balance: 0,41%. The company is located in the state of Espírito Santo. Fertilizantes Heringer operates in the agribusiness field and imports chemical products and fertilizers from Germany

It is evident that the chemical, automotive and electronic sectors fill most places on the list. This reflects the strength of these business segments in Brazil today.