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The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Microsoft announced the signing of a partnership agreement to promote development and foster regional cooperation in Africa by leveraging information and communication technology (ICT).

A press release showed that the signing, presided over by the United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary of ECA, Mr. Abdoulie Janneh and the Microsoft Africa Chairman (Middle East & Africa), Dr. Cheick Modibo Diarra, took place at the UNECA headquarters in Addis Ababa as a pre-event to the 14th African Union Summit of Heads of State and Government with the theme “Information and Communication technologies in Africa: challenges and prospects for development”.

Through the public-private partnership, UNECA and Microsoft will employ their respective expertise in a number of areas including: access to software and technical support; local software development; capacity building in ICT for socio-economic development; and supporting the development of Africa’s e-government programmes through enhanced use of ICT.

Partnership programmes will support and align closely with the work of UNECA’s Information Technology Centre for Africa (ITCA) to raise awareness and commitment in the use of ICT as a driver of economic opportunities in Africa. Microsoft will assist in technology infrastructure planning for the ITCA and provide curriculum and certification to ITCA trainers so that they can in turn teach ICT skills. The partners will use a “train the trainer” approach to ensure the long-term sustainability and scalability of the centre.

During the ceremony Mr. Abdoulie Janneh emphasized that:
“Technology is a powerful tool to help drive investment competitiveness and growth on the African continent. Through this partnership, we aim to strengthen Africa’s access to ICT tools to build modern economies”.

The partnership will also include collaboration on issues relating to safeguarding intellectual property, security of information systems and networks and minimizing the impact of attacks on citizens and critical infrastructures.

Dr. Cheick Modibo Diarra affirmed that:
“Microsoft is committed to helping provide creative thinking and innovative solutions in areas where the necessary resources and capabilities are often lacking. Our partnership will allow us to use ICT to support UNECA’s broad mandate and apply the potential ICT has in supporting economic development in Africa”.

The collaboration further broadens Microsoft’ overall commitment to Africa and its partnerships with other major international organizations – including the African Union, African Development Bank, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Microsoft first began operations in Sub-Saharan African in 1992 and has expanded to 13 offices in 9 countries, with more than 600 employees and over 17,000 commercial partners across the region.

Data mining services are used extensively by businesses who have strong focus on their consumers. They are used in retail, financial, communication and even marketing organizations. Data mining services allow companies to determine relationships between various internal factors like price and product positioning and external aspects like market competition, economic indicators and customer demographics. As a result, businesses can enhance their sales and corporate profits.

Retailers use data mining services to determine point-of-sale records of customer purchases so that they can send more targeted offers and promotional newsletters. They can also customize their marketing strategies as pet the purchase history of individual customers. Data mining services provide retailers with crucial client information based of which they can develop products and services that appeal to the particular audience segments.

Data mining services can be used effectively by both SMEs as well as major organizations.

Video rental companies have used data mining services to mine its rental history database and recommend rentals to people. Similarly, credit card companies companies suggest products to its subscribers based on their monthly expenditure habits. These are just a couple of examples how businesses are using data mining services to know more about their target audiences and make their marketing strategies more effective.

Working of Data Mining Services
Data mining is a perfect amalgamation of IT and analytical systems. Data mining professionals use specialized softwares to identify relationships and patterns in stored transaction data based on open-ended user queries. Some of the popular relationships on the basis of which data is classified are:

Classes – Data mining services are used to locate data in predetermined groups. For example, a restaurant can mine the purchase data about their customers so that they can determine when do people visit and what do they order. Using this information, they can have daily special items and special treats in order to attract more traffic.

Clusters – Data elements are also grouped according to logical relationships and preferences of consumers. Data mining services can be used to identify niche market segments and consumer affinities.

Associations – Data mining services are used to identify associations as well.

Sequential Patterns – Data mining services are used to anticipate behavior patterns and trends.

Process of Data Mining

Data mining services comprises of a series of procedures -

The data is first extracted and transformed. Then the transaction data is loaded onto the data warehouse system.
The stored data is managed within the multidimensional database system.
Access to the data is given to business analysts and information technology professionals.
These data mining professionals analyze the data by application software.
The data is presented in a useful format, such as a graph or table.

Data mining services have ingenuous benefits for any business . The web is an exhaustive source of data but to pick out relevant data and transform it into understandable information is what data mining services do for a business. With relevant data in place, businesses can seek to make their operations and processes more effective.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Maneet Puri is the director of LeXolution IT Services, a professional IT services company that specializes in providing a range of KPO services. He helps his clients with a range of data entry,Data mining and data processing services as well.

Linux Fund and the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) have pledged to work together to promote Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Africa.

In a Press Release, Linux Fund and the Free Software and Open Source Foundation of Africa (FOSSFA) have signed a landmark agreement to promote Free Software and Open Source in Africa. This historic engagement between two Foundations speaks to the success of the Community Summit and Foundations face-to-face meeting at this year’s Open Source Conference (OSCON) which was held in San Jose in Silicon Valley.

Within the framework of the agreement, David Mandel of Linux Fund emphasizes that “Linux Fund will work to raise money to help fund FOSSFA projects and events that expand the use and development of Open Source software, documentation, data, and education in Africa. Linux Fund will also add information about FOSSFA to promotional fliers and other literature that Linux Fund uses at conferences and for direct appeals to potential donors”.

Nnenna Nwakanma of FOSSFA says she believes that Linux Fund support has come at a good time when FOSSFA has engaged in the ICT@INNOVATION project in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Kenya http://www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net and the FOSSWAY (http://fossway.fossfa.net ) project that sweeps across the whole of West Africa and Central Africa promoting and building FOSS capacities in those 18 countries. She also believes that the upcoming projects of FOSSFA on Policy Support to Governments, Management of Internet Resources, Open Source Certification, Resource/Competence Centers and Open Source Solutions for Governance will also benefit greatly from this collaboration. Finally, she believes the upcoming Fourth African International Conference on Open Source and the Digital Commons (Idlelo 4, Accra, Ghana, May 17 – 21, 2010) will be an important event to showcase results of this partnership.

Both organizations will disseminate information about each other’s activities, initiatives, and operations on their web sites, at conferences, meetings and events. FOSSFA and Linux Fund are committed to expanding their partnership beyond funding to include joint projects and events plus strategies for information exchange between their diverse communities. The development of a system that would allow Open Source experts visiting Africa could be linked with speaking opportunities or short volunteer consulting projects during their trips is also under consideration.

About Linux Fund

Linux Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides financial and advisory support to the free and open software community. Linux Fund has given away over $750,000 to open source events and development since its founding in 1999 using funds raised through its line of credit cards and direct donations.

http://www.linuxfund.org/

About FOSSFA

FOSSFA is the premier African FOSS organization, and was founded under the auspices of the Bamako Bureau of the African Information Society Initiative within the mandate given by African Governments in 1995 to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The Vision of FOSSFA is to promote the use of FOSS and the FOSS model in African development. FOSSFA supports the integration of FOSS in national policies and also coordinates, promotes, and adds value to African FOSS initiatives, creativity, industry, expertise, efforts and activities at all levels. FOSSFA partners with development organizations who share these goals towards a participatory and gender-mainstreamed sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. The Foundation is already working with the African Union, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the State Information Technology Agenca of South Africa (SITA), the German Capacity Building International (INWENT), the Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) and the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE)