Four separate sectors in Information technology and beyond

As an application support analyst, one can be quite familiar with the process of level 3 support. For g. Ripley, app. support analyst and systems analyst are my career paths. For the application support personality, one has to work with the cloud sector; business intelligence (BI); customer relationship management (crm); and enterprise resource planning (erp). To achieve maximum results and gain the most knowledge, G. Ripley wants to be an expert in all four sectors. Second, here are the top three companies in the cloud services/software area: 1. Amazon web services (AWS); 2. Microsoft Azure; 3. google cloud platform. Business Intelligence involves getting data through different tools to perform ETL (extract, transform, and load) process. Three well known companies along with their respective products in BI sector are Tableau desktop/online/support; Microsoft PowerBI; and Informatica powercenter. SAP BusinessObjects is another key player in the BI sector. After mastering the cloud and Business Intelligence, the next step includes familiarizing oneself with customer relationship management. Hence, the popular software companies and products are Salesforce enterprise/professional environment; and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For ERP, the major players are SAP R3; Oracle ERP cloud; and Microsoft Dynamics AX. SAP is an acronym for Systems, Applications and Products. The company is based in Germany, and has one of its corporate headquarters there. While SAP; Microsoft; Oracle; Salesforce; and Google are big software rivals, consumers and companies tend to use their products regardless of the expensive costs. In this penultimate paragraph, there are other products that should be mentioned. One product is Google BigQuery, and it is an data warehouse analytics product in the cloud. When people talk about the cloud, it is a very broad subject. Let's break it down. The cloud will consist of Iaas, Paas, and Saas. Iaas is Infrastructure as a service; Paas is platform as a service; and Saas is software as a service. Lastly, the reader should recognize that there will be a lot of different IT acronyms used in today's tech. jargon. It is not a necessity to know all of them. Yet, it helps to know a majority of them. To survive in application support world, it is best to follow the trends in all of these four sectors in IT. Keep track of what is used, and what you use to support companies on the enterprise and cloud platforms. Goodbye to tech. land. Enjoy the picture above of the different modules of ERP business software. Bus. Intelligence and CRM are in the image, as they fit in the pie nicely.

2018 was a wild year for the stock market; STZ has diverse product portfolio :)

The stock market had a lousy 2018. All three stock markets (NYSE; nasdaq; and s&p 500) were down by more than 5%. Abiomed, Macy's, McCormick, and Zoetis plus other firms posted strong gains. What about the chip sector? Chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) surged 73% in 2018. AMD is benefiting from increased demand for PCs. AMD's Ryzen chips have been taking market share from Intel. Second: in the auto world, auto parts retailers were also among the top performers in 2018. Advance Auto Parts (AAP) gained 55%, while O'Reilly Automotive (ORLY) gained 42%. In the online travel sector, TripAdvisor (TRIP) was the fourth best stock of the year. In the food and beverage world, Chipotle (CMG) gained 46% this year under new CEO Brian Niccol. Next up, let's talk about one of G. Ripley's favorite companies in the Spirits and Alcohol world. STZ is the stock symbol for Constellation Brands, and they are based in Western New York. This company owns different wines, beers like Corona; and they are invested in Cannabis. There is no smoke about that last snippet. The company is big into crown whiskey too, and their market cap is between $20-30 billion. Robert Mondavi and Kim Crawford are a few of their wine brands. In closing on STZ, keep drinking and absorbing their products because they may generate steady profits for 2019. Finally, is earnings season going to drag down the stock markets and the US economy? The earnings season starts in week of January 14; and it could be two full weeks of companies reporting 4th quarter earnings. The US economy will report their GDP numbers in the next 2-3 weeks. Hope Q4 GDP is above 1 or 2% growth. The rest of the world may be in recession, but US is chugging along at a health 2 to 2.5% growth rate for 2018. Good day from the financial R$G. Good night from g. ripley (greenleaf/ripley); and tonight's wine will be just like the picture above.