In my recent posts, I’ve focused on initiatives in the Federal space and steps Avnet Government Solutions is taking to protect Uncle Sam’s goods. As summer wraps up I wanted to drill down on the other side of the public sector. Last month we attended XChange SLED University and then road tripped to the Sunshine State for NASCIO a couple weeks ago. The state, local and education (SLED) industry provides a lot of white space and the time to capitalize is now. But first, let’s take a closer look at what SLED organizations are doing to shake things up.

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When those located outside of the region discuss business in Latin America, one of three things happen. They have a basic understanding of the countries within the region, they’re well versed in the region and understand how the countries behave and their cultural and business differences, or none of the above – they believe that the countries within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) all behave is one unit, with identical priorities and focuses.

Editor's Note: This guest post was originally published by guest author, Ahmed Banafa. Ahmed is currently a lecturer at the College of Engineering at San Jose University and is a Five-time winner of instructor of the year award. Ahmed is also a contributor to LinkedIn, IBMCloud , IBM Big Data Analytics Hub, and HP Infrastructure Insights and has been published on MIT Technology Review, ComputerWorld, Livescience, Techonomy, and Openmind. Subscribe to his blog, New Trends in Hi Tech, or follow him on Twitter.

Your brackets are officially printed and filled out and you’re ready for the craziness of the college basketball championship tournament that will consume television channels throughout the next two weeks. 67 games of single-elimination basketball is one of the most exciting times of the year for sports fans and one of the most challenging, yet opportunistic, times of the year for technology companies. With 11 million brackets completed on ESPN.com last year alone, the 2015 tournament is set to be the most exciting and innovative yet with emerging technologies working to upgrading the fans’ experience.

After months of preparation and anticipation for NRF’s Big Show, I arrived at the Javits Center in New York City early Saturday morning ready for the event of the year to begin, and of course to make sure our booth setup was going smoothly. Weaving my way around crates, boxes, rolled up rugs and beeping forklifts was no easy task and it was hard to imagine the NRF Expo would start in just over 24 hours and the stacks of packing crates would be replaced by thousands of retailers from around the world.

It’s typical for the data from consumer attraction venues—for example ticket sales, retail, and concessions—to sit in siloed systems that don’t easily communicate with each other, causing those business areas to operate independently when they are actually inextricably intertwined.