Rapid growth of the global economy has accelerated the degradation of the Earth's most important asset: the environment. Increasing poverty and challenges arising from climate change further threaten the planet's natural systems. With a rising global population, the demand on natural resources to cover even basic human needs is intensifying - supporting businesses that promote the sustainable use of natural resources and help ensure their long-term viability is imperative. As part of a pioneering movement to harness business towards effecting environmental change, The Nature Conservancy launched EcoEnterprises Fund in 2000 to provide investment capital to grow small "eco"-businesses in Latin America. There is a compelling need for financing this niche. Companies of this size truly drive change - creating the engine for economic activity and generating livelihoods for bottom of the pyramid rural peoples which brings about positive social and conservation impacts. EcoEnterprises Fund's portfolio highlights twenty-three cutting-edge companies, in expanding sectors such as organic agriculture, ecotourism, sustainable forestry, and non-timber forest products which include innovative industry first-movers-from organic shrimp to biodynamic flowers, and ready-to-drink smoothies made from the latest Amazonian berry. With a successful ten-year track record, EcoEnterprises Fund has valuable learning to share - from what pitfalls to avoid when structuring investments to what types of assistance entrepreneurs in these emerging environmental sectors need most. Portfolio for the Planet translates a decade of experience into accessible lessons for both veterans and newcomers in the field: for those interested in investing in sustainable businesses, discovering novel approaches to environmental conservation, or seeing entrepreneurs pursue their dreams.

Learn to extract actionable insights from your big data in real time using a range of Microsoft Azure features Key Features Updated with the latest features and new additions to Microsoft Azure Master the fundamentals of cloud analytics using Azure Learn to use Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly known as Azure SQL Data Warehouse) to derive real-time customer insights Book DescriptionCloud Analytics with Microsoft Azure serves as a comprehensive guide for big data analysis and processing using a range of Microsoft Azure features. This book covers everything you need to build your own data warehouse and learn numerous techniques to gain useful insights by analyzing big data The book begins by introducing you to the power of data with big data analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, artificial intelligence, and DataOps. You will learn about cloud-scale analytics and the services Microsoft Azure offers to empower businesses to discover insights. You will also be introduced to the new features and functionalities added to the modern data warehouse. Finally, you will look at two real-world business use cases to demonstrate high-level solutions using Microsoft Azure. The aim of these use cases will be to illustrate how real-time data can be analyzed in Azure to derive meaningful insights and make business decisions. You will learn to build an end-to-end analytics pipeline on the cloud with machine learning and deep learning concepts. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in analyzing large amounts of data with Azure and using it effectively to benefit your organization. What you will learn Explore the concepts of modern data warehouses and data pipelines Discover unique design considerations while applying a cloud analytics solution Design an end-to-end analytics pipeline on the cloud Differentiate between structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data Choose a cloud-based service for your data analytics solutions Use Azure services to ingest, store, and analyze data of any scale Who this book is forThis book is designed to benefit software engineers, Azure developers, cloud consultants, and anyone who is keen to learn the process of deriving business insights from huge amounts of data using Azure. Though not necessary, a basic understanding of data analytics concepts such as data streaming, data types, the machine learning life cycle, and Docker containers will help you get the most out of the book.