PowerPoint Agenda:

• Introduction
• Why are YOU here?
• Common Data Management Projects
• How to create a business plan for your data management project:
  • What?
  • Why?
  • End Goal?
  • What happens if  . . . . ?
• Go Get the Money!

NBC Universal is looking for a Data Management Lead for their NBC TV Network & Media Works business segment in Universal City, CA. The responsibilities of the position include, “Manage database server setup, configuration, system monitoring, and maintenance. Monitoring of product updates and maintenance. Monitor project timelines ensuring timely delivery. Analyze database performance at development and system levels. Oversee proper replication of database, backup and recovery, and Disaster Recovery.”

Some of the job requirements are, “5-8 yrs. of Oracle database administration experience including setup, configuration, health checks, and backups. 5-8 yrs. Experience with Oracle database tuning. 2+ years Data Conversion or ETL Development. 2+ years Working knowledge of UNIX and Linux commands and shell scripting.”

photo credit: NBC Universal

According to a recent article, Oracle’s sales increased 37% over last quarter: “Oracle credits cloud computing for the revenue jump; indeed, Oracle’s databases posted a 29% gain in new license sales.” The article insists that Oracle will continue to do well despite being “late to market with its cloud strategy… The company’s real goal is to rebrand its existing products as ‘cloud’… As clouds are created for public consumption or within the enterprises, Oracle will find a place at the table now and for some time to come.”

The article points to another commenter with a similar view: “Even in cases where NoSQL tools are adopted, traditional databases tend to remain. For example, CERN and CMS adopted Apache CouchDB and MongoDB for certain uses, but kept Oracle for others. And the numbers out from Oracle today suggest that the company’s databases are not just being used by cloud customers, but behind the scenes as well.”

The article continues, “The issue is that Oracle is almost like an infrastructure you can’t get rid of, no matter how expensive, even compared to the value and features of open source alternatives. Too many Oracle-savvy users depend on the core features of the company’s database to build applications, even in the cloud, and they are not willing to change — often for good reason, I’m sure. However, we have to consider the long-term value of not seeking thriftier alternatives.”

photo credit: Oracle

A new article discusses how Big Data is pushing us toward a surveillance society, noting that Big Data “will change our existing notions of privacy. A surveillance society is not only inevitable, it’s worse. It’s irresistible.” The article explains, “For businesses, knowing where people are by using geo-locational data will help them personalize advertising and marketing materials over the Web. For example, if a company knows a customer is in Aruba, it won’t bother offering him or her advertising for restaurants in New York, but instead it may market sun-tanning lotion or scuba-diving excursions.”

The article continues, “Knowing where people are will also determine with accuracy which potential customer is which. For example, if there are five people living in the U.S. with the same name and the same date of birth, but live in different cities, knowing their locations at a given time verifies their identities.”

The article goes on to discuss the types of data that businesses are using: “Big data, an industry term that refers to large data warehouses, includes machine- and human-generated data such as computer system log files, financial services electronic transactions, Web search streams, e-mail meta data, search engine queries and social networking activity. In 2010 alone, 1.5 zetabytes of this data was created, most of which was machine-generated. Corporations filled their data center storage systems with about 16 exabytes of that data last year, according to Jason Hoffman, founder and chief scientist at cloud software provider Joyent.”

photo credit: Daquella manera

Rob Karel, a keynote speaker at next week’s EDW conference, recently shared his thoughts on the monetary value of data: “trying to place a monetary value on data and information itself is a red herring, an effort that I highly recommend all avoid – unless you enjoy philosophical exercises that don’t translate to actual business value. (Apologies to those that fit in this camp — have fun!)”

Karel continues, “The ‘data is an asset’ rhetoric doesn’t translate to putting a monetary value on a customer record, as an example, because data in and of itself has no value! The only value data/information has to offer — and the reason I do still consider it an ‘asset’ at all — is in the context of the business processes, decisions, customer experiences, and competitive differentiators it can enable.”

Karel writes that data value should lie in the consuming process: “My process data management approach recommends that all data management, data governance, data quality, and MDM efforts be put into context of the most critical business processes that consume and depend upon trusted data. The alternative is attempting to boil the ocean and trying to solve Customer, Product, or Financial data for all processes and decisions across the whole organization — too big of an effort, destined to fail before it starts.

photo credit: DeeganMarie

PowerPoint Agenda:

• Equifax Overview
• Defining Data Strategy
• Executing Data Strategy
• Closing Comments
• Questions and Answers

PowerPoint Agenda:

• PART I: surveying the land
• PART II: taking a walk in the park, MySQL vs PostgreSQL
• PART III: welcome to a brave new world, making the commitment
• PART IV: concluding remarks

Freddie Mac is looking for an Enterprise Data Strategy Manager in McLean, VA: “This position will be responsible for the development, modifications, execution and measurement of company data policies, standards and guidelines which affect immediate operations and may also have company-wide effect.   Creates information strategies around data quality, implementation of a future state data architecture, metadata and information governance.  Will lead large, strategic, cross-disciplinary business change efforts.  Requires the ability to change the thinking of and/or gain acceptance from others in sensitive situations without damage to relationship.  Resolves problems or transactions, where expertise is required to interpret against policies, guidelines or processes.”

The position calls for 8-10 years of related experience and at least two years of management experience. Freddie Mac is “a shareholder-owned company with an important public mission: to make home possible for more of America’s families. To do this, we need smart, creative people from diverse backgrounds who want to make a difference in other people’s lives as well as their own.”

photo credit: Freddie Mac

Clarke Patterson recently shared some tips for enabling successful data governance in your business. Patterson says, “It should come as no surprise that there really isn’t a single be-all, end-all approach to data governance.  Organizations come in all shapes and sizes and as such, so too could your data governance program.  What’s important to consider is that the people, processes and technology within your organization will help in identifying where your efforts should start.”

Patterson continues, “Take technology, for example.  It can be said that data quality and master data management (MDM) provide a foundation for a data governance program.  Depending on who you talk to, however, some organizations start their efforts by building data quality best practices and later add an element of MDM.  Conversely, some organizations start with MDM, creating a single, authoritative view of customers or products and then add data quality.  Regardless of where you start, what’s important is to realize that both play an integral role and that your data governance strategy should ensure that at some point those two technologies converge.”

Patterson points out another useful tip for explaining the value of data governance to your business’s leadership: “By focusing on articulating the role data quality can provide in driving financial performance, productivity improvement or managing risk, for example, successful organizations help bridge the gap between business and IT to help get their data governance efforts off the ground.”

photo credit: olishaw

The Enterprise Data World (EDW) Conference has several hot topics lined up for this year’s conference which is set for April 3 – April 7 in Chicago: “This year’s extensive program offers 200 hours of in-depth tutorials, hands-on workshops, practical sessions, and insightful keynotes that will lift executives who need to exploit enterprise information for strategic, financial and operational success, to the next level.”

One highly anticipated session is “Data Virtualization for the Cloud, Big Data, and Social Media – Lessons from Navteq.” This presentation led by Senior Project Manager Gordon Redzic “will show how data virtualization has helped Navteq to integrate and enrich massive amounts of location data stored in the cloud with real-time information coming from partners, social media sites, location and content-sensitive commerce.”

Another hot topic will be Pramad Sadalage of Thoughtworks’s presentation on “NoSQL Databases.” According to the release, “This session will take an in depth look into the need for NoSQL solutions, its broad categories, and the products/solutions within those categories. The pros and cons of key-value stores, document stores, graph databases, column databases, and MapReduce queries will all be discussed.”

photo credit: Enokson