Peter Aiken disagrees with the popular idea that it’s impossible to put a dollar value on Data Architecture. “It won’t be the right number, but it will be at least a dollar value on it, and if there’s money involved, people should be paying attention to it.”Aiken is an author, an associate professor of Information […]
A Brief History of Data Lakes
Data Lakes are consolidated, centralized storage areas for raw, unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data, taken from multiple sources and lacking a predefined schema. Data Lakes have been created to save data that “may have value.” The value of data and the insights that can be gained from it are unknowns and can vary with the […]
Working with Complex Data Models
Complex data models have now become the norm. A single stream of the data can travel through many hubs, and many different technologies. It may travel through the front end, the APIs, the Kafka pub/sub systems, Lambda functions, ETLs, data lakes, data warehouses, and more. Riding within this stream of data is the schema, and […]
So You Want to be a Data Manager?
A Data Manager develops and governs data-oriented systems designed to meet the needs of an organization or research team. Data Management includes accessing, validating, and storing data that is needed for research and day-to-day business operations. Currently, a wide array of organizations are using Big Data to gain insights into customer behavior and to provide […]
Analytics Best Practices for Transforming Data into a Business Asset
Data has three main functions that provide value to the business: To help in business operations, to help the company stay in compliance and mitigate risk, and to make informed decisions using analytics. “Data can have an impact on your top line as well as your bottom line,” said Dr. Prashanth Southekal, CEO of DBP-Institute […]
Building a Productive Organization with Artificial Intelligence
There’s plenty of research on employee productivity, which is key to building a profitable and successful business. Engaged employees are likely to put their heart into their jobs – not just go through the motions. Here are some findings that put this into perspective: Happy workers are 13 percent more productive, according to research by […]
Knowledge Graphs: Context, Compliance, and Connections
“Graph is leaving a larger and larger footprint. And that is good,” said Thomas Frisendal in Knowledge Graphs and Data Modeling. Gartner named knowledge graphs as part of an emerging trend toward digital ecosystems, showing relationships among enterprises, people, and things, and enabling seamless, dynamic connections across geographies and industries. Elisa Kendall and Deborah McGuinness, […]
The Fundamentals of Deep Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement Learning (RL), a “niche” Machine Learning technique, has surfaced in the last five years. In context-based decision making, Reinforcement Learning helps the machine take action-provoking decision making through a trial-and-error approach to achieve the optimal algorithmic model for a situation. Furthermore, the machine is trained through a reward/penalty-based feedback mechanism, the goal of which […]
Case Study: Jerry’s Foods Improves In-Store Data Infrastructure
The ability for people to be able to buy food and essential supplies, in-store IT and data infrastructure must be kept running. Jeff Miller, Director of IT at Jerry’s Foods, a national chain with fifty grocery, retail, hardware, and liquor stores, knows this reality very well. Miller explains that each Jerry’s Foods franchise includes many […]
The Logical Data Fabric: A Single Place for Data Integration
The ability to provide a single place for instantaneous data access can mean business continuity or closure. Many nations found this out during the recent global crisis, as countries needed to know the number of tests taken and the infection rate in order to determine both the virus’ spread and who to quarantine. Unfortunately, the […]