Monthly Archives: April 2011
Difficult April – Amazon, Sony and 4G Networks Ohh My!
Verizon’s 4G network goes down, cripples Thunderbols
Amazon failure takes down sites across the Internet
With PSN Still Down, Sony Says Data May be Tainted
These headlines are just some examples of the new levels of complexity with systems that rely on many services to stay up, have constant attempts to exploit security holes and thousands if not millions of consumers demanding “right now” service.
Sometimes I meet customers and talk about how CEP can help them proactively monitor their operations so they can get one step ahead of problems. Once in a blue moon, a customer will tell me they don’t have problems. It’s not polite for me to disagree out loud, so I say “I disagree” in my silent voice and then probe on. (more…)
Customer Data Forum Off To A Great Start Featuring MDM
We launched a coast-to-coast Customer Data Forum road show with visits to Atlanta and Washington, D.C., that attracted business and IT professionals interested in using master data management (MDM) to attract and retain customers.
From the business side, our guests consisted of analysts, sales operations personnel, and business liaisons to IT, while the IT side was represented by enterprise and data architects, IT directors, and business intelligence and data warehousing professionals. In Washington, about half the audience was from public sector and government agencies. (more…)
Guaranteed Messaging: It’s Not Just for Brokers Using Store-and-Forward Any More!
Guaranteed Messaging – or persistent messaging – is a popular feature of messaging applications that provides both high-performance and reliable delivery of streaming messages, plus the ability to store the messages for later use, often for failover or late-starting consumers.
To implement guaranteed messaging, some messaging vendors employ a messaging broker and a store-and-forward messaging model, to ensure that the message is persisted on a hard disk before sending along to consumers. This model simplifies late join and loss recovery, since all messages flow through one central server.
This simplicity carries a price tag, however, and if you are brave enough to look at that price tag, you will see “slower performance, a single point of failure, and for resilience, you have to buy expensive HA or SAN hardware”.
Ultra Messaging® changed all that in 2007 with the revolutionary Parallel Persistence® feature in Ultra Messaging Persistence Edition (UMP).
Don’t Gamble With Data Quality
Like many of you, I have been to Las Vegas many times for business conferences. You work hard and you play hard as the saying goes. Once you leave the confines of business meetings, the restaurants and shows are a lot of fun. For me, I always have to play the slot machines at least once, but I never thought about the importance of data quality in doing so however.
I recently learned from one of my customers that data quality is in fact paramount in the gambling industry. A few months ago Station Casinos decided to embark on a new customer strategy to provide a complete, high-value gaming and entertainment experience with unparalleled convenience, high quality assets, unique gaming products, personalized customer service, and consistency in execution – And the timing was not good to say the least. (more…)
Join our @INFASupport TweetFest
It’s not the survival of the fittest anymore, it’s not the survival of the strongest either, it IS however the most adaptable who survive.
At Informatica we are always innovating ways to serve our community better. In keeping pace with the adoption of social networking, the Global Customer Support team expanded some of our communication channels to include new options of contacting us through social media. There are a number of great social media tools, but perhaps the simplest one for business use is Twitter.
We launched our @INFASupport Twitter channel in mid-February and have used this as one way to support, reach out to and dialogue with our wider community since then. We have received a number of accolades from our followers/customers for all the useful information we have been sharing and also for giving them an easier and quick channel for communicating with us. (more…)
Your Biggest IT Security Nightmare – Non-Production Data
Everyone is worried about data security and privacy as they should be; for data to be trusted, users and management need confidence in not just knowing that data is correct, but also in knowing that it is secure and that access is permitted only in controlled situations. There is no shortage of security disaster stories, but I’m not worried about production data since it is at the heart of application management disciplines which, while still not perfect, have had 50 years to mature. This perspective is stated succinctly by Ronald Reagan when he spoke about the economy and said “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” (more…)
Why Making Data “Worthless” Is Useful
The Healthcare industry is facing more challenges today than ever regarding data security as a result of increased Healthcare compliance initiatives. The most vulnerable area for data security is in non-production environments. How can Healthcare IT organizations ensure secure data, while providing non-production environments that meet testing and development needs?
I recently wrote a guest blog for SearchHealthIT. It reviews some of the technologies available to address these challenges, the most effective being Data Masking. Data Masking is a method of replacing sensitive data in test and development environments with contextually accurate benign data that meets the requirements of both test and development teams.
Check out Why Making Data “Worthless” Is Useful: Best practices for ensuring the privacy and security of health care data and let me know your thoughts.
MDM: 5 Questions Companies Must Tackle To Attract & Retain Customers
Tackle the Data Challenges Impeding Your Company from Attracting & Retaining Customers
In discussions with our top customers and industry experts, it’s become clear why best-in-class companies are best-in-class at attracting and retaining customers.
Best-in-class companies recognize that there are sides to the customer centricity equation, which need to be addressed in tandem to truly impact customer acquisition and retention: (more…)
Locations Are Not Addresses
In my last post, I shared a minor epiphany I experienced working on a project to merge data sets from two different oil companies in which I fully recognized the difference between an address and a location. Borrowing from an assortment of definitions, a location describes a point or an area within a dimensional space. A location is frequently mapped to two dimensions on the surface of the earth, usually latitude and longitude, but may encompass three dimensions (including altitude). On the other hand, an address is a text string that is formatted according to a definition provided by a postal authority representing a location directing parcel or package delivery. (more…)
Cloud Slam ’11: The Importance Of Cloud Integration For Hybrid IT
Cloud Slam ’11 is the first hybrid event that I’ve been a part of – in other words, its both virtual and live. Naturally I’ll be doing a session focusing on the hybrid reality of today’s IT organization and the importance of cloud data integration.
I even have a few free passes if you’re interested in attending this or other sessions. (Sorry, it’s first come first serve.) (more…)
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