Monthly Archives: November 2011
What is Change Data Capture? Something Business and IT Both Agree on for Mainframe Data Integration
A few days ago, I got a text message from a friend telling me that my favorite company’s stock price was suddenly tanking and that I should dump my holding. So I went to the news portal to get a stock quote and see where the stock price happens to be. I found that the stock didn’t move much at all. Thinking that it might’ve been a prank text message, I ignored it. To my dismay, the stock quote I saw was delayed by 20 minutes and the decline wasn’t yet reflected in the news portal. (more…)
Enterprise Applications Myth #2: You Only Need to Focus on the Application in Any Modernization Initiative
This is the second in a series of myth-busting posts. Myth #1 was “Apps and Data Live and Die Together“.
Myth #2: When embarking on an application modernization initiative, either doing a significant application upgrade or entirely replacing legacy applications, you really only need to focus on the application and making sure that it aligns with your business processes.
Fact: Managing and migrating data is a top priority in any application modernization initiative, and neglecting the data can introduce huge risk to the project. (more…)
Characteristics of Entities and Characteristics of Roles
I am 5’9” tall. I have brown-ish eyes (actually they seem to have adjusted slightly to being hazel-ish sometimes, but my driver’s license says brown). I was born on a specific date in a specific year. My first name is Howard, my middle name is David, and my last name is Loshin. These are all characteristics of me as an individual, and for the most part these attributes are static. Yes, I might shrink as I get older, and I could change my name; I could also lie about my birth date and/or year. But these are relatively drastic changes, and for most individuals, they are relatively good criteria as a start for determining an identity for a specific entity. (more…)
What You Should Know When Buying a Home in the Cloud for Your Archived Data
A recent IDC report says that we should expect enterprise spending on private cloud storage will grow by 28.9% between now and 2015. At the same time, the report also indicates that big data and archival are among the key drivers of this growth. It is not surprising that organizations are seeking new cost savings alternatives. Private and public cloud deployments are just the next extension of outsourcing. By definition, archived data are inactive data that’s infrequently or rarely accessed, and perhaps needed only for compliance audits or eDiscovery. It is therefore ideal for storage in the cloud. Cloud storage also accommodates for the on demand, elastic growth of aged, archived, and retired data. (more…)
Do You Have A Strategic Integration Vendor?
If you answered NO, then consider some recent developments which may cause you to re-think your organization’s position. Loraine Lawson in her recent blog Organizations Demanding More from Data Integration Tools writes that “customers are demanding more from their data integration tools” and, by inference, from their integration vendors. The article goes on to highlight advice from Gartner to “Seek out vendors that support a range of styles.” (more…)
The Mundane Is A Lot To Be Thankful For
So, there I am, taking a long hot shower. And I thought, what an amazingly simple yet indulgent perk of our life. So, that inspired me to look at our mundane life with a different perspective. How the seemingly mundane can be the amazing and how we should be thankful for the circumstances we find ourselves in.
For a wonderful U.S. holiday, Thanksgiving, I tried to walk through my average day and augment the information with some research found across the web (I make no claims about the accuracy of this research). The purpose of the following is not to make any of us feel guilty, cut back on what we do, go out and try to change the world (or make a political statement), but rather embrace these mundane daily acts as amazing things to have, to cherish and to be thankful for. (more…)
2011 #Cloud Integration Predictions in Review
‘Tis the season, but before I post my 2012 cloud integration predictions, I thought I’d spend a few minutes scoring how I did this year. Last year I predicted the following:
- Cloud adoption will drive two-tier cloud integration strategies
- LOB-driven cloud integration projects will lead to strategic MDM initiatives
- Cloud integration platforms will emerge
- Database.com will gain enterprise adoption
- Private Cloud confusion will continue
Here’s my assessment: (more…)
Dodd-Frank Legislation and Structured Data Retention
The “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” has recently been passed by the US federal government to regulate financial institutions. Per this legislation, there will be more “watchdog” agencies that will be auditing banks, lending and investment institutions to ensure compliance. As an example, there will be an Office of Financial Research within the Federal Treasury responsible for collecting and analyzing data. This legislation brings with it a higher risk of fines for non-compliance. (more…)
Making Your Data Work for You
Yesterday, CIOs from Informatica, Qualcomm and UMASS Memorial Healthcare participated in a panel to discuss how to deliver business value from applications while managing “data deluge” – the ever increasing growth and fragmentation of data across the application portfolio. Having worked in the IT Applications area for 15 years, I know firsthand how big a challenge this can be for organizations.
We are experiencing an unprecedented growth in the sheer amount of data that can be made available. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide exciting new insights into user preferences and habits and the move to electronic systems for utility companies and healthcare organizations means that an even larger set of information can be stored electronically for reference and used to gain new business insights. Even internal systems such as sales automation, marketing and support applications contribute to this overwhelming tide of data that can be extremely valuable but hard to unlock. (more…)
The Future of Applications (4): Transforming to a Data-Centric Enterprise
This is my fourth blog in a series on the subject of “Informatica & Applications”. You can read my previous blogs here:
- The Future of Applications (1): From Sustaining to Enhancing to Transforming
- The Future of Applications (2): Lowering Costs & Complexity
- The Future of Applications (3): Enhancing Apps to Modernize Business Processes
In the era of big data we are seeing “big” changes in how customers are collaborating. These changes are forcing enterprises to review how they interact with their customers and transform their business processes.
For too long we have built applications that treat human beings as impersonal entities – account numbers in banking; telephone numbers in telcos; and social security numbers in healthcare. A big lesson that the social network is teaching us is that we all want to be treated as human beings. We want to be appreciated for who we are, and that is not an asset on a balance sheet! (more…)
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