Category Archives: CIO
2013 Predictions from the World of Data
Let me open by stating what I’m not: I’m not one of those psychic data scientists who can predict the future – although sometimes I wish I had gone to the same school that Nate Silver did! However, my hindsight has always been phenomenal! It’s been a year of immense change and one thing I can predict with 100% certainty for 2013 – more change!
It’s become an annual tradition at this time of year to share technology predictions and trends that we should pay attention to in the coming year. They have already started coming through thick and fast – see here for predictions relating to B2B Marketing, Social Media, IDC, Gartner, Tech and even Jim Cramer! I’ve been thinking about this lately and I want to share my top predictions. Read on and tell me what you think. I’d love to hear what your predictions are for 2013 too. Let’s see how close we are on what’s to come. (more…)
Is Your Center of Excellence Excellent?
A CIO told me “After five years with an integration Center of Excellence, I expect them to be excellent. They aren’t.” But so what? The IT organization has lots of things to focus on. Is integration excellence really essential? (more…)
Cloud Integration Predictions – The Year in Review
For the past few years I’ve been posting my cloud integration predictions. It’s always interesting to look back to see what transpired and evaluate where I scored well and where I was off base. Here’s how I did in 2011: 2011 #Cloud Integration Predictions in Review. My 2012 cloud integration predictions centered around Data as a Service, Master Data Management, Business Intelligence and enterprise IT adoption of all flavors of cloud computing. Before I throw my hat into the 2013 predictions ring, here’s a review of 2012.
Data Governance for Big Data: It’s Even More Critical Now
Big data and related technologies such as Hadoop present significant opportunities and challenges to businesses. Nearly everybody in IT reports that they are actively evaluating big data technologies. And, just as you would expect, they are in a variety of stages of implementation. So, who has time to think about data governance when dealing with a massive change like this?
First, you have to get your hands around the new technology, right? Actually, this is exactly the right time to think about data governance for big data; before the wild, untamed data from outside the company starts getting mixed with your potentially more trustworthy, tamed, internal data. (more…)
Focus in 2013
Like many of you, this time of year means budgeting. Every year is different, and budgeting for 2013 is no exception – so how do I maximize the return on investment for our shareholders?
What makes 2013 different? For many of us, the global economic climate and political change means uncertainty. In most cases, this leads to cautious optimism and moderate budget increases at best. As I was scouring the IT Leadership Exchange for benchmark data. I found the data to be consistent. (more…)
The Value of Knowing the Value
Ever wondered if an initiative is worth the effort? Ever wondered how to quantify its worth? This is a loaded question as you may suspect but I wanted to ask it nevertheless as my team of Global Industry Consultants work with clients around the world to do just that (aka Business Value Assessment or BVA) for solutions anchored around Informatica’s products.
How far will your investment stretch?
As these solutions typically involve multiple core business processes stretching over multiple departments and leveraging a legion of technology components like ETL, metadata management, business glossary, BPM, data virtualization, legacy ERP, CRM and billing systems, it initially sounds like a daunting level of complexity. Opening this can of worms may end up in a measurement fatigue (I think I just discovered a new medical malaise.) (more…)
Leverage Big Data or Go Out of Business
I’m sitting in the Taiwan airport on my way to Guangzhou. We just completed the Informatica World Tour in Hong Kong, Beijing and Taiwan, and I’ve had the opportunity to deliver the keynote presentation, Maximize Your Return on Big Data.
All of our audiences exceeded our expectations. We had 50% more attendees than planned. Why? Big data. It is a hot topic and everyone is trying to determine how to leverage big data in their enterprise to get a competitive advantage. At the event, I made the point – if you’re not trying to understand how to leverage big data in your enterprise, your successor will. Kitty Fok, the IDC China Country Manager, spoke after me. Her consistent comment was – “if your company isn’t looking to leverage big data, you will be out of business.” (more…)
The Freshest Data Makes the Best Business Decisions
There’s no denying that business continues to accelerate its pace, and that the luxury of using historical data for business intelligence (BI) and planning is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Today, businesses need immediate insight into rapidly changing data in order to survive and thrive. Data that’s even a few hours old—let alone a few days old—is largely useless. But most current information architectures today still only provide data that is a day, a week, or sometimes as much as a month old.
This leaves most BI, reporting, and analytics systems to operate without up-to-date data from operational systems, data that’s fundamental to making informed decisions about the business. To operate at the speed of business, it’s imperative that executives and decision makers have ready access to fresh information at all times, delivered continuously and automatically without impact on operational systems.
More and more organizations have found the answer in data replication. Data replication allows you to work with and make the best business decisions based on the freshest data drawn from all your operational systems. It delivers this current, up-to-date data in a seamless and non-intrusive manner, empowering you to operate at the speed of your business without constraints. It also automatically delivers this data wherever it’s needed – for operational intelligence, as well as operational use – without direct impact.
This unique “data-on-demand” approach removes the constraints of stale, old information and enables powerful outcomes for business initiatives. Fresh, current data drives new thinking across the enterprise, and can help organizations to:
- Increase revenue, delight customers, and outshine the competition
- Improve the quality and efficiency of business decisions
- Standardize on a single reliable and scalable solution that lowers costs and removes complexity
At Informatica, we’ve seen numerous customers implement Informatica Data Replication to deliver this fresh, up-to-date data for operational intelligence, reporting, and analytics, and report tremendous positive changes to their business. Some examples of customers using Informatica Data Replication with great success are:
- Westlake Financial Systems saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and improved its profitability and customer satisfaction through a more effective payment collection system
- Optus Australia increased both revenues and customer satisfaction by providing calling plan access, alerting, and self-service upgrades directly to its customer base
- A major national pharmacy chain accelerated and improved health care decision making across the business and increased agility and responsiveness to its customers, resulting in higher customer satisfaction while driving down the cost of technology
Is your business ready to make the leap to true operational intelligence using the freshest data to make your business decisions? Do you want to understand more about the impact that this kind of insight can make to your business?
If yes, please join us for a discussion with two business executives who have seen the impact in their own and their customers’ businesses using data replication on August 28 at 10 am Pacific. You can register using the link below.
Bad Business Decision? Blame Stale Data – Register Today
The freshest data does make the best business decisions. We look forward to your joining and participating in the discussion.
Walk Before You Run – Social Media Data as the MDM Silver Bullet
The Silver Campaign Bullet
Recently I had a number of meetings with clients who are looking at social media to enrich master data in their legacy data warehouse to improve their batch and real-time campaign effectiveness. They are primarily looking at Facebook as their marketing salvation to create as close to one-on-one offers as possible but there are multiple ways to skin this cat.
Surprisingly, I have seen this thinking primarily in emerging markets. It reminded me how some countries jumped from having a poor fixed line phone infrastructure catapulting themselves to 3G wireless for all citizens within a decade. The decision makers who were part of this overnight communication transformation assume that master data management (MDM) works the same way. (more…)
How Do You Enable Mobility in the Enterprise?
I had a conversation with our CFO last year regarding securing the enterprise to support mobility. I said the answer is really easy. In fact, it will reduce cost. (more…)
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