Tag Archives: Benefits
Two Sci-Fi Big Data Predictions From Over 50 Years Ago
Science fiction represents some of the most impactful stories I’ve read throughout my life. By impactful, I mean the ideas have stuck with me 30 years since I last read them. I recently recalled two of these stories and realized they represent two very different paths for Big Data. One path, quite literally, was towards enlightenment. Let’s just say the other path went in a different direction. The amazing thing is that both of these stories were written between 50-60 years ago. (more…)
Data, So Mom Can Understand
Dear Mom,
I’ve been in the data management industry for over 20 years, and you’ve always been very supportive of my career – even though you admit you have no clue what it is I do for a living. So here’s my best shot at explaining what I do so you can more accurately brag about me to your friends! J
A key growth milestone for the Informatica Marketplace
Recently, the Informatica Marketplace reached a major milestone: we exceeded 1,000 Blocks (Apps). Looking back to three years ago when we started with 70 Blocks from a handful of partners, it’s an amazing achievement to have reached this volume of solutions in such a short time. For me, it speaks to the tremendous value that the Marketplace brings not only to our customers who download more than 10,000 Blocks per month, but also to our partners who have found in the Marketplace a viable route to market and a great awareness and monetization vehicle for their solutions.
There has been a lot of discussion around the explosion of data and what it means to companies trying to leverage this extremely valuable resource. Informatica has a huge part to play in helping customers solve those problems not only through the technologies we provide directly, but through the tremendous ecosystem that we have built through our partners. The Marketplace has grown to more than 165 unique partner companies, and we’re adding more every day. Blocks such as BI & Analytics sing Social Media Data from Deloitte, and Interstage XWand – XBRL Processor from Fujitsu represent offerings from large, established software companies, while Blocks such as Skybot Enterprise Job Scheduler and Undraleu Code Review Tool from Coeurdata are solutions that have been contributed by earlier stage companies that have experienced significant success and growth. It has been a pleasure helping these companies to grow and reach new customers through the Marketplace.
One of the most exciting things about reaching the 1K Block milestone is not just the amount of companies that are on the Marketplace, but the amount of solutions that have been contributed from our developer community. Blocks such as Autotype Excel Macro, Execute Workflow, and iExportNormalizer are all solutions that Informatica developers have built because it helps them in their daily activities, and through the Marketplace they have found a way to share these valuable assets with the community. In fact, over half of our solutions are free to use, which is a ringing endorsement of the power of the community and a great way to try out any number of useful solutions at no risk. By leveraging enabling technologies such as Informatica’s Cloud Platform as a Service, developers can create and share solutions more quickly and easily than ever before.
Overall, it has been an exciting ride as the Marketplace has rocketed to 1,000 Blocks in under three years, and I look forward to what the next three years has in store!
Build A Prioritized Data Management Roadmap
In my recent white paper, “Holistic Data Governance: A Framework for Competitive Advantage”, I aspirationally state that data governance should be managed as a self-sustaining business function no different than Finance. With this in mind, last year I chased down Earl Fry, Informatica’s Chief Financial Officer, and asked him how his team helps our company prioritize investments and resources. Earl suggested I speak with the head of our enterprise risk management group … and I left inspired! I was shown a portfolio management-style approach to prioritizing risk management investment. It used an easy to understand, business executive-friendly visualization “heat map” dashboard that aggregates and summarizes the multiple dimensions we use to model risk . I asked myself: if an extremely mature and universally relevant business function like Finance manages its business this way, can’t the emerging discipline of data governance learn from it? Here’s what I’ve developed… (more…)
Introducing GovernYourData.com!
I’m excited to officially announce the public launch of www.GovernYourData.com, a new one-stop data governance resource center and online community hosted and sponsored by Informatica. This vendor-neutral site is open to all data governance stakeholders, solution providers and thought leaders (no relationship with Informatica is required) and we welcome any non-promotional content and contributions that share best practices, tips and tricks that aim to help data governance evangelists succeed. (more…)
Data Governance Measure & Monitor Processes Open a Window to Data and its Value
As mentioned in my post describing the major business processes that comprise a data governance function, the Measure and Monitor processes i) capture and measure the effectiveness and value generated from data governance and stewardship efforts, ii) monitors compliance and exceptions to defined policies and rules, and iii) enables transparency and auditability into data assets and their life cycle. (more…)
Data Governance Framework Walkthrough: Vision and Business Case
In my previous post I introduced our data governance framework. Now it’s time to dive a bit deeper into each of the individual facets. I start with the “Vision and Business Case” facet because that’s exactly where your data governance efforts should begin. No point in trying to align your people, process, and technology components if you’ve yet to identify what you’re hoping to accomplish.
Data Governance Framework
Making Big Data A Little Smaller
Big Data. The term has certainly caught on and the phenomenon is real. Every nanosecond of every day, more and more data is being created at ever increasing speeds. And since storage has become so economical, both cost and foot print, there are fewer compelling reasons for the enterprise to manage down the size of its databases. In response, new and emerging technologies such as universal database connectivity, complex event processing, connectivity to social network feeds and in-memory processing have been developed to better manage Big Data’s scale. While this is great news for the enterprise, it comes with some challenges in respect to business analytics. (more…)
(Data) Champions Are Everywhere
I recently had the opportunity to meet with the board of directors for a large distribution company here in the U.S. On the table for discussion were data quality and data governance, and how a focus on both could help the organization gain competitive advantage in the market. While I was happy to see that this company had tied data quality and data governance to help meet their corporate objectives, that’s not what caught my attention. Instead, what impressed me the most was how the data quality and data governance champion had effectively helped the rest of the board see that there WAS a direct link, and that with careful focus they could drive better business outcomes than they could without a focus on data at all. As it turns out, the path to success for the champion was to focus on articulating the link between trusted data — governed effectively — and the company’s ability to excel financially, manage costs, limit its risk exposure and maintain trust with its customers. (more…)
Data Quality is More Than Customer Data
We’re all well aware of the importance of high quality customer data and, perhaps more importantly, the impacts of poor customer data. This heightened awareness is due to many factors, but the main reason is simple, customer data quality resonates with all of us because we can easily relate to it. Why? Because, all of us are “customers” in our daily interactions as consumers – online banking, grocery shopping, Friday night dining out – so we intuitively understand the customer role. In addition, industry white papers, testimonials and Webinars frequently position data quality from a customer perspective. But there’s much more to business than CRM and continuing to “plow that field” may be at the expense of another business area whose problem warrants our attention. (more…)