Biographical Information
Joyce Wells
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Joyce Wells is managing editor of Database Trends and Applications magazine and the 5 Minute Briefing series of email newsletters. Contact her at Joyce@dbta.com.
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Mergers and acquisitions often come quickly and when they do, it is critical to have tools and utilities capable of scaling to meet new challenges so operations continue seamlessly, customer service standards are upheld, and costs are contained. This was the case for UGI Utilities, a large natural gas and electric service provider in the eastern U.S. In 2006, UGI acquired the natural gas utility assets of PG Energy from Southern Union Company. A longtime customer of BMC, UGI found it was aligned with the right software company to provide implementation of mainframe service management solutions as well as first class support to get the job done and successfully integrate the newly acquired company's data into its environment, saving time and money.
Customer service is always important but never more critical than during difficult economic times, when wasting time is just not acceptable and customer satisfaction is an imperative. Atlantic Detroit Diesel-Allison sells and services a full line of Detroit Diesel, Mercedes-Benz, and MTU engines, and the automatic transmissions offered by the Allison Transmission Division of General Motors Corporation. Atlantic DDA had initiated a plan to improve its service department by improving order processing, thus driving more revenue, with additional goals of gaining operational efficiency and heightening customer satisfaction. In order to achieve these objectives, Atlantic DDA needed to make real-time information available to its teams of service representatives.
COLLABORATE 10 will at long last bring together Sun and Oracle users for the first time under one roof. Ian Abramson, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, talks with DBTA about what the group is planning for the April conference in Las Vegas, and how the integration of customers and technology is being handled by Oracle and the IOUG.
IBM acquired predictive analytics vendor SPSS in October 2009. Erick Brethenoux, predictive analytics strategist for SPSS, an IBM Company, talks about the growing importance of the technology in helping enterprises address customer needs, what is driving the demand for it now, and how it fits into IBM's idea for a Smarter Planet.
Faced with growing data volumes and limited budgets, companies, educational institutions, and government agencies are increasingly relying on IT to help them gain a competitive edge and better serve their customers and constituents. DBTA recently asked key MultiValue vendors to explain their strategies for enabling data integration from different repositories and for supporting business intelligence and analytics that provide meaningful insight for customers.
Oracle has introduced Oracle Business Intelligence 11g. "The new release allows customers to integrate relational and OLAP analysis across a multitude of different federated data sources and presents that in a very simple way to end users so that they can do analysis on their own without understanding or needing to know that there might be potentially multiple data sources beneath," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence, tells DBTA. Representing the result of a large investment in simplifying the end user experience, adds Rodwick, companies will see "very interactive dashboards that are completely live and completely interconnected and allow business people to do their own analysis without really needing to go into any kind of query tool." The new release also provides new capablities for search and collaboration, and enhanced performance, scalability, and security through deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
The market for data warehouse appliances - solutions consisting of integrated software and hardware - is heating up, with new twists emerging from both established and new appliance vendors. Netezza, an early proponent of the appliance approach, was acquired in November 2010 by IBM. Here, Phil Francisco, vice president, product management and product marketing for IBM Netezza, shares his views on what's changing and what's ahead for appliances. Going forward, he anticipates that there will be very specific, vertically-oriented solutions that are built on appliances, which will take into account the kinds of data models and the kind of functionality that is required for industries such as telco, retail, and financial services.
Data continues growing rapidly, flowing into enterprises from traditional sources as well as new pipelines fueled by web and social media. Often presented in a range of formats and structures, this data onslaught phenomenon has come to be known as "big data." Companies, educational institutions, and government agencies are striving to meet the management challenge of this data deluge as well as mine this wealth of information for business advantage. In this special section, DBTA asks key vendors to explain their strategies for enabling customers to better handle ever-increasing data stores.
DBTA recently presented the third in a series of educational webcasts focused on managing and leveraging big data. The webcast, "Using SQL to Explore Any Data on Hadoop in the Cloud," showed how Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a hosted Hadoop web service, combined with Karmasphere Analyst, provides a rapid onramp to big data using SQL. Presented by Adam Gray, product manager, Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and Martin Hall, co-founder, president and CEO, Karmasphere, the webcast was hosted by Tom Wilson, president, DBTA and Unisphere Research. Setting the context for Gray's and Hall's presentations, Wilson observed that, according to the findings a recent study of data growth conducted by Unisphere Research among members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), data is growing at 9 out of 10 respondents'organizations, and at rates of more than 50% a year at 16% of the respondents' organizations. But it is not simply the growth of data that is the problem; it is the size of the resident data that is thwarting the ability of organizations to not only manage - but extract business value from - these vast and potentially rich repositories of information, Wilson said.
Imagine the job of a high school athletic director - juggling the full spectrum of seasonal sports, planning for fields, gymnasiums and pools, transportation to the events, as well as the assignment and fees of the officials, timekeepers, scorers, security, and other necessary personnel, for all of freshman, JV, and Varsity teams - all with little, if any, staff. Add to that mix, the inevitable last-minute scheduling changes that occur due to inclement weather and there is the potential for some very unhappy students, coaches and parents if those changes are not shared in a timely manner. MVP Software eases this burden with Sportspak, a software application which provides game scheduling and official assignment management to a league, conference or district-wide office, and a more recent product, SportspakAD, which serves the needs of high school athletic directors by providing modules for student athletes, teams and rosters, equipment, coaches' certifications, awards, budgets inventory, facilities and alumni. A third product, Sportspak.Online can be used with either Sportspak or SportspakAD, allowing a central office or school to publish current, up-to-the minute game schedules, personalized directions, news, and web links to the public.
Brent Ozar achieved SQL Server 2008 Master status earlier this year, becoming the fifth person in the U.S. outside of Microsoft to achieve the company's highest technical certification. A Quest Software SQL Server expert at the time, Ozar has since joined SQLskills.com, a provider of training and consulting focused on Microsoft SQL Server, as a principal consulting partner. In this issue, he provides an arcane gliimpse into the intense 3-week-long onsite program that include the most difficult exams he had ever seen.
Enterprises that downplay the importance of storage management may be putting other key enterprise objectives at risk. That's the message from Kyle Fitze, Director of Marketing, Storage Platforms Division, HP StorageWorks. With IT shops facing constrained budgets and data volumes continuing to escalate, Fitze says, greater efficiency in the IT infrastructure is a requirement so that more money and time can be targeted at IT projects that will drive business growth. "Today, we believe that most customers spend upward of 70% of their budget just keeping the systems running and the lights on and everything cooled, on maintenance and operations, and the remainder of their budget on innovative IT projects," he observes. What HP would like to do, "is flip that ratio, so that customers, while they spend less on IT overall, are spending a smaller percentage of their budget on operations and the larger percentage then on innovation and business intelligence, and the kind of IT projects that can help them navigate these rough waters of economic decline."
The time is past when the unique attributes of the MultiValue database model alone provided sufficient justification for the use of the technology, according to Pete Loveless. He explains why MV companies must support interoperability and integration from the ground up, in order to meet the challenges presented by the market now, and in the future.
Ed Boyajian joined EnterpriseDB, the open source database company whose products and services are based on PostgreSQL, in June, 2008, as president and CEO. Before that, he spent six years in sales leadership roles at Red Hat, including vice president and general manager for North American sales, and vice president, worldwide OEM and North American channels. Recently Boyajian chatted with DBTA about the looming challenges and opportunities for open source in general as well as for EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus product family.
In the face of an uncertain economic outlook, organizations as well as government agencies and educational institutions are focused on controlling costs, while also maximizing IT investments that have already been made. In this special section, DBTA asks leading MultiValue vendors: What is your company doing to help customers extend the value of their MultiValue assets?
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of multi-platform tools that companies use to design, develop and manage databases and the data they contain, was acquired by Thoma Cressey Bravo a little more than a year ago in a $200 million go-private transaction. One year later, Embarcadero completed the purchase of CodeGear from Borland Software Corp. for approximately $24.5 million. DBTA talked with Wayne Williams, CEO of Embarcadero, about how the companies fit together to provide system-wide capabilities and also how in a larger sense the worlds of application and database development are converging.
Alvion Technologies provides a web-enabled platform that allows compilers, resellers and managers of marketing lists to easily deliver their product to end-users in support of targeted marketing efforts. Individual customers submit their data and then Alvion runs customer-specific data transformation and uploads the data to production servers, for access by end-users who are the customers of the data owners. If you need, for example, to find consumers within a 35-mile radius of your business that meet a certain profile, you can go online and find lists within Alvion, put in the criteria you are looking for, and those names will be provided to you, via electronic delivery, be it email or download.
Sybase turned in the best year in its history in 2008, followed by its best-ever first quarter in 2009. Brian Vink chats with Database Trends and Applications about what he sees as the key issues in information management, the company's partnership with SAP and the plans to revamp TechWave this year.
A modern architecture, system stability and strong behind-the-scenes support are key attributes to consider when evaluating new database technology. In December 2008, Brasher's initiated a phased roll-out of its enterprise applications on the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance database with MultiValue technology, concluding the implementation in January 2009. In all, the migration involved more than 8,000 programs and cataloged procedures ranging from accounting applications through real-time bid processing systems in auction venues. In going live with CACHÉ at each location, says Ty Brewer, Brasher's CIO, "our goal was for people to go home on a Friday and come back on a Monday and not notice anything different, other than things being faster. By and large, that's exactly what happened."
Rocket Software recently completed the purchase of the UniData and UniVerse Servers and Tools assets from IBM. Susie Siegesmund, now vice president and general manager for the U2 brand under Rocket, talks with Database Trends and Applications about why the timing was right for this move and what U2 customers and partners can expect under the new ownership.
Just days after Rocket Software completed the purchase of the UniData and UniVerse Servers and Tools assets from IBM, Susie Siegesmund, now vice president and general manager for the U2 brand under Rocket, took time to talk about why the timing was right for this move and what customers and partners can expect under the new ownership. Here, some excerpts from that interview. Read the full interview in the December issue of Database Trends and Applications.
A member of the Quest International Users Group and IT specialist at Shell Canada Ltd., Sue Shaw took on the role of president of the users group in June. She talks with Database Trends and Applications about what drew her in as a member and her goals for the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Oracle Utilities association now that she is at the helm.
The Swiss National Sound Archives is Switzerland's official depository of audio records. Founded by law in 1987 as a private foundation working in close collaboration with the Swiss National Library in Bern, the mission of the Swiss National Sound Archives is the preservation of the country's audio heritage. Strictly for Switzerland's audio archives, the foundation collects and safeguards anything sound-related, including speeches, theatrical works, interviews, audio books, and all types of music-from rock to classical. It makes these recordings and detailed information about them, such as the people involved in their creation, available through a website accessible to the public in Switzerland's four official languages - German, French, Italian and Romansh - as well as in English.
Despite highly publicized data breaches, ranging from the loss of personally identifiable information such as credit card and Social Security numbers at major corporations to the WikiLeaks scandal involving sensitive U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. State Department information, and the "alphabet soup" of compliance regulations, data around the globe remains at grave risk, according to John Ottman, president and CEO of Application Security, Inc., who has written "Save the Database, Save the World" to focus attention on the problem and present steps to its solution. While super secure networks are important, that alone is far from enough and a layered data security strategy with a commitment to "protecting data where it lives - in the database" must be pursued to avoid risks posed by outside hackers as well as authorized users, says Ottman. A stronger government hand may be needed as well to defend "the critical infrastructure that operates in the private sector," he suggests.
The Oracle Applications Users Group is continuing its Back to Basics theme, Mark C. Clark, president of the OAUG, told 5 Minute Briefing during Oracle OpenWorld, with education and networking, enabled by smaller regional events and online learning opportunities, in addition to its continued participation in larger events such as OpenWorld and COLLABORATE. Upcoming Connection Point events include the "OAUG Connection Point-EPM/BI/R12.1 Upgrade" which will be held November 15-16, 2011, in Atlanta; and the "OAUG Connection Point-Dubai 2012" will be held March 14-15, 2012, in Dubai, UAE.
At OpenWorld, Oracle's annual week-long conference in San Francisco for customers and partners, Andy Flower, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, spoke with 5 Minute Briefing about the emerging challenges facing IOUG members, the group's plans for the year ahead, including additional training and certification around Exadata, and how Oracle's engineered systems approach is being received. "The overall need for analytics, the growth of data, and the managing and processing of more and more data - those areas are the central themes for us," Flower noted.
During a keynote presentation last week at Oracle OpenWorld 2011, the new Oracle Big Data Appliance, an engineered system optimized for acquiring, organizing and loading unstructured data into Oracle Database 11g, was announced by Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Product Development, Oracle.
Smartphones, tablets and other handhelds are changing the way companies do business. And when these revolutionary devices can be combined with existing tried-and-true software for evolutionary change, as opposed to ripping and replacing, the results are even better.
During a keynote presentation last week at Oracle OpenWorld 2011, the new Oracle Big Data Appliance, an engineered system optimized for acquiring, organizing and loading unstructured data into Oracle Database 11g, was announced by Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Product Development, Oracle.
Quest International Users Group (Quest) for Oracle PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle Utilities users is laying out an ambitious roadmap for the year ahead, incorporating new in-person product-focused events directed specifically at the needs of the JD Edwards and PeopleSoft communities, as well as expanding its offering of online learning opportunities. Michael L. Whitmer, president of Quest, joined by Jonathan Vaughn, Quest's executive director, talked with 5 Minute Briefing at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco about strategies for supporting members in 2012. There is a shift going on in IT and being technically competent is simply not enough anymore, says Whitmer. "The IT organizations that are going to be successful going forward are those that really move out of being the order-taker organization to being a true business strategy organization, in partnership with the business, and deliver IT in a way that provides business value."
The first calendar year following SAP's acquisition of Sybase is coming to a close. David Jonker, director, product marketing - Data Management & Analytics, Sybase, discusses key product integrations, IT trends that loom large in Sybase's data management strategies, and the emergence of what Sybase describes as DW 2.0. 2011 has been "a foundational year," with effort focused on making Sybase technologies work with SAP and setting the stage for 2012, says Jonker. "We believe 2012 is going to be a big year for us on the database side."
The challenges of maintaining security and regulatory compliance as applications increasingly move to the cloud - whether public, private or hybrid - will come into greater focus in 2012, Ryan Berg, cloud security strategy lead for IBM, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Moreover, the need to manage security among an increasingly mobile workforce, with many employees choosing to use their own personal devices, will also be a key concern in 2012, says Berg.
The results of the latest IOUG survey on data security are in and the story is not likely to help data professionals or C-level executives sleep better at night. The study, "Databases are More at Risk Than Ever: 2011 IOUG Data Security Survey," conducted in July 2011 by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Oracle, finds the security threat level to business is escalating and many information security professionals are concerned about the growing numbers of data breaches as well as the methods by which valuable data is being accessed. The IOUG Data Security Survey has been conducted every year since 2008, and Oracle is making the full report on the 2011 survey, authored by Unisphere Research analyst Joe McKendrick, available on the Oracle website. A short registration form is required for access.
At Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco earlier this month, Oracle users groups were out in force hosting SIG meetings, providing educational information, and presenting sessions by subject matter experts. User group presidents were also onsite, outlining ambitious plans for the year ahead.
The results of the latest IOUG survey on data security are in and the story is not likely to help data professionals or C-level executives sleep better at night. The study, "Databases are More at Risk Than Ever: 2011 IOUG Data Security Survey," conducted in July 2011 by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Oracle, finds the security threat level to business is escalating and many information security professionals are concerned about the growing numbers of data breaches as well as the methods by which valuable data is being accessed. The IOUG Data Security Survey has been conducted every year since 2008, and Oracle is making the full report on the 2011 survey, authored by Unisphere Research analyst Joe McKendrick, available on the Oracle website. A short registration form is required for access.
Smartphones, tablets and other handhelds are changing the way companies do business. And when these revolutionary devices can be combined with existing tried-and-true software for evolutionary change, as opposed to ripping and replacing, the results are even better.
"Big data" has emerged as an often-used catch phrase over the past year to describe exponentially growing data stores, and increasingly companies are bolstering their product lines to address the challenge. But helping companies manage and derive benefit from the onslaught of mainly unstructured data has consistently been the focus for MarkLogic Corporation, whose flagship product, MarkLogic Server, is a purpose-built database for unstructured information. The company, which has roughly 240 customers in industries, including media, government and financial services, today announced Ken Bado as its new chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors. "Unstructured data, literally and figuratively, is huge. Clearly, 80% of the data that is generated every day by all of us is unstructured. The question is: How do you deal with it?" Bado tells 5 Minute Briefing.
River Parishes Community College (RPCC) is an open-admission, 2-year, public institution. It is located in the small Ascension Parish town of Sorrento in what is known as the River Parishes region of the state because of the parishes' proximity to the Mississippi River. RPCC recently implemented a new self-service student portal based on Revelation Software's Web 2.0 toolkit, OpenInsight for Web (O4W). The new portal allows students to accomplish a range of tasks on their own, such as scheduling classes, without requiring assistance from school administrators.
Data continues growing rapidly, flowing into enterprises from traditional sources as well as new pipelines fueled by web and social media. Often presented in a range of formats and structures, this data onslaught phenomenon has come to be known as "big data." Companies, educational institutions, and government agencies are striving to meet the management challenge of this data deluge as well as mine this wealth of information for business advantage. In this special section, DBTA asks key vendors to explain their strategies for enabling customers to better handle ever-increasing data stores.
A member of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) since 1992, Mark C. Clark recently took over as president of the organization. He spoke with DBTA about what's in store for members at the annual Oracle users conference COLLABORATE as well as for the year ahead. Helping members prepare for an upgrade to Oracle Applications Release 12, providing additional smaller, more targeted regional events, and a continued emphasis on a return to the basics with networking and education are at the top of his to-do list for 2011.
Despite highly publicized data breaches, ranging from the loss of personally identifiable information such as credit card and Social Security numbers at major corporations to the WikiLeaks scandal involving sensitive U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. State Department information, and the "alphabet soup" of compliance regulations, data around the globe remains at grave risk, according to John Ottman, president and CEO of Application Security, Inc., who has written "Save the Database, Save the World" to focus attention on the problem and present steps to its solution. While super secure networks are important, that alone is far from enough and a layered data security strategy with a commitment to "protecting data where it lives - in the database" must be pursued to avoid risks posed by outside hackers as well as authorized users, says Ottman. A stronger government hand may be needed as well to defend "the critical infrastructure that operates in the private sector," he suggests.
The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and X2-8 with the Solaris option began shipping just this month. Now in its third generation, the Database Machine combines all the components to create what the company describes as the best platform for running the Oracle Database. Here, Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle, talks about the performance innovations that differentiate Oracle's offering, how customers are using the system today for business advantage, and also — what's ahead.
The rise of big data has garnered much of the attention in the data management arena lately. But it is not simply the sheer volume of data that is challenging data professionals. Many new types and brands of DBMSs are also popping up across organizations, bringing new problems for the data professionals who are tasked with managing them, and also giving rise to scores of "accidental database administrators" with no formal DBA training, a new Unisphere Research study reveals.
The rise of big data has garnered much of the attention in the data management arena lately. But it is not simply the sheer volume of data that is challenging data professionals. Many new types and brands of DBMSs are also popping up across organizations, bringing new problems for the data professionals who are tasked with managing them, and also giving rise to scores of "accidental database administrators" with no formal DBA training, a new Unisphere Research study reveals.
When you think of mission-critical services, perhaps none is as critical as electrical service. Not much can happen in modern businesses, government offices, or even homes without it. Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) is the largest electric company in Vermont. More than 159,000 customers in 163 communities rely on the electrical service CVPS provides. And, according to J.D. Power and Associates, a global marketing and surveying company, for overall customer satisfaction, CVPS continues to rank in the top tier of utilities in the eastern region, more than 50 points above the regional average.
The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and X2-8 with the Solaris option began shipping just this month. Now in its third generation, the Database Machine combines all the components to create what the company describes as the best platform for running the Oracle Database. Here, Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle, talks about the performance innovations that differentiate Oracle's offering, how customers are using the system today for business advantage, and also — what's ahead.
When you think of mission-critical services, perhaps none is as critical as electrical service. Not much can happen in modern businesses, government offices, or even homes without it. Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) is the largest electric company in Vermont. More than 159,000 customers in 163 communities rely on the electrical service CVPS provides. And, according to J.D. Power and Associates, a global marketing and surveying company, for overall customer satisfaction, CVPS continues to rank in the top tier of utilities in the eastern region, more than 50 points above the regional average.