DBTA E-EDITION
October 2020
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Trends and Applications
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). Started by the National Cyber Security Division within the Department of Homeland Security and the non-profit National Cyber Security Alliance, the goal of this designation is to raise awareness of the importance of cyber security. Find out what data governance and security leaders think about the state of data security today.
This may be the era of the data-driven enterprise, but only a handful of organizations report they are ready for it. There is a growing volume of "dark data" that remains obscure to IT managers and decision makers. This period unfolding before us will be driven by several technology initiatives, from 5G wireless and IoT to AI.
While the cloud can offer an organization a wide array of benefits—including a reduction in infrastructure costs, greater flexibility to deploy regionally, and more—it's not always an organization's first choice when it comes to building out an SAP landscape, where high availability (HA) is essential. If you're invested in real-time analytics or building out AI services that depend on uninterrupted access to your SAP landscape, you don't want to find yourself unable to access the data and services you need.
As technologies evolve and become more sophisticated each year, the world is becoming increasingly data-driven. Large volumes of data inject macro- and micro-level insights into our behaviors, opinions, and preferences, which in turn power business opportunities for revenue growth, cost reduction, and customer satisfaction.
For several years, digital sales have been steadily expanding year over year by 12%-15% and gradually taking more and more of the overall share of retail sales, but that expansion was quickly accelerated this year by the COVID-19 pandemic. Historical sales data is inconsequential this year, and there is not a handbook for the types of challenges we've faced so far. In times of uncertainty, a business's greatest asset is the flexibility to be ready for whatever may happen. The truth is, no one knows what the future of this market will bring.
At the heart of the latest wave of tool consolidation in enterprise software delivery is data—and getting all that precious information into one place. By creating a single platform experience to help software delivery teams at largescale organizations plan and track all work from ideation to operation, tool vendors hope to support customers in this goal by providing faster, more accurate knowledge- sharing between teams and tools in real time to accelerate the planning, building, and delivering of products. Obtaining one source of truth to create business-centric IT reports helps organizations understand whether investments are paying off and improve decision making.
Both data warehouses and data lakes offer robust options for ensuring that data is well-managed and prepped for today's analytics requirements. However, the two environments have distinctly different roles, and data managers need to understand how to leverage the strengths of each to make the most of the data feeding into analytics systems.
"It's yours, free. Just pay shipping and handling!" claims the infomercial host. We've all seen them, the advertisements for home maintenance, gardening equipment, or even cooking products that promise the world but end up costing a lot of money. Whether it's through shipping fees or the need to sign up for long contracts that are hard to break, unfortunately, most deals that seem "too good to be true" usually are not what they seem.
COVID-19 is far from over, and consequently, many people find themselves facing extended work-from-home (WFH) timelines. Tech companies, such as Twitter and Square, which in May announced the "work from home forever" option—and Facebook, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated may have as many as half of the company's employees working remotely in the next 5-10 years—are leading the WFH charge.
Columns - Database Elaborations
Plenty of analytics environments have landing areas, plenty have staging areas, and some have both. So, are landing and staging just synonyms for the same thing? A survey of usage would show there is much overlap in implementations, and even some confusion.
Columns - DBA Corner
Database administration includes responsibility for ensuring the ongoing operational functionality and efficiency of an organization's databases and the applications that access those databases. Traditionally, for the DBA, this has meant becoming an expert about "all things" related to a particular database management system (DBMS), such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM Db2, and others, and that the DBMS was installed on-premise on physical servers.
Columns - Quest IOUG Database & Technology Insights
Employers today look for a broader and more adaptive skill set in their DBAs. Here's a look at skills that any DBA should have and also those that a DBA should look to obtain and nurture, regardless of which new technology is entering the hype cycle.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
If you are an old hand at Microsoft SQL Server, you have probably used the SQL Server Agent (i.e., SQL Agent) service and MSDB database for the last 20 years. With a humble and largely unchanged feature set since it was first introduced, SQL Agent is one of those incredibly useful and cost-saving features we have come to expect from the Microsoft Data Platform. However, SQL Agent faces one important shortcoming: It can run on Azure VMs and on Azure SQL Managed Instances, but it is not available on Azure SQL Database. As a result, we need a substitute.
Columns - Next-Gen Data Management
Citrix and Microsoft have a complicated history, but they've recently taken their relationship to new heights by announcing an extension of their partnership to help businesses better manage a remote workforce. Since the pandemic began, CIOs have been looking for ways to bring the office experience to the home and in the process put their enterprises anywhere. At the same time, CFOs are wondering just how to do so with the evolution of OpEx subscription options.
Columns - Emerging Technologies
For the past few years, database vendors have been busily enhancing their cloud offerings and consolidating the innovations that arose more than 10 years ago from the big data and NoSQL movements. While both NoSQL and big data were enormously influential for database technology, it remains true that the vast majority of databases are running on architectures that are positively ancient in computer science terms.
MV Community
MultiValue Central is partnering with BlueFinity to utilize the Evoke platform, BlueFinity's low-code business app development platform for worldwide distribution. The partnership will enable MultiValue Central to provide support, development, and implementation services associated with the development of business apps.
Rocket Software is in the midst of conducting several product alpha and beta programs to implement user feedback into new and existing products. The fall of 2020 is about Rocket engaging with its MultiValue user base, during these programs customers can provide critical feedback on features they need to modernize and optimize their applications, ranging from API development to helping define metrics that they want to monitor for better performance.
Zumasys has made a distribution arrangement with Phocas Software, provider of a business intelligence solution for worldwide manufacturers, distributors, and retailers running ERP systems. Phocas and Zumasys have partnered to bring a turnkey solution to the PICK MultiValue market. By combining Phocas with MVConnect RESTful APIs and with Zumasys' data extraction, flattening, and mapping services, customers benefit from an enterprise analytics and visualization solution without the typical cost and complexity.