Five Data Management Predictions for 2018

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has their 2018 filled with good health, happiness and prosperity. Once again I am offering you my data management predictions for 2018. Thank you all for great support in 2017 and countless emails regarding my conference, user group presentations and blogs last year.

For 2018, I will continue to bring you a completely independent data management perspective. None of the points of view, URLs or ideas are sponsored in anyway in my blogs, tweets or LinkedIn feed. Several times, I have turned down compensation to promote articles. I see others in the industry promoting those products on twitter or other social media and know why they are promoting it. Reserve your judgment before clicking on any article, it may be only a good marketing ploy, technology advertisement or paid promotion. Everything written, tweeted or expressed in this blog and through my social media networks since day one is completely 100% sponsor free. These blogs are my independent consultant point of view, based on my extensive Db2 Family, Big Data, Analytics and security industry consulting, teaching and audit successes. I have been honored to work with many great people and corporations around the country, and my reputation is more valuable than anything anyone could pay me.

So with several years’ worth of data management predictions recorded in this blog from 2014 found here, 2015 found here, 2016 found here and 2017 found here, you can see that I don’t always go for the five easiest typical data management trends or play it too safe. So, here are the Five Data Management Predictions for 2018.

• Security and hacking continue to be the most important major issues facing governments, businesses and individuals. Everything is at risk and if you have ever been hacked, it changes your life, priorities and your actions forever. Trust me I have had first-hand experience. That is the reason I started doing security audits two years ago and continue to believe security and hacking are the most important issues for 2018.
  • In 2017 …
    • WannaCry and Trickbot used script worm functionality to spread malware.
    • Intel chip kernel flaws exposed data that still is not patched as of this writing.
    • Compromised URLs, websites, and macros in Microsoft Word documents evaded antivirus engines; Microsoft PowerShell attacks made all communications a risk.
    • Vulnerable end-point inventory, mobile phone patching problems and network platform vulnerabilities.
    • Security software and security systems targeted by hackers.
  • International, national and insider criminal threats and exposures continue to increase.
  • Security procedures for patches, security assessments and breach protocols are inadequate. According to the recent EY study found here, 12 percent of organizations have no breach detection program in place and probably no remediation procedures established.
  • Most, if not all, IoT devices are extremely vulnerable endpoint security exposures.
  • Security AI analytics are being used by nation state hackers to infiltrate your systems.
  • Are you EU GDPR compliant? How have you operationalize data governance policies for providing GDPR required 72 hours’ notice of a breach? Remember, 4 percent of the company’s revenue is at risk as a penalty.
  • Does your car have passwords? All the new ones do. If you bought a used car, does it still have the original owner’s password?

All of these IT security system factors require immediate attention through your company’s security personnel and infrastructure. In addition, you personally need to strengthen and limit your security hacking exposure. Take steps in 2018 to improve your security infrastructure and practices because companies continue to expose corporate and personal information.

• Cloud continues to grow, the cloud leaders are changing and are not who you think they are. When everyone thinks of cloud computing, they automatically think of Amazon, but the real cloud leader is not really AWS. According to these articles, the cloud computing leader is really different depending on how you look at the cloud. In these articles, there are three different leaders, Alibaba is first here, then here it’s IBM and Microsoft.
  
  In addition, Oracle is coming up fast as a cloud provider, and I have learned through the years to never count Larry Ellison’s company out. In addition, the way cloud is defined is critical to who you think is first. Some say Salesforce is first because they operate one of the most robust and biggest cloud company infrastructures.
  
  So the cloud computing competition will continue in 2018 with all of these companies adding customer service and software enhancements to their infrastructure as a service cloud configurations. The cloud in 2018 will become pervasive, almost invisible as on-premises and off-site cloud infrastructure and transaction definitions blur the cloud computing definition and the processing gets executed transparently.
  
  
• Everyone starts to realize the open source database costs, their limitations and their NoSQL access issues. Big Data, Data Lakes, Data Vaults and other database terms invented by open source DBMSs are used to continue to separate themselves from normal data management issues and functional capabilities.
  
  The problem is that after the initial open source database project implementation, successful or not, the open source DBMS application or new project needs enhancements or maintenance. Many times the open source DBMS cannot handle the enhancements or does not provide real time results or a good access interface. This is where the open source maintenance issues, lack of a SQL interface, tools and utility functional shortcomings become painfully obvious. These open source shortcomings become more noticeable by management as Db2, SQL Server and Oracle lower their costs, offer subscription and functional based pricing and provide cloud extensibility of their relational databases.
  
  Add on top of those open source DBMSs issues, the security risks of open source vulnerabilities, operating system and patch support may not be robust enough as security continues to be a top priority. So open source will continue to grow, but the costs and limitations will slow its growth trajectory.
  
  
• Corporations start and new software companies offer cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI) application development automation. Software writing software is nothing new, and AI will replace application developers. Machine learning (ML) and AI advanced application generators from the 1970s and 1980s will resurface as AI application developers and will rewrite, migrate or replace your existing applications with varying degrees of speed and accuracy. Application replacement or migrations to cloud or other platforms will be the application management challenge.
  
  
• Technology wars or embargos from governments, companies, and industries increase and take hold. China has already banned the software of WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and others companies because of the lack of controls and censoring capabilities. China bans VPNs and other software to control free speech. In addition, the USA has previously banned Kaspersky Labs software and some Huawei routers because of spying from the Russian and Chinese governments. Will the latest computers Intel Chip security privacy issue found in chips from the last ten years be result in a ban of Intel chips? The hardware and software technology wars will continue and intensify as 2018 security concerns become more important.

Have a happy, healthy, prosperous and great 2018!

Dave Beulke is a business strategist, systems architect and performance expert specializing in big data, data warehouses and high-performance internet solutions. He is an IBM Gold Consultant, Information Champion, President of DAMA-NCR, former President of International DB2 User Group (IDUG) and frequent speaker at national and international conferences. His strategies, architectures and performance tuning techniques enhance analytics, security and performance so organizations can better leverage their information assets and save millions of dollars in time to market, CPU, development and overall costs. Follow his blog at davebeulke.com or on Twitter here (@DBeulke) or connect through LinkedIn here (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebeulke).