Five Data Management Trends for 2014

Another year has come and gone.  Content continues to gain mindshare with the CEO as companies that get hacked and individuals on Facebook better understand the importance of governance, security and overall data management issues.  Last year’s “Five Data Management Trends for 2013” turned out to be fairly accurate so hopefully I can keep it going with the following Five Data Management Trends for 2014.  Please let me know what you think through the comments or an email.

  1. Big data continues to grow, so why is it special?
    Big data will continue to grow, get produced, analyzed, and adopted into the efforts of all corporations.  The internet will be leveraged by wear-able technology; gadgets for your home/security, Google Glass, location services with Smart Watches/Phones, expanded 3D printer use, and coming soon, automatically driven cars. Big data from all these devices will feed the hungry corporations’ databases for use with any type of marketing, sales and research initiative.

    Even with all of these new data sources, big data will begin to be adopted, incorporated and managed just like all the other data sources.  C-Suite executives will start to learn from the budget difficulties of integrating the Hadoop silos individual departments created and big data projects that did not produce the dramatic “wow” insight they were expecting.  Big data silos and failures slowly force the big data sources back into IT management.  It won’t happen quickly but the business units created their big data headaches and they are frustrated by the difficulties. IT departments will have to pick up the pieces.

    Business units will still want to do big data by themselves, but 2014 will start to see big data hype turn into big data reality. IT departments will have more control over big data to develop big data successes.
  2. Connected internet of everything drives more analytics.
    As I said in the first big data trend more consumer products, applications, electrical grids/power meters, cars, industrial equipment, etc. will be monitored and provide data through the internet.  Implications for marketing, manufacturing, and overall efficiencies/profits will drive analytics within all aspects of your business.

    Corporations and people will monitor everything and look to improve results.  From your heartbeat, the number of steps taken to your food calories to all aspects of the supply chain, manufacturing efficiencies to Amazon drones or their Christmas delivery disappointments, companies will want to know the aggregated details.  Internet connected monitors will track and drive more analytics into your everyday schedule of things to do.
  3. Privacy, security, governance and censorship issues will get bigger.  With the Snowden disclosures many people are realizing that their lives are monitored by their governments.  As I wrote last June, there is no privacy, so get over it.  Governments are only part of the privacy questions as every marketer, political party, and product manufacturer wants to discover your intimate details so they can sell you something or get your vote.  Even though all the data is available people need to understand that it can be analyzed for all type of good and evil purposes.

    With all the latest disclosures the conversations and debate will continue as everyone figures out how much data should be allowed to be collected, analyzed and used by governments, private companies, and political parties.
  4. IT continues to lose control over applications.
    Since the enormous IT backlog is too ridiculous to be even mentioned or discussed, and IT initiatives continue to take too long to be developed and end up too expensive, IT will continue to lose control over applications.  Businesses and business units are buying common off the shelf (COTS) products, along with software as a solution SaaS, and cloud solutions that provide services for business and personal use.  Bring your own device and hardware commoditization will continue to provide better cost, flexibility and innovations.  The Open Source and guarded garden walls of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple will use their business, transactions and devices to harvest as much data as possible to crowd source to build their next service offering.

    Until Moore’s law begins to fade in 2018 hardware capacity will continue to be commoditized which continues the march toward a virtual world where businesses and users can pick COTS solutions that users can purchase, manage and operate without IT.
  5. Costs, software skills and ease of use grow in importance.
    The commoditization of IT capacity, memory, and bandwidth through Moore’s law, application software for a dollar, easy to understand Open Source and all types of COTS apps will continue to proliferate the IT landscape.  IT cost measurement discussions will continue to be a source of conflict as Open Source proliferates through the enterprises without understanding its greater actual expense due to overall costs of integration, personnel time, support costs, and software limitations.

    All types of legacy software skills from z/OS to Visual Basic to Java and .NET will be in demand to handle legacy systems.  With colleges teaching less true IT skills, specialized experience in all types of platforms, applications, code bases, and real world integration will be needed.  These business needs on top of the demands for BYOD, mobile, and cloud experiences will lead to demands within IT for analysts who can talk the business unit’s language.  All types of legacy systems and code that still produce 80% or more of the revenue within the companies will need knowledgeable support. These skills requirements will require real IT management, specialized training, and custom skills for custom business applications.

    Ease of use has always been an IT software factor, but will take on added emphasis as everyone now understands the importance of ease of use because of problems working through their phone settings, and phone application choices.  Every business application’s ease of use, its features, and cost compared to the competition will be evaluated when everyone has to agree on a corporate solution. We all have struggled with a new smart phone or poorly designed app purchased for a dollar that caused more than a dollar’s worth of grief or time.

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Dave Beulke is a system strategist, application architect, and performance expert specializing in Big Data, data warehouses, and high performance internet business solutions.  He is an IBM Gold Consultant, Information Champion, President of DAMA-NCR, former President of International DB2 User Group, and frequent speaker at national and international conferences.  His architectures, designs, and performance tuning techniques help organization better leverage their information assets, saving millions in processing costs.

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