Five Data Management Trends for 2015

‘Tis the holiday season, and I want to thank all my readers for their comments and encouragement.  It has been a pleasure and honor working/hearing from all of you.  I enjoy the challenges of data management too much, and my curious nature has me continuing to explore and write about all its aspects.

Data management turned out to be very interesting in 2014 with most of my predictions from last year coming true.  Check them out and make your own judgment here.  Below are the five Data Management Trends that I believe will occur in 2015. Please let me know what you think through the comments or an email.

1. Big Data Analytics morphs from Big Data
   Big data will continue, but the focus will change to analytics against the big data.  CEOs and CIOs are a paranoid bunch and worried that the next big data analytics innovation will disrupt their industry and put them out of business.  Every company’s big data project will now need a focus on analytics.  Analytics are key as companies engage, research and discover the most effective marketing, most profitable products, and make operations as efficient as possible.  
   
   Analytics will measure all aspects of every interaction within the corporation and be used to optimize it all for the best possible bottom-line outcome.
   
   
2. Security and hacking move to the next level — offense.
   The latest Sony hacking incident has intensified security threats.  Last year there was the personal privacy concern due to the Snowden government disclosures. Now hacking has racketed up the consequences of poor security, basically exposing all the facets of a multibillion-dollar company (Sony).  The hackers are going on the offense: capturing, ransoming, and exposing all data to inflict as much physical, psychological, and reputational damage possible.  
   
   The disclosures of all aspects of their internal and external salaries, products and internal communications have caused un-calculable losses that will impact the company for years.  Now hackers are holding servers and files hostage, blackmailing their victims.  All governments, companies, and individuals have been targets that need defenses.  2015 could be the first year when more offensive destructive hacking against enemies or companies will be publicly exposed. 
   
   
3. Partly cloudy.  
   Even with all the hacking and security issues, the elastic on-demand characteristics of the cloud will continue to be very attractive for innovative companies.  Database as a service, elastic scalability, data synchronicity, and the mobility demands of new applications will drive adoption of these cloud capabilities. 
   
   The big data silos of the last year are all being converted to analytics and the cloud.  No one wants to fund the big data system and its expensive storage build-out and will switch to the on-demand lower elastic cost model of the cloud.  Elastic, on-demand cloud capabilities will continue to drive IT costs lower, letting all departments concentrating on customer experiences and business profitability.
   
   
4. Mainframe resurgence
   
   With all the hacking and security difficulties, low utilization of UNIX environments, and continued lowest total cost of ownership, the mainframe resurgence is on for 2015.  IBM is set to announce a new mainframe in 2015 which is rumored to feature hybrid private cloud and mobile application capabilities, making the mainframe the best scalable solution for any type of processing.  Corporations are starting to realize costs of the underutilization of their UNIX hardware, extra disaster recovery costs for UNIX systems, and extra UNIX support personnel costs, and moving to the on-demand model of the cloud initiatives.   The mainframe’s rumored new hybrid cloud capabilities, along with its industry leading security, will help CEOs and CIOs address these processing issues while lowering their costs and improving their security profiles.
   
   
5. More software application packages  
   The enormous IT backlog continues as companies struggle with their various applications.  Everyone is now equipped with a mobile phone wants the convenience of the Apple/Android store, and access to all possible application types and corporate data resources on any device at any time. 
   
   Departments and business units will bring non-compliant, non-standard applications, and software packages into the business and host them on the cloud with their corporate credit cards.
   
   SaaS solutions and other DBaaS solutions will continue to segment and fragment the software landscape with visual report writers and analytic interfaces helping end users make decisions.

Let me know what you think of these predictions of five trends for data management in 2015.

Thank you all again for a great last year, 2014. I really appreciate your support.

Happy Holidays, New Year and have a great 2015!

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, and 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.