Introducing Our Actian 2022 Interns!

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Organizations trust Actian data management and data intelligence solutions to streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Learn more about Actian, the data and AI division of HCLSoftware, at actian.com.

Introducing Our Actian 2022 Interns!

#Internships

#Internships

It’s National Intern Day, which means it’s time to talk about Actian’s Summer Internship Program! Since launching this 12-week program in 2020, Actian’s internships have been centralized around intern capstone projects, and engaging virtual events, all while being fully remote – this year however, they were able to add the exciting addition of a hybrid-remote Intern Orientation.

My name is Gabrielle Kray, and I am halfway through my internship as Actian’s Employee Experience Intern. I have learned so much about the People field these past 7-weeks and have felt appreciated for what I have brought to the table every step of the way. Being a global organization, it has also been an exciting time of meeting and working with people cross-functionally. I am looking forward to learning more as I continue my internship but let’s talk about what has been going on so far!

The first thing to note about Actian’s internship program is that every internship has a capstone project. This project is meant to be the interns’ focus, where over the course of the twelve weeks they will be able to plan, organize, and complete it with the guidance of their manager and buddy. As Actian is a remote-first organization, this helps ensure that interns do not fall into the pitfalls of other internships – where interns are brought on as less expensive, temporary workers, with unfocused objectives or relegated meaningless tasks. This helps ensure that it is a learning experience that benefits the interns, as well as the organization.

The project I am working on this summer is to migrate Actian’s New Hire Orientation to an asynchronous format, that a new hire can go through at their own pace. The benefits to this would be that the program will be digestible, and engaging, and it provides us an opportunity to be more thorough. What’s more, it will provide course materials they can return to in case they need reference information. In addition to the asynchronous orientation, there will also be a monthly synchronous gathering of new hires to answer all their questions, provide a networking opportunity, and offer engagement with our leadership. Altogether, this orientation will be a proper welcome to our company!

So far, I have planned out how the orientation will flow, generated ideas on how to create an engaging program, and got to work creating the materials we will be presenting. Soon, with the help of the Employee Experience Team, I will be recording content and uploading it to the course to our internal platform Actian Academy! I have faced challenges, like worrying I would not reach my completion goals, or not always feeling like I knew all the content I like I should, but in the end, everything was a learning curve, and my team had my back. It is really satisfying to see how the first half of my internship, which was spent learning the ins and outs of new hire orientation and creating a game plan with my team, is starting to come to life!

The second feature to note about our internship is that it has been fully remote (outside of the optional in-person attendance of Intern Orientation). Actian has provided all the essentials for completing our projects, along with structured learning plans, and we don’t even have to worry about commuting! As with most remote first companies, we communicate through chat, email, and video calls. We also have employee events and weekly intern events to give us space to connect.

Speaking of weekly intern events, we recently had an exciting one. Rae Coffman-Bueb and Sara Lou, who direct the intern program, sent each of us a small kit that included tea candles, a small lighter, and all the necessary ingredients for s’mores! The event was called “Tiny Camp Fire” where we lit three little tea lights in a triangle and roasted ‘mallows while telling spooky stories. I certainly got the chills!

This year, we had an aspect to the internship program that hadn’t been an option until now – the ability to attend Intern Orientation in-person at the Round Rock, Texas office! Those that wanted to were flown in from all over the country, where we got to not only attend the hybrid orientation, but also get in some team building time too! My fondest memory was when we all bussed down to the Congress Avenue Bridge and watched thousands of bats flood the sky during their migration. We then made our way down to the round rock for which the city of Round Rock was named and took this iconic picture:

Actian 2022 interns at the Round Rock, Texas office

It was such a blast, and I hope that in future years the in-person orientations will continue!

As this is International Intern Day, I would like to introduce our group of Actian’s 2022 interns. They are a phenomenal bunch!

Ashwin Ramakrishna (he/they)
Revenue Operations Analyst Intern

Ashwin Ramakrishna is from Saratoga, California. He attends UC Davis and is an incoming Junior in Economics. In Actian, they are currently working to automate the sales recommendation engine process to make analysis in lead processing more efficient. He learned about the internship through his family friend who is an Actian Employee and thought it would be an incredible learning opportunity. In their free time, Ashwin teaches himself piano, and enjoys going to concerts.

Henry McKinney (he/him)
Cloud Operations Analyst Intern

Henry McKinney is Actian’s Cloud Operations Analyst Intern. He is currently studying at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York, majoring in Psychology, and minoring in Math, Finance, and Analytics. He first found Actian through LinkedIn, met his manager, and decided it would be a wonderful place to work, especially with the opportunity to work in the cloud space.

Henry is currently assisting the project manager on the cloud operations team. Using JIRA, he is helping reorganize tasks, as well as implementing a new project type that has additional features such as timeline view and priority. He values getting this bird’s eye view of an IT operations team and understanding of an Agile mindset. He is learning how to make operations efficient and scalable by working with developers and project managers in the cloud space.

During his free time, he loves to read non-fiction, train for hockey, and learn about new tech.

Nikita Gaurihar (she/her)
Engineering Intern

Nikita Gaurihar is an Engineering Intern at Actian. She is currently pursuing a Master of Information Systems at the Northeastern University in Boston; however, she already has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from India where she is from! She moved from India to the United States to gain more opportunities in roles that focus on data engineering, analytics, and machine learning.

During this internship, she is working on a project to design and develop a data pipeline solution to create a Data Vault Schema for Actian. She values the experience she is gaining by working with data, as it will bring her closer to her goal of becoming a Data Scientist!
When she is relaxing after work, she enjoys playing badminton with her husband & friends, or taking a stroll on the beach.

Linson Miranda (he/him)
Business Intelligence and Analytics Intern

Linson is pursuing his Master’s in Business Analytics at the University of Texas at Dallas. A techie at heart, he knew he wanted to work at an organization where he would have the opportunity to grow significantly as a summer intern and create an impact on the company’s future. And Actian was the perfect fit!

This summer, Linson is working as a Business Intelligence and Analytics Intern with the Customer Enablement & Revenue Operations team. Keeping in line with Actian’s aim to grow its market footprint, his capstone project revolves around building a customer 360 demo using the Actian Data Platform, their flagship product.

When he is not busy analyzing customer data or reading, Linson loves playing the guitar and binge-watching sit-coms!

Joshua Reyes (he/him)
Finance Intern

Josh is a Finance Major studying at the University of San Francisco. His aim this year was to gain experience in his field, and when he found this internship, he appreciated that it was specifically focused on financial analysis, which is his main interest! His internship capstone project is to create a financial forecasting model to predict future costs from cloud service vendors that Actian works with.

So far, Josh has valued experiencing the work environment and finds it interesting seeing the implementation of the skills he learned in college. When he wants to have a fun time, he enjoys hanging out with friends, watching sports, and going to the gym!

Riya Singla (she/her)
DevOps Intern

Riya is majoring in Computer Science at UT Austin. When she applied for Actian, she was originally interested in the Software Engineering internship, but when she received a recommendation to try out DevOps, she decided to go for it! As her main project this summer, Riya is writing a script to automatically deploy Terraform templates every time a git repository updates. During her experience as DevOps, she learned new perspective on software engineering, understanding that code in the writing process needs to be checked for a strong framework before it reaches a production environment. She hopes to return to the world of software engineering with this new perspective to enrich her work.

Maddie Heath (she/her)
Marketing Intern

Maddie Heath is from Carmel, Indiana, and a rising Junior at IU Bloomington’s Kelley School of Business. She first found the Actian Internship online and was excited at the opportunity to work within the technology industry! While her primary responsibilities are managing Actian’s blog and tagging content via UberFlip, she manages many different projects and continually offers support to the marketing team. Despite her allergies, Maddie is a cat person, and has two cats. She spends her time fundraising for charity through designing art and clothes and spending time with her family.

Andi Wagner (she/they)
Software Engineering Intern

Andi is based in Round Rock, Texas, close to the Actian office! They are currently a senior at the University of Dallas, majoring in Computer Science. When she came across this internship, they thought it would be a great learning and networking opportunity. What more, she found that based on the reviews online, employees loved the company, so she chose to apply!

Their main project this summer is to implement an Apache Camel extension into DataConnect, which will allow for the implementation of Camel routes seamlessly through the product. After work, Andi enjoys spending time with her dog, Loki, exploring, eating, and playing video games.

Matthew Jackson (he/him)
Zen Engineering Intern

Matt is from Round Rock, Texas, right by the Actian office! He is an incoming freshman for the Colorado School of Mines and will be studying Computer Science. He is an engineering intern, working with the team that manages Zen, Actian’s database management system. He started off his internship focusing on the migration from CMWiki to Confluence, by writing a program to scrape data from CMWiki, process it, and upload it all to Confluence. Once he completed this project, he started his next one, setting up an app that will serve as an example of how customers can use BRestful API in Btrieve 2. This will improve the implementation of the product for users. Outside of work, Matt really enjoys music. One of his favorite pastimes is busking on the street with his Jazz Band.

Gabrielle Kray (she/her)
Employee Experience Intern

Gabrielle is from Sunnyvale, California. She is an incoming freshman at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. This summer she joined the Employee Experience team as an intern, finding it the perfect opportunity to explore the field of HR. Her focus during her internship is to build an asynchronous new hire orientation that is digestible, engaging, and thorough. She found that this project gave her perspective on the needs and experiences of a new hire. After work, Gabrielle loves spending time with her family and friends, and taking short hikes in nature.

Written by Gabrielle Kray

About Author

How the Right Data Platform Approach Unleashes Competitive Advantage

#Data Analytics

Jennifer"JJ" Jackson is CMO of Actian, leading global marketing strategy with a data-driven approach. With 25 years of branding and digital marketing experience and a background in chemical engineering, JJ understands the power of analytics from both a user and marketer perspective. She's spearheaded SaaS transitions, partner ecosystem expansions, and web modernization efforts at companies like Teradata. On the Actian blog, she discusses brand strategy, digital transformation, and customer experience. Explore her recent articles for real-world lessons in data-driven marketing.

#Data Analytics

For some time now, we at Actian have been focusing squarely on making the Actian Data Platform the most trusted, flexible, and easy-to-use data platform on the market.

These, of course, are traits that anybody in any industry would want to trumpet. But they’re especially important in the world of data, where the market is shifting rapidly and customers are making technology decisions that will determine their level of business success for years to come.

Here’s what we mean. In recent years, data’s role as a competitive asset has grown substantially. As data volumes swell and calls for data-driven insights increase, companies have scrambled to piece together the best possible ways to store, access, manage, and analyze this critical resource. Many vendors have responded by pursuing a “platform approach,” trying to pull capabilities previously siloed in data warehouses, data lakes, data hubs, and analytics hubs into new, more versatile data platforms.

It’s driven a market convergence where industry upstarts and veterans are competing in the same field. We believe we’re positioned well in this competition for a few reasons. We have the data expertise and knowledge the new, born-in-the-cloud data vendors don’t have. Traditional, legacy brands, meanwhile, are struggling to pivot. We bring all of this expertise to the cloud in a way that makes data easy.

We’ve built trust, flexibility, and ease of use into the Actian Data Platform in several ways.

Through Superior Price Performance

The platform outperformed, on speed and price performance, four other leading cloud services, including Google BigQuery, in an Enterprise Strategy Group Technical Validation report. Actian Data Platform performed up to 7.9 times faster with up to 92% lower cost for simulated queries run by five concurrent users of cloud-based data warehouses.

Through Native Integration

For customers to use born-in-the-cloud vendor platforms for analytics purposes, they have to partner with a data integration vendor. In the Actian platform, the warehouse, database, and integration capabilities are native. Hundreds of connectors are available, allowing customers to connect any source to any target. It’s built into the platform, not the warehouse, and customers can consume services all through the same mechanism.

Through REAL, Real-Time Data

A lot of vendors claim to return data queries in real-time, but as they’re updating the database with real-time information, they experience latency. In Actian, queries still run at the same speed. Customers are powered to have data in their hands when they truly need it.

Through Hybrid Deployment

For Actian, it’s the ability to use the same platform to deploy on different clouds, on-premises, and in hybrid environments. Pure cloud players can’t operate in hybrid or on-prem situations, and major cloud providers won’t operate instances provided by a chief competitor. The platform is agnostic.

Actian customers are seeing value in the platform approach. The London Stock Exchange is using Actian for trade analysis, enabling customers to make smart trade decisions in the moment. The AA, an insurance company in EMEA, offers on-demand insurance quotes on its website using Actian’s real-time engine.

Companies that win the most use data as a key differentiator. Leveraging a platform that inspires trust, performs flexibly and is easy to use enables them to separate themselves in the market. We believe our vision and capabilities make Actian the perfect company to partner with to unlock the competitive advantage data brings.

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About Jennifer Jackson

What is Data Virtualization?

#Data

#Data

Committing to a data-driven project can sometimes feel like opening Pandora’s box. To avoid getting lost along the way, you need to have a global, secure, and agnostic view of all your data. Among the avenues to explore, there is data virtualization.

Companies that embark on the path of a data-driven strategy have a compelling need to rely on real-time data. All processes and thought patterns are oriented around data to make faster and more relevant decisions to bring more value to their customers. However, there is a challenge: the more data you use, the more likely it is to be scattered across different platforms, and therefore, the more you need to reconcile your data sources. The risk? Degrading the effectiveness of your data-driven project. To avoid exposure to this risk, there is a path to explore.

This path involves deploying an advanced data integration methodology, called data virtualization.

What is Data Virtualization?

Data is central to your company’s strategy, making it essential to collect data from different sources. However, this creates the risk of having scattered information. When data is disparate, it’s difficult to get an overview that allows for quick and informed decision-making. If some of your data remains in the shadows, if it doesn’t fit into the scope of your analyses, there is a risk of making mistakes.

The objective of data virtualization is to fight against this scattering by bringing together all your data, regardless of their origin, without moving or copying them. The principle is to create a single virtual zone where all your data assets are available regardless of origin or format. Data virtualization provides a global, unified, organized, and encapsulated view of all your data, whether it comes from the same or different data sources, without having to manipulate or move it. A single “virtual” data layer is created to deliver unified data services.

What are the Benefits of Data Virtualization?

Data virtualization supports multiple applications and users while providing:

Faster access to data, limiting the latency between data collection and exploitation.
Significantly reduced time to market for data.
A decrease in data redundancy.
Agile decision-making.

The first essential benefit of this approach is to have a global and exhaustive vision of all your data. But data virtualization also has another advantage: you don’t have to move, copy or manipulate data, which remains stored in its original platforms. Because the source data is preserved, it cannot be altered or degraded and therefore retains its original quality. And because it is not manipulated, you save considerable time in making decisions.

How Does Data Virtualization Work?

A data virtualization solution works as a single platform that provides access to all data in a virtual environment. The data can be accessed directly, without being moved from its original source. This not only simplifies data access to the maximum extent but also minimizes the risk of degrading or damaging the data. A data virtualization solution aggregates all structured and unstructured data sources to offer a virtual visualization, all available via a dashboard. It allows you to visualize metadata while eliminating the complexity of reconciling disparate data sources.

To reduce storage costs, optimize data governance, simplify access to data and, ultimately, develop your data-driven culture, why not start data virtualization?

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Data Security, Data Privacy, and Moving to the Public Cloud

#Cloud Data Platform #Data Security

Data security and privacy when moving to the cloud.

#Cloud Data Platform #Data Security

The cloud has revolutionized the way modern businesses operate. By moving to the cloud, companies can access data and applications from anywhere globally, scale their remote infrastructures in real-time, and take advantage of cloud-based analytics and machine learning tools.

Transitioning to cloud-based applications and solutions offers unparalleled flexibility for businesses, but it also comes with certain risks. When moving to the cloud, one of the biggest concerns for businesses is data security and data privacy, which are essential for companies to get right.

The Importance of Data Security and Privacy in Today’s Cloud Landscape

The cloud has become the go-to platform for businesses of all sizes. It is flexible, scalable, and cost-effective, making it the perfect solution for organizations looking to improve their IT infrastructure. However, with the cloud comes new security challenges.

Data security and privacy are top concerns for companies moving to the cloud. And rightfully so—the cloud is a shared environment, which means your data is stored on servers that are managed by other organizations. This creates risk if the servers are not properly secured.

To add to some of these concerns, recent high-profile data breaches have made headlines and spotlighted the importance of effective cloud security. In 2019, Capital One experienced a data breach in which a hacker was able to access the personal information of more than 100 million people’s credit card applications and accounts stored on cloud data servers.

This instance and many others prove how important it is for companies to maintain a robust cloud security strategy to successfully protect their data and that of their customers.

Best Practices for Securing Cloud Data Platforms

While there are risks associated with moving more data through the cloud, there are best practices businesses can follow to ensure their cloud data platforms meet their organization’s data security and privacy requirements.

Encrypting Data at Rest and in Transit

One of the most important things companies can do to secure their cloud data is to encrypt it. This makes it much more difficult for hackers to access and steal data if they penetrate your cloud servers.

There are two main types of encryption: at-rest and in-transit. At-rest encryption refers to encrypting data that is stored on cloud servers. In-transit encryption protects data as it is being transmitted between different systems—for example, when you are sending an email or accessing a website.

Both at-rest and in-transit encryption are essential for securing cloud data. And while at-rest data is typically considered more secure because of its reduced attack surface, it is critical to ensure it’s adequately encrypted as it is targeted more by attackers.

Many different cloud encryption key management systems are available, so do your research and choose one that meets your organization’s specific needs.

Implementing Identity and Access Management

Another best practice for securing cloud data is implementing an identity and access management (IAM) system. IAM is a process of managing users’ identities, roles, and permissions. It is designed to allow authorized users access to the data and resources they need while preventing unauthorized entry.

IAM can be used to control who has access to your cloud servers and data and what actions they can take. For example, you can use IAM to grant read-only access to specific files or folders for some users while allowing others to read, write, and delete files.

Using Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an additional layer of security that can be added to cloud data platforms. MFA requires users to provide more than one piece of evidence (or factor) to verify their identity before being granted access to a system.

The most common type of MFA is two-factor authentication, which requires a user to provide a password and a one-time code generated by an app or sent via text message.

Adding MFA can help to further protect your cloud data by making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to your servers. Even if a user’s password is obtained, hackers would also need the one-time code making it less likely that your storage solutions could be compromised.

Establishing Real-Time Monitoring and Protection

Taking a proactive approach to cloud security is always best, and an effective way to do so is to establish real-time monitoring and protection. This means setting up alerts, so you are notified immediately if there is any suspicious activity on your cloud servers.

Most cloud data platforms have some form of built-in security monitoring that helps keep an eye on your servers and data, but many third-party cloud security tools can provide additional protection.

When deciding on the level of security monitoring and protection that is right for your organization, it is essential to consider the type of data you are storing in the cloud and the sensitivity of that data. For example, if you are storing financial or personal health information, you will need a higher level of security than what is needed to store basic contact information.

Either way, it is essential to have a form of monitoring and protection in place so you can quickly identify and respond to any potential threats before they evolve into business-wide security and compliance issues.

Balancing Cloud Flexibility and Adequate Security

Cloud data platforms offer flexibility, which is often one of the main reasons organizations choose to use them. However, this flexibility can also present some challenges when securing cloud data.

Organizations must strike a balance between providing adequate security for their cloud data and maintaining the flexibility they need to run their business.

The good news is that many different security measures can be taken to protect cloud data. With a proactive approach and by implementing the best security practices, organizations can keep their data safe while enjoying the benefits of using a cloud data platform.

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Does a Data Catalog Help Companies With Data Stewardship Programs?

#Data Catalog #Metadata Management

#Data Catalog #Metadata Management

By implementing a data stewardship program in your organization, you ensure not only the quality of your data but also that it can be used easily and effectively by all your employees. As a key player in data governance and management, the Data Steward needs specific tools, the first of which is the data catalog.

The role of data in companies is becoming increasingly strategic, and not just for large organizations. Indeed, to define business strategies, manage distribution, or organize production, the exploitation of data constitutes a major competitive advantage. To deliver its full potential, data must be reliable, of high quality, and perfectly organized. These characteristics are linked to a discipline: Data Stewardship.

The Data Steward, also known as the Master of Data, acts as the guarantor of optimal data exploitation. How? By centralizing all data, regardless of its source, in an environment that is accessible to all business lines in a simple, intuitive, and operational manner. A Data Stewardship program is based on a rigorous methodology, a global vision of available data, and an ambition to rationalize data to develop a strong data culture. However, vision, understanding, and methodology do not exempt the Data Steward from relying on the right tools to accomplish their missions: a data catalog is one of the essential tools for a successful Data Stewardship project.

A Data Catalog’s Objectives

A data catalog exploits metadata – data on data – to create a searchable repository of all enterprise information assets. This metadata, collected by various data sources (Big Data, Cloud services, Excel sheets, etc.), is automatically scanned to enable users of the catalog to search for their data and get information such as the availability, freshness, and quality of a data asset. A data catalog centralizes and unifies the metadata collected so that it can be shared with IT teams and business functions. This unified view of data allows organizations to:

Sustain a data culture.
Accelerate data discovery.
Build agile data governance.
Maximize the value of data.
Produce better and faster.
Ensure good control over data.

The Benefits of a Data Catalog for Data Stewards

From importing new data sources to tracking information updates, the ability of a data catalog to track and monitor metadata in real-time automatically allows data stewards to gain efficiency. A data catalog provides 360° visibility into your data from its origin to all of its transformations over time. There are four key benefits to using a data catalog as part of a Data Stewardship program:

Benefit 1: Maintain up-to-Date Documentation

Your data is constantly active. It is collected, valued, exploited, enriched… To have a perfect understanding of your data assets, you need up-to-date documentation regarding its data sources and how they are used. A data catalog is designed to do just that.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: Our catalog automatically retrieves and collects metadata through our APIs and scanners to always ensure that your data is up-to-date. View your data’s origins and transformations over time with our smart lineage capabilities.

Benefit 2: Ensure Data Quality

The first vocation of a data catalog is to keep a clear view of your data via metadata. The definitions, structures, sources, uses, procedures to follow…by nature, metadata management by a data catalog contributes to guarantee the quality of your data.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: Our data catalog enables your Data Stewards to build flexible metamodel templates for predefined and custom item types. Simply drag & drop your properties, tags, and other fields into your documentation templates for all your catalog items.

Benefit 3: Comply With Data Regulations

Compliance with data regulations is a crucial issue in a Data Stewardship program. A data catalog, through its ability to organize data and centralize it in a clear, healthy, and readable environment, helps to comply with these regulatory requirements.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: Through machine learning capabilities, our Data Catalog speeds up time-consuming tasks by analyzing similarities between existing personal data. It provides smart recommendations by identifying and giving suggestions to tag personal data.

Benefit 4: Monitor Data Lifecycle

Between governance, quality, and security, your Data Stewardship project implies monitoring the lifecycle of your data in real-time. The data catalog responds to this challenge by offering you the possibility to monitor all activities affecting your data.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: our data catalog provides Data Stewards with a dashboard that tracks and monitors metadata activity. Check the completion levels of your documentation, the most frequently accessed and searched for catalog items, the connectivity status of your catalog, and get smart recommendations on the sensitivity level and additional properties to add to your fields.

Organization, knowledge, transparency, scalability…a data catalog is tailored to accompany your Data Stewardship project.

Start a Data Stewardship Program

Actian Data Intelligence Platform Data Catalog provides a metadata management solution that enables Data Stewards to overcome the challenges associated with handling increasingly large volumes of data. Our solution helps organizations maximize the value of their data by reducing the time spent on complex and time-consuming documentation tasks, and by breaking data silos to increase enterprise data knowledge.

About Author

Keith Bolam is a veteran Data-Oli-gist at Actian, with nearly 40 years of hands-on experience in databases and operating systems. Since 1985, Keith has specialized in Data Application and Hierarchical Database design, focusing on Ingres technology and the x100 capability. He's guided teams through complex DB deployments, often presenting to user groups on data performance tuning. His Actian blog posts highlight best practices in database optimization and legacy system modernization. Check out his articles for deep dives into Ingres enhancements.

The Benefits of Cloud Compared to On-Premises

By Keith Bolam

#Cloud Data Warehouse #On-Premises

What are the benefits of cloud versus on-premises

By Keith Bolam

#Cloud Data Warehouse #On-Premises

Starting at the turn of the century, there has been a steady move to the cloud across industries. It started slowly at first but has evolved into a paradigm shift for many businesses.

Security-conscious players – bricks-and-mortar financial institutions, healthcare providers, retailers and utilities – have been slower than others in adopting the cloud. New digital-first FinTechs, however, have been much more aggressive in their strategies. In many cases, these businesses would not exist if it were not for the cloud.

Overwhelmingly, we see that businesses operating in the cloud enjoy much greater flexibility, allowing them to compete in a fierce market and adapt to customer demands quickly. Without the shackles of legacy applications and the need to support a slow-changing culture of manual checks and balances, they have expanded quickly. According to Foundry’s Cloud Computing Study 2022, “just 27% of companies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region currently have most or all of their IT environment in the cloud, compared to 41% globally – but they expect that to double to 53% in the next 18 months.” While APAC still has a way to go, it is positioned well to become a world leader in the cloud.

The companies that have been making investments in cloud, mobile computing, security, and big data are reporting higher growth than those that are predominantly on-premises based. Tech-aware companies and industry leaders are leveraging the advantages of the cloud-computing trend to modernize their operations. A paradigm shift is taking place, from individual investments to collaborative (cloud) investment. Companies are using cloud technology to operate their businesses differently, helping them to identify prospects, improve customer service, and, in turn, generate greater ROI.

Cloud computing is a practical solution for small and large businesses alike. A small business can use as much instantaneous computing power as a large business, which previously would have been impossible if they had to invest in the on-premises hardware and infrastructure.

The Benefits of Cloud

Cloud offers a wide range of benefits for many applications. Take, for example, the strategic use of data. Creating a cloud data platform gives organizations the ability to store, access, and analyze data without being held back by legacy technologies. Consider what these benefits can unleash when they’re applied to data.

No investment in on-premises hardware – It frees up limited financial CapEx so organizations can innovate and keep up with customers/competitors.
Genuinely highly resilient storage – Theoretically indestructible limitless storage for anything digital enables them to scale projects as needed.
The ability to locate compute near the point of consumption – While on-premises solutions tend to be in a limited number of data centers, cloud’s dispersed resources help users operate with more agility.
Robust security – Once thought of as risky, cloud security now provides as good or significantly better protection than on-premises security.
The option to pay as you go – Rather than pay a flat fee, organizations can scale usage and payments up and down seamlessly, avoiding unnecessary costs.

Taken together, all these benefits have enabled organizations to take advantage of the data revolution. Cloud data platforms give them the ability to process data quickly, scale their data usage as necessary, simplify their budgets and conduct deeper analyses of a wide range of data stores. The cloud paradigm shift has taken place – and it’s exerting its impact on the world of data.

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About Keith Bolam

All You Need to Know About the Data Governance Act

#Data Governance

#Data Governance

The Council of the European Union has just approved the Data Governance Act, a document that aims to facilitate the re-use of certain protected public sector data and encourage data sharing throughout the European Union while ensuring strict respect of data privacy. It should be executed by 2023.

When it comes to data, the European Union plays a major role. While the GDPR celebrated its fourth anniversary on May 25th, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union continue to work for a reasonable and responsible use of data. The Data Governance Act (also known as the DGA) has been in the works since 2019 – the result of a broad consultation covering the private and public sectors. Based on 11 workshops, the DGA is devoted to the strengthening of the control offered to individuals and legal entities on the use and dissemination of their data.

After an initial agreement on April 6th, 2022, to define the scope of the Data Governance Act, the Council of the European Union officially approved the DGA on May 16th, 2022. The Act is expected to be fully implemented by the summer of 2023. Beyond its main ambition, which is to define a unique and homogeneous framework for all European countries, the Data Governance Act is conceived as a legal instrument that should facilitate, fluidify, and rationalize the exploitation of data.

Unlike the GDPR, the Data Governance Act is not limited to personal data but has much broader ambitions. These are ambitions that not only frame good practices related to data governance but also encourage the exploitation of data from the public sector. Behind the DGA, there is a double aspiration: to preserve the freedom of the business while protecting data privacy.

What Exactly is the DGA?

To fulfill its mission of protecting data while creating the conditions for freeing up innovation and creativity, the Data Governance Act is based on four key principles.

The first principle concerns public actors. Like private sector companies, public agencies generate and use large amounts of data. This data falls under the scope of the GDPR and is subject to strict protection and oversight, whether it is personal data, privacy rights, or intellectual property. The DGA sets out a legal and technical framework that defines the rules for the re-use of this protected data, with essential levers such as anonymization or pseudonymization.

The second major component of the Data Governance Act is devoted to the sharing of data (personal or corporate) with non-profit organizations. The regulator’s ambition is to encourage innovation in the public interest in key sectors such as the environment and health sectors. A specific status called ‘altruistic organization’ will thus be created. To benefit from this status, it will be necessary to register officially via a European form and to respect a demanding framework, placed under the line of transparency.

The third principle of the DGA concerns the sharing of data between companies and private actors. These actors use intermediaries whose missions are redefined by the DGA. The principle is clear: to avoid that these intermediaries can exploit the information for their own purposes by sharing it. Once again, the DGA sets out the principle of total transparency, combined with an ambition for sovereignty. For example, these intermediaries must be located in the European Union or the European Economic Area.

Finally, the DGA institutes the creation of a European Data Innovation Council that will compile and share best practices related to data governance, with ongoing reflections on standardization at the European level.

What is the Impact of the Data Governance Act for Your Company?

While the DGA may seem restrictive in developing a precise framework, particularly for data intermediation, it is nevertheless a major step forward. Indeed, behind the native requirement inscribed in the spirit of the Data Governance Act, you will find above all, the ground of trust with your customers as well as your partner ecosystems. A trust that is essential to legitimize all data projects in the service of the efficiency and productivity of your company.

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Cloud Economics – The Advantage of Moving Your Data to the Cloud (TCO)

#Data Management

Digital cloud to illustrate how to calculate TCO

#Data Management

Cloud economics is a relatively new term, but it is growing in importance as businesses increasingly move their data to the cloud. As more organizations look for new ways to model their business in support of scalability and agility, it has become imperative that they better understand the short and long-term costs of cloud services.

There are many factors to consider when evaluating the economics of a move to the cloud, but one of the most important is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

What Exactly is Cloud Economics?

Cloud economics is the study of the financial impact of moving data and workloads to the cloud. This includes both the short-term and long-term costs associated with such a move, as well as any potential benefits that may be realized.

Understanding TCO

TCO is a financial metric that attempts to quantify all of the direct and indirect costs associated with a given investment over its lifetime. In the context of cloud computing, TCO analysis can be used to compare the costs of running a workload on-premises versus in the cloud.

There are several factors to consider when conducting a TCO analysis for cloud migration. You’ll need to think about short-term costs, such as data egress fees and one-time migration expenses. However, it is also essential to consider long-term costs, such as running and maintaining on-premises infrastructure and the opportunity cost of not taking advantage of cloud-native features and services.

Other vital things to keep in mind when evaluating TCO include:

Capex vs. Opex – While many believe that Opex is preferable, you may want to consider waiting for compelling reasons, such as data center decommissioning or hardware refreshes.
Labor – While the cloud can often require less human capital to operate, the cost of highly skilled cloud professionals may be higher than traditional data center staff.
Cost of Migration – This cost includes many facets, consultants, time, and risk. This is probably the biggest consideration and should be a big part of cloud planning.
Architecture – Vendor lock-in, portability, ecosystem integrations, and security all play a part in determining how to architect a shift to the cloud.

While TCO analysis can vary depending on the complexity of your business and its move to the cloud, it is essential to remember that the goal is to get a holistic view of all costs associated with a cloud transition. By understanding TCO, you can make more informed decisions about when, where, and how to plan and invest your resources.

The Advantages of Moving to the Cloud

As businesses calculate their TCO when moving data to the cloud, it becomes evident to most that there are many advantages to be gained. These benefits can be broken down into four main categories.

1. Increased Agility and Scalability

The cloud is an ideal platform for businesses looking to scale their operations quickly and easily. By moving to the cloud, you can take advantage of the elasticity and flexibility that the cloud provides, allowing you to scale up or down as needed. This can help you save on both capital and operational expenditures.

Additionally, the cloud allows you to quickly provision new resources and services as your business needs change. This increased agility can give you a competitive edge in today’s ever-changing business landscape and improve your customer experience.

2. Better Business Efficiency

The cloud can help you optimize your IT infrastructure and increase your operational efficiencies. By moving to the cloud, you can take advantage of features like auto-scaling and self-healing, which can help you reduce downtime and improve your overall efficiency.

The cloud also provides businesses with access to a global network of data centers, which can help you improve your latency and speed. This can be a significant advantage for businesses looking to improve customer experience. Additionally, all of the major cloud providers boast a robust set of ecosystem partners.

3. Enhanced Security

One of the common misconceptions about the cloud is that it is less secure than on-premises. However, this could not be further from the truth. In fact, the cloud can provide you with a number of security advantages.

When you move to the cloud, you gain access to a team of experts who are constantly working to keep your data safe. Additionally, the cloud provides you with robust security features like firewalls, intrusion detection, and encryption, which can help you protect your data. Of course, it’s important to remember that it’s a shared security model. In the most basic terms, your cloud provider secures the infrastructure, but your teams will still need to understand how to secure databases and applications.

4. Improved Disaster Recovery

The cloud can provide you with a robust disaster recovery solution that is scalable and reliable. By leveraging the cloud, you can ensure that your data is always protected and available, even in the event of a significant outage.

The cloud can also help you save on disaster recovery costs. With the cloud, you only pay for the resources you use, which can help you keep your disaster recovery costs to a minimum.

Bottom Line

When comparing costs between on-premise and cloud solutions, it is important to think about the total cost of ownership by considering all of the costs associated with a move to the cloud while also weighing the benefits of better scalability, agility, and improved business efficiency. Even with all the pros, there will always be situations, especially in highly regulated environments, where some data and applications will need to remain on-premises. Thankfully, hybrid cloud is also a viable choice and certainly should be considered as you plan for the ever-expanding future of cloud technology.

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What are the Benefits of Big Data in the Retail Industry?

#Artificial Intelligence #Big Data #Machine Learning

#Artificial Intelligence #Big Data #Machine Learning

The recent COVID-19 crisis has forced retail players to reinvent themselves and accelerate their digital transformation. To gain a competitive advantage, the retail industry must rely on Big Data. Personalized experiences, optimized pricing, supply-chain connectivity; discover how data has transformed the retail & e-commerce sector.

Figures from the FEVAD (Federation of e-commerce and distance selling) indicate that the e-commerce sector has exceeded 129 billion euros in 2021, up 15.1% since 2020. The increasing success of online vendors has attracted more and more historical retailers to launch their e-commerce adventures. The consequence? The line between e-retail and retail is becoming increasingly tenuous. According to the LSA/HiPay 2021 study, 63% of French shoppers say they have used click & collect at least once, 44% have had a product delivered to their home, and 37% have returned a product purchased online.

In this very competitive context, the use of Big Data, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, has many advantages for this industry.

Benefit 1: A 360° View of Customers

Faced with an increasing number of digital and omnichannel consumers, retail players can have a 360° view of their customers through data. Indeed, data plays a huge role in building a relationship between customers and the retailer by providing point-of-sale experts with in-depth knowledge about a customer or a product. With a better understanding of the customers, their habits and expectations, as well as the products that are sold, salespeople can have richer and more satisfying jobs. An advantage that can be seen as a response to the talent shortage affecting the industry.

But that’s not all. By using purchase records from a large portfolio of customers, retailers can use predictive analysis to adapt their offers in real-time. For example, companies can define specific personas or offer personalized discounts.

Benefit 2: Optimize Pricing

The analysis of supply and demand is a must for any business. In a hyper-competitive context, with tense consumer purchasing power, selling at the right price is an absolute necessity. One of the main guarantees of the use of data to optimize pricing is to preserve the attractiveness of the brand while protecting its margins.

This is even more critical for multi-site brands, spread over a vast territory. They must not only adapt their pricing based on customer expectations and behavior, but also to the competition in a given area – two major strategic levers for the retail industry.

Benefit 3: Innovate to Improve Products & Services

Under the effect of digitalization, consumer habits are evolving at a very fast pace. Brands must therefore constantly innovate. But innovating can be a risky and expensive process.

With data, retail players can rely on the knowledge they have on their customers’ preferences and expectations to define the roadmap for innovating their products and services. The challenge? Winning the race to constantly conquer new markets, while keeping the R&D budgets under control.

Benefit 4: Offer Personalized Shopping Experiences

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the explosion of online shopping has attracted a population that used to shop in physical stores. To differentiate themselves, retail players must do everything they can to offer personalized shopping experiences.

Data is the basis of all personalization, especially for retailers who have embarked on the path of e-commerce. The ambition? To exploit the knowledge of on and off-line customers to harmonize experiences. Optimized and controlled data allows retailers to take advantage of the benefits of digital platforms while reinforcing the quality of in-store contact.

Benefit 5: Fluidify the Supply-Chain

One of the reasons why customers will visit a physical store rather than purchase a product online is to make physical contact with the said-product. In fashion for example, trying on a piece of clothing almost always makes the difference. In addition, having the possibility of leaving with one’s purchase without shipping delays is one of the most important factors for purchasing in a physical store.

Optimized inventory management, fluidity of supplies, control of logistics costs… It is crucial to ensure the excellence of data in order to guarantee the availability of products at the point of sale.

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Technical Trifecta: The Future of Data Professionals

#Data Management

Group of data professionals reviewing information in a digital environment

#Data Management

Data-driven roles are in demand. According to research firm Deloitte, the number of postings for positions in data science, data engineering, machine learning (ML), and visualization now surpasses those for more familiar skill sets such as customer service, marketing, and public relations (PR).

For database administrators (DBAs), business technologists, and data engineers, this increasing demand comes with the opportunity to explore new roles within their organization and expand existing skill sets to make better use of emerging technologies.

But what comes next? Beyond the growing need for skilled data staff, what does the future hold for this trifecta of technology professionals? How will these roles evolve over the next few years to align with the growing impact of cloud technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) frameworks?

The Database Administrator: Delivering Dynamic Architecture

DBAs are responsible for managing, monitoring, and upkeep of SQL, NoSQL, Oracle, and other database environments. The advent of process automation and machine learning tools, however, has led to questions about the future of this role: If software tools can handle most of the heavy lifting when it comes to repetitive and error-prone tasks, where does that leave DBAs?

Moving forward, database administrators should expect a shift in priorities that sees them focusing on the dynamic nature of database architecting, capacity planning, and scaling to help businesses reliably access and leverage data across multiple clouds and on-premises instances. Put simply, the role of DBAs is shifting away from managing databases to assisting organizations in making the most of evolving and interconnected database architecture.

The Data Engineer: Abstracting the Source

Data engineers leverage their expertise to discover trends and develop new algorithms that help companies pinpoint actionable information within data sets. Historically, data sources defined the scope of this work—each unique source required its own set of processes and algorithms to facilitate effective data capture.

Consider user data stored across different databases. While the underlying asset—the user—remains the same in each case, disparate data sources meant different analysis models for each. Once extracted and formatted, data from different sets could then be combined to facilitate trend analysis and strategic decision-making.

The future of data engineering, however, is about abstracting the source. By leveraging both machine learning algorithms and AI frameworks, new engineering approaches are capable of capturing and understanding data in a way that’s set- and source-agnostic.

The Business Technologist: Finding Common Ground

Business technologists often have a combination of operations and development skills—for example, they may be data analytics experts who also have experience designing and building applications. This diversified expertise empowers technologists to help improve communication and collaboration across multiple departments. By functioning outside the traditional paradigm of IT, business technologists are better equipped to see the bigger picture and identify opportunities for increased efficiency.

The ongoing integration of IT into business processes at scale, however, sets the stage for an evolution of the business technologist role that broadens their communications strategy. This starts with the C-suite. To secure executive support and ensure appropriate funding for new IT projects, business technologies must now bridge the gap between technical and tactical communication to capture C-suite attention and encourage specific action.

There’s also a growing need for business technologists to cultivate connections with outside experts such as managed service providers. From data backup and disaster recovery solutions to on-demand data management platforms, there are now a host of solutions that can make business operations easier—if companies can pinpoint where they’re best used and how they can integrate with current operations.

The Evolving Future of Data Expertise

In the near term, data professionals will see increasing demand for their skills as businesses look to effectively leverage the volume, variety, and velocity of information produced across their networks.

Over the next few years, however, members of this technology trifecta should expect changes in their roles as technology continues to evolve. For DBAs, this means a move away from static management and monitoring to dynamic architecting and scaling. For data engineering staff, a shift to source-agnostic data analysis is on the horizon. And for business technologists, communication is key—not just across departments but outside traditional boundaries to leverage the potential of provider-driven expertise.

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The Customer Journey and the Role of Data

#Cloud Data Warehouse