Diary of an Asian Swing: Day 4

November 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

Halfway across the world you go to breakfast and see a neighbor is in your hotel too. How often does it happen? Today I saw an SAP colleague I worked with two decades ago at Sybase – and his colleague, with whom I’ll meet while in Singapore. Great start to the day.

This day was all business. Met several Gartner clients to talk Big Data (since that was my billing.) Interest is high, and like North American firms, one of the key questions, as always, is Value. “What are people doing? What is proving useful from a business perspective?”

Gartner’s local office is beautiful – two floors in a thriving business neighborhood in one of the world’s most vibrant cities. I was told per capita income here is the second highest in the world, and the way the city is kept continues to impress: clean, efficient, beautifully designed and planted with fabulous flora everywhere. Our people here are professional, motivated, friendly and prepared for all our meetings, making sure I know who we’re meeting with and why.

It was a busy, stimulating day capped with dinner with my colleague Arun Chandrasekaran in the Pan Pacific Hotel’s restaurant. Multiple serving stations with different cuisines: Indian, Cantonese, Japanese…. that marvelous Singaporean polyglot cuisine I love. And if the food was good, the conversation was even better. Arun and I talked about how his infrastructure research and my software focus converged in big data and what our next collaboration should be after the Hadoop pilots piece we’re nearing completion on now.

Closing the day with a little BBC World in my room, I watched the pre-election coverage, amused by the overloading of the “battleground states” metaphor when I switched to CNN. They even referred to reporters “embedded” there. Please. Thank goodness this overpriced, overheated exercise will soon be complete. And after all the sound and fury, I don’t expect much will have changed.

Filed under Hadoop, Industry trends, Research Industry Tagged with , , , , , ,

Diary of an Asian Swing: Day 3

November 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

This was a day of transition. No meetings in Hong Kong, so after a leisurely breakfast and a look at the news, I settled down for a rare session of uninterrupted writing. It was still Sunday back home, so the email was relatively caught up and I could focus. Finished first drafts of some Gartner Magic Quadrant DW DBMS content and sent them off to colleagues for review and assembly into our eventual document.

This MQ is my second, and I’m really enjoying the process this time now that I’m not trying to figure out what happens next. I’m especially pleased with the process of combining interview data from customer interviews and analysis of our inquiry traffic – hundreds for each of the four authors – with surveys we conducted specifically for the report.

Mark Beyer built a fantastic link for feeding survey criteria measured by numeric scores from customers directly into relevant cells on our underlying spreadsheet. We had already done some collective scoring of our own in those cells, and the new exercise showed us how customers read the same issues. And it moved some of the scores significantly, with some vendors doing better than we expected in some areas, and others getting hammered. When a sizable number of survey respondents highlight an issue like support as a serious weakness, one has to take notice.

Several hours of uninterrupted time, a luxury that made the work move quickly, gave way to a decision about what to do with a free afternoon. I decided to use it for more work, so instead of an excursion I headed to the airport hours ahead of schedule to work in the attractive Cathay Pacific lounge. But I was surprised by a helpful check-in agent who told me there was an earlier flight I could get onto. As a result, I arrived in spectacular Singapore late in the evening instead of well into the night, and was in my hotel for a good night’s rest before early morning meetings the next day.

And of course, working on the place – even without wi-fi – was just as good as working in the lounge. So I had the chance to complete a new draft of a forthcoming Hadoop Pilot Best Practices piece and send it off to a collaborator. A good day indeed.

Filed under Data Management, Data Warehousing, DBMS, Hadoop, The Computing Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Diary of an Asian Swing: Day 2

November 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

(Written on iPhone) Typical Eurostyle breakfast. Learn at desk that I DO have a TV, but have to slide picture over to reveal it. Feel remarkably stupid.
A little work, then onto subway. Like everything else here, clean, efficient, modern and packed with people – most playing with their smartphones. I’m the only Anglo in my car. Signs in cars that illuminate stops, connections, which side door will open. Off toward Victoria Peak, near Sheung Wan station at end of line. But think better of it: Macau ferry is here. Change of plans and 10 minutes later I’m on an equally crowded ferry (but with a [lousy] reserved seat.) It’s very hazy and I can’t get to an open window or outside anyway, so no pictures.

(Back on computer) Lovely ride, bit a disappointment when I got there. Entering Macau through the ferry terminal is like going to NY and arriving via the Port Authority Bus Terminal. You won’t form a good impression. There is no nice harborside park. The place seems designed to draw the gambling crowd – the elevated walkway I took after the 45 minute immigration process took me right onto a casino floor. (I could have taken a cab, or a courtesy bus to the Wynn or one of the other new splashy joints, but that’s not what I was there for.) After a few minutes determining there was nothing within reasonable walking distance I wanted to see, I turned around and went back to Hong Kong. Another nice boat ride, easy transfer back to the subway and the hotel. Not much of an adventure. But I enjoyed myself nonetheless.

Next up, a few hours of work – more Magic Quadrant stuff. Then a light dinner and an early night. Feeling a little jet lagged in that disconnected sort of way, although I’m not tired.

Filed under Industry trends

Diary of an Asian Swing: Day 1

November 3, 2012 by Leave a comment

I’ve never been a diarist. But as an exercise, I’m going to document this trip: two weeks on the road to Asia and Australia. Almost all work, though there is one day of weekend and recovery time built in.

Friday, Nov 2. Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. Business class. Comfortable, well-appointed cabin. Friendly, courteous staff.

Learned system, table, storage, seat. NO WIFI! OMG. 14 unconnected hours – that’s what stimulated the idea to blog. Otherwise I would have been tweeting a lot. Which is fun, but this will be a change. Let’s start with some entertainment and settle in….

Video presentation of Sir Paul McCartney’s Kisses on the Bottom. Diana Krall. John Pizzarelli. Joe Walsh! It’s delightful – commentary, moments of studio play, tenderness. No real edge, but that’s not what it’s about. Luscious melody, beautiful jazz harmonies. Diana is a sideman here and a brilliant one. McCartney is who he is – always a touch too smooth and a touch too sweet, but it works so well here. Wonderful selection of songs and I love his own Valentine one.

Next up is a video piece about the Who’s Quadrophenia. Clearly part of Townshend’s current campaign to remind the world of his brilliant work – and well done. A good narrative sprinkled with revelatory bits about Moon, and Daltrey, and the terrible chaos they endured. Live performance footage and some nice stuff at the control board with Pete and the engineers highlighting dimensions of the music.

Now, it’s time to get to work – pick some music for background, get the computer out. Found Xuefei Yang – guitarist, playing Bach. Lovely tone, tempos, clarity. Don’t know her. Will fix that. And now to work – Magic Quadrant writing.

Wait. First a survey by Cathay Pacific. Why not?

A few Magic Quadrant hours reviewing interviews, surveys, briefing content, and our own scoring and it’s on to writing up a draft for one of the vendors and sending it off for my colleagues to comment and collaborate on the content.

Now, a break. I’ve earned one. Stretch the legs, a few exercises…

Treated to a reboot of the airplane’s computer system. Red Hat, it turns out. A parade of system level messages marched across the screen, unfathomable to anyone unfamiliar with Linux. The darkness, and eventually, a blessed progress bar, followed by the return of the flight map. We’ve passed over Siberia and the Gulf of Shelekhova; now we’re over the Sea of Okhotsk, only 6 and a half hours to go.

A moment to update this diary and a little reading – music choice Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton. Really? Didn’t know about this one. Would love to look it up on the net, but NO WIFI. Oh well, a little Time magazine, and then some Hadoop Operations by Eric Sammer.

Eric’s book is highly recommended – lucid, well written and doesn’t demand extraordinary technical depth to understand. Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Hadoop-Operations-Eric-Sammer/dp/1449327052/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351944059&sr=1-1&keywords=hadoop+operations 

Arrived on time. Hong Kong continues to impress: efficient, clean, modern as I remembered. Nice hotel. Good wifi. Sent off MQ writeups to colleagues and synchronized all the email I did while offline. Time to crash. Day One is done.

Filed under Data Management, Hadoop, Mapreduce Tagged with , , , ,

Guest Post: Leading the Logical Data Warehouse Charge Has its Challenges

February 24, 2012 by Leave a comment

From my colleague Mark Beyer, who speculates about how leadership in moving toward the logical data warehouse (LDW) will be received: 

The logical data warehouse is already creating a stir in the traditional data warehouse market space. Less than 5% of clients with implemented warehouses that we speak with are pursuing three or more of the six aspects of a logical warehouse: 

  • repositories
  • data virtualization
  • distributed processes
  • active auditing and optimization
  • service level negotiation
  • ontological and taxonomic metadata

That means we are in a very early stage regarding the adoption trend, and vendors who are aggressively moving toward it are ahead of their customers.

..more…

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Apache Hadoop 1.0 Doesn’t Clear Up Trunks and Branches Questions. Do Distributions?

January 22, 2012 by Leave a comment

In early January 2012, the world of big data was treated to an interesting series of product releases, press announcements, and blog posts about Hadoop versions.  To begin with, we had the announcement of Apache version 1.0 at long last, in a press release. Although there were grumblings here and there in the twittersphere that changes to release numbers are meaningless, my discussions with Gartner’s enterprise customers indicate otherwise. Products with release numbers like 0.20.2 make the hair on Procurement’s neck stand on end, and as Hadoop begins to get mainstream attention (Gartner’s clients, see Hype Cycle for Data Management 2011), IT architects and executives find such optics quite important. Hadoop is moving beyond pioneers like Amazon, Yahoo! and LinkedIn into shops like JP Morgan Chase, and they pay attention to such things.

…more…

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Mark Beyer, Father of the Logical Data Warehouse, Guest Post

November 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

Another guest post, this time from my colleague and friend Mark Beyer.

My name is Mark Beyer, and I am the “father of the logical data warehouse”. So, what does that mean? First,  if like any father, you are not willing to address your ancestry with full candor you will lose your place in the universe and wither away without making a meaningful contribution. As an implementer in the field, I was a student and practitioner of both Inmon and Kimball. I learned as much or more from my clients and my colleagues during multiple implementations as I did from studying any methodology. My Gartner colleagues challenged my concepts and helped hammer them into a comprehensive and complete concept. Simply put, I was willing to consider DNA contributions from anyone and anywhere, but through a form of unnatural selection, persisted in choosing to include the good genes and actively removing the undesirable elements.

more…

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Beyond Moneyball: How Organizations Can Use Collaborative Decision Making to Succeed

September 25, 2011 by Leave a comment

 Having just seen the movie myself, I was delighted to receive this guest post from my colleague Rita Sallam, a Research Director here who focuses on Analytics, BI, and Performance Management. It’s a good read.

As demonstrated in movie “Moneyball”, starring Brad Pitt and opening in theaters today (http://www.moneyball-movie.com/), professional sports teams are increasingly using data mining and statistical analysis to find the players that best correlate to success.

 This approach has resulted in the displacement of many long-held, but less relevant, performance statistics and “gut feel” recruiting approaches. Many successful teams are building on – and supplementing – this fact-based approach to winning by using collaborative decision making (CDM) platforms that enable key team decision makers to assess, weight and optimize a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures used to select the best players at any one time to meet their specific team needs.

more…

Filed under Industry trends

Hadoop Distributions And Kids’ Soccer

July 18, 2011 by 3 Comments

The big players are moving in for a piece of the big data action.  IBM, EMC, and NetApp have stepped up their messaging, in part to prevent startup upstarts like Cloudera from cornering the Apache Hadoop distribution market. They are all elbowing one another to get closest to “pure Apache” while still “adding value.” Numerous other startups have emerged, with greater or lesser reliance on, and extensions or substitutions for, the core Apache distribution. Yahoo! has found a funding partner and spun its team out, forming a new firm called Hortonworks, whose claim to fame begins with an impressive roster responsible for most of the code in the core Hadoop projects. Think of the Doctor Seuss children’s book featuring that famous elephant, and you’ll understand the name.

While we’re talking about kids – ever watch young kids play soccer? Everyone surrounds the ball. It takes years to learn their position on the field and play accordingly. There are emerging alphas, a few stragglers on the sidelines hoping for a chance to play, community participants – and a clear need for governance. Tech markets can be like that, and with 1600 attendees packing late June’s Hadoop Summit event, all of those scenarios were playing out. Leaders, new entrants, and the big silents, like the absent Oracle and Microsoft.

–more–

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IBM Fills Out Netezza Lineup With High Capacity Appliance

June 23, 2011 by Leave a comment

In the months since IBM closed its Netezza acquisition, the data warehouse appliance pioneer has been busy, if the announcements at this week’s Enzee are any indication. An enthusiastic crowd – 1000 strong – heard CEO Jim Baum deliver the news: new hardware, software and partnerships.The biggest news was The Appliance Formerly Known As Cruiser, now known as the Netezza High Capacity Appliance (HCA). A wag made up some t-shirts bearing the acronym TAFKAC and did quite well. IBM is aiming to push the size perception for Netezza higher. How high? Half a PB in a rack. You can scale it to 10PB.

more…

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