Data Virtualisation at EDW 2011

Just completed my presentation on The role of Data Virtualisation at Enterprise Data World 2011. Really lively discussion on the big drivers for DV.

Fundamentally it's to:

• Mask Complexity;
• Improve Agility
• Reduce Cost.

Check out my earlier post on DV here.

Now what kind of error caused this?

Early this morning, sighted in the river Avon, close to my office in my home town of Bath was what appeared to be a stranded naval vessel.

Bath is home to several Royal Navy departments

including Submarine design, however none of their designs have previously been seen outside the confines of the secure MoD establishments.

Curious onlookers gazed from Pulteney bridge and wondered what kind of navigation data error caused this. 

Or maybe it was a date er error ;)

 

  

I wish I'd said that

Have you ever had one of those moments when you thought "I wish I'd said that"?
Well, I was getting my head together in preparation for my conference presentation next week at Enterprise Data World in Chicago.  Well, although I've already submitted my slides for a talk on Data Virtualisation as a viable Data Integration approach, I thought I'd do some last minute research. From companies I've worked with I'm very aware of the benefits Data Virtualisation can bring particualrly for flexibility & rapid time to solution.  But I wanted to get some more quotes - so off to friendly Google I went.  Pretty quickly I came across a variety of finds including  
“The difficulties in dealing with the ongoing data explosion and the proliferation of ever-more diverse data sources has resulted in companies being open to reevaluating their data integration strategies,”
Wow - just what I'm after .  A little bit more digging & I also found 
“The availability of a new generation of data virtualization tools and business intelligence (BI) solutions which easily integrate with ERP systems has undoubtedly provided real benefit in reducing overall time to solution and a business opportunity for those organizations who best leverage those data assets,”  
Excellent - I'll use that last one in my presentation.  Now, who said it?  Well apparantly I did :)

National Australia MDM, Governance and Regulations

National Australia Group Europe, MDM, DG & Financial Regulations:  Tuesday 22nd March 2011, 10:05am  IRM MDM/DG Europe Conference.

Martin Campbell & Tim Franklin described Clydesdale Bank's (part of NAGE) approach to Customer MDM and Data. governance. Campbell described the Bank's challenges & importance of executive buy in. The FSCS regulatory issues were of utmost importance & fixed time constraints for these had to be achieved.
Franklin outlined the IPL Information Architecture Framework (IAF) and how the governance component of the IAF was expanded to initially benchmark & then form the basis of the Bank's Data Governance approach.

Of particular interest was the importance of establishing principles & getting early buy in for these; the IPL IAF proved to be a useful jump start here.

Overall very interesting & practical.

MDM the next decade; Go early go governance

MDM the next decade; Go early go governance: Tuesday 22nd March 9AM at the MDM/DG 2011 Europe conference.

Aaron Zornes presented some interesting statistics and speculation regarding the future of MDM. I agree with the thought that the trend is towards pro-active DG for MDM
Despite the European tag on the talk both the spelling and the content was still very US centric. Most surprising was continual mention of ETL and SOA technologies to support DG - fine in themselves, but very surprising that nothing was mentioned on data federation/virtualisation.  This made me question just how up to date the thinking really is.
Overall I came away rather disappointed.

I'm presenting at Data Governance 2011 - London

Monday 21st - Wednesday 23rd March sees the 2011 IRM MDM/ DG Europe Conference in London. On Wednesday afternoon I'm presenting a case study with Colin Wood on Clinical Data Governance.  If you're in town at the conference, be sure to stop by and say hello.

BA Air Miles - What's the point?

Massively frustrated at the unavailability of seats that you can use BA miles on.
As a loyal BA customer over the years I'm now seriously wondering just what is the point.


I've got lots of miles and Amex companion vouchers. Back around Christmas my family & I thought we'd like to do a mega holiday in July, August or September this year, particularly having had two family bereavements in 2010. We fancied San Francisco, Vancouver, Australia or New Zealand and have enough miles for all 4 of us to go First or Business Class. After several days of searching availability & then phoning BA we were told there are no available miles redemption seats - to any of those destinations.  This despite availability showing if you buy with cash. "What about buy with cash & upgrade with miles" I inquired. Can't do that either :(    What about nearby cities LA, Seattle?  No BA air miles seats available to those either!


Just this week I again tried to use some BA miles, this time for a run of the mill business trip to Chicago in mid April. I received the same story again. No availability of any miles redemption seats. Once again I tried to buy with cash & upgrade with miles and once again was told no go despite lots of availability showing if you buy with cash.


So I'm wondering, unless you book miles redemption seats a full year in advance (apparently that's when the paltry few actually get released) then just what is the point in being a loyal customer & collecting BA miles?