Data Centers are the focus of increased scrutiny and renewed interest as more and more power consumption and resource statistics show eye-popping figures. A significant aspect of energy consumption is dedicated to data center cooling systems, which are crucial for maintaining optimal operating temperatures and preventing hardware failure. Current estimates suggest that data centers account for 3% of global electricity consumption, with predictions indicating a rise to a potential 10% by 2030.
Posted December 09, 2024
Big data is continuing to proliferate at organizations, this time spurred by AI and machine learning within enterprise software tools, followed by advancements in software for managing unstructured data, and the substantial increase in data volume. To help make the process of identifying useful products and services easier, each year, DBTA presents a list of Trend-Setting Products, highlighting a commitment to innovation and to provide organizations with tools to address changing market requirements.
Posted December 05, 2024
At a time when every enterprise looks to leverage generative artificial intelligence, data sites are turning their attention to graph databases and knowledge graphs. The global graph database market size was $2.12 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $10.3 billion in 2032, according to estimates from Adroit Research. These databases enable data managers and analysts to model, store, and query complex and increasingly interconnected relationships between datapoints. They also are employed to construct knowledge graphs that can cut through data silos, enable semantic searches, and support chatbots and recommendation engines.
Posted November 14, 2024
Many organizations have a false sense of confidence when it comes to databases and their vulnerability, believing that if their database is hit by a ransomware attack, it will automatically cease operations to indicate an attack has taken place. Then, they can just restore the last clean version of the database, and everything will be fine.
Posted November 14, 2024
In DBTA's recent webinar, The Future of Open: What's Next in Lakehouse Architecture, experts offered their perspectives on why open lakehouse architectures continue to be a popular vehicle for enabling modernization and innovation across the enterprise, examining the latest trends, tools, and emerging best practices.
Posted November 14, 2024
AI—both generative and machine learning/statistical—is essentially dead in the water without well-vetted, timely, quality data. This is holding back AI efforts more than anticipated, a recent survey finds. Data issues hampering AI were explored in a recent survey released by Precisely and Drexel University, which exposed widespread data trust issues and its impact on data and AI initiatives. Data quality and governance have hampered organizations for decades, and such deeply rooted distrust in the data is now being reflected in their embrace of AI output.
Posted October 10, 2024
Software development has come a long way in the past few decades, but data management hasn't. It's time to change that. Despite automation becoming more ubiquitous, many engineering teams are still managing databases manually—a practice that can be time-consuming and complex, slowing down developers and impeding overall productivity. Additionally, current models force database administrators (DBAs) to work within silos, which creates logjams and communication lapses. It also leaves more room for error.
Posted October 10, 2024
In today's digital landscape, delivering exceptional user experiences has become a top objective for businesses across industries. As applications and digital touchpoints increase, understanding user behavior within these platforms is crucial for driving product innovation and business growth. However, collecting, managing, and reporting on user data has traditionally been a complex and resource-intensive endeavor, often requiring significant engineering resources.
Posted October 10, 2024
In DBTA's webinar, Modern Data Architecture for AI, John O'Brien, principal advisor and industry analyst at Radiant Advisors, led experts through a thorough discussion of how to cultivate the right data infrastructure to support AI initiatives, from leading best practices to key technologies.
Posted September 12, 2024
We decided this Sourcebook was timely, given how enterprise AI has caught mainstream attention and triggered the imaginations of those working in IT, knowledge management, and a score of other areas within the enterprise. AI is dominating headlines, and people want to know how they can best apply the various technologies under the AI banner.
Posted August 26, 2024
With the recent AI boom, data is being created and generated at unprecedented rates. Per the latest estimates, 402.74 million terabytes of data are created each day. This increase calls for a paradigm shift in company efficiency—quickly enabling enterprises to uncover quality insights and effective organization of this data. To help organizations progress along their data-driven journeys, each year, DBTA presents the Readers' Choice Awards, which provide the opportunity to recognize companies whose products have been selected by the experts—our readers!
Posted August 13, 2024
In many organizations, microservices have become the default method of application building and deployment, leveraging containers and Kubernetes. The resulting architecture has been a flexible network of services that provide resiliency by operating independently, unaffected by potential failures in other parts of the system. Recently, however, some technology leaders have been questioning if this is the best way to build.
Posted August 08, 2024
There is a confluence of activity—including generative AI models, digital twins, and shared ledger capabilities—that are having a profound impact on helping enterprises meet their goal of becoming data driven. Capturing data, converting it into the right insights, and integrating those insights quickly and efficiently into business decisions and processes is generating a significant competitive advantage for those who do it right.
Posted August 08, 2024
With today's data-driven practices and AI demands, there has never been more pressure on data managers and professionals to deliver real-time, high-quality information when and where it is needed. Many organizations are struggling to achieve such a level of "data management maturity," in which data is provided on an agile, automated basis.
Posted August 08, 2024
Despite the overwhelming promise of AI, its rapid proliferation has been accompanied by some unwanted side effects, including a dramatic uptick in cyberattacks— particularly social engineering attacks like phishing, which have grown 1,265% since late 2022. As a result, organizations across industries are faced with an ever-evolving challenge: balancing the positive use cases associated with AI, such as automated monitoring and streamlined workflows, with its very real risks.
Posted August 08, 2024
SAP platforms, used by 99 of the Fortune 100 companies and with over 280 million cloud subscribers worldwide, are among the most reliable business applications. As SAP administrators, your role in maintaining the security of these platforms is crucial. However, the platform's popularity makes it a prime target for hackers to exploit Structured Query Language (SQL) injections and directory traversal vulnerabilities, which are only two specific risks in a much larger group.
Posted July 11, 2024
While AI has been the talk of science fiction-aficionados and tech-enthusiasts for many years, it wasn't until the tail-end of 2022 that AI entered the mainstream conversation with generative AI and the popularity of ChatGPT technologies. To help readers gain a greater understanding about this complex area of information technology, the solutions available, and their role in handling real-world challenges, DBTA and Big Data Quarterly present the list of Awesome Companies in AI.
Posted July 10, 2024
Never before has the business spotlight been on database managers and professionals as it is at this time. Every business leader now wants a data-driven organization, as they recognize this is the key to competitive differentiation. Data monetization is seen as a vast new revenue source. AI—both operational and generative—relies on effective data management and quality. The ongoing transition to digital business demands real-time delivery of insights to end users and applications.
Posted June 13, 2024
Two surveys show that many executives are skeptical they can move forward with AI demands, which include the right data, at the right time. AI is a high priority, and is in production at most sites, but supplying trustworthy data is still a challenge at the back end.
Posted June 13, 2024
The world of open source has moved from being a niche interest that was the province of academics and self-described geeks to the mainstream. From being the purview of free software interest groups, open source is now ubiquitous. According to OpenUK, open source is used by 78% of private enterprises, and open source components and code are present in roughly 97% of all applications, proprietary or otherwise.
Posted June 13, 2024
To help bring new resources and innovation to light, each year, Database Trends and Applications magazine presents the DBTA 100, a list of forward-thinking companies seeking to expand what's possible with data for their customers. Spanning the wide range of established legacy technologies from MultiValue to cutting-edge breakthroughs such as the data lakehouse, data mesh, and data fabric, the DBTA 100 is a list of hardware, software, and service providers working to enable their customers' data-driven future.
Posted June 06, 2024
At the annual Data Summit conference, Bharath Vasudevan, head of product, erwin, Quest, led the session, "Making AI Ethical & Explainable," considered how consistent, clean, and curated datasets are key in bridging the gap between data and the real-world, enabling AI to transcend "magic" and ground itself in transparent truth.
Posted May 09, 2024
Are you taking a hard look at your cloud costs this budgeting season? Is your IT budget getting eaten up without a good ROI to show for it? Do you need to justify your cloud expenses and business cases to leadership? At Data Summit 2024, Michael Agarwal, director and global practice leader, site reliability engineering, cloud and NoSQL databases, Datavail, discussed cloud cost optimization strategies, tips, and best practices during his session, "Cloud Cost Optimization: Strategies, Tips, & Best Practices."
Posted May 09, 2024
Aaron Cutshall, enterprise data architect, Healthfirst, Inc., and Niraj Vora, lead sales engineer, Fivetran, joined the annual Data Summit session, "Moving to a Modern Data Architecture," to examine the multitude of nuance associated with cultivating modern data architecture, focusing on the roles that clear frameworks and centralized data strategies have to play.
Posted May 09, 2024
Doug Laney opened Data Summit 2024 with a look at Infonomics in the era of AI. Laney, innovation fellow, data and analytics strategy, West Monroe, and Author of Infonomics and Data Juice, visiting professor at University of Illinois Gies College of Business, shared insights from his best-selling book, Infonomics, about how organizations can actually treat information as an enterprise asset.
Posted May 09, 2024
Data insights have never been more vital to business operations than they are today. Line-of-business (LOB) teams rely on data insights to drive sustainable growth, lead business operations, and understand customer behaviors and needs. The growing demand for data analytics has spurred a flourishing $31 billion-plus industry of established and emerging tech companies—but is the data analytics tech stack working for enterprises? Despite years of investment and effort, research indicates that 95% of businesses still struggle with operational challenges around data and analytics, leaving only 5% with the competitive advantage data-driven decision making delivers.
Posted April 11, 2024
Data management needs AI and machine learning (ML), and, just as important, AI/ML needs data management. As of now, the two are connected, with the path to successful AI "intrinsically linked to modern data management practices," said Dan Soceanu, senior product manager for AI and data management at SAS. Blazing this path requires "prioritizing data quality, accessibility, and governance."
Posted April 11, 2024
AI talent is in high demand; AI reveals brain oscillations for memory and disease; AI may allow us to talk to whales; AI can help plan meals and other tasks; an AI platform for dentistry just raised $53 million. That was the tip of the AI news iceberg—in one day. Has technology ever garnered so much interest, so widely, so fast? Amid the hype lies the incalculable promise of AI—and the fear of getting left behind by competitors that figure it out first. It's no wonder that organizations are rushing to implement AI, ready or not. The trouble is, many are not ready.
Posted April 11, 2024
Data makes the world go round, but there are gaps in the data needed to make the products and raw materials that move around the world. Unforeseen events around the globe—such as weather, wars, ships running aground, or infrastructure issues such as the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse that closed the main shipping lane in and out of the Port of Baltimore—can wreak havoc with even the most carefully planned supply chains.
Posted April 11, 2024
Regulations are constantly evolving, becoming more punitive with larger fines and penalties every year. As a result, there is a collective industry movement toward the continuous improvement of cybersecurity in business and their ecosystem. This includes understanding what policies and processes must be implemented to remain compliant.
Posted March 14, 2024
Public cloud has skyrocketed to become the indisputable go-to destination for new IT workloads, especially for data. And while the cloud is full of advantages over on-premises data platforms, cost optimization rarely makes that list. Since modern data professionals' roles encompass building and maintaining this platform, they should also be aware of how to objectively reduce the data platform costs to eliminate this enormous, missed business opportunity.
Posted February 08, 2024
The momentous transformation putting data managers and their systems at the helm of modern enterprises has only begun. Industry leaders and experts agree that it's critical for data managers and team leaders to design today's data architectures to meet the demands of a digital economy, from cloud to real-time streaming to AI.
Posted February 08, 2024
Both operational and generative AI depend on distilling reliable data sources. A new survey, however, finds they are being overwhelmed by data sources and providing the data needed to deliver insights. In a survey of 600 chief data officers and data professionals released by Informatica, 41% admit they're juggling 1,000 or more data sources. A number, 79%, expect to increase in 2024.
Posted February 08, 2024
Much like organizations in every sector, federal government agencies run on data. The universal challenge of dealing with massive amounts of data every day, while leveraging the right data at the right time, is also very much front and center for government agencies. Amid the growth of computing platforms, mobile devices, and cloud environments, government agencies have steadily added new systems and capabilities, but they've often integrated those systems on an ad hoc basis—as point solutions to address specific needs.
Posted February 08, 2024
Cybersecurity is more crucial than ever, especially for enterprise applications running the SAP platform. Why put a spotlight on SAP platforms? Because SAP platforms are used by 99 of the Fortune 100 companies and have more than 280 million cloud subscribers worldwide. Many companies run SAP ERP, SAP SRM, and SAP HCM environments while simultaneously moving SAP implementations to the cloud. Due to the massive scaling of SAP systems, organizations are losing track of their vulnerability as hyperscalers, SaaS models, on-prem, and cloud-based systems continue to expand the attack surface.
Posted January 11, 2024
In the year ahead, data managers and their enterprises will be at a crossroads. Organizations will be leaning more heavily than ever on data—and the teams that manage it—for success with their customers, markets, and operations. The world of data is changing rapidly, and with it, its role in the business, from sitting on databases in the back end to competitive differentiation. Data is driving everything, everywhere.
Posted January 11, 2024
Data managers, administrators, engineers, and analysts know more than anyone what kind of data is available to enterprises seeking to compete in the AI and analytics age. However, their perceptions of data quality are slipping—even though data quality has increased in importance due to the rise of analytics, AI, IoT, data monetization, and other next-generation initiatives.
Posted January 11, 2024
Data continues to grow and is poised to double in 2024. To help make the process of identifying useful products and services easier, each year, DBTA presents a list of Trend-Setting Products. These products, platforms, and services range from long-established offerings that are evolving to meet the needs of their loyal constituents to breakthrough technologies that may only be in the early stages of adoption.
Posted December 06, 2023
Data quality is becoming a hot button issue as more and more businesses aggressively move into artificial intelligence (AI)—both generative and operational—which requires massive amounts of accurate and timely data. The rise of large language models (LLMs)—both publicly available as well as contained within enterprises—to support business decision making and customer communications means data is being pressed into service in new and highly demanding ways as training data and real-time streaming feeds.
Posted November 30, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence that aims to balance the needs of cutting-edge technology companies with national security and consumer rights, creating an early set of guardrails that could be fortified by legislation and global agreements. The order is an initial step that is meant to ensure that AI is trustworthy and helpful, rather than deceptive and destructive. The order—which will likely need to be augmented by congressional action—seeks to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy.
Posted October 31, 2023
According to Gartner, global spending on the public cloud is expected to increase by approximately 20.7% to reach $591.8 billion (about $1,800 per person in the U.S.) in 2023. The advantages of migrating to the cloud are widely recognized. By adopting cloud-first models, businesses can move away from traditional, fixed-cost methods of managing IT infrastructure. Cloud migration allows for controllable, agile, and secure operations that can easily scale as needed while optimizing costs.
Posted October 12, 2023
It may be well-understood that cybersecurity needs to be front and center in all technology projects, but organizations are still slow or hesitant to fully commit to it. This is becoming a problem for data-intensive organizations, which need to brace for an onslaught of both external and internal threats. Only about one-half of organizations are beginning to recognize how important cybersecurity is from the start in any transformation effort, an Accenture survey of 3,000 executives shows.
Posted October 12, 2023
For most enterprises these days, hyperscale data workloads and AI have become the norm and are driving data strategies. However, while conventional wisdom dictates that this means greater reliance on cloud services and cutting-edge approaches to manage data pipelines, there's a place for more well-tread approaches as well. Many data managers intend to beef up their data warehouse capabilities and even return to on-prem systems in the near future.
Posted October 12, 2023
Today's applications—including enterprise applications—need to be always on and always available and often must serve a global base of users who expect almost instantaneous response times regardless of where they are located. Meeting these challenges doesn't just mean happier users: There are direct bottom-line benefits for every business able to tackle the underlying issues of low latency and ultra-high availability. Because of the fundamental role the database plays in every application tech stack, the most logical place to tackle these issues is at the database layer. One of the best and most cost-effective ways to do this is by deploying applications on top of a distributed relational database.
Posted October 12, 2023
Cisco announced it's acquiring Splunk, the cybersecurity and observability leader, building on Splunk's heritage of helping organizations enhance their digital resilience and will accelerate Cisco's strategy to securely connect everything to make anything possible.
Posted September 22, 2023
For more and more organizations, real time is not only the right time—it's the only time that matters. No longer can decision makers afford to only understand the material events affecting their businesses a month, a day, or even just a few hours after the fact. They need a sense of what is happening in the moment to be able to predict and adjust for events that are arising. The value of real-time data "is that it provides needed information to accelerate business insights so teams can make better informed decisions and avoid the issues around using older data," said Tarun Chopra, vice president of product management for data and AI at IBM.
Posted August 10, 2023
Existing data infrastructures are crumbling under the weight of data, leading to unsustainable energy consumption, increased management complexity, and declining security. That's the word from a recent survey of 1,288 executives, released by Hitachi Vantara. The survey also finds 76% feel their current data infrastructures "will be unable to scale to meet upcoming demands"—such as AI. Another 61% report they are simply "overwhelmed" by the amount of data they manage. By 2025, the report's authors predict, large organizations will be storing more than 65 petabytes (PB) of data.
Posted August 10, 2023
With more data than ever being created, making the right choices among the countless options for data management and analytics is a top priority for many organizations. To help organizations progress along their data-driven journeys, each year, DBTA presents the Readers' Choice Awards, which provide the opportunity to recognize companies whose products have been selected by the experts—our readers.
Posted August 09, 2023
Developers have a strong affinity for deploying their applications on open-source database engines, such as MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) offers these engines as a managed service and manages complex and time-consuming administrative tasks, such as database engine software installation and upgrades, storage management, replication for high availability and read throughput, and backups for disaster recovery.
Posted July 28, 2023
According to PWC's "Future of Experience" survey, 73% of respondents view customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Nevertheless, understanding the customer journey can be a difficult and lengthy process for many product developers. Outdated software, the lack of a customer-focused culture, and data silos all contribute to a negative experience.
Posted July 13, 2023