Philip Russom, Ph.D., is senior director of TDWI Research for data management and is a well-known figure in data warehousing, integration, and quality, having published over 550 research reports, magazine articles, opinion columns, and speeches over a 20-year period. Before joining TDWI in 2005, Russom was an industry analyst covering data management at Forrester Research and Giga Information Group. He also ran his own business as an independent industry analyst and consultant, was a contributing editor with leading IT magazines, and a product manager at database vendors. His Ph.D. is from Yale. You can reach him by email (prussom@tdwi.org), on Twitter (twitter.com/prussom), and on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/philiprussom).
Top Twelve Priorities for Data Warehouse Modernization
By Philip Russom, Senior Research Director for Data Management, TDWI
No matter the vintage or sophistication of your organization’s data warehouse (DW) and the environment around it, it probably needs to be modernized in one or more ways. That’s because DWs and requirements for them continue to evolve. Many users need to get caught up by realigning the DW environment with new business requirements and technology challenges. Once caught up, they need a strategy for continuous modernization.
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Posted on March 24, 20160 comments
By Philip Russom, Senior Research Director for Data Management, TDWI
As any data warehouse professional can tell you, the average data warehouse (DW) is today evolving, extending, and modernizing, to support new technology and business requirements, as well as to prove its continued relevance in the age of big data and analytics. This process has become known as data warehouse modernization; synonyms include DW augmentation, automation, and optimization. Every user organization and its DW is a unique scenario, so every modernization program is, too. Even so, a few common situations, drivers, and outcomes have arisen.
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Posted on March 15, 20160 comments
New big data sources and data types – and the need to get business value from new data – are forcing organizations to evolve their data management practices.
By Philip Russom, TDWI Research Director for Data Management
I recently participated as a core speaker in the Informatica Big Data Ready Virtual Summit, sharing a session with Amit Walia, the Chief Product Officer at Informatica Corporation. Amit and I had an interactive conversation where we discussed one of the most pressing questions in data management today, namely: How should an organization get ready to capture and leverage big data? This is an important question, because many organizations in many industries are facing big data, with its new data sources, data types, large volumes, and fast generation rates. Organizations need to modernize their data integration (DI) infrastructure, so they can capture and leverage the new data for new business insights and analytics.
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Posted on January 6, 20160 comments
An Introduction to Apache Spark and its uses in Business Intelligence (BI), Data Warehousing (DW), and Advanced Analytics
Blog by Philip Russom
Research Director for Data Management, TDWI
At TDWI, we’re hearing a lot of interest in Apache Spark, although it’s still new and most users are unfamiliar with it. So, please allow me to define Spark for you, explain its potential benefits, and describe actual use cases.
Apache Spark is a parallel processing engine. It specializes in big data, and works well with Hadoop environments. However, Apache is not just for Hadoop; it provides parallel processing for other environments, too. Spark is known for high speed and low latency, which it achieves by leveraging in-memory computing and cyclic data flows.
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Posted by Philip Russom, Ph.D. on December 7, 20150 comments
Blog by Philip Russom
Research Director for Data Management, TDWI
To help you better understand what today’s emerging technologies and methods (ETMs) are – especially those related to business intelligence, analytics, and data warehousing – I’d like to share with you the series of 25 tweets I recently issued on the topic. I think you’ll find the tweets interesting, because they provide an overview of ETMs in a form that’s compact, yet amazingly comprehensive.
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Posted by Philip Russom, Ph.D. on November 9, 20150 comments
Inspirational User Case Studies and Educational Product Demonstrations
By Philip Russom, TDWI Research Director for Data Management
When I attend a user group meeting or a vendor’s conference, my top two priorities are (1) to hear case studies from successful users and (2) to see practical demonstrations of the vendor’s products. I got both of those in spades last week, when I spent three days attending Informatica World 2015 in Las Vegas.
It was a huge conference, with about 2,500 people attending and five or more tracks running simultaneously. I couldn’t attend all these sessions, so I decided to focus on the keynotes and the Data Integration Track. To give you a taste of the conference, allow me to share highlights from what I was able to attend, with a stress on case studies and demos.
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Posted by Philip Russom, Ph.D. on May 18, 20150 comments