Times, they are a-changin’

We were warned of this back when SQL Server 7.0 launched.  We were told that the technology was so great that we wouldn’t need DBAs anymore; the database was self-tuning.  I know, we all chuckled at this and moved on, but not without at bit of damage control as we explained to our bosses that the Marketing people were once again posturing.

Times were a changing with Windows Azure being released in 2010 and SQL Server Data Services (as it was then coined) we were counting the days to move our systems to The Cloud.  Okay, maybe we aren’t quite there yet – Strangely not all of my clients have a Windows Azure account, but for a large number of companies, relieving themselves of on premise data centers truly is a compelling idea.

Times are changing, again with talk of Big Data, Visual Analytics, and Sentiment Analysis becoming common buzz words in all sorts of places.  Of course, we don’t throw up our hands and start fresh.  We need to take pause, listen, absorb and discuss.  What better place than at a conference?  Among the people that we’ve come to know and respect over the years either by attending other conferences, or reading their books, blogs or other trade publications.  We can learn from one another how we can help educate and direct our own teams as we navigate our way around some of these new concepts.

Some of us could leverage some of these new and emerging technologies to solve business challenges we have today.  Sometimes we have processes in house that have already collected and archived or warehoused this information; we just need a way of letting it tell a story.  Tools like PowerPivot and PoverView can help us discover treasures, and build a visualization which can help the business gain a deeper understanding, and potentially make better decisions based on new found ideas.  Let’s embrace the opportunity to help our companies reach new levels of understanding through business insight.  Other times we have hit a wall and we need new solutions.  Perhaps, we have multiple petabytes of sensor data, and we need to look at a big data solution.  How will we know where to turn? This is where the PASS Business Analytics Conference can help.

PASS has, for a number of years has, put on a conference for the Data Professional, with a focus on the Database Administrator and the Database Developer.  Over the years as Business Intelligence has gained a greater focus for the Data Professional, PASS has added tracks to meet this growing demand.  The areas outside the traditional relational database engine continue to gain focus.  “Beyond Relational” is what this area has been called, but I think the levy broke.  Too much new innovation is coming from areas outside of the relational engine.  It gets hard for one conference to serve the needs of one audience.  The PASS Business Analytics conference is not the silver bullet – it is a conference targeted at the Decision Makers, Technology Architect / Implementers, Business SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), and Data Wranglers.  

 If you are wondering wether Big Data can help answer new questions for your business, or need to unlock insight from the data that is trapped in you data silos, or you are struggling to find solutions to answer today’s business questions, perhaps, you need to join me in Chicago from April 10th – 12th.  As always, if you see me, don’t be shy – introduce yourself, I don’t byte.  

 use the code BAC725MVP for $200 OFF the PASS BA Conference

 

Cheers,
Scott Stauffer
@SQLSocialite