BI Final

The Bonds That Bind
the Internet of Things
First the World, Then the Cloud
Cognitive Computing for All?

Think About It
A Question of Ethics
APRIL 2014, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2
Business
Information
PLUS:
Joshua Greenbaum:
NoSQL Alone Doesnt
Equal Success
INSIGHT ON MANAGING AND USING DATA
NoSQL
MAKES
ITS MARK
A feisty pack of new

databases is nipping at
the heels of mainstream
relational software. But
is their bite big enough
to bring SQL down?
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NoSQL, No Problem?
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FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
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JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
A QUESTION OF ETHICS
recently a group of chief technology

officers from the Boston area debated the merits of Platform as a Service over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and
waffles.
Someone asked to clarify, What are we really talking
about when we are talking about Platform as a Service?
Before anyone could answer, one CTO interrupted with
another question: Whats the business problem?
Nods all around. As if this group needed a reminder,
technology is never deployed for its own sake.
Its never been more important to ask that key question when it comes to spending IT dollars. New technology abounds: cloud, mobile, social media, analytics. But
what is the value to your business?
In this issue of Business Information, we take a look at
a new database technology, the realm of NoSQLa.k.a.
not only SQLas well as its younger cousin, NewSQL,
a kind of synthesis of the good, old relational database
thesis and its NoSQL antithesis.
The good news is, NoSQL databases arose from a specific business problem, writes SearchDataManagement
Site Editor Jack Vaughan in this issues feature story on
the dawn of the age of NoSQL: Google, Yahoo and Facebook ushered in the first of a new kind of database technology because they needed a platform that eschewed
ONE SNOWY MORNING
BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014
rigid SQL development principles in favor of more flexible and scalable data designs.
But not every organization has the data needs of Google, Yahoo and Facebook. Does that mean that NoSQL
is only for the Internet giants? Assuredly not, Vaughan
writes. NoSQL databases have become must-have items
for companies with fast-growing vaults of Web, social
media, demographic and machine data.
So far, so good: We have established that there is a
business purpose for the dozens of new NoSQL databases
popping up. But dont get too excited, warns IT consultant Joshua Greenbaum.
Before going all-in on NoSQL, he implores readers
to do some soul searching, pinpointing the business
purpose of the project. For example, are you developing
new applications to support new business processes?
Or bringing in new types of data for analysis? Only
then, Greenbaum writes, should you look around to see
whether a new database is better for the job than something you already have.
But SQL or no, the decisions that IT managers and
execs need to make are still the old ones, tried and true. n
What do you think the future of relational database management
systems holds? Write me at spetersen@techtarget.com.
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Clouds Roll In
HOME
Nearly one-quarter of organizations are running enterprise content management systems in private clouds
and in hybrid ECM setups combining on-premises and cloud deployments. The use of public clouds for ECM
is still in the single digits, though.
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14%
ON THE BEAT:
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THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
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THINK ABOUT IT
Traditional
on-premises
Hosted
17%
23%
22%
6%
Software as
a Service
Private cloud
(hosted)
Public cloud
Hybrid
SOURCE: TECHTARGETS 2013 CONTENT MANAGEMENT AND COLLABORATION SURVEY; BASED ON RESPONSES BY 157 IT PROFESSIONALS.
RESPONDENTS WERE ASKED TO CHOOSE ALL ITEMS THAT APPLY
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
Money Matters
Social Calling
55%
The percentage of IT professionals
who received a raise in salary in 2013
5.5%
The average raise in IT salaries
SOURCE: THE 2013 TECHTARGET IT SALARY AND CAREERS SURVEY;

BASED ON RESULTS FROM 1,711 IT PROFESSIONALS
81%
The percentage of small and midsize businesses on social media
94%
The percentage of those companies that use
social networking sites for marketing purposes
SOURCE: A JOINT STUDY BY LINKEDIN AND MARKET RESEARCH OUTFIT TNS; BASED ON
RESULTS FROM 998 SMALL AND MIDSIZE BUSINESSES IN THE U.S. AND CANADA
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As much as its hyped, big data does

open doors to things we couldnt do
five years ago, or even two years ago.
CLAUDIA IMHOFF,
president of consultancy
Intelligent Solutions,on the business benefits
that organizations can get from big data analytics
applications
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TODD MORAN,
director of social enterprise

at Schneider Electric, on the confusion
created by the use of multiple platforms
for collaboration. It later drove a decision
to collaborate on a single software system
Its not just datathere are actually people, patients attached to that data.
JASON GRADY,
a nurse and paramedic at Northeast Georgia Medical Center, on the problems with
relying on spreadsheets to log patient information
ON THE BEAT:
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Enough. We have got to stop

this set of siloed applications.
It allows you to compete with

the big boys if you do it right,
and its not beyond your reach.
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
MIKE ROWELL,
vice president of business development at Alfa Insurance, advocating for midsize

organizations to implement adata warehouse
and analytics architecture
Data is a proxy for reality. It has

little relevance unless a tool or
person does something with it.
PETER MUELLER,
head of the global business analytics

program at Lonza Pharma & Biotech, discussing the
problems that out-of-control analytics applications
can cause when viewing data as a corporate asset
It can be very productive for you, but it can be equally destructive
if its not communicated or messaged in the right way.
BRYAN COLANGELO,
the former president and general manager of the Toronto Raptors,

on the difficulty of getting decision makers to trust the recommendations of data analytics
4
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Health Care Execs Rx: A Bigger Role for Analytics
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industry is often seen as behind the

times when it comes to technology, and nowhere is that
more apparent than in analytics. National stakeholders
are still having a debate about the best way to digitize patient records, and many organizations have yet to switch
from paper toelectronic health records. As a result, data
scientists and other analysts have a hard time getting the
THE HEALTH CARE
ON THE BEAT:
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THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
NAME:
Terhilda Garrido
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
TITLE:
Vice President
of Health IT
Transformation
and Analytics
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
ORGANIZATION:
Kaiser Permanente
HEADQUARTERS:
Oakland, Calif.
data they need to run basic business intelligence applications, never mind more in-depth data analytics projects.
But some providers are forging ahead with cutting-edge
analytics initiatives. For example, Kaiser Permanente, a
large health system serving mainly the western U.S., was
one of the first medical organizations to implement an
EHR system and is now using the data created and stored
there to change the way it delivers patient care.
The EHR system has enabled the companys data analysts to focus on deeper questions about clinical care,
according to Terhilda Garrido, vice president of health
IT transformation and analytics. She and her team have
worked on a variety of projects, including one to alert
doctors when patients with infections are likely to go
into sepsis and develop potentially life-threatening
complications.
A Waiting Game
But it took Garrido a while to put her background in
engineering and biostatistics to work in a clinical setting. When she earned her graduate degree in biostatistics in 1983, the only statistical analysis being done in
health care was in medical research. You had to come
in through the research arm, Garrido said. I think its
wonderful now that people are much more aware of the
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JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
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importance of [clinical] data, but I would observe that

that hasnt always been the case.
She had to look for work elsewhere. Her first job, in
1986, was doing economic modeling for theEuropean
Economic Community, a predecessor of the European
Union. It wasnt until 1995 that she found work at Kaiser in a new division called the Medical Economics and
Statistics Department, which analyzed clinical data for
meaningful correlations. Garrido said the teams work
was hampered by a lack of useful data, but it did help
get the organization thinking about
ways to use data analysis in care
Read more
TechTarget
delivery.
profiles of
Kaiser has adopted some technolbusiness and IT
professionals.
ogies more quickly than other health
care providers, but it still has room
to grow on analytics, Garrido said. Outside factors will
compel it to make analytics projects even more central to
its clinical operations. Private insurers and public payers,
like Medicare and Medicaid, are pushing providers to
adoptaccountable carepractices, which will result in organizations being paid for the quality of care they deliver
rather than the quantity of services provided. Plus, a provision of the federal Affordable Care Act penalizes hospitals with high readmission rates. Garrido said those two
factors make it imperative for providers such as Kaiser to
understand their operations at a deeper level and predict
which patients will need extra attention.
Theres enormous pressure on the industry to do
more with less, she said. Its incumbent on those of
6
us in the industry to really try to identify where we can

leverage those resources we have to provide the best care
we can for patients.
Mind the Gap
Garrido is working on an initiative to minimize readmission through the use of analytics. Called KP Outpatient
Safety Net, the program seeks to identify patients who
havent received appropriatefollow-up attentionafter being discharged from the hospital so that proper care can
be arranged. For example, patients who undergo splenectomies have an increased risk of contracting the flu.
Garridos team will analyze the EHR data to make sure
that those patients have received vaccinations and alert
clinicians if they havent.
It remains unclear how quickly the rest of the industry
will adopt the same kind of analytical approach to patient
care. Garrido said that about 50% of physicians work in
one- or two-doctor practices. Their time tends to be consumed by day-to-day patient care activities, meaning they
dont have the timeor, often, the expertiseto think
about things like database architecture and other technical concerns that come with analytics projects.
Nonetheless, Garrido is hopeful that data analysis
technology and know-how can be diffused more broadly
throughout the industry so a larger number of organizations can take advantage of the benefits of data analytics.
There are many forces for the good that are improving
opportunities for analysts and statisticians [in health
care], she said. ED BURNS
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The Bonds That Bind the Internet of Things
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NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
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JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
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is the term popularly used to describe the ability of machinery and other devices to talk
to one another and send data to IT systems over the Web.
An example of machine-to-machine communication, its
made possible by inexpensive sensor technology, such
as radio frequency identification chips, and widespread
Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The connections can be
used to gather real-time information on the performance
and condition of wind turbines, generators, vehicles,
streetlights or even household appliances.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
THE BUZZ
Connecting things to the Web can make available data
that was hard to get. It can save organizations cash by
cutting down on travel to service devices in the field
and even enable preventive maintenance on equipment.
Utilities can use the Internet to monitor data from connected meters, eliminating the need for in-person checkups. And manufacturers can remotely track and perform
maintenance on machinery in multiple plants.
THE REALITY
Network disruptions could have devastating results: For
example, incomplete data could spoil the stock of trucks
carrying refrigerated medicines. Also, collecting and
7
COMING RIGHT UP!: A vending machine is one thing

being connected to the Internet. When stock is low, a
soda machine, say, can send an alert to the supplier.
BEVERAGES
managing all that data can be a challenge. Then there are

security risks. Strong data security and disaster recovery
procedures are imperative. Other, more direct human
losses are possible as field technicians who service machines find their hours reduced or eliminated. After
populating the Internet with things, people might find
themselves outnumbered. BRENDA COLE
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OF THINGS
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
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JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
decade ago, Amazon Web Services wasnt

much more than some ideas scribbled on a whiteboard at
Amazon.com. In todays Infrastructure as a Service universe, AWS is, as Frank Sinatra might have put it, king of
the hill / top of the heap.
Amazon rolled out its first Web service, a messagequeuing product called Simple Queue Service, in November 2004, but the Seattle-based company didnt
launch AWS as a business until 2006. Today, Amazons
cloud offerings include computing, database, networking, payment, storage, application and other services.
AWS operates in more than 190 countries, serving hundreds of thousands of customers in 10 regions worldwide.
In April 2012, Amazon launched the AWS Marketplace,
an online store that now offers more than 1,100 AWSrelated software products from other vendors.
Customers range from NASA to Nokia. President
Barack Obamas 2012 re-election campaign relied on
AWS, and the company recently inked a deal with the
CIA. Netflix runs virtually its entire business on AWS
although its streaming-video service competes with
Amazons own video offerings.
In November 2013, the Amazon re:Invent conference
sold out, attracting 9,000 attendees to a cavernous convention center in Las Vegas while another 9,000 from 57
JUST OVER A
countries watched a streaming version of the event.

Amazon senior vice president Andy Jassy, who oversees AWS, told the crowd that despite its stunning ascent,
AWS still sees itself as a young business. Thats because
we have so much more coming for you guys, our customers, in the next few years. After the conference, The Wall
Street Journal ran an interview with Jassy under the headline Meet the Man Who Really Runs the Internet.
The Attraction
AWSs popularity is often credited to a few factors: Amazons brand power, AWSs size and reach and the flexibility and simplicity of its pay-as-you-go business model.
But for most customers, the biggest attraction is the
highly competitive prices.
They can translate to big savings. In 2012, market
research outfit IDC studied 11 AWS customers to determine the long-term financial impact of using Amazon
cloud products. On average, the companies reported a
five-year return on investment of 626%.
For other customers, AWSs real value is its scalability.
One example: Airbnb Inc., an online property-rental
marketplace that launched on AWS in 2009 and has
since grown to accommodate 11 million users and an average of 150,000 bookings a day.
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JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
Behind the Curtain

Just how much money does AWS make? Amazon isnt
saying; the company doesnt specifically break out AWS
revenues in its financial reporting. That could change if,
as some analysts have suggested, Amazon spins off AWS
into a separate company. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt recently estimated AWSs current value
at $25 billionthats $2 billion higher than his estimate
for Amazons Kindle e-reader business. Other analysts
project AWSs value to reach anywhere from $50 billion
to $100 billion over the next few years.
Thats not to say that AWS has had an easy ride to the
top. The company has suffered several major crashes, including the Christmas Eve outage that knocked out Netflixs streaming-video service in 2012.
Then there are AWSs price reductionsat least 40
since 2006. While they sound like great news, some
analysts have suggested that prices are already so low
that constant reductions dont make a real difference
anymore.
And theres no question that AWS must keep looking
over its shoulder. When VMware launched the U.K. version of its vCloud Hybrid Service in February, a company
official told reporters that the EMC subsidiary hoped to
become a major cloud-services providerbut didnt expect to challenge AWS. Less than a week later, VMware
announced the hiring of AWS senior technology evangelist Simone Brunozzi as its new vice president and chief
technology for hybrid cloud.
In a recent report, analysts at market research
9
New Site: SearchAWS

THIS MONTH WE
are launching a website focused on
Amazon Web Services. Go to SearchAWS.com to

find out how your organization can get the most
out of its cloud strategy. Whether youre struggling to expand computing power in the cloud;
want to develop, deploy and even sell applications on the AWS platform; or are making AWS
your primary IT infrastructure partner, youll find
insight in news, features and tips compiled by my
team of award-winning writers and editors.
SCOT PETERSEN
company Gartner included several cautionary notes

about relying on AWS. For instance, it charges separately
for some optional items that are included in its competitors packages. This increases the complexity of understanding and auditing bills, the report said. Researchers
also took issue with AWSs tiered support system, noting
the quality of support differs materially between tiers.
Still, AWS remains the market leader. Gartner analyst
Lydia Leong wrote in a blog post, While its still far from
everything it could be, and it has some specific and significant weaknesses, that steady improvement over the
last couple of years has brought it to the good-enough
point. ANNE STUART
ARCHITECTURE | JACK VAUGHAN
NoSQL MAKES
A DENT IN
RELATIONAL
DATABASE
DOMINANCE
SQL used to have a lock on how data processing
was done. NoSQL databases have opened things up
to alternative approachesbut they arent likely to
completely replace the old way.
HOME
10
In 1922, automaker Henry Ford
famously wrote that his customers

could have a car painted any color
they wantedas long as it was black.
Until recently, IT managers, application developers
and business executives faced similarly limited choices
in selecting database technologies. Relational databases
built on top of the SQL programming language were the
dominant engines powering corporate IT and business
systems, with no real challengers in sight.
But things have changed. Starting in the mid-2000s,
SQLs absolute supremacy was undone by the likes of
Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and eBay. Their
need to run colossally scalable Web applications with
varied and fast-changing data requirements prompted
efforts to find alternatives to mainstream relational databases. That ushered in first a stream, and over the past
few years a torrent, of new technologies that eschewed
rigid SQL development principles. Those databases are
spread across several distinct product categories based
on different data models. But they share a pithy name
with a stake-in-the-ground sound: NoSQL.
The truth is, though, that the NoSQL movement
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isnt really an up-against-the-wall revolution seeking to

eradicate relational databases. Yes, some NoSQL vendors do talk like thats their ultimate goal. But the term
NoSQL has been softened to also mean not only SQL,
in recognition of the fact that many of the databases do

incorporate some elements of SQL. More substantively,
NoSQL technologies arent positioned as wholesale replacements for relational softwarethey tend to be built
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All in the NoSQL Family

NoSQL databases are geared toward managing large sets of varied and frequently updated data, often in distrib-
WHATS THE BUZZ?

THE BONDS THAT
BIND THE INTERNET
OF THINGS
uted systems or the cloud. They avoid the rigid schemas associated with relational databases. But the architectures themselves vary and are separated into four primary classifications.
Document databases
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
Store data elements in document-like structures that encode information in formats such as JSON.
Common uses include content management and monitoring Web and mobile applications.
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
EXAMPLES:
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
Emphasize connections between data elements, storing related nodes in graphs to accelerate
Couchbase Server, CouchDB, MarkLogic, MongoDB
Graph databases
querying. Common uses include recommendation engines and geospatial applications.
EXAMPLES:
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
InfiniteGraph, Neo4j
Key-value databases
Use a simple data model that pairs a unique key and its associated value in storing data elements.
Common uses include storing clickstream data and application logs.

EXAMPLES:
Aerospike, DynamoDB, Redis, Riak
Wide column stores

Also called table-style databasesstore data across tables that can have very large numbers
of columns. Common uses include Internet search and other large-scale Web applications.
EXAMPLES:
11
Accumulo, Cassandra, HBase, Hypertable, SimpleDB
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ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
for specific uses, usually involving large data sets that

need to be accessed and updated frequently. And thats
how things are playing out on the ground: NoSQL databases have become must-have items for companies with
fast-growing vaults of Web, social media, demographic
and machine data, but often theyre sharing data processing and analysis workloads with SQL-based software.
For example, Crittercism Inc. is a startup that helps
organizations monitor the performance of their mobile
applications, based on real-time data collected from more
than 800 million mobile devices. In application performance management parlance, a user interaction with an
app is called a request; Crittercism pulls in information
about more than 30,000 requests a second, a rate that
adds up to nearly 3 billion a day. That has created a pool
of more than 20 terabytes of dataand the total only
keeps growing, said Lars Kamp, vice president of business
development at the San Francisco company.
Included in the mix is data on application errors,
crash diagnostics and what Crittercism calls network
breadcrumbs documenting the trail of processing events
leading up to app problems. That data is very unstructured and non-uniform and varies widely from customer
to customer and application to application, said Mike
Chesnut, director of operations engineering.
Meeting the Old Way Halfway
The sheer amount of information involved, and its variable nature, mandated a fresh approach to formatting
the data. Using relational software would have required
12
LARS KAMP, vice president

of business development at
Crittercism Inc., needed a technology that could capture a
fast-flowing stream of mobile
application performance data.
He and his colleagues found
one in MongoDB, a NoSQL database running on the Amazon
Web Services cloud.
substantial processing overhead to maintain a database

schema that could accommodate all of the information,
plus frequent downtime for making changes to the
schema, Chesnut said; he added that the company had to
be able to modify how it collects and stores data on the
fly, often several times a day. Kamp was even blunter:
Crittercism as a company would not have been possible
10 years ago, when SQL was the only choice, he said.
Enter MongoDB, a NoSQL database running on the
Amazon Web Services cloud. Like other NoSQL technologies, it offered schema design flexibility. That made it
possible for Crittercism to store the error and crash data
in a single collectionthe MongoDB equivalent of a
relational tablewithout imposing a strict schema on
the information. In turn, the lack of a fixed data structure with uniform fields has enabled the companys performance management service to evolve organically to
meet the needs of different customers, Chesnut said.
Crittercism also uses Amazon.coms DynamoDB
(Continued on page 14)
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NOSQL DATABASE IMPLEMENTATIONS
have become increas-
ingly plentiful among fast-moving Web and cloud
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effect, islands of NoSQL data.

Managing all of the individual data models was
companies looking to buck the confines of relational
a major source of pain for Lemons team. The data
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software. But NoSQL vendors are facing heightened
models were crippling, he said. We wanted to put
competition of their own from another group of up-
this all into a single large database that we were able
starts: Developers of NewSQL databases that com-
to query.
WHATS THE BUZZ?

THE BONDS THAT
BIND THE INTERNET
OF THINGS
bine SQL and NoSQL traits.

operates a logistics and business-to-business trading
like most NoSQL technologies; its features include
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
platform for retailers, suppliers and distributors, took
multi-tenancy support that allows users to run multi-
a stab at using NoSQL software to help run its opera-
ple databases off of a single installation. But it sports
tions. The American Fork, Utah, company initially mi-
a transaction engine that executes SQL code, said
grated from relational MySQL to the MongoDB NoSQL
NuoDB CEO Barry Morris.
DropShip Commerce, a two-year-old company that
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
database before moving again last year to NuoDBs
COGNITIVE
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THINK ABOUT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
tabase architecture and built for use in the cloud,
Lemon gave good marks to NuoDB for its distrib-
namesake NewSQL technology to power virtual prod-
uted computing chops. He said elastic scalability
uct catalog delivery, inventory management and or-
is vital to his applications because e-commerce in-
der tracking for its clients.
terchanges are subject to massive seasonaland
The MongoDB system ran into limitations in scaling
sometimes dailyswings in traffic. Blaine Nielsen,
and its ability to handle the reporting requirements of
DropShips president, added that the company can
customers, said Scott Lemon, DropShips chief tech-
now scale its databases in lockstep as the business
nology officer. The companys processing platform
scales.
has to be flexible because its used by a variety of
13
NuoDB is based on a three-tier, distributed da-
A MongoDB representative said that there are
suppliers and retailers with data requirements that
plenty of people running highly scalable MongoDB
change frequently. But Lemon said the MongoDB de-
systems, while also acknowledging that theres still
ployment consisted of separate implementations built
room for improvement in the experience of develop-
around individual customer partnershipscreating, in
ing such systems. n
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NoSQL database to store data on a specific request path
that requires particularly fast performance. But theres
SQL in its database architecture, too. A PostgreSQL open
source database holds highly relational operations data,
and all of the information is summarized in a SQL-based
Amazon Redshift data warehouse for analysis and reporting. Chesnut and his colleagues arent NoSQL purists:
Were very engaged with exploring any and all technology offerings that can help us solve our problems and
better serve our customers, he said.
Recent surveys show that NoSQL databases are
making inroads with big data usersbut overall, adoption is still relatively low. For example, TechTargets 2013
Analytics & Data Warehousing Reader Survey found that
21% of 222 respondents with active or in-the-works big
data programs were using or planning to deploy NoSQL
systems as part of the efforts. Another survey conducted
last year by Enterprise Management Associates and
9sight Consulting produced an almost identical result:
In that case, 22% of the 259 respondents said they had
NoSQL platforms in place. In a third survey, done by The
Data Warehousing Institute, 32% of 189 respondents said
their organizations were using NoSQL software. Even
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Whats in Your Big Data Environment?

Percentages of organizations using various data platforms for big data management, in order of prevalence:
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63%
Relational databases on massively parallel processing systems

JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
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60%
Relational databases on symmetric multiprocessing systems
51%
Data appliances
Hadoop Distributed File System
48%
Columnar databases
48%
NoSQL databases
32%
SOURCE: THE DATA WAREHOUSING INSTITUTES MANAGING BIG DATA; BASED ON RESPONSES FROM 189 IT PROFESSIONALS, CONSULTANTS AND BUSINESS USERS
WITH BIG DATA MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE, FROM AN ONLINE SURVEY CONDUCTED IN 2013
14
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there, though, NoSQL technology was last on the adoption list, trailing behind relational databases, data appliances, columnar software and big data fellow traveler
Hadoop.
Greater penetration of data centers is expected: Analyst group Wikibon forecast last year that worldwide revenue for NoSQL software and services would grow from
$286 million in 2012 to $1.825 billion in 2017. Venture
capitalists are betting on such growth. MongoDB Inc.,
which leads the development of its namesake database,
raised $150 million in new funding last fall. That came
shortly after $45 million and $25 million funding rounds
by DataStax and Couchbase, two other NoSQL vendors.
CARL OLOFSON, an IDC analyst,

sees the surge in NoSQL technologies pointing to a greater
issue: the growing move toward
cloud computingand the resulting need to quickly mine
application-driven data.
there in the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

DB2 can also handle graph and XML data, and IBM in
March acquired Cloudant, a NoSQL vendor that runs a
hosted version of the JSON-based CouchDB database.
Hitting From Both Sides
Microsoft offers a NoSQL data store as part of its WinEven the big relational database vendors have gotten into
dows Azure cloud platform.
the NoSQL game. Oracle introduced a NoSQL database
Application-driven data needs and the growing move
in late 2011 and was one of the lead sponsors of last years
toward cloud computing are creating a wider opening for
NoSQL Now! conference. Last June, IBM added support
NoSQL methods, said Carl Olofson, a database analyst
for MongoDBs application programming interface to
at market research company IDC. For IT managers and
its DB2 relational database, enabling users to store data
business executives, though, he compared buying into
NoSQL with investing in a new
stock that doesnt have a lot of
market history.
Most of the NoSQL databases
Percentage of developers who cited 1 petabyte
are new. They still need to be bator more as the point at which to switch from
tle tested, Olofson said. If youre
traditional database technologies
SOURCE: EVANS DATA CORP.S DATA AND ADVANCED ANALYTICS SURVEY
constantly changing data defini2013; BASED ON RESPONSES FROM MORE THAN 440 DEVELOPERS
tions and you cant change your relational database fast enough, you
67
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might look at NoSQL. But there is risk.

For one thing, NoSQL technologies typically dont
provide full ACID capabilitiesatomicity, consistency,
isolation and durabilityfor guaranteeing transaction
integrity, as relational databases do. In addition, they often lack enterprise-class services in areas such as disaster
recovery, security and data quality, according to Olofson.
He also expects a whittling of the well-populated ranks of
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NoSQL Tools Enjoy Rarefied Cloud Air
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job at hand is updating gener-
al-ledger data or running queries for analytics and
on managing databases, said he expects NoSQL cloud
reporting, SQL relational databases are still the likely
deployments to increase naturally as more organiza-
technology choice for most organizations. But its a
tions move applications to public clouds.
different story with Web applications, particularly
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relational software to modify the data architecture
environments.
of Web applications and set up different fields and

structures for individual data setsboth common re-
cloud-based applications and Web applications, said
quirements for Web developers. The schema-less or
IDC analyst Carl Olofson. Relational software became
schema-after-the-fact NoSQL database is a means to
harder to maintain as databases increasingly ran
those ends, and that flexibility is often the chief driver
across farms of servers scattered in multiple loca-
when organizations decide to dip their toes in the
tions or deployed in the cloud, he added. That created
NoSQL waters.
an opportunity for NoSQL vendorsand theyre cashing in on it.

Guy Harrison, executive director of research and
16
The strictures of SQL also make it difficult with
ones running in NoSQL-friendly cloud computing

NoSQL arose from a desire to quickly spread
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instance. Harrison, who also has written four books
Doing the entire schema in advance is inconvenient for Web applications, said Curt Monash,
president of analyst company Monash Research. In
development for Dells database management tools,
addition to complicating modifications down the
said NoSQL databases arent dependent on cloud
road, it adds time to the development processand
environments. But, he added, they are built with the
on the Web, Monash pointed out, deployment speed is
cloud in mind. They all easily scale elastically, for
often king. n
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NoSQL vendors as the market matures.

NoSQL databases are really good for handling XML
and JSON data, which includes a lot of things Java developers are working on these days, said Wayne Eckerson, a
TechTarget industry analyst and president of consultancy
Eckerson Group. In particular, theyre well suited to
high-performance Web applications with a high volume
of reads and writes, Eckerson said. But, he added, they
arent such a good fit for complex analytics jobs.
NoSQL Speed Booster
That maps to the database architecture at Exelate, a marketing data services and technology provider that uses a
range of tools to supply information on household demographics and purchases to online advertisers and publishers. Data is what we do, said Elad Efraim, co-founder
and chief technology officer at the New York company.
While Exelate didnt start out with NoSQL technology
when it was founded seven years ago, the need for speed
eventually led Efraim and his team to deploy Aerospike,
an in-memory NoSQL database that has helped scale the
companys infrastructure to handle as many as one trillion real-time data transactions a month.
Aerospike provides a high-performance repository for
data on the user session activity of website visitors that
is constantly being updated, Efraim said. Were talking
about a large-scale system with a very high capacity of
reads and writes that have to complete in some milliseconds. Its very important for us to make sure we can access the data in a way so that it can be made available
17
ELAD EFRAIM, co-founder and

chief technology officer at
marketing data services and
technology provider Exelate,
deployed Aerospike, an in-memory NoSQL database that has
helped the company handle as
many as one trillion data transactions a month.
[to our customers] for decision making.

The database runs on servers at four fully replicated
data centers worldwide, indexing everything to memory
and holding it in the server cluster for further processing. From there, the data can be mined and correlated to
other information in analytics and back-office systems.
To make that happen, though, Exelates applications dont
solely use NoSQL software. One layer above the Aerospike repository is a pretty standard MySQL relational
database that lets customers aggregate data, Efraim said.
The company also uses an IBM Netezza appliance and
relational database as a data warehouse for analytics uses.
To put things in Henry Fords terms, users like Exelate and Crittercism no longer have to limit themselves
to basic-black relational databasesand theyre taking
advantage of NoSQLs new color choices to drive applications that mainstream relational software isnt suited
for. But SQL black isnt going completely out of style with
IT shoppers. For now, the two technologies are likely to
share space in database garages. n
TRENDS | STEPHANIE NEIL
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Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and

natural language processing, machines like IBMs
Watson are becoming as smart as we are. And
soon the technology may become elementary
to many more than just Big Blue.
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18
The health care industry suffers from
an ailment known as information

overload. Its a condition that makes
it difficult for doctors and insurance
providers to quickly determine the
procedures that will be required and
covered for each patient.
The individuals history, years of case files and clinical
evidence must be consideredno small feat for a human. But its as easy as saying aah for WatsonIBMs
artificial intelligence computer system that processes
natural language questions against a deep well of data to
compute evidence-based answers in a matter of seconds.
Watson can sift through the data equivalent of about
1 million books, analyze the information and provide
precise responses to complicated questions in less than
three seconds. Insurance provider WellPoint Inc. doesnt
have to imagine what that could mean to the health
care industry. Through a partnership with IBM that began two years ago, the Indianapolis-based company is
working with more than 3,000 physician offices in its
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network to provide patient coverage and treatment options almost instantaneously.

We trained Watson to think like a nurse or physician
on staff, said Elizabeth Bigham, WellPoints vice president of health IT strategy. It receives requests from
providers, finds medical policies, compares what the provider said in the request, determines who the patient is,
what they want to do and why, and renders a recommendation to our staff.
Watson, Bigham said, is a game changer in the medical field. Other companies are also developing Watson-powered applications for health care providers and
consumersfor example, software startup Welltok Inc.s
CafeWell Concierge, which will offer personalized, location-based guidance on diet, exercise and preventive
services.
And its not just health care. In January, IBM launched
a Watson Group business unit to ignite new commercialization efforts in a range of industries, including
financial services, travel, telecom and retail. To help fuel
its efforts, the new unit was given $100 million to invest
in third-party software developers; it made an initial
investment in Welltok in February. IBM also is making
Watson services available in the cloud and providing
software developers with access to its Watson application
programming interface to build new kinds of cognitive
apps. Welltoks project is one of those efforts; another is a
Watson-powered smart adviser self-service application,
which can understand natural language, read and interpret text and learn from other types of smart technology,
19
ELIZABETH BIGHAM, vice president of health IT strategy

at health insurance provider
WellPoint Inc., oversees a program that uses the cognitive
power of IBMs Watson to work
with thousands of physician
offices in its network, offering nearly instantaneous patient coverage and treatment
recommendations.
such as virtual personal assistants. Also, Fluid Inc., which

makes software designed to improve online shopping, is
developing an app that makes product recommendations
based on information provided through natural dialogue.
So talking to a smart device, like an iPad, could deliver
the same kind of experience a shopper would have with
an in-store sales associate.
A Bountiful Mind
It is this cognitive capacitythe ability to mimic the
human brain, to learn and to understand in context and
to be more assistant than toolthat could revolutionize
computing as we know it.
Thats according to IBM, of course. But Dan Miller,
founder and senior analyst at Opus Research, doesnt disagree, calling the technology transformative.
IBM was out to demonstrate deep computings ability
to do things like understand a topic quickly, discern irony
and satire, he said. It also helped uncover some of the
(Continued on page 21)
IT Brain Evolution
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1956
The history of cognitive technologies is studded

with starts and stops, and new developments
indicate the trend is again picking up steam.
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Scottish robot Freddy is built by The Assembly

Robotics group at Edinburgh University with the
ability to use vision in problem solving. Later,
such open-ended research in AI would no longer
receive government-allocated funds.
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John McCarthy coins the term artificial intelligence

at a Dartmouth conference.
1963
MIT receives a $2.2 million grant from the U.S.
government for research in AI.
1980
The American Association of Artificial Intelligence holds
its first national conference, at Stanford University.
1986
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Sales of AI-related software reach $425 million in

the U.S., fueled by vendors of Lisp-based expert
systems such as Symbolics and Lisp Machines.
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1989
Dean Pomerleau creates ALVINN
(Autonomous Land Vehicle in a Neural Network),
the groundwork for a system that drove a
car coast to coast under computer control.
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1997
Chess-playing system Deep Blue, developed by IBM,
beats then world champion Garry Kasparov.
1982
Thinking Machines Corp. is founded in Waltham,
Mass.; it later launches a commercial product called
Connection Machine.
1994
Thinking Machines files for bankruptcy.
2008
Jointly created by IBM and the Los Alamos National
Lab, the Roadrunner supercomputer is the first of its
kind to achieve one quadrillion calculations a second.
2011
IBMs Watson competes on the game show Jeopardy!
against former champions Brad Rutter and
Ken Jennings and beats them both.
20
2014
IBM Watson Group is formed as part of an effort to
foster increasing demand for cognitive technologies.
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(Continued from page 19)

constraints of the brute force approach. Scientists have
long known that the answers get better and quicker if
the systems address a specific topic or domain. And thats
where IBM Watson is taking it.
In health care, for example, where the volume of data
is doubling every five years, it could take a nurse 20
minutes to collect the data needed to make a treatment
assessment. Cognitive technology, coupled with big data,
is delivering that same evidence-based information in a
matter of seconds.
We know Watson makes us more efficient and is helping us turn around requests faster, Bigham said. It also
ensures we are consistent in our application of medical
policies and guidelines.
IBM is also working with pharmaceutical companies
to understand drug interactions. Using IBMs new Watson Discovery Advisor service, which makes connections
across millions of articles, journals and studies, drug researchers can formulate conclusions that previously took
months in just hours.
$1b
21
Of course, cognitive technology is not a new concept. Artificial intelligence emerged as a hot topic in
the 1960s, when computer scientists set out to build
systems that were as intelligent as humans. The 1980s
saw a flowering of expert systems from companies like
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS
SET OUT TO BUILD SYSTEMS
THAT WERE AS INTELLIGENT
AS HUMANS IN THE 1960s.
Symbolics and Lisp Machines as well as the highly publicized development of a massively parallel processing
supercomputer aimed at AI applications by Thinking
Machinesbut those efforts quickly ran out of steam.
Other supercomputer makerseven IBMalso dangled
the idea of intelligent machines in front of government
agencies and research laboratories, but their focus was
on solving grand scientific problems, such as modeling
the global climate and mapping the human genome. Those things didnt require
cognitive capabilities, just colossal computing power.
IBMs investment in a new business
Today, processing power and storage
group dedicated to commercializing
are
not the big issues they once were.
its Watson supercomputer
SOURCE: IBM CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENT
When Watson was introduced in 2011,
AND CEO VIRGINIA ROMETTY
it ran on 90 servers and 20 terabytes of
disk. The current system is 90% smaller
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and 20 times faster, said Steve Gold, IBMs vice president

of marketing and sales operations for Watson systems.
And the cognitive technology has evolved as well.
Watson is an amalgamation of artificial intelligence,
machine learning and natural language technologies.
But it does not follow a logic-based set of rules as the
supercomputers of the past did. Instead, it decomposes
WHATS THE BUZZ?

THE BONDS THAT
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questions from natural language to understand the context of what is being asked. Then it analyzes the corpus
of available information in research and articles and
comes up with candidate answers. It is not deterministic;
it is probabilisticproducing a set of best answers with
ranking and supporting evidence. For example, a simple question about the color of the sky depends on the
Cost-Effective Cognitive Tools Not an Idle Thought
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is not the only game in
town when it comes to complex, deep learning tech-
but it was never designed to be low-labor-intensive,
nology for the enterprise.
said David Lloyd, CEO of virtual agent provider Intel-
There are more cost-effective ways to enter the
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Watson is great in a highly complex environment,
liResponse. If all you are trying to do is help a cus-
market and start applying those same disciplines
tomer get to a finite set of the right answers, it is a
to provide a better customer experience, said Dan
much different process. The trick is figuring out the
Miller, founder and senior analyst at Opus Research.
many ways a customer might ask the question in or-
Specifically, the use of virtual agents that harness
der to serve up the right information, he said.
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artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural

language to ascertain the purpose of a question and
sistant technology, including Anboto, Expertmaker,
get the answers quickly. The difference is, virtual
Next IT and Nuance. And the market could be about
agents tap into a finite data set rather than the un-
to explode. According to Opus, in 2013, enterprise vir-
limited sea of information available to Watson. While
tual assistant spending lingered around $100 million.
IBMs technology has its place in sophisticated ap-
But as these virtual agents get better at learning new
plications in the health care and pharmaceutical in-
tasks and responding to customers in personalized
dustries, it can be overkill when it comes to customer
ways, Opus predicts spending will approach $700 mil-
self-service uses.
lion by 2016. n
22
Right now, more than 50 vendors offer virtual as-
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circumstances: It could be blue, gray or white. Watson

tries to comprehend the question and then uses thousands of algorithms to score the answer.
Business users and consumers, too, are more ready for
intelligent systems than in the past. Conditioned by the
prevalent use of intelligent personal assistant application, like Siri on Apples iPhone, many people now expect
computers to recognize natural language and be able to
respond to complex questions.
What IBM is doing at the high end, as well as companies like Google and Apple that are working natural
language understanding into machine learning, we, as
humans, are being conditioned to feel more comfortable
talking to some form of artificial intelligence, Miller
said.
Miller expects there will be a ripple effect that will
eventually bring high-end Watson-powered apps to the
masses. But it doesnt take a Watson-like investment to
get an interface that is conversational and human-like in
nature, he said.
The Road to Reason
Watson isnt simple or inexpensive. While Bigham
wouldnt disclose WellPoints financial arrangement with
IBM, the process of training Watson for use by the insurer includes reviewing the wording on every medical
policy with IBM engineers, who define keywords to help
Watson draw relationships between data. The nursing
staff together with IBM engineers must keep feeding
cases to Watson until it gets it. Teaching Watson about
23
DR. S.S. IYENGAR, a professor at

Florida International University
and chief scientist at NuLogix
Labs, helped invent a complex
event processing technology
called the Cognitive Information
Management Shell, which is being used to develop an agro-intelligence platform designed to
help increase food supplies.
nasal surgery, for example, means going through policies

and inputting definitions specific to the nose and conditions that affect it. Test cases then need to be created
with all of the variations of what could happen and fed to
Watson.
And things change, so it is an ongoing process. Bigham
said the company can now teach Watson new things
over a period of several weeks. It is a significant time and
money investment, but WellPoint is bearing the brunt of
the work to develop an affordable commercial app that it
can license to other health insurance companies.
This painstaking process of training Watson is most
likely the reason cognitive technology is not catching on
like wildfire, Bigham said. According to Miller, there are
subtler things at work.
Generally, solutions like Watson are put in the
emerging technologies category, and the processes
involved with building a business plan to make an investment in Watson are just now being defined, Miller
said. So though cutting-edge technologies like cognitive
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computing arent typically associated with objectives like

return on investment, that is starting to become an issue
in this case.
Similarly, other companies are working on their own
strategies with different forms of cognitive technology.
Enterra Solutions, based in Newtown, Pa., has developed a cognitive reasoning platform that combines big
data and artificial intelligence to find insights that can
improve performance in areas like the supply chain and
consumer marketing. Google, Facebook and Yahoo have
all recently hired AI researchers or acquired startup vendors to lead machine learning development efforts. And
NuLogix Labs, recently relocated from Princeton, N.J., to
San Jose, Calif., is using a complex event processing technology, called the Cognitive Information Management
Shell, to develop an agro-intelligence platform designed
to help increase food suppliesstarting in India.
Total Recognition
The CIM Shell, developed at Louisiana State University, can drill down into complex events and activities
to adapt rapidly to evolving situations. The work being
done with a university in India is focused on increasing
specific crop productivity by using sensors to collect data
on ground activity and a synthesis program to dynamically reconfigure in real time to adjust to environmental
changes. The agriculture app provides actionable intelligence to scientists who use it to direct experiments and
inform decision making.
The technology can be put to use in other industries as
24
well. Oil and gas company BP gave LSU a $250,000 grant

to develop a prototype of the technology that could be
used to help prevent future oil spills.
The CIM Shells distributed intelligent agents fuse
disparate streaming data, like text and video, to create an
interactive sensing, inspection and visualization system
that provides real-time monitoring and analysis. If there
are any changes in data patternstemperature or pressure of equipment, for exampleit sends an alert, noted
Dr. S.S. Iyengar, a computer science professor at Florida
International University and chief scientist at NuLogix,
and one of the technologys inventors. Its not the first
technology that detects changes in conditionsabnormal situation management applications can, but they
only flag things out of the ordinary. The CIM Shell not
only sends an alert but reconfigures on the fly in order to
isolate a critical event and fix the failure.
The goal of CIM is that nobody should have to write
the program, said co-inventor Supratik Mukhopadhyay,
an assistant professor in the department of computer science at LSU and NuLogixs chief technology officer. You
tell the computer what it needs to do and it writes a program itself that will solve the problem in real time.
The Human Factor

The CIM Shell and Watson take different approaches to
understanding complex events, but they both are built
to respond, learn and continue processing, just like the
human brain.
HOME
EDITORS NOTE
EXECUTIVE
DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
MEETING ROOM:
HEALTH CARE EXECS
RX: A BIGGER ROLE
FOR ANALYTICS
WHATS THE BUZZ?
THE BONDS THAT
BIND THE INTERNET
OF THINGS
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
What these cognitive systems cant do is analyze the

risk that might not be represented anywhere in the unstructured data. That includes factoring in cultures, environments, people and accountability.
WHAT THESE COGNITIVE

SYSTEMS CANT DO IS
ANALYZE THE RISK THAT
MIGHT NOT BE REPRESENTED
ANYWHERE IN THE
UNSTRUCTURED DATA.
You have to be able to analyze risk, said Jose Bravo,
a chief scientist at oil company Shell Global. Shell is
looking at big data systems and is considering a variety of
artificial intelligence products, but, according to Bravo,
there are still limitations to what a deep learning machine can do. For example, if a predictive model says buy
oil in the Middle East, but a leader in the region is at risk
of being deposed by a revolution, it must be factored into
25
the decision. If you could predict how the future will

develop, that would be great, but you cant, Bravo said.
And you cant hold a machine accountable if it makes a
disastrous decision.
But thats why there will always be a human element
in the cognitive machine mix. At WellPoint, the staff
ultimately chooses whether to accept Watsons recommendations. The value of Watson is the speed, efficiency
and consistency for responding to a doctors request
and for complying with medical policies and guidelines,
Bigham said.
For the doctors office, users are typing a natural language question into a browser on demand. There is no
calling and waiting to submit a request. And every day
Watson gets smarter, drawing connections between concepts based on things its already learned.
As time goes on, Opus Researchs Miller predicted,
cognitive technology will evolve for the masses, getting
less expensive and easier to use. Watson and other artificial intelligence systems wont fade away like the cognitive fads of the past, Bigham said. In my opinion, this is
one of the next big things. n
CONNECT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM
Latest Isnt
Always Greatest
Todays post-relational database models have sleek
designs and promise fast performancebut if they dont
suit your business needs, youll be off on a road to ruin.
are coming to market with

increasing regularity, and if these products live up to the
hypesuperfast and crazy cheaphundreds of thousands of workhorse relational databases in use today
will be put out to pasture. Who needs a 20th-century
relational database when you can have a decidedly more
modern NoSQL, columnar or in-memory databaseor
even the Hadoop Distributed File System?
Most organizations, it turns out. At least for now.
While the seductive powers of the new technologies
are not to be denied, you should be careful about listening to the siren song of the new, post-relational database
vendors. Not because the new database options lack
merit, but because making your companys next database
move a technology decision is the wrong way to go about
NEW DATABASE TECHNOLOGIES
HOME
26
it. The choice of database should be secondary. Your

business goalthat comes first.
A Very Good Place to Start
Consider a battery of practical questions about your project: Are you creating net new applications in support of
net new business processes or merely upgrading the ones
you already have? Engaging new types of users, data or
analysis? Supporting a new line of business or reinvigorating an existing one? Answers to these questions will
provide essential criteria for understanding which new
database technology, if any, to deploy.
Only then should you look around to see whether a
new database is better for the job than something you
already have.
Implementing a database of any kind isnt cheap.
While many of the new varieties are open source, they
arent freeand even more costs enter the equation
when a project involves migrating an existing relational
database to one of the newbies. Myriad complexity issues
also stand in the way.
New database technologies, particularly in-memory
ones, often need new hardware. Many of the available
options promise to lower total cost of ownership over
timebut new hardware will have to be obtained, and
that up-front cost must be taken into consideration.
CONNECT IT | JOSHUA GREENBAUM
HOME
EDITORS NOTE
EXECUTIVE
DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
MEETING ROOM:
HEALTH CARE EXECS
RX: A BIGGER ROLE
FOR ANALYTICS
WHATS THE BUZZ?
THE BONDS THAT
BIND THE INTERNET
OF THINGS
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
The Fine Print

Finding people with the right skills is an even bigger
issue. The new models may require fewer administratorsmost proponents insist that their databases are
less expensive to implement and manage than old-school
relational databases are. And in many cases thats an easy
argument to make: Top-tier database administrators are
some of the highest-paid people in the IT department,
and their numbersmost relational databases are notorious for the number of admins required to keep them
finely tunedclearly add significant costs.
But the likelihood of finding a Hadoop or columnar
database expert in a traditional relational database shop
is slim, which means youll have to go out and hire these
in-demand people or get the required skills from a consulting company.
And as anyone who has worked to bring a major
application project to fruition can attest, the bulk of
the complexity is centered on everything but the cost
of the software license. Creating new algorithms, analytical models, transactional components and business
27
processes that need to be engineered and implemented is

where the real expense is. Until theyre well understood
and the necessary stakeholder input and approvals have
been obtained, the choice of database technology is at
best a distraction. At worst, its a great way to knock a
project off its axis and send it spinning out of control.
Think Big
This is particularly true in the era of big data, which is
driving a considerable percentage of the new application
projects in organizations. For many, big data projects
involve data types that are new, unfamiliar and often
unstructuredtime-series data, Web server logs, text.
While some new database technology might eventually
need to be deployed, figuring out what the new data
sources are and what the new algorithms should look
like must be the first order of business, right after youve
reached agreement on what the new business processes
are all about. To do otherwise is to march your company
down the path of cost overruns, scope creep and eventualif not inevitablefailure. n
HINDSIGHT
JACK VAUGHAN
A Question of Ethics
Not long ago, the challenges presented by big data
were capturing, storing and harnessing all that
information. But there are other, knottier issues,
and they go much, much deeper.
something of a household term last year,

but it did so in a swirl of controversy.
Snooping by the National Security Agency and data
breaches at Target stores were just two of the prominent
news events that took some of the wind out of big datas
burgeoning sails. That wasnt necessarily bad, though, because the storm of hype around big data technologies was
threatening to burst those sails at the seams.
Data processing has a long history, but the recent controversies suggest that it may be entering a new eraone
in which information ethics will become top of mind.
While most of the coverage in Business Information and
on SearchDataManagement is about the nuts and bolts
of data management, were also hearing from people on
the IT and application front lines who are thinking about
BIG DATA BECAME
HOME
28
theethics of data, perhaps more deeply than in years

gone by.
Big data applications have something to do with that;
so do the open data initiativesbeing launched by government entities. But like almost any political, philosophical
or ethical issue, the challenge doesnt present itself in
stark black and white. IT, analytics and business managers have to find a balance betweenmaking data open,
protecting individuals privacy andin businesses, at
leastusing data to make money.
Longhorn Data Gets Freer Range
Privacy and access to data are dual concerns for Stephanie Bond Huie, vice chancellor of strategic initiatives
at the University of Texas. She helped lead an effort to
open up data for measuring the UT systems performance
across its various academic and health services institutions, but at the same time she had to be mindful of protecting sensitive data.
Huie and her colleagues have transformed their approach to delivering data analytics. Where once-a-year
report books once held sway, highly interactive and
up-to-date data analysis dashboards became the rule. To
meet the challenge, her group implemented a data warehouse fronted by SAS Visual Analytics software, which
enables citizens to see info such as out-of-state versus
HINDSIGHT | JACK VAUGHAN
HOME
EDITORS NOTE
EXECUTIVE
DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
MEETING ROOM:
HEALTH CARE EXECS
RX: A BIGGER ROLE
FOR ANALYTICS
WHATS THE BUZZ?
THE BONDS THAT
BIND THE INTERNET
OF THINGS
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
Read more
columns by
TechTarget
editors.
in-state enrollment for different academic departments.

In January, the university also announced the launch
of a website that provides salary and student-loan debt
statistics on students after graduation.
It was important that we had secure procedures in
place, to make sure people cant hack into the site, Huie
said. For example, the production servers that push data
to the website dont hold any student data.
The drive to open up the data on the universitys performancewasnt without controversy. The effort came
in part at the behest of political forces backed by Texas
Gov. Rick Perry. The proponents pushed hard to bring
the data to light, including politically sensitive metrics
like the workloads of professors. In response, UTs chancellor, Francisco Cigarroa, embraced measured openness
initiatives.
Ethics on the Back Burner
Huies efforts are clearly conscious of the real people behind the data points. Will that type of thinking become
pervasive?
Thats what I was wondering when I met up with David Wells, an independent consultant at Seattle-based
Infocentric and an instructor for The Data Warehousing
Institute, at a TDWI conference late last year.
The NSA and its digitalhooveringwas all over the
news. Funnythe surveillance agency is being scrutinized for activities that sometimes arent very different
than the practices of top Web companies that collect
massive amounts of information as part of theirbig data
29
STEPHANIE BOND HUIE, vice

chancellor of strategic initiatives at the University of
Texas, had to deal with a host
of issuesamong them data
security and student identity
protectionwhile leading the
effort to open up data on the UT
systems performance.
business strategies. That was the backdrop as I asked

Wells if there really is such a thing as a data profession,
with accepted norms of data ethics.
Its not a profession yet, he said, adding that he
doesnt think theres enough interest in ethical considerations to qualify it as one. There are a handful of articles
about the ethics of data, but there should be many. There
should be books, and classes. What we have to do is to get
people to understand that it matters.
Unfortunately, as Wells points out, crises most often
drive peoples attention. The NSA fiasco, he remarked,
may be whats needed to bring the issue of balancing data
access and privacy to a head.
Coming months will tell how much attention stays
focused oninformation ethics issues. Data and analytics
are playing an increasingly pivotal role in the rush to innovation, as well as in the drive to succeed in commerce.
But sometimes its necessary to pause and consider the
social implications of data collection, access and usage
if the term data professional is to ring true. n
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
EDITORS NOTE
is site editor of SearchBusinessAnalytics. Email him at

eburns@techtarget.com and follow him on Twitter: @EdBurnsTT
EXECUTIVE
DASHBOARD
BRENDA COLE
HOME
VERBATIM
MEETING ROOM:
HEALTH CARE EXECS
RX: A BIGGER ROLE
FOR ANALYTICS
WHATS THE BUZZ?
THE BONDS THAT
BIND THE INTERNET
OF THINGS
ON THE BEAT:
FIRST THE WORLD,
THEN THE CLOUD
NOSQL MAKES A
DENT IN RELATIONAL
DATABASE DOMINANCE
COGNITIVE
COMPUTING FOR ALL?
THINK ABOUT IT
JOSHUA GREENBAUM:
LATEST ISNT ALWAYS
GREATEST
ED BURNS
is site editor of SearchManufacturingERP.

Email her at bcole@techtarget.com and follow the site on Twitter:
@ManufacturingTT.
JOSHUA GREENBAUM is
an independent industry analyst and founder

of Enterprise Applications Consulting in Berkeley, Calif. Email him at
josh@eaconsult.com and follow him on Twitter: @josheac.
Business Information is a
SearchDataManagement.com e-publication.
Scot Petersen, Editorial Director
Jason Sparapani, Managing Editor
Joe Hebert, Associate Managing Editor
is a freelance writer and a correspondent for

Business Information. Email her at stephanieneil@comcast.net.
STEPHANIE NEIL
is editorial director of TechTargets Business

Applications and Architecture Media Group. Email him at
spetersen@techtarget.com.
SCOT PETERSEN
Mark Fontecchio, News Director

David Essex, Executive Editor
Lauren Horwitz, Executive Editor
Jan Stafford, Executive Editor
Craig Stedman, Executive Editor
Linda Koury, Director of Online Design
is senior site editor of SearchCloudApplications.

Email her at astuart@techtarget.com.
ANNE STUART
Doug Olender, Publisher, dolender@techtarget.com

Annie Matthews, Director of Sales,
amatthews@techtarget.com
is news editor of SearchDataManagement.

Email him at jvaughan@techtarget.com and follow him on Twitter:
@jackivaughan.
JACK VAUGHAN
Stay connected with us on social media

Facebook
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LinkedIn
TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466

www.techtarget.com
2014 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the
publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.
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The Bonds That Bind

the Internet of Things

First the World, Then the Cloud

Cognitive Computing for All?

APRIL 2014, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2

INSIGHT ON MANAGING AND USING DATA

A feisty pack of new

EDITORS NOTE | SCOT PETERSEN

recently a group of chief technology

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

TREND SPOTTER | EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD

SOURCE: THE 2013 TECHTARGET IT SALARY AND CAREERS SURVEY;

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

TREND SPOTTER | VERBATIM

As much as its hyped, big data does

director of social enterprise

Enough. We have got to stop

It allows you to compete with

vice president of business development at Alfa Insurance, advocating for midsize

Data is a proxy for reality. It has

head of the global business analytics

the former president and general manager of the Toronto Raptors,

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

TREND SPOTTER | MEETING ROOM

Health Care Execs Rx: A Bigger Role for Analytics

industry is often seen as behind the

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

TREND SPOTTER | MEETING ROOM

importance of [clinical] data, but I would observe that

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

us in the industry to really try to identify where we can

TREND SPOTTER | WHATS THE BUZZ?

The Bonds That Bind the Internet of Things

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

COMING RIGHT UP!: A vending machine is one thing

managing all that data can be a challenge. Then there are

TREND SPOTTER | ON THE BEAT

First the World, Then the Cloud

decade ago, Amazon Web Services wasnt

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

countries watched a streaming version of the event.

TREND SPOTTER | ON THE BEAT

Behind the Curtain

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

New Site: SearchAWS

are launching a website focused on

Amazon Web Services. Go to SearchAWS.com to

company Gartner included several cautionary notes

ARCHITECTURE | JACK VAUGHAN

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

In 1922, automaker Henry Ford

famously wrote that his customers

ARCHITECTURE | JACK VAUGHAN

isnt really an up-against-the-wall revolution seeking to

in recognition of the fact that many of the databases do

All in the NoSQL Family

WHATS THE BUZZ?

Couchbase Server, CouchDB, MarkLogic, MongoDB

Common uses include storing clickstream data and application logs.

Aerospike, DynamoDB, Redis, Riak

Wide column stores

Accumulo, Cassandra, HBase, Hypertable, SimpleDB

BUSINESS INFORMATION APRIL 2014

As much as its hyped, big data does

Enough. We have got to stop

It allows you to compete with

Data is a proxy for reality. It has