Big Mini Data

We hear about big data all the time. How big data is changing everything. If you don’t know what big data is, follow this link and get up to speed. When we read reports on Big data, they are generally Really Big Data, like Facebook adding 500 Terabytes a day. Well even your SMB clients with far less data, growing at a far smaller rate, feel like they have big data, and they are right.

Big Data

So how are you helping your mini big data users? Have you upgraded their backup and recovery options? Have you looked at their storage requirements and is it sufficient? Have you looked at the software they use to report on their data? The database they use to store their data? This is your job you know… Knowing what they need so you can sell it to them.

You may have clients who started populating an MS Access database several years ago and they have never done any real maintenance on that database. Maybe you should migrate them to MS SQL or MySQL, something with a little better performance. Are they using built in reporting tools? Maybe you need to get them using a more powerful tool set for reporting.

To quote Wikipedia Big Data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools. I think that is what I just pointed out above. So if your clients are using under powered tools to deal with larger databases, they have big data…for them.

Weak tools can break the system

Big data needs better tools and better planning. Planning for growth and performance. Better tools for working with and displaying the data. Don’t miss the big data boat with your clients, evaluate your clients data needs today.

Monkey in the Middle

Imagine a monkey with a bunch of bananas. Now imagine a monkey with a bunch of bananas trying to defend them from another monkey. I’m sure he would put the bananas behind him and keep his eyes on the other monkey trying to steal his bananas. Well now imagine a monkey with a bunch of bananas and some other monkey friends helping him to try to defend the bananas from another monkey. The first monkey has his eyes on the monkey trying to steal the bananas, but who is watching the monkey friends? This is the problem with IT network security.

I saw an article today written about a security survey provided by Bit9. You can read the story here. There were a lot of interesting numbers in the survey that stuck out to me. Most interesting to me? Nearly 2/3rds of IT security professionals worldwide think Anonymous or another hacktivist group will attack them in the next 6 months, but only 1/3^rd of the same people feel an employee is a likely threat.

It seems to me we are watching the wrong monkeys. Not that we can ignore the “professional hacker”, of course we have to secure the network. Firewalls, NAC, VPNs, all play a part, but later in the article it is reported that only 11% of the security professionals worry about the common attack methods used by hactivist groups. The biggest fear of attack by 62% of the IT security professionals surveyed is targeted attacks. Targeted attacks are things like malware and Phishing attacks.

So unless an IT department is installing Malware, it seems to me that this is being loaded by the end user. So while watching the monkey trying to steal our bananas, and trying to keep our company off the evening news, we let the other monkeys steal our bananas, and put our company on the evening news.

Ford Motor Company used to have a motto in the 80s, “Quality is job one”. Today all companies should have the motto, “Security is job one”. Security is everyone’s job, not just the security division of the IT department. What do you secure? The PCs? The servers? Hardware? Software? I say the data. We live in a world of always on, always connected, always working.

So however we access the data, wherever we access the data, whoever accesses the data, we have to secure the data. Everyone has the secure the data, from the CEO to the janitorial staff. More sensitive data is viewed inappropriately because of passwords on sticky notes or non-shredded business documents than hactivist attacks.

Watch the bananas Monkey, watch the bananas…

Words Mean Things

I must have said that phrase to the sales people working with me a thousand times. Words like “Synchronize”, “Cloud”, “Real-time”, and “Unlimited”. These words have a dictionary definition as well as common usage. It is important to define the techno babble words you use with your prospects and clients so they understand what you mean.

If you say to your clients, “you get unlimited data.” When you mean, you get a lot of data until you are in the top 5% of data users in your area, they may disagree with you. They may even feel you have violated your contract with them and they may even sue you. Just ask AT&T. Story here.

So the point of my blog today is not to slam AT&T. I am an AT&T customer and I’m generally happy with their service. My point is to show how words have meanings that can get you in trouble keeping a happy client. If you say you get unlimited data, but that isn’t “technically” what you mean, stop. Explain until they understand.

If your prospects can’t understand you, it is hard for them to buy from you, and even harder to not blame you if there is an issue.

Waving Goodbye

It is time to wave goodbye to Google Wave. Some of you must have tried Google Wave. When Google Wave came out I was really excited about the concept and possibilities. Combining and integrating multiple communication streams into a single thread. Google wave is shut down now and will power off the servers April 30^th. So why did it die?

Good question. My opinion is it was ahead of its time and all the connectors weren’t there to make it work as it needed to. In business, and in our personnel lives we need a Google Wave like function. You send an email to a coworker, he IMs another coworker, who texts a customer to post on the Facebook page asking other customers to Tweet with the hash tag #WTH and you would like to see all of this activity in one connected thread, because it is.

Google integrated some of this into Google+ by letting you make one post and notify additional people who are not on the platform by email. I hope the reverse the funnel and allow us have a single aggregated stream to read everything we care about, Email, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, 4Square, LinkedIn, Etc.

The Web was always about information. The biggest challenge in the early days was finding what you wanted. Today’s challenge is filtering out too much data and making the logical connections between linked data. We are going to hear more and more about this with the push of “big data” into the SMB channel. A small business can have huge data, and as more data like medical records gets digitized, linking and finding this data may need Google Wave like technology.

So I waving goodbye to Google Wave, welcome Google+ with open arms and look down the road to more data and more tools do deal with the “big data”.