Mastering Data Management

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• Break Free Tour: Build Your Information Strategy

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What trends will shape your IT strategy? Join the Break Free Tour to find out.

I had a safe flight to Seattle on Monday since Laura Bush was on my flight, along with several members of the Secret Service.  But I did not make it safe for the attendees at the Break Free Tour. I chose to share the truth that the next five years is going to be pivotal for their business and it will be so because of information management.

We had our first Break Free event Tuesday in Bellevue (which I was told was NOT Seattle!). The hall was packed full of eager, engaging professionals and I was very pleased to be a part of it, kicking it off with my keynote, “Building Information Strategies for Unparalleled Competitive Advantage.” I spoke about how heterogeneity of systems is now the norm, that all data is required to be fully utilized and that many actions need to take place at the earliest possible point.

I talked about Master Data Management, Hadoop and how many organizations are over-relying on and abusing the multidimensional platform. Increasingly, much of our infrastructure is moving to the cloud, and I talked about that as well.

The point is that using systems for ill-fitting functionality creates challenges. I could tell I sparked some interest in further investigation into these topics, some of which were new to some in attendance.

For the rest of the day, the IBM experts picked up these topics, drilling in, providing case studies and talking about how their product set is aligned to these realities.

I enjoyed these presentations, including the keynote from Inhi Suh, the Vice President of Information Management Product Strategy who talked about the three forces driving systems today: information from everywhere, extreme scalability and radical flexibility. Inhi also gave a riveting account of how the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center “future-proofed” its infrastructure. (Ed Note: UPMC will be speaking on an upcoming webcast: Transforming Healthcare with “Truly” Connected Medicine.)

There are two threads at Break Free – one on databases and the other on system virtualization. I joined the database thread where the topics of Netezza, SAP and Smart Analytics were presented.

I believe that the content at Break Free is appropriate and must-know for all information technology professionals, regardless of level. If you are a DBA, you need to know the bigger environment and, of course, the CIO needs to shape that environment so must know and consider the information from Break Free in setting the strategy for arguably the most important business asset of the next five years – information.

It is also very important that the IT professional know what a major, bellwether vendor like IBM is doing, thinking and promoting. This is true regardless of which vendor, or vendors, that your shop primarily deals with.

Break Free accomplishes that for IBM. Agree or disagree, you will hear what IBM thinks is important (and consequently is important) and where they are investing. You will be alerted to competitive points that you can use in negotiating with your non-IBM vendors or that may spark an interest in changing. You may just learn about something that seriously shapes your career.

And the breakfast and lunch were well above the usual conference standard.

If you are in Los Angeles, Denver or Atlanta, consider spending a morning with Break Free next week. Read my previous post about what else you'll learn.

Full details on the Break Free Tour, including upcoming dates around the world.