Martin Wildberger presenting big data scenarios
If there was one takeaway from Information On Demand 2012, it was that the era of big data has arrived. Technology is available today to help us achieve the holy grail of Information Management: the ability to not only manage and store data but also integrate and analyze high volume, variety and velocity data in real time.
We can unleash the power of information with greater speed and efficiency while also detecting fraud and improving security. Seems too good to be true, right? Wrong!
One of the most memorable aspects of IOD 2012 was hearing from customers who are putting the InfoSphere technologies to the test and consequently solving daily business challenges. ConocoPhillips, Aetna, MoneyGram, Dillards, Nationwide, Citigroup, T-Mobile, Vestas Wind Systems and many others shared their big data journeys. In addition, demos of InfoSphere Guardium, InfoSphere Optim, InfoSphere Data Explorer and much more turned me into a believer.
During the Information Management keynote, we heard from Martin Wildberger, VP, WW Information Management Development, that InfoSphere closes the gap between big data challenges and opportunity by applying best practices around Information Integration and Governance to big data systems.
For example, with the announcement of InfoSphere Guardium v9.0, we can expand data security into big data environments such data warehouses, Hadoop-based systems and file shares. Another example, with InfoSphere Optim Data Privacy v9.1, we can protect data in big data systems with intelligent data masking techniques. Read more about these announcements in the October 18, 2012 IBM press release. Both of these technologies have a proven track record of delivering protection for relational data sources. These best practices have been expanded to embrace the new era of computing.
This message was also prevalent in the main tent keynote address by Steve Mills, Senior VP and Software Group Executive. Mills talked about how Information Integration and Governance is now more important than ever and is the foundation on which we should build all our big data projects.
With the InfoSphere Optim portfolio organizations can build common rules and policies across systems including privacy, retention, archive and retirement policies to ensure they are honored and enforced across the data lifecycle. InfoSphere Optim also provides a self services approach to governance spanning all roles and business units rather than being relegated to silos. InfoSphere Optim makes governance easy to design, execute, manage and easily extends to new sources of data.
Mills also commented that big data isn’t just about managing the data explosion: it’s about working smarter. InfoSphere Optim data lifecycle policies allow us to expand existing best practices and embrace a new era of computing. Don’t throw away filesystems and databases. Instead, extend the governance policies you have to address big data challenges across physical, virtual and cloud systems.
Mills commented that big data is a team sport shared across database experts, application owners, security professions, executives, partners and much more.
IBM has lived through massive paradigm shifts over its 100 year history. Now IBM is embracing the next generation bringing manageable and repeatable processes to harness and control big data. Mills left the audience with a fascinating story. If the US could eliminate the amount of fraud and waste in the federal government, we could retire the entire US debt in a decade. This is truly a big data project. What’s yours?
Related reading:
New! ebook: Top Tips for Securing Big Data Environments
New! ebook: Top 3 Myths about Big Data Security
Updated! Solution Sheet: InfoSphere Guardium
Enhanced! InfoSphere Optim Masking - IBM InfoSphere Optim Data Masking solution – Mask data on demand to protect privacy across the enterprise
Enhanced! InfoSphere Optim Data Growth
Enhanced! InfoSphere Optim for Warehouses
