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Live Tweeporting from #GartnerAADI: Convergence

yvesm — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:34:49 PDT

For the past few years, Gartner analysts Ted Friedman and Jess Thompson have been collaborating on the topic of the convergence of Application and Data Integration. This session at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (#GartnerAADI) was a great summary of the key points, under the tile: “Application and Data Integration: Converge Them For Maximum Value.” Because at the end of the day, it’s about getting value, right?

The Ted & Jess show at #GartnerAADI: converge #DataIntegration & #ApplicationIntegration for maximum value
What's the best tool for the job? is the wrong question. #GartnerAADI pic.twitter.com/KFXdrMrB2f
By 2017, 50% of all orgs will have federated their application & #DataIntegration COEs #GartnerAADI

Live Tweeporting from #GartnerAADI: You Know It’s Big Data When...

yvesm — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:33:30 PDT

More on information management at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (#GartnerAADI). Ted Friedman delivered a fast paced session on Big Data: what it is, how to define it, some of the risks. Impossible to cover it all in half an hour, but nevertheless a good way of busting a few myths!

#GartnerAADI is keeping @ted_friedman busy today... After the #DataIntegration #MagicQuadrant he's about to talk about #BigData.
Eventually the words #BigData will go away and it will just be there. As it has always been! #GartnerAADI
Lots of hype, many definitions of #BigData #GartnerAADI pic.twitter.com/9dwhOsDGWC

Live Tweeporting from #GartnerAADI: Data Integration

yvesm — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:04:27 PDT

Information management’s mindshare is growing at every iteration of the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (#GartnerAADI). Ted Friedman may still introduce himself as “the guy from the other team”, but sessions are getting more and more crowded, and so does (I suspect) his one-on-one agenda. Gartner clearly needs to bring more Information Management analysts to this conference!

Anyway, to set the stage on Information Management, Ted started with the “core” of this market: Data Integration. The official session topic was a review of the Magic Quadrant, but the content was richer than just that.

Waiting for @ted_friedman's #DataIntegration #MagicQuadrant to begin at #GartnerAADI
Now that's a good idea: @ted_friedman has his Twitter handle on his title slide. #GartnerAADI
Integration is taking multiple things of independent design and origin and making them work together to achieve common purpose #GartnerAADI

Live Tweeporting from #GartnerAADI: Cloud Service Integration

yvesm — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:17:47 PDT

The first session I attended today clearly lived up to expectations. At the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (#GartnerAADI), Massimo Pezzini provided an in-depth review of CSI, aka Cloud Service Integration (no, not the TV show…) – probably one of the fastest growing integration segments today.

It is really interesting to see how the analyst’s thinking is evolving and morphing to the continuous shifts in the market. I have been tracking Gartner’s view of this space for some time now, and the least we can say is that this is a very fluid market.

The session’s actual title was “Cloud Service Integration: Enabling SaaS and On-premises Applications Working Together”.
Second day of #GartnerAADI starts with Massimo Pezzini on #Cloud integration: on-prem & SaaS apps
Any app portfolio does or will include both on-prem and cloud apps. #GartnerAADI

Live Tweeporting from #GartnerAADI: Change the Culture to Design for Life

yvesm — Fri, 17 May 2013 01:50:21 PDT

The second part of the opening keynote of the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (#GartnerAADI) featured analyst Andy Kyte discussing the changes in culture required for IT to embrace the ever growing needs of the business, and be successful at doing so. The key here is to “design for life” with the big picture in mind.

I know my tweets won’t do justice to an engaging and energetic presenter who delivered a thought-provoking keynote, but these nuggets are interesting (I hope!)

Demand unmet by IT creates a market, in which vendors are going to jump and bypass IT. #GartnerAADI
How does IT embrace the need for ever growing demand, and be successful at it? #GartnerAADI
In best organizations, there is only one team and it's the company. #GartnerAADI

Live Tweeporting from #GartnerAADI: Opening Keynote

yvesm — Thu, 16 May 2013 06:47:08 PDT

The great thing about the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summits (#GartnerAADI) is that the US and EMEA events are nicely spread across the year. This makes for less repeat content, and maximizes the opportunities to interact with the ecosystem. This week, I am tweeting and blogging from the London event.

During the opening keynote by Gartner analyst and conference chair David Mitchell Smith, the Nexus of Forces was a key focus, hence the illustration that goes with this post. I will be posting separately the second part of the keynote by Andy Kyte.

#GartnerAADI keynote is starting. Conference Chair David Mitchell Smith setting the stage.
Integrate the Past. Embrace the Present. Shape the Future. Great theme for #GartnerAADI

Data, Big and Easy

yvesm — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:15:35 PDT

No, this is a not a post about The Big Easy, the famed city on the Mississippi River. But about how Big and Easy don’t have to be antagonistic when it comes to describing data…

There is a general perception out there that big data isn’t easy. It brings many benefits, some immediately tangible and some that will become clearer in the longer run. But in order to leverage big data, organizations need expertise that few engineers or business users possess. Gartner puts it quite eloquently:

“Over the next 24 months to 36 months a main challenge that organizations will face will be recruiting, onboarding, retaining and developing people with advanced information management/analytics skills. These people include data scientists, information leaders, data stewards, chief data officers and information architects.”

The Impala and the Elephant in the Big Data Savanna

yvesm — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:50:38 PDT

According to Wikipedia, the impala is a medium-sized African antelope im its name comes from the Zulu language meaning "gazelle". Like elephants, it is found in savannas, and this may be the link with Hadoop. Impala is also the name of Cloudera’s SQL-on-Hadoop project, launched in beta at Strata last October and just released in version 1.0.

SQL-on-Hadoop – wait a minute… isn’t it what Hive is for? Well, yes and no. HiveQL certainly brings a set of SQL-like commands to Hadoop data. The big issue with Hive: it’s very slow. More precisely, it’s not interactive. Queries take a long time to be “parsed” and distributed across the cluster. Response times can reach the minute, which is highly impractical for interactive use. It works fine for batch use (response times actually don’t vary much based on the dataset size), but when users want to mine Hadoop data, perform interactive queries or drill-downs, profile data, etc. – they end up spending lots of time glaring at their screen (or fetching more coffee than they should).

Integration at Any Scale: Scale Projects

yvesm — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:59:45 PDT

Talend’s new tagline, introduced a few weeks ago is Integration at Any Scale. Scale, in this context, has many meanings, and after focusing recently on the data angle, I would like to highlight today another dimension: scaling projects.

Integration is a very important part of any IT project. In their Predicts 2013 for Application Integration (you need to be a Gartner client to access this document), Gartner provided this Strategic Planning Assumption:

“By 2018, more than 50% of the cost of implementing 90% of new large systems will be spent on integration.”

Kick the Tires with Talend's Beta Program

yvesm — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:18:01 PDT

In the proprietary software world, the beta program is the only way to get insight into what’s coming in the next release. Sure, roadmap presentations under NDA with the Chief Architect also give a good idea – but the truth is, one doesn’t know how it works until they can actually kick the tires.

Open source is different. The development process is open, and progress on features is visible to anyone who cares to follow the project tracker. And since builds are produced on a regular basis, anyone can download the latest milestone release and try out the new features, pretty much before everyone. Now, of course, before everyone also means before the QA teams, and it hence means that not everything in a milestone release is production-grade. That’s the usual tradeoff between early access and solid, tested features. And that’s one of the key contributions of the community: in return for this early access, they provide feedback that is used by R&D and QA to tune the software.