The battle for “In-Memory Computing” dominance

As you might already know, In-Memory computing is what is on most of the architects and consultants lips these days. It’s true, it’s a damn good architecture that could change the way business analyse data and make decisions.

Reducing the time to make decision, could fast-forward world economies at a tremendous rate.

So in this post, I thought I’ll share with you what the vendors out there have in their arsenal to fight it off in the “In-memory” computing battleground.

SAP SAP HANA - SAP HANA is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system (RDBMS) that’s designed to support transactions and complex query processing on the same data set  

Aerospike - A Distributed NoSQL Database that delivers both speed and scale. Key-value focused operations on whi 

DataStax Apache Cassandra, a NoSQL database - Apache Cassandra is an open source distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure.

IBM IBM DB2 - IBM DB2 is a family of database server products developed by IBM. These products all support the relational model, but in recent years some products have been extended to support object-relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and XML.  IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration is an in-memory columnar data platform that speeds up real-time and ad hoc analytical and operational workloads on IBM DB2.  

Kognitio Kognitio Analytical Platform -  Kognitio Analytical Platform is a scale-out in-memory, Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) Not-only-SQL that is optimized for low-latency data load and high-throughput complex analytical workloads.  

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 - SQL Server 2014 provides a new in-memory capability for tables that can fit entirely in memory (also known as Hekaton). Whilst small tables may be entirely resident in memory in all versions of SQL Server, they also may reside on disk, so work is involved in reserving RAM, writing evicted pages to disk, loading new pages from disk, locking the pages in RAM while they are being operated on, and many other tasks. 

MemSQL - MemSQL is a distributed In-Memory Database that lets you process transactions and run analytics in real-time, using SQL.  

Oracle - Oracle Database In-Memory / Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database

Oracle offers a mature, in-memory database product called Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database as well as Oracle Database In-Memory, an option that extends Oracle Database 12c to support in-memory.

So there we go, a whole lot of products out there to cater to the needs of “in-memory computing”, it all comes down to who can sell better and who can keep the innovation lab churning out new ways of analyzing big data faster.

Hope you found this post informative, have a nice day.

"Freeze the base" - Importance of a Scope Baseline Plan

In most projects, one thing that generally hits the project managers hard is to define what is in scope and what’s not. This is by far one of the most important sub-project plan since it determines the work involved, the resources required, budget required, the final project deliverable and sign-offs required to close the project. Given all these you need to make sure all the elements that make up a scope baseline are addressed at the earliest and communicated to the stakeholders of the project.

Drawing up a Scope Baseline.

The 3 most important documents that should be part of a Scope baseline are:

1. Work Breakdown Structure - The WBS defines each deliverable and further decomposes in deliverable into smaller work packages.
2. WBS Dictionary - The WBS Dictionary contains the actual detailed description of the work required, and is often a very detailed and technical description of each work package.
3. Scope Statement -The Project Scope Statement includes the product scope description and the project deliverable, and it also defines the product user acceptance criteria.

Once the deliverables are confirmed in the scope statement, they need to be developed into a work breakdown structure (WBS) of all the deliverables in the project. The scope baseline includes all the deliverables produced on the project, and therefore identifies all the work to be done. The following should form part of the scope baseline plan:

• All the activities and individual tasks that need to be done to achieve the deliverable identified.
• The resource required for each of the tasks identified. Likely resource constraints, their involvement and ability to execute each task in the available time frame.
• Part of the time management plan e.g. time required for the tasks identified.
• Estimated cost of resources for each tasks based on some notional unit of calculation.
• A complete schedule linking all tasks, resources and time estimates. With start and end dates clearly laid out.
• Identified dependant tasks and their involvement in the critical path.
• Setup a cost baseline which should include a time based budget as well, i.e. a milestone based budget gateway taking into account the cost of resources and cost of time taken to complete the tasks in the WBS dictionary.

With all the above in a scope baseline plan it’s easier to control the momentum of the projects progress.  However, there is always a likelihood that Scope changes are required as the project goes forward, that’s because not everything can be determined upfront, so educate your project sponsors of the likely area a scope creep could occur and always plan to keep some project budget available for these scope additions, after all, these could end up being project deliverables that are an absolute must to achieve the company’s objectives.

I’ll like to think that every Project is like a "Skier" sliding down a “snow slope“which can be thought of as the Scope, if you have a locked in scope that would equate to a good body of snow with the right density, then you will most likely cruise through the project deliverable s and close the project successfully, but if not, then get ready for a wobbly ride ahead !!

Hope this helps. Drop me your queries & comments on ssurenlk@msn.com.

9 - Analyzing too much for the sake of it (Just saying...)

When made responsible to analyses a process and come up with solution, keep in mind the final key deliverable of what needs to be done to make the solution work. Don’t get too bogged down on the intrinsic details of the connecting systems that do not have any direct impact on the final outcome. There are too many consultants out there who like to analyze for the sake of it and don’t deliver the final outcome, with all the connecting systems these days it’s not “attention to detail” that matters but it’s more about “attention to the details that matter”.  Don’t become subject to “paralysis by analysis”!!

8 - Solution first, pollution later (Just saying...)

There will always be instances in a project or tasks, where things go wrong, when it does, the PM or the consultant need to first work on a solution to the issue rather than getting bogged down with the details on who, what and why it occurred, the time and negativity arising out of such a discussion without focusing on a solution, just leads to "pollution" in a project. This in turn might also have an impact on the quality of solution put forward because people become nervous and might mess up again. No one wants to make a mistake, but if and when it happens, first thing on everyone's mind should be to solve it, just saying....

Cloud Ready or Not !!

Many business these days are considering a move to the cloud, some want to get there but lack a could strategy, some want to stay partly "on-premise" and partly in the cloud,  and some don't know where to be, well this article is to provide some tips that management could consider before deciding  if "Cloud" is for them or not.

Some of the key items I've come across when considering a cloud move are listed below:

• Cost of current software licensing, performing tuning, upgrades, fixes, patches & equipment maintenance are some of the cost of an on-premise solution that needs to be considered and compared with the cost of moving to the cloud. A TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis is vital before considering the move.

• Understand the business areas and process that can be broken down into smaller chunks before moving to the cloud. Phased approach seems to be the most widely used cutover model used by most organizations, make sure you go for something small that can be pulled back at an early stage if things go "pear" shaped.

• Make sure that the organization has the ability to be able to manage roles for people in the cloud. Most of the cloud solution these days focus on user experience which states the fact that its mostly going to be user role base. 

• Choose the right partner - Like any IT implementation, make sure you choose the right vendor who is going to support you throughout your organization's transition to the cloud.

• Be open and honest about what is available currently within the organization. IT infrastructure has got to change, people's thinking needs to change and the businesses need to have an adoptive culture, if none of these can be done, cloud is not for you at least not until you get these issues sorted first.

• Get the business involved, this is an extension of my previous point, make sure you get the business users to also buy in on the cloud move. Moving to the cloud is not just an IT Strategic decision is also a business operating decision , keep in mind that this is something that's going to have an impact on the entire business & its operating style.

Hope you found these tips useful, this is by no means an exhaustive list but I believe this is a good starting point to address if your business is "Cloud Ready" or NOT.

7 - Fishing Solution (Just saying....)

There are always those situations when the business might require  a solution to cater to one of their short-term goals, but as a consultant you need to make a call to analyze this requirement and make sure it's not going to be solution which is going to be in place for a short-time only and has to be completely redesigned later on again once new technology or business requirement changes, I call these "Fishing solutions" because it more or less like "Catch & Release fishing" , it's not as much fun in a business context.

6 - Best time for meetings (Just saying...)

Studies show that the more productive meetings are the ones which are held in the morning  simply because the participants can be done with the meeting and can go ahead with working on their daily tasks, rather than having to think about a meeting  later in the day and having to schedule other tasks around that meeting.

Some people say they want to focus on the key tasks that come up in the morning of the work day and hence prefer to do meetings later in the day. Well,  if they are key tasks shouldn't it require more focus, wouldn't it be wiser to get the meeting out of the way and then turn your absolute focus to those key tasks without having to break for a meeting later,  just saying...

5 - Own Agenda (Just saying...)

Don't get too stressed out when you know the client is acting is a way that doesn't seem quite right to what the project wants them to do, everyone have their own agenda that they are working towards, sooner or later they will get back on board because they will have to once they realize that the business's agenda is more important than theirs.  However just make sure that the project doesn't get completely derail off , because that's not going to help the project agenda,  just saying.....

4 - Good enough Users (Just saying...)

Those end-users who are happy with "good enough" to get the job done are the ones who move on much faster to other tasks which in turn makes them more productive and better "cost-per-task valuable employees" in the organization, just saying....

Line 'em up and Knock 'em down in 2015 !!

Go hard this year, in your next New Year celebration have a reason to party like crazy about a successful year just gone by !!

The below tips might  come in handy to make it count this year, all applies equally.

• Be agile, prepare yourself for change and be able to respond to it. This is crucial for personal survival as well as surviving and thriving in a business landscape.

• It’s all about the user, make the user experience fantastic and they’ll stick with you. Think CUSTOMER!!

• If you are looking for resources for what you want, go places looking for it, remember the more you stick at home and look for resources at your immediate vicinity, your competitors are all over the place grabbing the best one !! It’s called Globalresourcetrotting!!

• Up skill yourself on generalized skill and then target specialised skills.

• Make everything available on the web, open up yourself and your products to the world; the web is your market!!

• Dont always expect everything to happen under your feet, decentralise and get the best out of what you need. Remember a Ship that doesn’t sail too far off the shore doesn’t sail too far!! – A true entrepreneur should be able to delegate tasks and venture into new areas.

• Give out material that is relevant to your product, advertise intelligently, get away from the norms, get away from old school thinking....dare to do something new, something different.

• Learn from your own growth, if it has worked previously...go with it, don’t break the cycle, whether its growth or decline, you can’t change it, everything repeats itself in cycles.

• Network, network, network, people would only hire you when they know you. In a skills-for-hire economy, your network is how you find the opportunities. 

Last but not the least, BE A BABY! Yeah that’s right, studies found that babies learn at an exponential rate, simply because everything is new to them and they are curious about everything!! 

Start that off with yourself, question yourself, ask why, experience something new.... take a swing at life before it has one at you!!

All the best, make this YEAR really count!!

Happy New Year 2015 - Lets get started !!

Wishing all my readers the very best of everything in 2015 !!

 Make this year count, get started on doing everything that you've been putting off last year.