Data, Data Everywhere – Techstrong Research Review EP 18

here Hi everybody, Mike Rothman here with the tech strong research review another of our internal research meetings. I am general manager of tech strong research and general gadfly pain in the ass all sorts of other things. I've been characterized and We have the nice guy of our team, right the midwestern, you know Monster that made what is monsters of the Midway wasn't there team or something was the Midway?

Yeah, that's kind of wrestling Sounders and maybe it's actually so much. How are you? You're the least thing, you know to a monster that I think I've ever seen maybe the nicest most genuine person.

I've come across and I am not that So now there's that some work you want me to do? Okay. All right.

You got our Hour Lanes? Defined I'm like Monsters Inc. I'm that kind of monster.

Mike was asked you. There you go. What time this week we're gonna talk about beta.

Yeah about data and and why is data, you know becoming a thing. Why are we split it out? Well, of course first and foremost, there's something absolutely self-serving about us talking about data.

What would that be? We are starting a new conference. We are firing up the data Ops connect conference that will be in August August 16th.

It's a new conference for us. We've not done this before. So we're excited to start carving out, you know, kind of a new area for Tech strong really obviously we've been talking about beta for a long time and we're all aspects of what we're doing but it does seem that increasingly with the aggregation of all sorts of corporate data a lot of analytics that we're starting to see, you know, this Renaissance in you know, kind of iterative AI and machine learning and you know trying to Inferent and you know from these massive data sources that curating and and understanding how to leverage data within an organization is becoming increasingly important.

So we certainly recognize that we've got a lot of activity on the security side. That's certainly what I'm closest to when we talk about application architecture. There's you know, again a lot of devops a number of cloud native, you know projects that are focused around, you know, managing and curated data a ton of data.

We you know, they don't stores that are open source, and obviously, you know, you have your mom goes in your influxes and you know, pretty much all sorts of Open Source, you know kind of data stores that are starting to be the back and of these environments all sorts of stuff around data. So what we wanted to do get pretty quickly today since we all have a lot going on. It's really talk a little bit about, you know, kind of the backdropo.

Why date is important where it fits into, you know, certainly our cover. Is and I think a lot about how we're going to start thinking about data over the next couple of months leading into Data Ops connect in August. Yeah, it's it's you just named off the proliferation of data.

Right? And of course, there's more we could add to that which is why it's such a big topic for us courses never went away. But I think we focused on software development and software engineering and adding security to the security to that and data data Ops is emerged like other disciplines, you know, a higher higher on a radar screen, but it it's also evolved too at the same time, right because we know we put things in teradata and we created data lakes and now we've got data sprawl everywhere and different clouds and but we've got regulation and privacy and security and all kinds of things that that are, you know important to address as well as how we want to use that data analyze it plug it into our AI systems as well as transform it so that we can use it across multiple applications.

You know, I think you've heard me say For Mike wins a whole Shadow it thing was like, oh, it's a bad thing. I'm like no, it's actually good thing. Don't worry everyone who's doing Shadow?

It will eventually come to it and ask for security access integrate with applications or data, right? Those are the three things everybody needs and you know, no app is really truly an island and data is it's just it's part of everything right? What are we protecting in our systems?

Yeah, we don't want them to be bodded. But also we don't we really don't want to lose their data. That's that's the valuable stuff, right?

Yeah, that's right. And and I think that there are so many different aspects of you know, kind of this initiative. That's just thinking about right.

I mean, we've got data obviously in our application. So whether that's email obvious, that's the most, you know, obvious one, but our internet or sure who means and and internet type environments we've got Final stores and file systems that we still Have data all in and that's not even including the structure data that you know kind of drives a lot of our applications and again, so think about kind of the breath of what the charter is for somebody who takes on you know, a datas are and I don't even know what the the actual title is is it hit of data is it, you know, be cheap data officer. I guess, you know, sir, you know you increasingly we're starting to see stuff like that.

But let's just call them the date is star because they may or may not be a sea level type person but getting a sense of what all this stuff is it and not just from you know, obviously you mentioned the compliance issue and and there's an intellectual property protection issue. So not even dealing with you know, kind of the security piece of stuff. You're still there's a huge businessability problem here, right?

You just don't know where things are. You don't know what's folks have, you know in their local stores and and on Or you know kind of personal devices and and all that. So, you know, this idea really kind of first controlling the sprawl getting some visibility to it and then figuring out how you're gonna leverage it, you know really is a logical progression for how this this initiative can really happen.

But I don't know that these folks right these data's Arts have the time to do that, right? They tend to be brought in with the specific chart build the data lake so we can roll out, you know, a new fangled application that leverages our corporate data more effectively to give us a business Advantage. Okay, right, but that's why one maybe it's five percent of the entirety, you know of this problem.

So get a big challenge is gonna be how do I you know address that's practical needs that are really driven by business oriented initiatives and and, you know kind of make that more strategic in terms of getting your arms around the entirety of the In the environment and again, I don't know the answer these things, right but you know kind of the days are has to you know, really think a lot more strategically than just whack on all which is hey, you know, let's let's move something into a central place so that you know, we can get to it a little bit easier and we can build a micro service to access it, you know from the application layer, right? I just don't think that's you know, yes, that's a tactical thing but that's not gonna solve the problem and face, you know, we think of that date Ops that's squeezing the balloon right? I've got everything.

Oh, they're popped out over here. It's popping out on that side. You know, I think that the data's are in the in its infinite number of names in that role sort of the other side of it is starting to think about data in a platform sense.

Right? It's it's having a way to work with data in various forms various locations and its growth in in services and our applications, you know things that we're generating you might look at our business and we're a small company. We don't write big applications ourselves.

There's a lot of SAS Services, you know, we do a lot of website everything we do generates data. Yeah, and and while there we don't have a date is our you know, as a growing business, we do a pretty decent job in a lot of cases and there's cases where we have needs to of really, you know, what's happening on our webinars and what's happening with our research who's reading and how many people are you know interested in those topics, you know, there's an external data sources and our own experience interacting with people and we're just you We're tiny compared to a big insurance company or somebody else like that and it's not easy. It's it's love to bring that just together to get that information.

Yeah, we we actually have a person on our team Greg who you know work makes works on your CTO on the CTO side of your brain is opposed to the research side of your brain. He builds dashboards. So that's really kind of the reporting but we just a whole bunch of other stuff that I want minimize will bring us the company needs a lot our marketing initiatives and paid adapters.

That's a data switchboard. You get all the day we're exactly so when we need to get a sense of what it is, I mean great kind of has a sense of where the data is and and how to get to it and and leverage some of the reporting tools that we use typically have Google, um, you know, in order to make sense of that so we can put it out that we're internal dashboards. Do we leverage that to drive the business as well as we should know, of course not no everybody struggles with that, right?

And it's still a lot of intuition and and you know kind of feel and and you know, well, we're launching the data show did we have data that said we need to launch a data show. No, right probably do but with a different we didn't use that to make the decision. You know, we talked to a bunch of folks and they said this is an interesting area and we see a bunch of companies and we do a lot of interviews, you know about the topic and we go.

Yeah, this is something we need to deal with but that's much more added data. Again, we're small company. We're not you know necessarily, you know kind of funded from the standpoint of you know, being able to dedicate folks to that problem, but it's a problem again.

It's a micro problem for us because we're a smaller entity the bigger you get the bigger problem it is because you have more data it's sprawled across too many other places and you have so many Initiatives happening right at the same time that you know getting a handle on again. It's it's an unenviable position for anybody really to try to you know, at least centralize the understanding of how this data is and to act as a resource right to the application teams that are trying to figure out how to leverage this data and and have it translated to into business value. And then there's the force multiplier Factor Colin Powell term is mergers and Acquisitions.

Oh, but right now we have all this too. What do we do with all that? Right and in addition to what we were already?

All right, so you're right. So I just spent the last, you know X years trying to get my arms around what we already had and then you know, you either divest or you invest or you acquire or whatever and then, you know, walk rich and repeat and start all over again. Yeah.

So again, all of these things are huge problems. I don't know. I don't have any answers to this right now.

I have not, you know kind of done and that's gonna be one of the things that we start to carve out over the next, you know, again, six months. I mean edges definitely a major area folks for us and I think data we have to figure out what that means. But I think we're gonna do you know some specific primary research on that front as well leading up to the to the conference because you know why it's an opportunity when we talking about it and to you know, I think the time is right to really start to carve out what that means, you know to customers right?

What does that mean to the industry? What does that mean to the folks who are past with, you know, kind of running, you know heard or writing heard over a lot of you know, getting these different initiatives that are happening within their organization. I think there are many touch points to our business and I'm sure not all of these will cover in the conference, but You know just there's proliferous proliferation of data.

There's also just the intersection of data with all the topics. We work on and we talk about just think about you know, security David data privacy data security. There's of course app SEC which protecting data traveling across and inside applications and between applications.

We talked about data that's used in workflow, whether it be in devops workflows or business workflows or whatever that might be low code kind of applications that might be built and and of course Cloud native Technologies, so it you know, I we talk about modernization of applications that's also part of it. That's kind of the new word for digital transformation, right? But it intersects with Adam more AI everything.

So I think we're well. I hope we'll have some variety. We always have good diversity of topics that are virtual conferences that will hit on those points so though at least be a couple of sessions.

They'll probably be directly in your lane. most likely and then there'll be some that'll be kind of, you know connected to that too, which makes them very part with we had fantastic attendance at At techstrong Con that that's only an extremely well and I think that's was partly because of the how the tracks or how the conversations were laid out and I think we learned a lot from that like We did we did. So yeah, I mean I'm excited right?

I mean, you know this a new area and I get to learn, you know, a whole mess of new stuff and and that's always exciting for an old dog like me, you know, and I was thinking this morning, you know, so I was on my rowing machine just like, you know old dogs can learn new tricks, right? That's kind of that's one of the aspects of constant renewal and and lifetime learning and all all sorts of other, you know, kind of important things for for mental health and and we practice that every week right because you know again, that's what we do. We that's some ideas around and and we see where we're gonna take them but, you know get a lot of aspects to understanding, you know, the data challenges of the modern Enterprise and and we attack strong research and going to you know, start carving this stuff out over the next, you know, get a couple of months leading up to our data Ops connection show in mid August, so Be fun pay attention stay around help us with our research, right?

You know, we do not surveys we get polls up on the sites all the time. com right now. We'll have another four or five in the next, you know, kind of two or three weeks because you know, we've got just a bunch of initiatives in Flight, which is really exciting.

I'll a lot of different aspects of modernizing your your infrastructure. So we've got even it's fun. We're having a great old time here, you know, I I inherited for my mother The Thirst and the love of learning.

I just enjoy that continue learning and one of my best college professors told me he told me in computer science. He said everything we you learned is out of date in six months in college, but I think that's about six minutes now, but then it was six months and I just hope better pay attention right to what's going on. And that's and I think that's the kids and people Entering the workforce in the workforce.

Now, they've learned that too. That's just part of the world. We live in it's a constant renewal and growth just fine.

I love that or not, right, you know, sir. We're going into you know, a number of folks that you know again, it just seems like um, You know 1998 called and they want their front end process about her, you know kind of where they want their IP network, you know, and I was talking to somebody, you know, yes, you need my token room. Where's my token rink?

You know? Yeah. I mean we're talking about that but you know, they're in the cloud and and they build you know, kind of again and they're talking about something that's and and you know isolating stuff within the account.

I'm just like you're doing it right you don't need to do it. That way we can build now within they're talking about. Oh, we don't want to overlap the IP address like they can unless you're in a Transit environment where you actually have to send data from one place to another you can have exactly the same, you know, kind of addressing scheme, you know, internally to understand things and exactly that's right and yeah mechanism to do that.

So it's just it's interesting where you you do see a lot of the old traditional patterns and and you know kind of structures and then you have read again groups that you know, kind of really Embrace this new way of doing stuff and just Text strong standpoint. Those are our people right our people are the folks that you know are Russian headlong into you know, kind of this new architectural mindset, you know leveraging open source and Cloud native technology, right, you know kind of re-architecting their Factory to be much more agile and devops-centric and thinking about how you know security layers into all of that. So that's again.

Those are our people right? And and if you're not that right now you have an opportunity to become that right by kind of paying attention to what we're doing in and reading a lot of the stuff that we have up on our sights and participating in our events. Well, that's that long tail.

That's that learn from the people who let you know, let the folks who were willing to make the mistakes who can afford to or you know want to take risks that you may not want to learn from them be the fast-forward be the next wave. That's the you know, we've seen that cycle over and over that's okay certain organizations have a personality. About how they take on new things right?

And but there's the tail end of you know, not moving and you may not be around for very long too. So you've got to not be at that point and figure out how you're moving forward, so Well Mike's been a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it and we'll be talking more about data Ops as our research takes more shape and we'll get feedback.

Yeah connect August 16th and next week same bad time same bat Channel actually, you know, typically we post the show on you know, but it sometimes it's it's Tuesday. Sometimes it's Thursday really depends on what's going on. Yeah the TV show but so for us it'll be the same bad time same b**** when we record when you guys see it.

Well, right, you know, that'll be that'll be determined. But check out the podcast text from you know, we have great podcast, you know, whether you want to consume stuff in 20 minute hour or you know on a show by show basis, you can get all that stuff and text wrong podcasts. And yeah, we just and again we're we're rolling so we got to keep on rolling.

So with that much a great week. And we will see all of you next week. You take care.

We'll see you soon.