Building the Knowledgebase
IOUG survey results drive the user group agenda, affect
product development, and inform the wider public.
The most valuable benefit that members of the Independent Oracle Users Group
(IOUG) share is our collective knowledge about
our industries, technology, and Oracle products. It is why IOUG exists, and it is why people
come to our conferences, read our periodicals,
and attend our online or in-person seminars.
This benefit is not confined to the IOUG
community: increasingly, IOUG members’
opinions and insights into many of today’s
challenges are sought after and referenced
by individuals and groups outside of our user
group. The next time you see a presentation
from Oracle on how it is addressing security,
data warehousing, business intelligence,
cloud computing, or big data, for example,
look for the IOUG logo. In such presentations,
the problem the technology solves is framed
in introductory slides that show trends in the
technology and what customers are saying
about their current challenges—and it’s there
that you will often see data from IOUG surveys.
IOUG is proud that our membership’s
opinions are valued, not only by those outside
of our community but also by Oracle specifically. This is how we directly, proactively,
and positively have an impact on solutions
to some of our technology challenges. In
fact, Oracle and other vendors have been
so interested in our surveys that they are
increasingly eager to participate in them
with a few targeted questions of their own.
IOUG and Unisphere Media, the firm used to
execute and manage IOUG surveys, maintain
control of the overall direction and content
of the surveys. Yet having other vendors voice
genuine interest in our members’ opinions is
part of the advocacy mission of IOUG.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the surveys help
shape this column, because what is important
to our members has a high probability of being
important to the readers of this magazine. The
surveys also direct the strategy of IOUG. Our
annual review of IOUG programs evaluates the
The Petabyte
Challenge focused
on the explosion of
data managed by
organizations.
information from these surveys so that we can
ensure critical, topical programs and educational events are appropriately funded.
One of our most recent surveys, The
Petabyte Challenge, focused on the explosion
of data managed by organizations. Not only
do we need to manage all of this data from a
physical perspective (that is, how do we effectively store and retrieve this much data?), but
we also need to get value out of this big data
store through analytics and business intelligence. The following nuggets of information
from The Petabyte Challenge survey are some
that I found interesting. Each finding is followed by the corresponding question IOUG
membership should help to answer.
SURVE Y FINDING: 30 percent of organizations have seen data grow at an annual rate
of more than 25 percent, with 10 percent
seeing greater than 50 percent growth. 27
percent of respondents currently have more
than 100 TB of data. Nearly 1 out of 10 sites
now has data stores in the petabyte range.
IOUG assignment: The more data we have,
the faster it grows. How do we manage
this explosion?
SURVE Y FINDING: Data warehousing and
business intelligence, online requirements for
data, and business protection and compliance
account for a majority of the data growth.
IOUG assignment: A diversity of factors
drives this data growth, implying that there
must be more than one approach to managing it. What are the best strategies for
managing the factors driving your growth?
SURVE Y FINDING: Having multiple copies
of data, in addition to production data, also
drives growth. Nearly half of the respondents
have three to five copies of their data, and
71 percent maintain all their data in-house.
IOUG assignment: Most organizations are
throwing hardware at the data-growth
challenge, with some implementing directed
archiving strategies. But what about a fundamental rethinking of how data is managed?
The IOUG assignments above are just some
of the issues our members will be focusing on
in the future, with the goal of providing solutions, recommendations, and direction to add
to IOUG’s collective knowledge.
What can you do to take advantage of
this IOUG knowledgebase or to add to it?
Download the executive summary of our
surveys from the IOUG Website ( ioug.org).
(IOUG members can download the complete
surveys.) More importantly, you should join
the conversation with your peers at IOUG
and share your solutions with them, and
learn from what other members are doing.
Become an IOUG member and add your
voice to a chorus to which industry insiders
are increasingly listening.
Andy Flower
( andy_flower@ioug.org)
is president of IOUG
and has been an active
volunteer with the
organization since 1998.
In his day job, he is an information management
and business intelligence consultant with Right
Triangle Consulting.
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