InsightaaS: One of the bloggers that ATN follows closely is Paul Lewis, CTO for Hitachi Canada, who uses a variety of comedic twists to make serious points about Big Data. Paul’s most recent post, “The Brain of a Grumbling Droid … Adding Data Lakes to Enterprise Information Management,” is a great example of this mixture of style and substance. In it, he uses C3PO’s whining as a proxy for “business value,” and then discusses the steps that would be needed to connect this whining to the greater Enterprise mission (sorry, couldn’t resist) of avoiding hurtling meteors and reporting to Yoda. It includes an easy-to-understand explanation of key data warehousing and Big Data tools, and of the benefits of linking data lakes to EDWs – which is of tremendous benefit to anyone who is trying to establish a data strategy connecting structured, batch systems with the coming meteor-storm of new data volumes, variety and value.
One time I went on a jungle cruise where the boat captain got us lost and we nearly got killed by head hunters…
…was the start of my comedic story until someone in the audience yelled “Can you pretend to be normal today?” And by “audience” I mean the driver’s side backseat passenger in the carpool I was ferrying to work.
“Fine, then I will not regale you with a tale of the time I was in the middle of a 18th century seaport town being pillaged by pirates, coincidentally, also slowly floating in a boat”, I snapped back. “If you insist on having a predictable and humourless tour of Endor, you’ve boarded the wrong Star Speeder!”.
“So speaking of droids, if you want to talk about work, how many TB’s of data do you think C3PO carries on board versus connected via some form of wireless connection to the ship he happened to find himself trapped in today?”, I inquired of the car load of information management professionals.
“Considering how much of a long, long time ago it was, even if it was far, far away, I would have to assume most of the few TB’s C3PO needed was onboard, in some sort of electronic storage. Spinning disk simply wouldn’t be able to handle the variety of extreme temperatures, altitude changes and garbage crushing he encounters on a daily basis. My guess is he only connects to the ship situationally, maybe for occasional updates to firmware or blueprints to spheres of death.” opined the front seat passenger.
The final member of our foursome wonders less about his storage requirements and more about his attitude problem. “Sure he needs to keep and access some relevant information to do his job of sidekick to the one true hero of the galaxy R2D2, but what kind of technologies are necessary for the constant whining?”.
Excellent question. I take a deep breath to start my rant….
“Let’s focus on the whining, as the most important technologically relevant feature of C3PO. That one emotional characteristic is no doubt, in large part, providing comic relief to the force as a whole and therefore let’s assume complaining, disapproving, and bellyaching can largely be described as “business value”…
