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William McKnight

President at McKnight Consulting Group

Plano, United States

William McKnight is an internationally recognized authority in information management. His consulting work has included many of the Global 2000 and numerous midmarket companies. His clients have reaped tremendous ROI and turned data into a real corporate asset. Many have gone public with their success stories.

William is the #1 global influencer in master data management, #1 in data warehousing, #3 in data management, #7 in information management and #14 in information architecture.

He is president of McKnight Consulting Group, which provides clients with action plans, architectures, strategies, complete programs and vendor-neutral tool selection to manage information. MCG is #1001 on the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies in the US and #743 on the 2017 list.

He is the author of the books "Integrating Hadoop", "Information Management: Strategies for Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data"? and "90 Days to Success in Consulting".

William teaches Data Platforms, Data Maturity, NoSQL, Graph Databases, Business Intelligence, Data Quality, Project Management, Data Governance, Data Architecture, Data Modeling, Data Integration, Data Return on Investment, Agile Methodology, Big Data, Organizational Change Management and Master Data Management for the Data Warehousing Institute (since 1998) and other events globally. He is a frequent international keynote speaker.

William has hundreds of articles and 50+ white papers in publication and is a prolific sponsored blogger.

An Ernst&Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist and frequent best practices judge, William is a former Fortune 50 technology executive and database engineer. William has taught at Santa Clara University, UC-Berkeley and UC-Santa Cruz.

He has consulted in 14 countries.

Current Services Offered, Presentation Calendar, White Papers, Articles and Press Quotes can be found at mcknightcg .com.

Available For: Authoring, Consulting, Influencing, Speaking
Travels From: DFW
Speaking Topics: data, artificial intelligence, analytics

William McKnight Points
Academic 0
Author 1538
Influencer 335
Speaker 187
Entrepreneur 26
Total 2086

Points based upon Thinkers360 patent-pending algorithm.

Thought Leader Profile

Portfolio Mix

Company Information

Company Type: Company
Minimum Project Size: N/A
Average Hourly Rate: N/A
Number of Employees: 11-50
Company Founded Date: 2023
Media Experience: 20 years
Last Media Interview: 04/04/2023

Areas of Expertise

AI 30.09
Analytics 39.60
Big Data 92.45
Cloud 100
Customer Experience
Digital Disruption 32.86
Emerging Technology
IoT
Data Center 100
DevOps 36.42
Management 30.10
Agile 30.34

Industry Experience

Healthcare
Insurance
Other
Pharmaceuticals
Professional Services
Retail
Telecommunications
Utilities

Publications

138 Analyst Reports
High-Volume Data Replication: Evaluating Fivetran HVR and Qlik Replicate
Fivetran
March 01, 2024
Whether for operational or analytical purposes – databases are the backbone of how many businesses run; from collecting consumer behavior on your website to processing IOT data across your supply chain and so much more. Accessing and replicating massive volumes of database content is key to business success and the responsibility of managing this crucial element of your infrastructure falls to data leaders and their teams.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

McKnight Consulting Group (MCG)’s 2nd Edition of the Data Integration Enterprise Contribution Ranking Report
Informatica
March 01, 2024
McKnight Consulting Group (MCG)’s 2nd Edition of the Data Integration Enterprise Contribution Ranking Report has been published. An Enterprise Contribution Ranking Report is the most detailed report on the market. It provides a comprehensive study on the offerings in significant enterprise data technology topics.

The study examines market preferences and priorities for data integration platforms including Data Transformation, Data Security and Access Control, Data Quality and Data Governance, Workflow Automation and Orchestration, Analytics, Automation, and AI. The reports also addresses Seamless Integration with BI and Analytics Tools, Data Cataloging and Metadata Management, Enterprise Scaling with Performance, Ecosystem Compatibility and Platform Versatility, as well as Financial Operations, Compliance, and Data Auditing. These are essential key areas for successful enterprise data integration implementations.

McKnight Enterprise Contribution Ranking Reports offer a thorough analysis of enterprise data technology offerings, focusing on the value of product capabilities to the enterprise. The reports emphasize the importance of AI, including Generative AI, in future-proofing technology. Market leaders are evaluated based on their critical capabilities, which include both currently available features and upcoming realistic capabilities. Ratings are assigned to vendors based on expert-opinion assessments by analyst-practitioners, resulting in Advanced, Skilled, Partial, or Beginner capabilities ratings.

Vendors are also plotted on a quadrant based on Project Scope Complexity and Project Technical Environment Complexity. These reports are written by hands-on Data Engineers.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Data Fabric Field Test: SAP vs. DIY Hands-on Assessment and TCO Analysis of Deploying SAP Datasphere vs. Assembled Applications
SAP
March 01, 2024
Interest in building a data fabric is very high, and for good reason. By enabling real-time, trustworthy data across multiple clouds, you can expedite the migration of analytics to the cloud, guarantee security and governance, and quickly generate business value. A data fabric provides a semantic layer that enables a map of your metadata, unifying data based on its meaning, rather than just its location, and preserving the business context and logic of that data across the fabric.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

High-Volume Data Replication Evaluating Fivetran HVR and Qlik Replicate
Fivetran
March 01, 2024
Whether for operational or analytical purposes – databases are the backbone of how many businesses run; from collecting consumer behavior on your website to processing IOT data across your supply chain and so much more. Accessing and replicating massive volumes of database content is key to business success and the responsibility of managing this crucial element of your infrastructure falls to data leaders and their teams.

Ensuring your solution for database replication can keep up with your business is a pressing need for every data leader across every industry and company size. In this report, we investigate two major vendors in database replication and put them to the test in terms of speed and cost.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

iPaaS Tools Evaluation: Security and Governance Report: Evaluating Workato and Boomi
Workato
January 11, 2024
We evaluated two leading iPaaS tools—Workato and Boomi—specifically across the top tasks a business would perform with the tools for governance and data security. Both Workato and Boomi offer robust features in these areas. Workato provides a user-friendly interface that allows businesses to easily manage user permissions and access controls, ensuring that sensitive data is only accessible to authorized individuals. Additionally, Workato offers advanced security measures such as encryption and multi-factor authentication to protect data from unauthorized access. On the other hand, Boomi provides a comprehensive set of tools for data

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Tags: Big Data, Data Center

MCG Data Pipeline Performance Testing
McKnight Consulting Group
January 10, 2024
To be agile and resilient in the modern world, an organization’s data infrastructure maturity must be in harmony with its business goals. Limited data capabilities could hinder or even derail all efforts. For a data management plan to be successful in an environment that is changing quickly, adaptability is also necessary.

Our scenario assessed the speed of syncing a 1TB data set between a source PostgreSQL database and a target Snowflake data warehouse. We tested total throughput, cost and total cost of ownership.

Airbyte is a data integration platform that offers a comprehensive catalog of connectors for structured data, including databases and files. Airbyte offers a cloud-hosted solution and a self-hosted one. It supports a large range of data sources and all major databases, and it can connect to over 50 destinations, including databases, data warehouses, data lakes, and vector databases.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Costs and Benefits of .NET Application Migration to the Cloud
Microsoft
January 04, 2024
Thousands of custom applications written using development frameworks such as ASP.NET are deployed by organizations, often running in on-premises environments. At the same time, organizations continue to move larger workloads to the cloud as part of their digital transformation strategies. While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated these digital transformation initiatives, the competitive advantages realized by organizations have kept the momentum high as business models evolve in the era of AI. The cloud allows them to augment and transform their existing applications using modern developer platforms to increase customer engagement, streamline operations, lower costs, and enhance profitability.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Vector Databases Compared
DataStax
December 05, 2023
The study found that Astra DB significantly outperformed Pinecone p2x8 in ingesting and indexing data, performing six times faster and with a low relative variance, making the ingest workflow more predictable. Astra DB also showed faster response times during active indexing and produced recall ranging from 90% to 94% versus Pinecone’s recall in the range of 75% to 87%. For larger datasets, Astra DB showed better recall and low variance, demonstrating accuracy and consistency. Finally, our testing and configuration pricing revealed that Pinecone’s TCO was 2.2 to 4.9 times greater than Astra DB, making it significantly more expensive to operate.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

TCO for Data Masking and TDM Solutions
delphix
October 12, 2023
The increasingly complex landscape of data management for enterprises has brought to light the need for tools to manage diverse platforms and provide overall management. These tools focus on efficient test data management; integration, lifecycle management, security, compliance, and storage optimization. We determined that for the equivalent usage (consisting of typical deployment, provisioning, and masking activities), IBM Optim would result in labor and infrastructure costs of $109,300 compared to $75,164 for Delphix over the first year (one setup), a difference of 31%.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Cloud Data Warehouse vs. Cloud Data Lakehouse: A Snowflake vs. Starburst TCO and Performance Comparison
GigaOm
September 03, 2023
Recently, several architectural patterns have emerged that decentralize most components of the enterprise analytics architecture. Data lakes are a large part of that advancement.

A field test was devised to determine the differences between two popular enterprise data architectural patterns: a modern cloud data warehouse based on a Snowflake architecture and a modern data lakehouse with a Starburst-based architecture. The test was created with multiple components to determine the differences in performance and capability, as well as the amount of time and effort required to migrate to these systems from a legacy environment.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Video SDK Benchmark Comparison
zoom
August 12, 2023
This benchmark report provides insight into how well Zoom and Jitsi supports enterprise applications requiring real-time customer engagement. We capture time to value by assessing the steps involved in initial setup, scaled deployment, and production integration, and we assess TCO by evaluating both software and labor costs associated with a deployment. The benchmark can also be used to determine the implementation steps for each solution.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Edge Bare Metal Benchmark: Lumen vs AWS: An Exploration of Edge Cloud Services: From Bare Metal to Private Cloud
GigaOm
August 08, 2023
This report focuses on the latency of two top bare-metal server providers: Lumen Edge Cloud Services (Lumen) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). For our testing, we defined a high-performance model, mixing applications that can process 1,000 transactions per second and demand a maximum latency of 5ms or less, while the NGINX reverse proxy handles HTTP requests.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Cloud Data Warehouse vs. Cloud Data Lakehouse: A Snowflake vs. Starburst TCO and Performance Comparison
Starburst
August 05, 2023
Recently, several architectural patterns have emerged that decentralize most components of the enterprise analytics architecture. Data lakes are a large part of that advancement.

A field test was devised to determine the differences between two popular enterprise data architectural patterns: a modern cloud data warehouse based on a Snowflake architecture and a modern data lakehouse with a Starburst-based architecture. The test was created with multiple components to determine the differences in performance and capability, as well as the amount of time and effort required to migrate to these systems from a legacy environment.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Actian Beats Snowflake and BigQuery in GigaOm TPC-H Benchmark Test
Actian
July 07, 2023
In the benchmark, the Actian Data Platform outperformed both Snowflake and BigQuery in 20 of the 22 queries, clearly illustrating Actian’s powerful decision support capabilities. Leveraging decades of data management experience, the Actian platform provides data warehouse technology that uses in-memory computing along with optimized data storage, vector processing, and query execution that exploits powerful CPU features. These capabilities significantly improve the speed and efficiency of real-time analytics.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Transaction Processing & Price-Performance Testing: Distributed SQL Databases Using Cloud Managed Services Evaluation: Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, CockroachDB Dedicated & YugabyteDB Managed
GigaOm
July 07, 2023
To evaluate distributed databases, we conducted a Transactional Field Test derived from the industry-standard TPC Benchmark C (TPC-C). We compared fully-managed as-a-service offerings of cloud-distributed databases:

Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL
CockroachDB Dedicated
YugabyteDB Managed

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Cloud Analytics Top Data base Performance Testing report: Exasol outstrips Snowflake and another major cloud data warehouse for performance and price-performance
Exasol
July 07, 2023
You should never have to sacrifice budget control to improve the performance of your analytics database.

Exasol’s no-compromise analytics database takes care of this for you, delivering significant productivity gains, cost-savings and flexibility, without any trade-offs. Don’t just take our word for it, read the latest report conducted by McKnight Consulting Group, on Cloud Analytics Database Performance testing against Exasol, Snowflake, and another major cloud data warehouse (April 2023).

The report proves that Exasol wins on:

Query response times:
3.6x faster than Snowflake
20x faster than the unnamed data warehouse
Price-performance:
Snowflake is nearly 17x more expensive than Exasol
Unnamed data warehouse is over 20x more expensive

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Digital Analytics and Measurement Tools Evaluation: Google Analytics 4 and Snowplow
Snowplow
July 02, 2023
We performed a field test to assess how Snowplow compares to GA4 for a retail organization that realizes the mandate for digital analytics. To make the test as fair as possible, we used both Google Analytics and Snowplow in vanilla e-commerce implementations. This means that for both solutions, we used the out-of-the-box e-commerce events.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Total cost of ownership: NATS vs Kafka
Synadia
May 05, 2023
A total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison against several real-world, and comparable workloads for NATS and Kafka for streaming. Users want to know if the “simplicity” is a trade-off vs functionality or performance.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Edge Bare Metal Benchmark: Lumen vs AWS: An Exploration of Edge Cloud Services: From Bare Metal to Private Cloud
GigaOm
May 05, 2023
This report focuses on the latency of two top bare-metal server providers: Lumen Edge Cloud Services (Lumen) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). For our testing, we defined a high-performance model, mixing applications that can process 1,000 transactions per second and demand a maximum latency of 5ms or less, while the NGINX reverse proxy handles HTTP requests.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Procurement Efficiency with the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace
Import from wordpress feed
March 27, 2023
The rapidly growing adoption of public clouds by IT organizations is frequently motivated by a desire to be more adaptable, agile, and
The post Procurement Efficiency with the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace appeared first on Gigaom.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

New Microsoft Teams Performance Benchmark
Import from wordpress feed
March 27, 2023
This GigaOm Benchmark report was commissioned by Microsoft. Microsoft Teams (Teams) is a collaboration platform that combines workplace chat, video meetings, file
The post New Microsoft Teams Performance Benchmark appeared first on Gigaom.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

SQL Transaction Processing and Analytic Performance Price-Performance Testing: Microsoft SQL Server Evaluation: Azure vs. Amazon Web Services
GigaOm
March 03, 2023
This report outlines the results from two Field Tests (one transactional and the other analytic) derived from the industry-standard TPC Benchmark E (TPC-E) and TPC Benchmark H (TPC-H). The tests compare two IaaS cloud database offerings running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), configured as follows:

RHEL 8.6 with Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Enterprise on r6idn.8xlarge Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) instances with gp3 volumes.
RHEL 8.6 with Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Enterprise on a E32bdsv5 Azure Virtual Machine (VM) with Premium SSD v2 disks.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Security Information and Event Management: A MITRE ATT&CK Framework Competitive Evaluation
Import from wordpress feed
January 25, 2023
Security information and event management (SIEM) technology supports threat detection, compliance, and security incident management through the collection and analysis (near real-time
The post Security Information and Event Management: A MITRE ATT&CK Framework Competitive Evaluation appeared fi

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

SQL Transaction Processing and Analytic Performance Price-Performance Testing
Import from wordpress feed
January 25, 2023
The fundamental underpinning of any organization is its transactions. They must be done well, with integrity and performance. Not only has transaction
The post SQL Transaction Processing and Analytic Performance Price-Performance Testing appeared first on Gigaom.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

ABAC vs RBAC: The Advantage of Attribute-Based Access Control over Role-Based Access Control
GigaOm
January 01, 2023
Data security has become an undeniable part of the technology stack for modern applications. No longer an afterthought, protecting application assets—namely data—against cybercriminal activities, insider threats, and basic human negligence needs to happen early and often during the application development cycle and beyond. This benchmark report captures the number of policy changes required to manage ever-evolving data security policies seen in a modern data-driven enterprise. The more policy changes required, the more likely a required change will not take place or an error is made when implementing the change. With this study, we show the impacts of data security governance policy management.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

20 Article/Blogs
McKnight Consulting Group 2024 Data Integration Market Study is Published
McKnight Consulting Group
March 15, 2024
McKnight Consulting Group (MCG)’s 2nd Edition of the Data Integration Enterprise Contribution Ranking Report has been published. An Enterprise Contribution Ranking Report is the most detailed report on the market. They provide a comprehensive study on the offerings in significant enterprise data technology topics.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

About the Enterprise Contribution Ranking Report
McKnight Consulting Group
March 13, 2024
McKnight Enterprise Contribution Ranking Reports provide a comprehensive study on the offerings in significant enterprise data technology topics.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Enterprise Data Integration: Now More than Ever
Information Week
March 01, 2024
Data integration stands as the ultimate business ally for modern-day business. Organizations boosting productivity and making better decisions make great use of data integration to optimally place the key asset of data.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Introducing Airbyte Data Integration and Custom Connectors
Linkedln
January 10, 2024
In today's rapidly changing business environment, an organization's data infrastructure must align with its goals. Efficient access, integration, governance, and management of data are crucial for realizing the full potential of the enterprise. However, companies often struggle with data management and integration due to outdated tools or an ineffective implementation.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

What to Know About the Differences in Analytic Architecture Patterns
Information Week
November 14, 2023
Enterprise data architects should take into consideration the data lakehouse, data mesh, and data fabric when constructing the analytic environment today. Here are the main ideas these patterns offer.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Showing ROI for Your Analytics Project
Information Week
November 14, 2023
Analytics is no longer an option and no longer a discrete function in the enterprise. If it’s to be measured, it would be in the return on investment increase of the applications.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

3 Tips to Recognize Hidden Costs of the Cloud
Information Week
November 14, 2023
Cloud usage and demand has spiked, but businesses must be wary of hidden cloud “gotchas” when it comes to modernizing and scaling their cloud infrastructure.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Analytics Program and Project Justification During Cautious Spending
Actian
November 05, 2023
Analytics Program and Project Justification During Cautious Spending

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Exploring the Contemporary Place of Graph Databases
Information Week
August 16, 2023
Graph technology has come a long way and has numerous applications in any enterprise. Here’s advice on how you can determine why, how, and where to apply graph databases today.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Building a Marketplace to Help Businesses Quickly Transform AI Initiatives to Reality (2 of 2)
Linkedln
June 08, 2023
This is Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. In Part 1 I talked about the need for an AI Marketplace, The Challenges of Creating High-Quality Training Data and The Benefits of a One-Stop-Shop for All AI Training Data Needs.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

What to Know About the Differences in Analytic Architecture Patterns
Information Week
June 05, 2023
Enterprise data architects should take into consideration the data lakehouse, data mesh, and data fabric when constructing the analytic environment today. Here are the main ideas these patterns offer.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Dell Container Storage Modules for Kubernetes Environments
McKnight Consulting Group
November 11, 2022
Changes in the development and deployment of applications are driving the storage business to adapt significantly as well. Applications are migrating to containerized environments that allow developers to package their code into self-contained units that can be easily deployed and run on any server. As a result, containers and Kubernetes are gaining popularity. Adoption of Kubernetes has grown to the point that it is currently the most widely used container orchestration platform.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Informatica Intelligent Data Cloud 2022
McKnight Consulting Group
November 11, 2022
Informatica continues to reengineer components of its portfolio to be cloud-native and to bundle components into its iPaaS Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC). Informatica is really at the dead center of the digital transformation movement through data and continues to thrill with new product developments, partnerships and global customer stories. Several items caught my eye this year at Informatica World.​

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

MLOps: Applying DevOps to Competitive Advantage
Information Week
August 16, 2022
Developers and data scientists can work together using MLOps through a shared methodology to make sure that machine learning initiatives are in line with wider software delivery and, even more broadly, IT-business alignment.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Life in 2050: How Will AI Shape the Future?
Information Week
August 16, 2022
While artificial intelligence is already changing our world, it’s really only just begun. Here’s my vision of what life might be like in 2050.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Yellowbrick Data
Gigaom
December 21, 2021
We covered Yellowbrick as part of the GigaOm Radar for Data Warehouses v2.0, as well as in the “Enterprise Analytic Solutions 2021…

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Tags: Analytics, Big Data, Management

SecureWorks 2021 State of the Threat: A Year in Review
McKnight Consulting Group
November 11, 2021
As a data professional, I am acutely aware that I am dealing with the crown jewels of the organization. Data is extremely valuable as an asset to company strategy and the essential ingredient for operations. That value, unfortunately, extends to nefarious players within and outside the organization. It behooves the data professional to be aware of the threats and to be an active partner in its security.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

High Performance Application Security Testing
Gigaom
November 01, 2021

Data, web, and application security have evolved dramatically over the past few years. Just as new threats abound, the architecture of applications—how we build and deploy them—has changed. We’ve traded monolithic applications for microservices running in containers and communicating via application programming interfaces (APIs)—and all of it deployed through automated continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. The frameworks we have established to build and deploy applications are optimized for time to market—yet security remains of utmost importance.


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Tags: Analytics, Big Data, DevOps

Enterprise Analytic Solutions 2021 v4.0
Gigaom
September 03, 2021
Enterprises from every industry and at every scale are working to leverage data to achieve their strategic objectives—whether those are to become more profitable, effective, risk tolerant, prepared, sustainable, and/or adaptable in an ever-changing world. An enterprise’s data maturity must grow at pace with the business and its needs to achieve agility and resilience—otherwise it will be hamstrung or tripped up by limited data capabilities. A mature analytic data management strategy includes the ability to adapt.

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Tags: Analytics, Big Data, Management

Need a Scale-Out Database?
Gigaom
March 26, 2021
NoSQL databases have seen a lot of growth in the past several years. The realities of the pandemic have exposed how important it is to have a reliable, agile technology infrastructure in place with proven software like the open source Apache Cassandra — which is crucial for business continuity, low latency, and being able to effectively support increased data traffic. Demand for data at all companies will only increase in the coming years, and the reality is, much of this is unexposed cost that may create an unsustainable burden for many organizations.

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Tags: AI, Cloud, Data Center

2 Books
Integrating Hadoop
Technics
August 23, 2016
Integrating Hadoop leverages the discipline of data integration and applies it to the Hadoop open-source software framework for storing data on clusters of commodity hardware. It is packed with the need-to-know for managers, architects, designers, and developers responsible for populating Hadoop in the enterprise, allowing you to harness big data and do it in such a way that the solution:
Complies with (and even extends) enterprise standards
Integrates seamlessly with the existing information infrastructure
Fills a critical role within enterprise architecture.
Integrating Hadoop covers the gamut of the setup, architecture and possibilities for Hadoop in the organization, including:
Supporting an enterprise information strategy
Organizing for a successful Hadoop rollout
Loading and extracting of data in Hadoop
Managing Hadoop data once it's in the cluster
Utilizing Spark, streaming data, and master data in Hadoop processes - examples are provided to reinforce concepts.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Information Management: Strategies for Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data (The Savvy Manager's Guides)
Morgan Kaufman
January 09, 2014
Information Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data is about making smart decisions to make the most of company information. Expert author William McKnight develops the value proposition for information in the enterprise and succinctly outlines the numerous forms of data storage. Information Management will enlighten you, challenge your preconceived notions, and help activate information in the enterprise. Get the big picture on managing data so that your team can make smart decisions by understanding how everything from workload allocation to data stores fits together.

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Tags: Analytics, Big Data, Digital Disruption

6 Citations
Performance demos at Oracle CloudWorld: MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse vs. Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and Databricks
Oracle
July 07, 2023
MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse delivered an industry first by enabling customers to query data in object storage as fast as querying data inside the database.

How about seeing live how the performance of MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse compares to Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Databricks? McKnight Consulting Group will be running demos on the AMD booth at Oracle CloudWorld (booth #16) at the following times:

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Total cost of ownership: NATS vs Kafka
Airbyte
July 07, 2023
During RethinkConn 2022, Jean-Noel Moyne, Synadia’s Field CTO, presented a lightning talk Comparing & Contrasting NATS to Kafka. This has been the most popular video on the event’s YouTube playlist and led to a growing number of requests from our community for more content on this topic.

The consistent feedback we receive from customers and the community is the appreciation for NATS overall simplicity. This manifests in the ease and power of developing NATS applications as well as the operability of a NATS deployment.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

5 challenges IT faces using open source data management
TechTarget
July 07, 2023
There are a variety of open source challenges for data management software, including lack of real-time BI access, miscalculating costs and underestimating the resources required.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Couchbase IPO brings NoSQL database to the stock market
Couchbase
April 01, 2022
Couchbase makes a move into the public markets with a Nasdaq listing as it continues to develop its NoSQL database technology that runs on premises and in the cloud.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Independent Benchmark Demonstrates First Trillion-edge Knowledge Graph – Stardog Recognized for Providing Sub-Second Query Times on Hybrid, Multicloud Data
Stardog
April 01, 2022
New McKnight Consulting Group report proves the significant operational and performance gains users can achieve using Stardog’s massive knowledge graph

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Business Intelligence Journal | Vol 26, No 1
TDWI
April 01, 2022
senior editor Hugh Watson set out to better understand the daily challenges of advanced analytics (and how to respond to them) by interviewing four consultants, managers, and professionals. They identified the most important and interesting problems. You’re sure to recognize these problems in your own environment and, like Hugh, gain new perspective on the solutions.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

1 Executive
McKnight Associates, Inc.
Conversion Services International
May 09, 2015
William founded and grew McKnight Associates, Inc. during 1998-2005 to placement in the Inc. 500, the Dallas 100 (twice) and the Collin (county) 60. He sold the company to a public firm in 2005.

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Tags: Big Data

1 Group
Pacific Northwest BI Summit
Humphrey Strategic Communications
June 06, 2019
Pacific Northwest BI & Analytics Summit, an annual weekend retreat that assembles the top industry thought leaders, vendors and media in an informal setting to discuss the latest trends and developments, as well as forecast the future.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

1 Industry Award
Ernst&Young Southwest Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist
Ernst & Young
May 01, 2015
Ernst&Young Southwest Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist is an award that recognizes the accomplishments of entrepreneurs in the Southwest region. The award honors businesses that have achieved remarkable success by demonstrating strategic vision, financial performance, innovation, and community and industry impact.

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Tags: Big Data

3 Keynotes
The Evolution of the Data Platform and What It Means to Data Warehousing
Astera
May 25, 2021
Business landscapes are in hyperdrive. Data volumes are exploding, modern sources are rapidly taking over old legacy systems, and organizations are continually seeking advanced analytics solutions to deliver unparalleled customer experiences and tap into new revenue streams. Amidst all the data chaos, you need an agile, well-knitted, responsive data warehouse architecture that provides information clarity, tackles complexity, and delivers accurate, trusted insights at lightspeed for game-changing decision making.

Opening a new dimension of agility, automation, and simplicity, Astera Software is introducing a next-gen data warehouse automation solution that allows businesses to go from data ingestion to BI & analytics in a matter of hours, all through a single platform.

Whether you want to build a new data warehouse or modernize a legacy architecture, we are bringing a solution that holds the key to unlock the agility and efficiency needed to drive your initiative.

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Tags: Analytics, Big Data, Cloud

Information - The Next Natural Resource | William McKnight | TEDxUTD
YouTube
May 26, 2015
Big Data is ubiquitous and continuously growing. William reflects on the trends of Big Data and demonstrates that its not the question of how much information we have but how we use that information wisely.

William functions as Strategist, Lead Enterprise Information Architect, and Program Manager for sites worldwide utilizing the disciplines of data warehousing, master data management, business intelligence and big data. Many of his clients have gone public with their success stories.

He is author of the book “Information Management: Strategies for Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data.”

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/14564
TEDx
April 12, 2005
Our theme is about looking deeper at ourselves, the world around us, and the problems we face. Topics of our event include: Public Health, Industrial Design, Virtual Reality, Big Data, Teenage Homelessness, The Self, and Theatre.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

12 Media Interviews
William McKnight: Listen to Your Data and Unlock Business Success
21st Century Entrepreneur
December 10, 2023
Learn from William McKnight, an expert in data management and analytics, about how to make better decisions based on data. William is the esteemed President of McKnight Consulting Group, specialising in data analysis and strategy projects. He is also a renowned author, speaker, and educator. Hear about insights for small to medium-sized businesses and strategies for leveraging artificial intelligence and ROI. Investing in yourself and deepening your knowledge base of enterprise data topics can be instrumental for the success of your business. From personal research & development, data warehousing, analytics, and integration to quality assurance - learn from one of the industry's leading experts! Tune in now, unlock the power of data-driven decision-making, and increase your knowledge base to drive data success in your business!

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

The Future of Data Management
Data Privacy Detective
December 10, 2023
William McKnight, one of the most highly published analysts in information management, offers insights into the future of how big data and artificial intelligence are changing the world. The McKnight Consulting Group is a leading data strategy and implementation firm that helps businesses solve complex problems through the use of growing personal information databases.

Learn from this podcast who is watching us and how our personal data is collected, shared, and used. Discover new analytic uses by enterprises in master data management, how artificial intelligence mines our data to create a burgeoning array of products and services. Hear how AI and other critical technologies will change the world in the next ten years. And consider how this will affect our privacy and what we can do about it.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

189: From Data Chaos to Data Maturity – McKnight Consulting Group
Spotify
April 04, 2023
William McKnight, President at McKnight Consulting Group discusses the importance of data maturity in achieving digital transformation and the crucial role of data architects in helping organizations become data-driven.

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Tags: Analytics, Big Data

Gary Fowler and William McKnight: How To Combat Infobesity
YouTube
March 28, 2023
GSD Presents
How To Combat Infobesity with William McKnight


Guest:
William McKnight, Founder & President at McKnight Consulting Group

William McKnight has been recognized as the #1 global influencer in big data, cloud, and data center by Thinkers 360 and the #1 global influencer in master data management by Onalytica in 2022.
He is the Founder and President of McKnight Consulting Group, which advises many of the Global 2000 companies, including Pfizer, Verizon, UnitedHealth Group, Dell, Oracle, and Scotiabank, on ways to faster grow their businesses with big data.
They've been recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the US two times and their clients in 14+ countries have reaped tremendous ROI and turned data into a real corporate asset.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

AI Impact on Data Resources - Episode #89 w/William Mcknight
YouTube
March 20, 2023
Join me as I speak with William Mcknight, President of McKnight Consulting Group, about AI within data management.

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Tags: AI, Big Data, Data Center

Privacy of Me - William McKnight Interview
YouTube
March 07, 2023
We discuss all things AI and ethics with William McKnight.

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Tags: Analytics, AI, Big Data

My Career in Data Episode 22: William McKnight, President, McKnight Consulting Group
YouTube
March 01, 2023
Welcome back to a new episode of My Career in Data – a DATAVERSITY Talks podcast where we sit down with professionals to discuss how they have built their careers around data.

This week we're happy to chatting with William McKnight, the President and Founder of McKnight Consulting Group, about the importance of commitment and how his athletic pursuits have informed his perspective.

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Tags: Big Data, Data Center

Maximizing the Power of Enterprise Data with William McKnight
Terminal Value
January 10, 2023
Doug and William spoke about

Learn more at https://www.irawolfe.com

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Exploring Master Data Management With William McKnight
Tech Talks Daily
December 10, 2022
William McKnight has been recognized as the #1 global influencer in big data, cloud, and data center by Thinkers 360 and the #1 global influencer in master data management by Onalytica in 2022. He is the Founder and President of McKnight Consulting Group, which advises many of the Global 2000 companies, including Pfizer, Verizon, UnitedHealth Group, Dell, Oracle, and Scotiabank, on ways to grow their businesses with big data faster.

They've been recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the US two times and their clients in 14+ countries have reaped tremendous ROI and turned data into a real corporate asset. With over 30 years of experience, William is a highly sought-after speaker who has spoken on four continents for various organizations, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Bank of America, Orange South Africa, and SAP.

Listen in as we discuss personal data, who's watching you, and how they can use the data collected from you. We also discuss new analytic uses of master data management in the enterprise, how AI will significantly impact users and how organizations think about their data resources.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Concise Leadership
Concise Leadership
December 10, 2021
Episode #31 Please join William McKnight as he discusses Being Responsible for Future Leaders and Watching People Grow! #salesleadership #podcast #leadership

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Pulsar Takes on Kafka with Uniform Architecture, Speed
The New Stack
June 06, 2021
The open source stream processing platform Pulsar has some notable architectural advantages over Kafka, which have helped to drive further support and adoption.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

What’s the Deal with Vertica TCO?
Opentext
June 06, 2021
Recently, a colleague of mine was trying to express why Vertica had such a low total cost of ownership (TCO). It’s not obvious. Our customers rave about the fast return on investment. We have a half dozen excellent case studies from third-parties showing Vertica’s ROI. But why?

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

1 Miscellaneous
ABAC vs RBAC
Immuta
June 13, 2023
The Advantage of Attribute-Based Access Control Report Debrief

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

1 Panel
How AI is Re-Shaping Cloud Data Management
Insight Jam
April 04, 2024
Our second of five panels! Join us Thursday April 4th to learn "How AI is Re-Shaping Cloud Data Management!"

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

3 Quotes
Ensuring Enterprise Data Privacy: 2024 & Beyond | Tips From 6 Data Experts
Astera
March 03, 2024
As we approach Data Privacy Day on January 28th, it’s crucial to recognize the significance of enterprise data privacy in our increasingly digital world.

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Tags: Big Data

Who’s Who in Cloud? Influential Voices & Brands
Onalytica
September 03, 2023
This category highlights influencers who are Cloud experts, and are
signed up to Onalytica’s marketplace, MyOnalytica. We analyze their
topical influence on Twitter, LinkedIn as well as how much they are
referenced within blogs and online media.

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Tags: Big Data

2022 Data Access & Analytics Trendbook
Immuta
September 03, 2023
We’ve compiled a range of expert outlooks on the state of data in an effort to understand what the near future may hold. From new technologies to emerging skill sets and beyond, the ideas collected in this Trendbook point towards a world centered around the importance of data.

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Tags: Big Data

7 Speaking Engagements
The Pros and Cons of Big Data in the Healthcare Industry with William McKnight
That Tech Pod
August 08, 2023
Today Kevin and Laura talk to William McKnight about big data in healthcare, the pros and cons of companies knowing this much about us, being a corporate influencer and much more!

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

CyberSide Chats An Interview With William McKnight
Cyberside Chats
June 14, 2023
While we are all appropriately focused on #AI, there are a number of issues that must be considered to maximize the value of AI. In this podcast, I spoke to William McKnight, of McKnight Consulting Group, about how companies should think about and organize #data to begin to maximize the value of AI.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

My Career in Data
Dataversity
March 02, 2023
Welcome back to a new episode of My Career in Data – a DATAVERSITY Talks podcast where we sit down with professionals to discuss how they have built their careers around data.
This week we're happy to chatting with William McKnight, the President and Founder of McKnight Consulting Group, about the importance of commitment and how his athletic pursuits have informed his perspective.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Maximizing the Power of Enterprise Data
Terminal Value
February 08, 2023
Doug and William spoke about maximizing the value of enterprise data is essential for large companies to make better decisions, it involves organizing data from different systems and extracting insights from it. This process can be costly, requiring specialized tools and skilled personnel, but is necessary.
Business owners should pay attention to the analytics to gain insights and inform strategic decisions, and having the right strategy and vision is important to know what to look for and ask.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Data Mindset podcast
That Data Mindset
August 08, 2021
In this episode of the #datamindset series, William McKnight shares his insight around his 22 plus years in working with data.

William is the President at McKnight Consulting Group, has worked in Data Strategy & Projects, Data Analytics is an Author, Speaker and Educator.

He further shares his passion for constantly analyzing the market to help companies plan and navigate their data journey through the development of an agile mindset.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Data Architecture for the CEO
Data Leadership for Everyone
June 17, 2021
William has advised many of the world’s best-known organizations. His strategies form the information management plan for leading companies in various industries. He is a prolific author and a popular keynote speaker and trainer. He has performed dozens of benchmarks on leading database, data lake, streaming and data integration products. William is the #1 global influencer in data warehousing and master data management and he leads McKnight Consulting Group, which has twice placed on the Inc. 5000 list.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

The Pre-Requisites for Analytics to Happen
Super Data Science
August 08, 2018
This is what William McKnight, our guest for today, wants for all the business owners, leaders, and data scientists to take note of. Listen as we talk about how data is a big asset in a company, the five levels of data maturity inside a business, and the four quadrants or aspects that should be improved inside your business!

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

1 Steering Committee Membership
President of the Data Warehousing Institute Dallas chapter
TDWI
January 01, 1016
Represented the organization in my local community and promoted its values and mission. As President, I worked with a team of volunteers to organize and lead local events such as seminars, meetings, and social networking opportunities. Additionally, I was responsible for promoting TDWI’s educational activities, such as certification programs, and strengthening the local chapter by networking and developing relationships with vendors and other organizations.

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Tags: Big Data, Education

2 Videos
William McKnight Interview with theCUBE | Teradata Possible 2023
theCUBE
October 11, 2023
theCUBE's Rob Strechay and Rebecca M. Knight interviewed William McKnight, President of McKnight Consulting Group, during Teradata Possible 2023 in Orlando. In this interview, they discussed:
- How organizations are embracing AI
- How leaders can educate their teams on AI
- LLMs and their place in the future of AI
- How to prepare yourself to embrace AI

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Demo: MySQL HeatWave Performance
Oracle
October 09, 2023
McKnight Consulting Group performed a 100 TB TPC-H benchmark of MySQL HeatWave vs. Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Databricks, and Google BigQuery. Watch this demo video to see the query performance and price-performance comparison.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

45 Webinars
Architecting a Modern Data Platform
Dataversity
April 15, 2024
Organizations require a comprehensive enterprise data cloud platform to modernize applications and utilize machine learning. This research-based session will discuss the components of modern enterprise data stacks, such as dedicated compute, storage, data integration, and streaming, and focus on total cost of ownership. The infrastructure alone for a modern data platform will be a significant cost, so decisions must be made with care.

The webinar will discuss emerging data architecture practices, such as data mesh, data fabric, data lakehouse, and data cloud, which are essential for modernizing applications and addressing data and analytic challenges. By integrating these practices into the environment, organizations can better architect their data platform and achieve the highest return in the coming years.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Data Integration – Newsflash: We Still Just Move Data!
Dataversity
February 05, 2024
Data integration is a broad term for data movement. While moving streaming data is increasingly important, and data virtualization and data mesh architectures somewhat lessens the need, straight data movement still comprises the vast majority of cycles for data integration. Are you getting the fastest and most economical data integration? Are you using all the capabilities that could benefit the workflow?

Comprehensive native connectivity, effective data cataloging and metadata management, enforcing data quality and data governance, data security and access control, versatile data storage integration, efficient workflow automation and orchestration, and effective monitoring and alerting features are important data integration criteria. These criteria enable organizations to effectively integrate their data from a variety of sources, ensure the quality and security of their data, and automate and manage their data integration workflows efficiently.

By choosing a data integration solution that meets these requirements, organizations can ensure that they are able to effectively integrate their data and achieve their data management goals.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

2024 Trends in Enterprise Analytics
Dataversity
January 05, 2024
Recent pullbacks appear to be driven primarily by macro factors. We have a positive outlook on IT budgets in 2024 because we anticipate a loosening of IT expenditures, which have been limited by fears of a recession since 2022. Artificial intelligence and LLMs will get major attention in 2024. Since data and analytics are the keys to success for these new endeavors, the demand for enterprise analytics has increased in order to address broad data quality issues in preparation for AI-based endeavors.

It is from the position of analytics leadership that the enterprise mission will be executed and company leadership will emerge. The data professional is absolutely sitting on the performance of the company in this information economy and has an obligation to demonstrate the possibilities and originate the architecture, data, and projects that will deliver analytics. After all, no matter what business you’re in, you’re in the business of analytics.

The coming years will be full of big changes in enterprise analytics and data architecture. William will kick off the sixth year of the Advanced Analytics series with a discussion of the trends winning organizations should build into their plans, expectations, vision, and awareness now.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Data Quality: The ROI of Adding Intelligence to Data
Dataversity
December 15, 2023
Data Quality is an elusive subject that can defy measurement and yet be critical enough to derail any project, strategic initiative, or even company. The data layer of an organization is a critical component because it is so easy to initially ignore the quality of data or make overly optimistic assumptions about its efficacy.

Having Data Quality as a focus is a business philosophy that aligns strategy, business culture, company information, and technology in order to manage data to the benefit of the enterprise. It is a competitive strategy.

However, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. There is measured ROI in Data Quality efforts.

We need a means for measuring the quality of our data. Abstracting quality into a set of agreed data rules and measuring the occurrences of quality violations provides the measurement in the methodology, which the speaker utilizes extensively in his consulting practice.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Strategies for Machine Learning Success
Dataversity
December 13, 2023
Enterprises make use of machine learning (ML) to gain actionable analytics and intelligence from a universe of data sets. ML is a critical competitive advantage. ML algorithms are becoming embedded in the fabric of the enterprise as well as all major software in use. Early adopters will reap the most benefits, which can be exponential.

In this session, we will define machine learning possibilities and algorithms and describe the steps and strategies for successful machine learning. Finally, we will discuss the challenges and limitations of machine learning and share the most effective strategies on how to use ML for tangible value.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Pleasures and Delights: North Texas Mensa Regional Gathering
Dataversity
November 12, 2023
The North Texas Mensa's Regional Gathering is back! With great hospitality, an eclectic range of speakers and activities, an indoor pool party, tastings! tastings! tastings!, and all the wonderfulness that is an NTM RG. The hotel provides a full breakfast buffet for every overnight guest. All other meals are included with registration. Tastings require the purchase of separate tickets available at the RG.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Common Misconceptions About Master Data Management
Dataversity
August 03, 2023
Master data is a key to digital transformation. All transformative projects require master data and usually many subject areas. Yet the uptake is not where it should be when considering how enterprises could be benefitting with MDM. This is due to several misconceptions.

MDM is crucial to data and business success so in this session, we will identify and dispel those misconceptions.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Open-Source vs. Commercial Vendor Software in the Enterprise
Dataversity
July 22, 2023
This study examines the full cost and true value of self-managed software and fully managed services.

There have been explosive developments in enterprise open-source software in the past few years, together with a corresponding growth of commercial vendors that close source capabilities that are borderline necessary for enterprise applications. These capabilities include performance boosters, administrative task management such as backup and recovery, clustering capabilities, and so forth. In addition, there has been growth in training, jump starts, documentation, a community of serious users, and more.

People costs take into account that certain capabilities in enterprise software needed for the enterprise are not available in self-managed software, requiring workarounds.

Some organizations require a commercial vendor behind every piece of software in the shop. Others decide on a case-by-case basis, often leaning toward open-source options that boast low up-front costs and the opportunity to prove out software, albeit without the safety net of a commercial vendor arrangement.

Determine your ideal split of open source and commercial and explore considerations that you may not have thought of by examining the true cost.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Organizational Change Management: Will It Hold Back Artificial Intelligence Deployments?
Dataversity
July 03, 2023
The disparity between expecting change and managing it – the “change gap” – is growing at an unprecedented pace due largely to artificial intelligence.

Investments in artificial intelligence will only pay off if paired with organizational change management. Managing this transformation is key to AI success.

Information management professionals and business leaders must concern themselves with the organization’s acceptance of these efforts. To be successful in achieving the larger enterprise goals, AI initiatives must transform the organization. However, it takes more than wishful thinking to bridge the gap. It takes knowledge and leadership.

The complexities of engaging behavioral and enterprise transformation for AI are going to be underestimated at great peril. Organizational change management may be the key to success with AI.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

From Data Chaos to Data Maturity
Data Protection Gumbo
June 06, 2023
William discusses the importance of data maturity in achieving digital transformation and data maturity.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Architecture, Products, and Total Cost of Ownership of the Leading Machine Learning Stacks
Dataversity
March 09, 2023
Organizations today need a broad set of enterprise data cloud services with key data functionality to modernize applications and utilize machine learning. They need a comprehensive platform designed to address multi-faceted needs by offering multi-function data management and analytics to solve the enterprise’s most pressing data and analytic challenges in a streamlined fashion.

In this research-based session, I’ll discuss what the components are in multiple modern enterprise analytics stacks (i.e., dedicated compute, storage, data integration, streaming, etc.) and focus on total cost of ownership.

A complete machine learning infrastructure cost for the first modern use case at a midsize to large enterprise will be anywhere from $3 million to $22 million. Get this data point as you take the next steps on your journey into the highest spend and return item for most companies in the next several years.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS! AND IT’S BETTER WITH ANALYTICS
DM Radio
February 16, 2023
This webinar will explore how analytics can help businesses make better decisions and improve their bottom line. We will discuss how analytics can be used to identify trends, uncover opportunities, and make more informed decisions. We will also discuss how analytics can be used to measure performance, identify areas of improvement, and create strategies for success. Finally, we will discuss how analytics can be used to create a competitive advantage and drive growth. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of how analytics can be used to improve their business.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Showing ROI for Your Analytic Project
Dataversity
February 09, 2023
Analytics play a critical role in supporting strategic business initiatives. Despite the obvious value to analytic professionals of providing the analytics for these initiatives, many executives question the economic return of analytics as well as data lakes, machine learning, master data management, and the like.

Technology professionals need to calculate and present business value in terms business executives can understand. Unfortunately, most IT professionals lack the knowledge required to develop comprehensive cost-benefit analyses and return on investment (ROI) measurements.

This session provides a framework to help technology professionals research, measure, and present the economic value of a proposed or existing analytics initiative, no matter the form that the business benefit arises. The session will provide practical advice about how to calculate ROI and the formulas, and how to collect the necessary information.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

23 things I’ve learned about data quality in 23 years of consulting by 2023
TechTarget
February 06, 2023
Data quality is a difficult concept to quantify while still being vital enough to sabotage any project, strategic initiative, or even an entire business. What's going on with the quality of your data? Is the data well-suited for all of its uses? Is your data everywhere – in operational databases, data warehouses, data lakes, master data management, etc.?

Information management expert William McKnight will go over 23 lessons he’s learned about data quality, frequently the hard way, in this presentation. Any problem with data quality, and quite possibly with data, that you may be experiencing is likely the result of someone failing to take one of these lessons to heart. Focusing on one or more of these could be the key to achieving understanding between parties and, ultimately, finding a solution to your data quality, and consequently data, problems.

In this presentation, you’ll discover up to 23 facts about data quality as well as fixes for the issues that the absence of data quality causes.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Analytics ROI Best Practices
Dataversity
January 18, 2023
Analytics plays a critical role in supporting strategic business initiatives. Despite the apparent value of providing the data infrastructure for these initiatives, many executives question the economic feasibility of business intelligence and analytics. This requires information professionals to calculate and present the business value in terms business executives can understand.

Unfortunately, most IT professionals lack the knowledge required to develop comprehensive cost-benefit analyses and return on investment (ROI) measurements.

This session provides a framework to help IT professionals research, measure, and present the economic value of a proposed or existing analytics initiative. The session will provide practical advice about how to calculate ROI, the formulas in use, and how to collect necessary information.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

2023 Trends in Enterprise Analytics
Dataversity
January 12, 2023
It is a fascinating, explosive time for enterprise analytics.

It is from the position of analytics leadership that the enterprise mission will be executed and company leadership will emerge. The data professional is absolutely sitting on the performance of the company in this information economy and has an obligation to demonstrate the possibilities and originate the architecture, data, and projects that will deliver analytics. After all, no matter what business you’re in, you’re in the business of analytics.

The coming years will be full of big changes in enterprise analytics and data architecture. William will kick off the fifth year of the Advanced Analytics series with a discussion of the trends winning organizations should build into their plans, expectations, vision, and awareness now.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Data Architecture Best Practices for Advanced Analytics
Dataversity
January 10, 2023
Many organizations are immature when it comes to data and analytics use. The answer lies in delivering a greater level of insight from data, straight to the point of need.

There are so many Data Architecture best practices today, accumulated from years of practice. In this webinar, William will look at some Data Architecture best practices that he believes have emerged in the past two years and are not worked into many enterprise data programs yet. These are keepers and will be required to move towards, by one means or another, so it’s best to mindfully work them into the environment.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

MLOps – Applying DevOps to Competitive Advantage
Dataversity
December 08, 2022
MLOps is a practice for collaboration between Data Science and operations to manage the production machine learning (ML) lifecycles. As an amalgamation of “machine learning” and “operations,” MLOps applies DevOps principles to ML delivery, enabling the delivery of ML-based innovation at scale to result in:

Faster time to market of ML-based solutions
More rapid rate of experimentation, driving innovation
Assurance of quality, trustworthiness, and ethical AI
MLOps is essential for scaling ML. Without it, enterprises risk struggling with costly overhead and stalled progress. Several vendors have emerged with offerings to support MLOps: the major offerings are Microsoft Azure ML and Google Vertex AI. We looked at these offerings from the perspective of enterprise features and time-to-value.

This session will be informative and helpful in uncovering some of the challenges and nuances of MLOps program development and platform selection.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Setting the Budget for the ML Stack for Analytics
BrightTalk
December 07, 2022
Organizations today need a broad set of enterprise data cloud services with key data functionality to modernize applications and utilize machine learning. They also need a platform designed to address multi-faceted needs by offering multi-function data management and analytics to solve the enterprise’s most pressing data and analytic challenges in a streamlined fashion. Above all, they need a worry-less experience with the architecture and its components.

A complete machine learning infrastructure cost for the first modern use case at a midsize to large enterprise will be anywhere from $2M to $14M. Get this data point as you take the next steps on your journey.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Using Automation to Build a Sustainable Data Warehouse
Astera
November 29, 2022
Join us in this webinar and watch industry experts share insights on building a sustainable data warehouse architecture to meet the data requirements of modern enterprises.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Assessing New Database Capabilities – Multi-Model
Dataversity
November 15, 2022
Today’s enterprises have an unprecedented variety of data store choices to meet the needs of the varied workloads of an enterprise because there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to data stores. Putting in place data stores to support a modern enterprise that is now reliant on data can lead to confusion and chaos. 

Enterprises have many needs for databases, including for cache, operational, data warehouse, master data, ERP, analytical, graph data, data lake, time series data, and numerous other specific needs.

While vendor offerings have exploded in recent years, in due time frameworks will integrate components into what amounts to, for practical purposes, a single offering for multiple workloads, perhaps even for the enterprise.

A multi-model database is a database that can store, manage, and query data in multiple models, such as relational, document-oriented, key-value, graph (triplestore), and column store.

An enterprise will find reduced overhead and other synergies from choosing a single vendor for these workloads.

This session will explore the multi-model option and some criteria that decision makers should evaluate when choosing a multi-model solution.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Graph Database Use Cases
Dataversity
October 20, 2022
Graph databases may be the unsung heroes of data platforms. They are poised to expand dramatically in the next few years as the nature of important analytics data expands dramatically into understanding. We live and work today in a highly connected world where individuals and their relationships brand perceptions, consumer behaviors, and many other business success factors. Where patterns are involved in relationships, it is imperative to understand them. Graph databases are the technology that is best-suited to determining and understanding data relationships.

This code-lite session will help you determine why, how, and where to apply graphs in your enterprise.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Measuring Data Quality Return on Investment
Enterprise Analytics Online
October 19, 2022
Data Quality is an elusive subject that can defy measurement and yet be critical enough to derail any project, strategic initiative, or even a company. The data layer of an organization is a critical component because it is so easy to ignore the quality of that data or to make overly optimistic assumptions about its efficacy. Having Data Quality as a focus is a business philosophy that aligns strategy, business culture, company information, and technology in order to manage data to the benefit of the enterprise. It is a competitive strategy. However, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. We need a means for measuring the quality of our data. Abstracting quality into a set of agreed-upon data rules and measuring the occurrences of quality violations provides the measurement in the methodology.

See publication

Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Assessing New Databases: Translytical Use Cases
Dataversity
October 13, 2022
Organizations run their day-in-and-day-out businesses with transactional applications and databases. On the other hand, organizations glean insights and make critical decisions using analytical databases and business intelligence tools.

The transactional workloads are relegated to database engines designed and tuned for transactional high throughput. Meanwhile, the big data generated by all the transactions require analytics platforms to load, store, and analyze volumes of data at high speed, providing timely insights to businesses.

Thus, in conventional information architectures, this requires two different database architectures and platforms: online transactional processing (OLTP) platforms to handle transactional workloads and online analytical processing (OLAP) engines to perform analytics and reporting.

Today, a particular focus and interest of operational analytics includes streaming data ingest and analysis in real time. Some refer to operational analytics as hybrid transaction/analytical processing (HTAP), translytical, or hybrid operational analytic processing (HOAP). We’ll address if this model is a way to create efficiencies in our environments.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Possible: Dallas Global Event Series for Cloud, Data, and Analytics Leaders
Teradata
October 10, 2022
Panel Discussion: Achieving growth in tomorrow’s market
Benefit from executive insights to position your business to seize emerging opportunities.

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Tags: Big Data, Cloud, Data Center

Thinkers360 Credentials

10 Badges

Radar

12 Trends
Big data is the future competitive advantage.

Date : November 28, 2023

Big data is the future competitive advantage.

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Chief Data Architect

Date : November 28, 2023

The importance of creating a discipline in an organization around data architecture, even having a Chief Data Architect.

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It doesn’t take longer or more budget to do data right, it takes knowledge and focus.

Date : November 28, 2023

It doesn’t take longer or more budget to do data right, it takes knowledge and focus.

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Master data management

Date : November 28, 2023

The inherent and provable justification of master data management in any organization.

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No matter what business you’re in, you’re in the business of information and analytics.

Date : November 28, 2023

No matter what business you’re in, you’re in the business of information and analytics.

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ROI in data projects

Date : November 28, 2023

The ability to show return on investment in data projects must be done.

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The cloud is creating the most massive change to technology careers.

Date : November 28, 2023

The cloud is creating the most massive change to technology careers.

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The discipline of organizational change management when making major information management changes.

Date : November 28, 2023

The discipline of organizational change management when making major information management changes.

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The measurement of data quality.

Date : November 28, 2023

The measurement of data quality.

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The use of a columnar orientation to data for analytics.

Date : November 28, 2023

The use of a columnar orientation to data for analytics.

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The use of a data platform that is fit-for-purpose.

Date : November 28, 2023

The use of a data platform that is fit-for-purpose.

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The use of a modified agile methodology in data projects.

Date : November 28, 2023

The use of a modified agile methodology in data projects.

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Opportunities

2 Businesss
2-Week Data Intensive Initiative Jumpstart

Location: Onsite or virtual    Date Available: November 28th, 2023     Fees: 0

Submission Date: November 28th, 2023     Service Type: Service Offered

Are you planning a data-intensive initiative? Targeted Marketing, Predictive Maintenance, Internet-of-Things, Customer Retention or most any other modern initiative are data-intensive. Their success is largely dependent on access to high-performing, high-quality, supported and understandable data. You may be planning to build or improve a leverageable platform such as a data lake or a data warehouse to support the initiative.

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INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ACTION PLAN

Location: Worldwide    Date Available: May 09th, 2019     Fees: Depends on scope

Submission Date: May 09th, 2019     Service Type: Service Offered

There is a demand for information to be an asset that fuels organizational growth. Greater volumes of data are generated and service level expectations continue to rise. Tolerance for poor quality is lessened, and the underlying complexity and load on the systems is amplified. Discussions around data warehouses, data integration, big data, business intelligence, and data management occur more frequently. Probably you’ve implemented one or more of these projects but at the end of the day, you need to take your information management capabilities to the next level.

MCG’s 2- to 8-week Information Management Action Plan (IMAP) is designed for organizations that want to advance their analytical capabilities across the spectrum of information management. Information management comprises the disciplines of data warehousing, big data, business intelligence, master data management and data governance. These disciplines are incredibly interrelated. Operating them in silos will not lead to success.

MCG will analyze your needs and provide expert advice across the process, people, and technology that drive your organization and are so critical to its success. MCG has built over 40 Action Plans for our clients and contributed to business successes worldwide.

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