I recently posted a blog entry on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization. In a way, the Systems Architect has the easiest transition to a new way of using computing technologies. In fact, that’s actually part of the job description. I mentioned that a Systems Architect has three primary ...

The SQL Server community is really engaged. They are an active bunch on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, they help each other on forums, they attend conferences. But that isn’t enough interaction – the community started a grass-roots effort to hold local conferences on a Saturday. Free conferences. Odds are there’s one near ...

A new term - well, perhaps not that new - has come up and I’m actually very excited about it. The term is Data Scientist, and since it’s new, it’s fairly undefined. I’ll explain what I think it means, and why I’m excited about it. In general, I’ve found the term deals at its most basic with analyzing data. Of course, we all do that, and the term ...

Last week Microsoft announced several new offerings for “Big Data” - and since I’m a stickler for definitions, I wanted to make sure I understood what that really means. What is “Big Data”? What size hard drive is that? After all, my laptop has 1TB of storage - is my laptop “Big Data”? There are actually a few definitions for this term, most ...

It is with both sadness and excitement that I am announcing I am leaving my position as Senior Data Architect at OTO Labs. The sadness comes because I am leaving behind a great company and an outstanding team, many of whom I am quite happy to consider friends rather than co-workers.   This decision was not easy; I spent several days and ...

In my last couple of posts I’ve mentioned a new world of work environment put forth by the Gartner Group’s Tom Austin, with a few additions from my own perceptions. I’ve mentioned “swarming” and that we deal with more unique tasks, and today I’ll continue that theme with two other observations. ...

In a previous post I mentioned that I’ve seen some Gartner Inc. studies, among others, that state that we’re in a “new world of work”. Since I’ve been working in technology for quite some time, and working around the world for longer, I agree that things are not what they were in the 9-5, Monday through Friday, ...

I’ve been reading some excerpts from Gartner, Inc. and information from others on the changes they are seeing in the workplace. It’s holding true where I work and in the workplaces of the other data professionals I work with. One of those new trends is called “Swarming” – where informal teams get together to work on a ...

I was reading this post on J.D. Meier's Blog, which deals with the “cloud” (I really dislike that term). You might wonder what that has to do with SQL Server, since it isn’t specifically about SQL Azure. I’ll come back to that in a moment. I play a little music now and then, on the keyboards and with a guitar as well as the mandolin and banjo. ...

After I got done speaking at the SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Event yesterday I came back to the hotel room for a web-meeting with some of the other teachers at the University of Washington. As teachers we are always looking to improve the knowledge transfer to our students – and the Program Director found an interesting study that I thought I ...