Skills for an Enterprise Data Management Career

Greetings from the Research School of Computer Science at the Australian National University, where

Andy Peyton, President of the Canberra Chapter of the Data Management Association, is speaking on "Evolutionary Pressures on Enterprise Data Management". Andy is a senior and distinguished member of the IT profession, who I have served on many committees with. He commented that data had been a large part of his professional life, starting be writing software for P3 Orion surveillance aircraft and other militarily systems. He then worked on computer software for the mining industry. Later he worked in the data field in government, which he commented had no exciting pictures, as the military and mining industry does.

Andy commented that while applications are being replaced with new software, the data those applications use tend to be the same. This provides a long term career path for data professionals. One estimate suggests we need 1 Data Base Administrator (DBA) per 1 to 5 Terrabytes of data, but as data expands that would be unsustainable.

Andy warned about mutual disinterest between IT and business people: business have a distrust of IT and IT people don't care about business. This distrust may be overcome by doing more with the enterprise data.

One of Andy's more unusual recommendations was that data modelers should describe themselves as philosophers at parties, as it sounds much more interesting. He mentioned a new role in the data field is the Business Intelligence Analysts. He outlined one problem was how to describe smells and DNA sequences for intellectual property purposes.

Andy described the problem of intelligence agencies collecting large amounts of data to track terrorists and other systems using zettabytes of data and how law enforcement agencies can't easily delete data.

Evolutionary Pressures on Enterprise Data Management

Andy Peyton (Data Management Association)

COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR Relational Databases

DATE: 2013-09-02
TIME: 11:00:00 - 11:45:00
LOCATION: CHEM T1
CONTACT: mohammad.yamin@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
The amount of data collected and maintained by enterprises is increasing at near exponential rates. Traditional approaches to the management of data are unlikely to be able to support the enterprise requirements. As a result there are significant shifts occurring in database technologies, data management, and data-oriented careers. However the end-state is not really understood as we are yet to master the data volumes expected to be managed. The security of data is becoming increasingly important to large enterprises and government. A recent US investigation estimates that over $300 billion worth of intellectual property is lost each year as a result of theft, and much of that intellectual property is simply enterprise data that has been copied. Cloud computing has its implications for managing the data storage explosion, but for government agencies there are important considerations of possible third party access to data that should remain under strict access control. The Australian Government places a very high priority on the security of citizensa data that it holds. This presentation will address all the above issues in the context of large Australian enterprises for whom data is a key asset of the organisation.
BIO:
Andy Peyton has over 35 years experience as an IT Professional. He started his career developing software for military aircraft, radar systems, and naval weapon systems. He then moved into the consulting field where he supported broad range of government departments designing computer systems, assessing data quality problems, running IT projects, and designing large databases. He is currently a senior solutions architect at IP Australia which is the Australian Government agency that administers intellectual property rights and legislation relating to patents, trade marks, designs, and plant breeder rights. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Sydney, and a Master of Management Economics from the University of NSW. He is currently President of the Canberra Chapter of the Data Management Association (DAMA) and was formerly Chairman of the Canberra Branch of the Australian Computer Society (ACS).