2017 Is Shaping Up to be Critical for SQL Server
Data platforms in general are moving forward at break-neck speed. It seems like we get our arms around managing X requirement and then all of a sudden there isn’t just one or two new things to address, but several. In my opinion, there are a few different things weighing in in the coming year as you consider direction and technology pieces that you may be working with in your own systems.
Cloud – and specifically hybrid or mixed cloud
I think with the acceptance and use of things like backups to the cloud, and extending databases between on-premise and cloud-based solutions – these technologies and others are driving acceptance and a willingness to use cloud-based technologies. Once we’re over that hump – that of acceptance – we’ll be looking at architecture issues of integration, security and access controls and we’ll also be looking at creating applications that make more intelligent use of the resources available in mixed environment solutions.
I think too that we will likely have more mixed-provider solutions – where not only is it a combination of on-premise and cloud-based technologies, but multiple cloud-based providers (like Azure and Amazon Web Services, working togehter, for example).
IoT (Internet of Things)
The IoT will bring challenges of larger and larger data flows. Speed, accuracy and discovery all play into the IoT solutions. We’ll be dealing with end-to-end planning for collection, exchange, cleaning, processing and storing of information from devices, applications, assistants, sensors, vehicles, and all of those combined as applications start to generate even more information by combining those data points and seeking to store their own additional data points. This has the potential to turn storage and processing requirements on their ear, especially mining meaningful information from very large data stores and data flows, often in real-time, where the questions being asked of the data aren’t even known yet.
Big Data
Yes, volicity, all of that (think “blah, blah, blah”) but making sense of more sources and more types of data across more platforms is going to be key. I think too that getting a return on investment is going to increasingly be on the radar of many companies as investments have been made, expectations have been set. Way back in the early days of realizing that we could learn a lot from “big data,” the talk was all about surprise learnings and intelligence that could be acted on. Even with all of the new sources and types of information, and the increasing flows, I believe we need to keep the eye on the results ball and keep pushing to make sense of it all.
Security
The intellectual property that is our data store is going to increase when it comes to delivering competitive advantage, and support for new products, offerings and services. If that’s the case, the protection of that data, even when we’re combining it with other data sources, will be paramount. That, combined with public expectation of protected personally identifiable information, transaction information and the like, means the pressure to protect information will be increasing and ramping right up with the types of information we’re collectively working with in our systems. That, combined with increasing intrustion tools and techniques, insider issues and “simple” mistakes will mean it’s critical to continue pushing on the security tools and approaches deployed.
There are other areas, of course. Some driven by features, some by technologies, some by expectations.
What types of things are you seeing? What do you anticipate being your biggest challenges in the year ahead?