Recent Posts by Nancy Swanson

What is Exadata Smart Scan? To answer that, let's first look at how a traditional data center operates. The database system consists of three components or layers: compute, storage, and network. Compute layer: It houses the servers that process data requests from users and returns results back to them. It makes up the back-end system of user-facing applications. Say you’re trying to purchase an airline ticket on an online booking app. The application sends a request to the...

IDC predicts that by 2025, the world will produce 175 ZB of data, up from about 33 ZB at the end of last year. That’s a staggering growth rate of 61 percent. IDC Senior VP David Reinsel explains that one zettabyte equals a trillion gigabytes. If you multiply that by 175, you realize that’s an almost incomprehensible amount of data.   But the only data that really matters is your business’ data. Your business doesn’t run without it. It also represents a big chunk of your IT...

The future of data is in the cloud. But for organizations that must keep at least some of their data behind a firewall for business, regulatory, or network latency requirements, migrating this critical data to the public cloud is not an option. Introduced two years ago, Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is designed to help these organizations easily move business critical database workloads to a cloud architecture and remove the obstacles to cloud adoption while still keeping...

When Oracle announced the release of its Autonomous Database in 2018, DBAs had to wonder how it would change their jobs. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, the Autonomous Database handles patching, upgrades, and tuning; manages its own security needs; and can perform repairs on itself, eliminating human error in the process. What’s left for a DBA to do? Well, the fun stuff: As automation absorbs mundane tasks such as tuning, backups,...

By Harald Kehl, VP, Cognizant                                                                                                                                              Businesses are discovering infrastructure as a service (IaaS) as a catalyst for digital transformation, accelerated application development, and increased customer engagement through mobile apps and social interactions. Gartner forecasts that IaaS spending will grow 27.6% in 2019 to reach nearly $40 billion,...

“Many people think about 5G as just new base station technologies and a new radio technology. That’s a narrow view that shows a very flawed understanding of the technology. I see 5G as a foundational layer for the digital transformation of industries and consumer lifestyles,” explains Peter Jarich, head of mobile operator research firm GSMA Intelligence. With 5G rolling out globally over the next months and years, this next wave in mobile technology offers greater speed,...

What do you think your company’s CFO would prefer: more coffee breaks for the finance team, or more analysis? At China’s Kingold Group, a multi-industry conglomerate with more than 10,000 employees and business operations across Australia, China, and Europe, one critical financial report used to take about 12 minutes to run. That was enough time for a quick coffee break. This and other time-consuming processes meant that reports would be run less frequently than was optimal,...

For AmerisourceBergen, a global pharmaceutical sourcing and distribution-service company with $150 billion in revenue, making sure that patients receive the medications they need when they need them is central to its mission. Not long ago, the company was processing and shipping more than 1 million products a day but was facing the prospect of dramatically higher demand. The problem? AmerisourceBergen’s hardware was having difficulty keeping up as its mission-critical SAP...

The concept of digital twins is a trending topic today. But digital twins aren’t really anything new. What is new are the more sophisticated applications that are becoming possible – across more industries – with the adoption of new technology. Two of the technology advances making these new avenues of applications possible are the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing. And today’s applications are just the beginning of what will become possible in the future. In...