Seeing the future in new technologies, smaller companies, and increased automation

By Blair Campbell

January/February 2019

Rita Núñez

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Company/URL: Tecnix Solutions

Job title: CEO

Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified Professional

Length of time using Oracle products: 20 years

  

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How did you get started in IT? I started studying systems engineering at university in Buenos Aires, because I liked the exact sciences. At the time, I didn’t have a computer at home—nor had I taken any programming classes in high school. Right away, though, I really liked programming—and in my third year, when I was introduced to database topics, I immediately knew that I wanted to specialize in databases.

You’ve taken Oracle University [OU] classes in the past. What led you to do this? Years ago when I was working as a DBA, my manager offered me the chance to take OU courses, so I did all the courses recommended for the DBA career path and earned my Oracle Certified Professional certification. In 2006 I became an OU instructor myself, and I now teach classes in database administration and cloud services.

Which new features in Oracle Database are you currently finding most valuable? I’ve been testing Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service. I know a lot of customers who don’t have enough backup library capacity to back up all their databases in a nightly window. Using Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service, they can implement their backups in the cloud without having to invest in new backup libraries.

Liron Amitzi

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Company/URL: Self-employed

Job title: Independent senior DBA consultant

Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified Professional (Oracle Database 11g)

Length of time using Oracle products: 20 years

  

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What’s the most common cause you see when IT projects go wrong? People often underestimate the time or budget involved in a complex IT project—or they let other stakeholders dictate unrealistic constraints that can jeopardize the entire project. On top of that, companies often pay a lot of money for experienced external consultants but fail to follow their recommendations. The benefit of consultants is that they have usually been involved in several comparable projects and have seen different scenarios, so they can assist in building the right solution.

What would you like to see Oracle, as a company, do more of? I hope Oracle will continue to make an effort to be appealing to younger technologists and smaller companies—in business opportunities, licensing, and pricing. Oracle is trying hard to become more relevant for smaller companies, and this effort is evident in the new Oracle Database 18c, Express Edition.

What’s your go-to Oracle reference? I use the Oracle documentation quite often on the web when I’m looking for something specific. I also really value blog posts and articles written by people I trust, mainly from the Oracle ACE Program. I turn to Tim Hall’s Oracle-Base a lot. Some other people I follow are Jonathan Lewis, Frits Hoogland, and Mike Dietrich. And I like to read anything that Franck Pachot is writing—his work appears in a lot of different places.

Ron Ekins

Haywards Heath, United Kingdom

Company/URL: Pure Storage

Job title: Oracle solutions architect, Office of the CTO

Length of time using Oracle products: 25 years

  

 

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What’s your favorite tool on the job? Oracle Database’s Direct NFS Client feature is an amazing technology and one of those little-known, underused gems that, when configured correctly, can be used to deliver superfast Oracle Recovery Manager backups and restores.

What advice do you have about getting into software architecture? Visit Oracle Technology Network to download Oracle VM VirtualBox, and download the database app development VM. This provides an Oracle Database 12c Release 2 database and Oracle SQL Developer running on Oracle Linux 7. The environment also comes with some hands-on labs for you to try. It’s a great way to learn and also provides a way to explore the different components of the technology stack to see if any area is of particular interest.

What’s the next big thing driving change in your industry? The explosion in the volume of data being created by machines and sensors is leading to changes in the way we think about, manage, and store our business data. Only a few years ago, we talked about very large databases being approximately 1 TB. Now, we see many companies having multiple 10 TB databases and other large datasets spread across multiple clouds, SaaS providers, and on-premises solutions. This, combined with shrinking project timelines, is driving the need for greater levels of automation across the entire development life­cycle. Automation is key in helping us reduce time to market, build and maintain consistent IT platforms, distribute secure data, improve the quality of testing, and reduce the risk of human errors by eliminating IT toil.