Utility companies are on the verge of having to learn how to drink from a fire hose when it comes to data.

Smart meters are rolling out to a house near you, by 2013 all houses in Victoria will be fitted with a smart meter. So the utility companies are going to move from 4 transactions a year to between 17520 to 35040 transactions per year, depending on the number of channels that the smart meter uses.

There must be quite a few thoughts that are going through the minds of these organizations, but once they get past the fear of so much data, think of the opportunity.

As someone who is fascinated with what data tells us about people, I am looking forward to better understanding of how I as an individual actually use energy. So I thought I would share my hopes around what a utility company will use my data for:

1. Visibility to how I am using energy though out the day
2. Visibility into how much I am paying for energy during the day
3. Comparison between me and other houses in the same area
4. Comparison between me and an eco friendly house
5. Hints around how I can reduce my energy bill
6. Rate plans that drive an eco friendly house

Most of us want to be green, smart meters are an opportunity for Utility companies to work with their customer base to drive down our carbon foot print. And the best bit about all of this for me is, Teradata is the right solution for an explosion in data.

Daniel Tehan

In previous years, Federal Government agencies have been given riding instructions to get the cheapest, "all you can eat" licensing bundles that provide economies of scale and cheap costs per unit. The world has changed, however. Where once the salesman who asked you if you wanted to buy a watch and get some free steak-knives was a friend, he is now steering you away from success.

The Gershon Review into IT in Australian Federal Government illustrated the need to demonstrate and measure efficiency and effectiveness in IT BAU and projects. Gershon also left the book open for Government to write the next chapter: identify efficiency savings and re-invest 50% into new capability building projects. Important to this process is being able to itemise costs, drill-down into just how many and how much of something is needed or can be reduced and demonstrate just enough to do the job efficiently and effectively. The identified savings are the key to being entrusted with new public monies to build capability. If this is not done, restructures, diminishing funding bases and a dissolved role for branches and divisions will ensue.

In the new wave of transparent Western Democracy, the transparent, lean and mean IT Divisions will be entrusted with public monies to enrich society and provide ROI to the taxpayer. These successful groups will be, more than ever before, reliant on contracts to help them achieve this result.

Returning to the proposition of the "all you can eat” contract, this model most likely cannot achieve Gershon's vision. Buying enterprise infrastructure and software licenses where there are lists of products, services and infrastructure without associated costs will be the biggest impediment to organisations achieving measured savings.

The acid test for an organisation is if they can switch off a server, data mart, license or service to result in real, immediate and measured savings. If an agency cannot do this, their model needs to change to respond to the new environment. Teradata offers a range of services to help organisations realise efficiencies, including a data mart consolidation service. Agencies can work with industry partners like Teradata to find and harvest savings from inefficient and ineffective data management strategies. Again, these services can only help organisations if the product or service being trimmed-down can be measured.

When negotiating large, enterprise agreements, agencies will have to demand granular costs, down to the unit, hour or fixed price for service level. There may be a trade-off in moving from a veiled cost model which suits large vendors and reductions in service levels, licenses and quantities. This, however, is the world of "just what you need", and being able to measure and demonstrate that not "all you can eat".

David Bremstaller

I’m not particularly a fan of Tennis but I’m originally from Scotland so took a keen interest in the recent Australian Open and cheered for fellow Scot, Andy Murray.

I’ve come to realise in recent years how in Australia we have an increasing tendency to drag out awards ceremonies for major sporting events. I really felt for Andy Murray in particular as he stood (im)patiently waiting to receive his runners up award and was then asked to make a speech when clearly all he wanted was to get out of there.

It made me think of how time poor everyone seems nowadays, particularly at work and how I imagine people sitting in business presentations, particularly the presentation of analytic findings, just wanting the presenter to get on with it.

I’m currently attending a course on dashboard design and information presentation principals, “Show me the numbers” by Stephen Few and one of the key principals we keep coming back to is how information should be easy to comprehend, the presentation of it should be intuitive and easy to understand ‘at a glance’. Stephen referred to Paul Grice and the Gricean Maxims of which I particularly liked the Maxim of manner, point 3: Be brief.

Stephen showed a video of Hans Rosling presenting at TED in 2006 (the 2010 show is on now where he enthusiastically presents what is essentially an animated bubble scatterplot chart (pretty complex) to debunk the view of the developed world as long life, small family and the developing world as short life, large family. Watch the presentation from approx 3.30 for 1.5 mins and at that point you’ll hear him claim “we have a completely new world”. Quite a claim, but after 1.5 mins you are convinced. That’s getting on with it! It’s how he tells the story.

When presenting or demonstrating I’m also a fan of Peter Cohans mantra to “do the last thing first”. Not only are we time poor, but we are programmed to forget, as Peter pointed out in a recent blog. Quite simply people remember the first and last things they are shown.

When presenting game changing or contentious hypotheses, as many of our customers do, its very easy to feel the need to show all the intricate details of the model they developed along the way (weren’t we always told “show your work” in maths class?). By the time they get to the punch line, if they get there at all, the audience has been lost or the meeting has been hijacked and no action will come out of it.

Make the point and make it easy. It’s an extension of the “tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them” idea but gets straight to the point.

“Show me the numbers” does not trivialize extensive research. Analysts should resist the need to justify themselves and their skills with a pre-punch line thesis. Getting straight to the point will invite engaged conversation and a stronger buy in of a hypothesis or at the very least a robust discussion and testing of the model.

The very fact that the analyst has created a robust and well researched model will come out in the ensuing discussion giving ample time to “show the working’ but this time to an engaged and interested audience. Of course you probably needed and used good data, great sophisticated processing and modeling engines and that’s where Teradata comes in!

I would love to hear or see examples of complex information being presented quickly, succinctly and the impact or result it had.

Alec Gardner
Area Presales Manager
www.linkedin.com/in/alecgardner

I’ve worked in business and IT a long time. Long ago IT terms were fairly well comprehended and tended to be unambiguous. Today however many IT and consulting organizations strive to add value to their offerings and freely inject, albeit perhaps innocently, ambiguous terms.

For example for reasons best known to marketers the term, Real – Time or is that Realtime?, or Real Time?, which plainly means “When things respond to events as they occur” to anyone who has been in IT and worked on Telecom, Banking or Airline operational systems or network systems - has been high jacked to mean maybe within 15 minutes…

This means that actually, when someone that gets what Real-time is, hears the 15 minute definition, the lights go out. Credibility shot down in flames!

I’d say that what the 15 minute definition should be described as Right Time. Taking a business event and applying business rules and enabling an action, is a good thing. Normally doing so in the right amount of time is all that is needed.

The same applies to another often confused term Operational Data Store (ODS). According to Bill Inmon, the originator of the concept, an ODS is "a subject-oriented, integrated, volatile, current-valued, detailed-only collection of data in support of an organization's need for up-to-the-second, operational, integrated, collective information."

Many database vendors and solutions providers have managed to obfuscate the meaning of an ODS into “something that is cheaper and faster than a Data warehouse, thus eliminating the need”. If only that were true!

My take is that in fact that, the functions of a properly defined ODS, and a properly capable data warehouse are merging into one. ODS’s exist because years ago it took too long to load the data into a data warehouse and make the data available – usually overnight. Today that is not the case and many leading Banks and Telco’s actually have true mixed capability systems, ODS and EDW. The key of course is having the tools and knowledge to build a system that has proper workload management, such that the system can perform the expected tasks within a planned time window. And of course with the appropriate IT disciplines, backups, no single point of failure, availability SLA’s, etc.

I am an advocate of keeping things simple and plain. If your IT vendor is blurring the meanings of words and using confusion as a differentiation, you may be in for interesting times! Don’t even start me on Cloud computing!

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Tony Whale 

So on the weekend I encountered the fear, that gut wrenching feeling you have when you are truly out of your depth, the lack of experience, the lack of knowledge, and an inability to know what I should do. Fortunately in Australia you can always call 000 (911 in America, 999 in the UK and 112 in Europe).

My daughter, two years old, had a temperature that spiked to 44.6 degrees Celsius and started to have a fit while in bed. Fortunately we were able to have the 000 operator talk me through my first aid basics, by which time the Ambulance had turned up. The next 5 hours were spent at Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) while her temperature returned to normal.

So apparently this, febrile convulsions, happens to a group of children, they do not know what causes it or what gets you into the group, they know that it does not cause any long term effects as long as it does not last for long. In short my little girl is OK.

This fear is something that management teams around the world have to live with day in day out, in fact they have become so a tuned to it that they have built “the unknown” into their risk plans and rules of thumb that they run their businesses on every day.

The recent financial crisis has shown us just how devastating “the unknown” can be, leaving our management teams wondering how they can minimize the unknown. Risk Management in many organisations is evolving, and a detailed enterprise view is the vision with associated mitigation plans where possible.

Working at Teradata I have been involved in building solutions to manage the complexities of this vision, enabling management to spend time on determining the mitigation plans. Its very satisfying to feel you’re helping to prepare and lessen the impact of any potential future disasters. What is your organisation doing to mitigate the risk?

I do not believe that the fear will ever go away for management teams or for parents, but a little knowledge certainly makes coping easier.

P.S. A big thank you to the team at RCH

Daniel Tehan

Watching the news grabs and reading about the Haiti disaster highlights to me the vast, tragic human cost of such disasters and leaves me asking the question what could have been done better?

The importance of preparing, planning and acting to minimise the human cost of such events is important, however it does cost resources. In a country like Haiti, the economic situation would suggest disaster planning and risk mitigation for disaster events are a low priority as compared to simply finding enough food, water, shelter, medicine and infrastructure to keep its people sustained.

However, Western nations with stronger financial positions appear to see disaster planning as a pastime rather than a passion. Numerous catastrophes post 9/11 would suggest that the power to pre-empt and act prior to events or mitigate disasters before they reach their full potential would seem to be inadequate. Could we have managed better in disasters such as the Canberra Bushfires in 2003, the infamous Asia Pacific Tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Cyclone Larry in 2006, Californian Wildfires in 2007, and Black Saturday fires in 2009?

So what comprises the concept or event that is a disaster and what precipitates it? It’s all about understanding risks that form the disaster and taking actions to mitigate these risks through strong leadership and command and control. Without insight into what comprises the disaster and being able to measure it, they can only occur with little or fragmented mitigation. Continuity Central describes "...disaster recovery and business continuity as a holistic approach is changing...from business continuity planning being an option to being mandatory."

In the project context, tasks form activities, activities form projects and projects form programs or campaigns. Disasters are also systemic; the likelihood of all of the "moving parts" occurring in the critical path to make the disaster happen. Like projects, disasters have milestones that indicate their progress and trigger other risks in a sequence that form the disaster. These are the indicators and measures that enable organisations and individuals to track if a potential disaster is now more likely, mitigated or no longer possible. This may sound simple, however it is understanding and measuring causes at the micro level and understanding the broader effect on a macro scale.

When an event occurs it is generally because no-one could see it coming or the risks were apparent could not be seen as a sum of the parts to form the disaster concept. Once it has happened it would seem that responding without a plan is even worse than the former. You need relevant data to inform actions that matter. Without clear command and control of a situation, business continuity and disaster recovery can only occur with good luck. The disaster itself is a series of things, risks that have achieved a milestone that conglomerate with other risks to complete the devastation. If the risks that form the basis of the event are identified and understood, action can be taken to mitigate or remove the next sequence of risks on the critical path. Again, you need to know what is important, have near-to-real-time access to this information and have a model that provides a decision-support basis for accountable and empowered people to act.

The Hurricane Katrina disaster exemplifies this point. It was impossible for the US Government to stop Hurricane Katrina itself, however, the response could have been more decisive by understanding what would continue to unfold without a final evacuation. On the human side, which is most important, the inalienable human rights to water, food, air, care, hygiene and shelter are the basis for all action. While responses were made to these basic needs, they were mitigations rather than resolutions. They prolonged the goal of a relocation of those affected, leaving them in the heart of New Orleans and the disaster area. Timely acquisition of buses to evacuate the remaining citizens in New Orleans was the intent. This simply did not happen.

The San Francisco Chronicle quotes former FEMA head Michael Brown as saying "It was beyond the capacity of the state and local governments, and it was beyond the capacity of FEMA," To me, this highlights flaws in planning through to taking action, including Brown's admission that he "should have demanded the military sooner" to assist in the response as the authorities in charge were responsible but not in control of the situation..

Instead of as decisive response, actions were taken to cordon-off the city and extend the time people were camped out in the stadium and convention centre - where the human side of the disaster unfolded further. Violence and looting ensued as desperation took hold and the disaster became complete. This was a damage control response, acting on what did happen without understanding exactly what created the situation and what was needed to resolve it.

The City of New Orleans needed a plan in the event of multiple disasters including a Hurricane. Early warning systems that provide off-shore data on Hurricane-like conditions, the city's topography and its high risk of flooding, the number of civilians in potential flood zones at various elevations to work out the magnitude of disaster scenarios could have helped model and understand what needs to be planned and what needs to happen if a disaster event occurs.

Disasters are not just about governments and nations nor are they only about natural disasters. In the wake of 9/11 or Katrina, many organisations were challenged by disaster recovery resulting from a terrorist attack. Those without such preparations and insight suffered massive financial loss and, in some cases ceased to exist. Had they had the right information at the right time to act before and after to find the best path to recovery, they may have continued in profitable business. I would argue that in disaster there is opportunity. The retailer, service provider or bank that resumes service quickest will be most profitable in meeting immediate demand and may have a long-term advantage and trust with customers, being there when they are needed the most.

I would like to hear from organisations that are looking at disaster planning, business continuity planning, disaster recovery and discuss the capabilities needed to do this effectively. While we hope disaster never comes, we have to plan that if it does, we will then have the right information and plans to know what happened, what needs to happen and act.

David Bremstaller

All sales organisations try and address problems, or solve pain points and that’s routine. However, sometimes in the heavily prescribed selling activity do we forget to make sure we understand what the one thing is that could motivate the customer to deal with us?

I once worked with a sales person who could never get the customer to consider a system that helped reduce ‘Churn’ (customers defecting elsewhere). When I spoke with the customer I asked one simple question. “What do you get rewarded for in your job” – they replied, “Acquiring customers and that’s all!” … hmmm so the motivation this person had was purely getting new customers in the door, his bonus depended on that!  Selling him a system that helped stem the flow of customers to the competitor – he could care less about!

Another example was a call centre manager. No way was she buying anything we were trying to sell, she had no issues and no pain!… Eventually she said “Look, I get paid on number of calls handled, not the quality or the accuracy of information we can supply to the customer!”

My dogs, I assume love me, but the truth is I feed them, and they need me to serve up the food and that’s their true motivation!

If you guess what a customer’s motivation is and then ask them you may well be surprised when they are truthful… it may not be what you assumed at all!

I reckon that it is well worth making an effort to understand a person’s motivation. Usually people are quite frank about this and their answer helps you positively address their problem or sell them what the truly need to succeed. When we can do that, we will find we have very loyal customers!

Tony Whale