Glasgow University is world-famous as an educational establishment but I had never thought of it as a place where I would be presented with a look into the future. It would have been nice for it to have been the place where I found out what next weekend’s lottery numbers will be, but unfortunately what I saw and heard was not quite so life changing, but it was significant nevertheless.
The occasion was the annual AGI Scotland conference http://www.agi.org.uk/POOLED/articles/bf_eventart/view.asp?Q=bf_eventart_299755 where I was representing and flying the flag for Sigma Seven. The title of this year’s event was “thinking outside the silo” but none of the speakers were insightful enough to tell the assembled audience exactly what silo we should be thinking out off! It was a pretty tame event really, although to be fair all the speakers did well to present their particular speciality.
My view of the future was reinforced by Charles Kennelly of ESRI (UK), their technical chief. His presentation on “the power of the Mashup” was the highlight of the day for me, not only because of the quality of Charles’ delivery, but because he painted a picture that addressed the “bee in my utilities’ bonnet”, that of corporate data. Like all asset heavy organisations, utilities really struggle on a number of levels with corporate data – who owns it; where is it stored; who is responsible for its capture and amendment; who maintains the IT systems; who is responsible for the data management standards and policies; how should be it used and presented; who is managing its security – the list goes on and on!
Utilities’ key competencies lie in operating and maintaining assets, which is just as well because their competency in managing corporate data is at best questionable and at worst, non-existent . Because of the huge volume of data that their operations generates, historically they have turned to IT to get them out of the proverbial “data hole”. The current prescription that is dispensed by the IT doctor for the debilitating data problem is the concept of the “data warehouse”. It is seen as the cure-all but the experience so far for the ones who have been brave enough, or desperate enough, to take this medicine is that its implementation costs a fortune, typically a big number with at least six zeros on the end, and although it may well tackle the problems from an IT view, it most certainly doesn’t from the operations view, especially when it comes to mobilising their field workers.
The paradigm shift in the corporate data world comes with the emerging Web2.0 technology and the power of the Mashup, where the web is used as an application that uses the map to locate and present the user-selected data from multiple storage areas. It is the new world that we can look forward to - it is on its way and I for one can’t wait.