The weather changes in an instant in the Colorado Rockies. I’ve lived here long enough never to take the weather for granted. It’s not a cliché but rather sound advice based on years of experience so, if you like the weather you’re having, don’t expect it to last as it will change. You want four seasons in a day then welcome to Colorful Colorado!
Tourist promotions coming out of Colorado feature many messages highlighting change – if you like to ski then certainly, this should be at the top of your list of destinations. On the other hand, information about what to expect on any given day can be obtained from any of the major television networks, in real time, as all of them support apps on your smartphones and tablets. No risk of something unexpected overtaking you!
Furthermore, performing any kind of transaction where the application has a view to your location you will likely see a sidebar display of the weather showing you conditions as they change. There’s really no excuse to be caught out in conditions you hadn’t expected as a simple inquiry will give you the complete picture. Lifesaving insight beamed right into your hands. Messages and transactions! Location transmission! Real time updates and complete picture (as to what to expect) – all at your fingertips even as you are more likely than not aware of what is happening behind the scenes.
Processes and databases are far from our minds as we hit the slopes and yet, in today’s always-connected, always-on, fully engaged world, so much tailored (indeed, targeted) information is directed at us that all too often we simply assume that this is just the normal way of things. The ether is alive with data that packaged appropriately allows us the freedom the previous generations never experienced.
A recent posting to the LinkedIn group, Connect HP User Group Community, included a link to a blog post heralding Big Data is Dead. All Aboard the AI Hype Train! While focused more on the hype surrounding AI, its conclusion reminded me of just how far we have to go with respect to applying the results from data stream analytics to business problems, and of course, how early we are in the lifecycle of extracting meaningful data and integrating with transactional systems. As the author of the post concluded, “But for now and the foreseeable future, the best way to attack your business problems is still done the old fashioned way: creative, smart, and curious people who can ask the right questions and know how to get them answered. Big, dumb algorithms and warehouses of data are useless without them.”
And yet, it’s exactly the work being done by creative, smart, and curious people at WebAction, Inc. that continues to keep me interested in the potential of Striim™ to make an impact on transactional systems, particularly when it comes to those applications running on HPE NonStop systems. Striim draws attention to this on its web site; becoming involved in addressing such business problems, we may be forgiven for overlooking just how successful Striim is becoming in simplifying the use of algorithms.
The Striim platform hides the reality that data stream analytics, as supported by Striim in its current iteration, isn’t about a new data warehouse or even operational data store utility or tool but rather, a fully functioning and operating non-intrusive, system-independent, platform. One that is fully capable of being deployed, interfaced, turned-on, and adding valuable insight to applications from the get-go. From the instant data is born, Striim can be configured to make it useful. The Striim platform begins sifting through a universe of information, continuously being generated all around us, to ensure that any piece of information potentially unique (in the instant of time it’s captured) can influence the behavior of all that it comes into contact with. Dramatic?
Yes, after a fashion, but more to the point, the new reality. Knowing this, enterprises are turning to a new breed of platforms of which Striim offers a degree or originality not seen in other implementations that ensures enterprises every piece of information, relative to your business, is identified, presented and potentially acted upon depending on the ongoing circumstances. Returning to the concept of Striim being more than a utility or tool and instead, being a platform, the story becomes even more compelling as you become aware of how Striim uniquely combines both streaming data integration and streaming operational intelligence in a single platform.
Indeed, Striim is the only end-to-end solution for streaming integration and intelligence, a claim that I haven’t seen any other vendor attempt to push back on. Cool! An interesting perspective of itself but the reality is that much of the frontier Striim is pushing beyond has to do with how Striim integrates the here and now with as much of its surroundings as an enterprise can expose to Striim. Which brings me to the important value proposition of the Striim platform; Striim will add relevant context to the data.
For enterprises wanting to not just act on the data the instant it’s born but to have it mapped into information that they can use, the data streaming past the enterprise needs to be enriched with reference and historical data, for instant, and usable context, and yes, at-speed and at-scale. And that’s the really difficult part of what enterprises truly require and yet, it’s the forte of Striim. Data, the instant it’s born, massaged by a platform that’s non-intrusive yet capable of enriching it in real time rapidly, and in a manner that can keep on scaling out, provides behavioral insight unimaginable by our predecessors. Creative, smart, and curious people still do make a difference.
I live in the HPE NonStop world where my clients rely on NonStop systems for handling all the transactional loads you see coming the way of financial institutions, mobile phone operators, healthcare workers and manufacturing lines, 24 X 7 X forever. The ability of the Striim platform to work in this environment is testament that the needs of enterprises to know of what is coming and to react accordingly has become paramount to the business health. Selling swimsuits during a blizzard isn’t a winning strategy for any merchant looking to prosper.
In Colorado, much has been done to keep communities informed of change as it happens so rapidly. That’s just the byproduct of living alongside the continental divide. For NonStop and Striim, the challenges are similar. A byproduct of processing mission critical transactions, in real time, with a need to be kept informed, as change happens just as rapidly. Make data useful the instance it’s born? Absolutely; maybe it’s time for you to take a closer look at the Striim website for yourself!
