This past Monday I listed out the five trends that data professionals need to be aware of and how it will impact their careers. I’m here to tell you something else: Dont just love your data, that isn’t enough. You need to make love to your data using tools like PowerPivot. Yesterday Rob Collie (blog | @powerpivotpro) provided a shining example.
A few weeks ago I came across this article and I had an idea: could I find out how many computations per second I would get for $1? And could I show how, over time, we are getting more for our money? And could I adjust for inflation? And if I did chart it all out, what would the data tell me, besides the fact that apparently the PS3 is faster per dollar than any other machine on Earth right now?
I had lots of questions. I had lots of tools at my disposal. What I didn’t have was time. I wanted an answer, quickly, but no time to get it done. So I turned to someone I knew could help get it done. Rob is one of the leading experts in Business Analytics. If you haven’t heard that term before, get used to it. Because it’s our future.
Rob took my idea and ran with it. He subscribed to ShadowStats.com in order to get more data to use to correlate my thoughts. He then started applying his own thoughts regarding Moore’s Law. His graphs help to show that Moore’s Law is becoming stagnant, and that in 18 months we shouldn’t expect things to be twice as fast anymore. In other words, he took my idea and was able to quickly gather data, perform analysis, postulate his own theory, and return the entire results back in a very short amount of time.
This is the future for data professionals. It isn’t about racking servers. It’s about getting people access to the data they want, in a meaningful way, and quickly. As a DBA you are already very familiar with data. How it moves, how it’s stored, how it should look. Take those skills and start learning how to apply them in a different manner.
Soon you will find your skills in demand in a similar manner to Rob. The guy is flat out busy for a reason.
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