Loraine Lawson

Ten Top Tech Trends to Watch in 2014 I have something important to tell you about APIs, but first you have to pinky-promise to stay with me through the end. Here’s why: I’m going to have to use the taboo term “SOA” to make the point, and you’re probably going to want to run away. […]

Three Big Problems Big Data Will Create in 2014 Discussions about IT and business alignment are almost taboo these days. I suppose people have heard too much about it in the past decade. Yet, that’s exactly the kind of discussion data experts seem to be calling for when it comes to how IT manages data. […]

Three Big Problems Big Data Will Create in 2014 Organizations are turning to Big Data because they believe more information will improve decision-making, whether it’s whom to target for a sale or whether a product should be recalled. But what if the real value of the data isn’t in providing us with more information, but […]

Three Big Problems Big Data Will Create in 2014 APIs are big on the Internet, and I mean that literally and figuratively. Let’s face it, for the past year, APIs have been king when it comes to moving services in the cloud or on mobile. It’s hard to imagine that APIs could become even bigger, […]

The Real Life of a Data Scientist How’s this for a definition of Big Data: If it doesn’t make sense in a system built 10-plus years ago using principles from 30 years ago — then you’re dealing with Big Data. That’s the unusual definition offered by William McKnight in a recent Q&A published on, oddly […]

Three Big Problems Big Data Will Create in 2014 When it comes to data, the U.S. federal government is a bit of a glutton. Federal agencies manage on average 209 million records, or approximately 8.4 billion records for the entire federal government, according to Steve O’Keeffe, founder of the government IT network site, MeriTalk. “All […]

Top Five Reasons Big Data Is Advancing Personalized Medicine A recent Canadian Medical Association Journal article shows how data specialists in Ontario are using integration and analytics to reinvent health systems. Data-integration innovations are refashioning the health systems from supporting acute care to “total patient data capture,” according to the article. I’ll say this much […]

Drivers and Challenges of Enterprise Integration Revealed “Integration” can be a tricky word in regards to technology, and so can “convergence.” For instance, is single sign-on a type of integration? It may appear so to end users, but when IT talks about integration, it typically means data is going to be integrated. In fact, as […]

Big Data Makes Organizations Smarter, but Open Data Makes Them Richer One of the most common predictions I read for 2014 is that Big Data will become no big deal this year. In other words, you won’t have to “sell” it to the business or convince anyone of its value, because that will become a […]

Six Reasons Businesses Need to Pay Attention to Unstructured Data Does self-service integration make a difference for business leaders? Yes, according to the Aberdeen Group: Where self-service integration is used, managers are 17 percent more likely to find the right information at the right time than in those companies where the self-service integration was not […]

Three Big Problems Big Data Will Create in 2014 Some of the best Big Data and sensor uses come from the manufacturing and logistics world. But while supply chains and manufacturing floors can generate plenty of important business data, those functions aren’t always the best equipped to use that data. Operations, supply chains and manufacturing […]

Big Data: Not Just for Big Business Anymore Before we embrace a new year, I want to share my personal picks for the best data success stories from 2013: Feds Stop $47 Billion in Fraud, Overpayment. We often think in terms of technology solutions. For example, we ask “How much can master data management save […]