With SAPs release of the High Performance Analytic Appliance, SAP HANA, I wanted to know...

How fast is SAP HANA?

In September 2009 IBM announced the availability of SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator on the BladeCenter S. Now, just over 18 months later, IBM no longer approve this solution for new systems. However, all systems already in the field are still supported.

The BladeCenter S solution bought BWA functionality to users at a much lower price point than the BladeCenter H solution. Although it suffered from limited redundancy and scalability the BladeCenter S did prove a popular choice with Centiq customers. To plug the gap left by this mini BladeCenter IBM submitted the System X x3850 X5 server to SAP for qualification. The system has been tested and approved for use with BWA. So, if you are looking for a small BWA solution at a low price point, then maybe you should be considering the IBM System X x3850 X5.

IBM announced the acquisition of Gardium, a software house specialising in the monitoring and securing of applications and the underlying relational databases. Ranging from privileged user monitoring to data masking to SOX and DPA compliance the product suite adds to IBMs growing number of acquisitions in the Information on Demand, (IOD) arena.

See http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28889.wss for more details

Just one of the challenges of maintaining in house applications is keeping relational integrity where the relational functions of the database are unused and the business logic is built into the system through stored procedures or the like.  Any attempt to analyse the hundreds of potential relationships is a long a drawn out and cost prohibitive task at the best of times. If however the system is poorly documented and the knowledge has left the organisation serious problems can arise.  The painful analysis task has recently got significantly quicker and easier. IBM’s procurement of Exeros has added the powerful Discovery tool to the Optim portfolio. By analysing the data stored, relationships are automatically mapped to provide a complete understanding of the data landscape.

Find out more by contacting me at Centiq, 0115 951 9666

For some of us it is exciting when a new computer arrives but quickly we realise that we will need to install all our applications again and then copy all our documents to the new system.  This can be a huge task but once this is done the job is still not complete, we still need to erase the data from the old computer.

Found a good blog on the evolution of memory management within Oracle, from 9i up to 11g

http://repettas.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/automatic-memory-management-amm-11g/

Speak to one of our technical experts now to see how Centiq can help your business by requesting a "call back" using the button to the right, or calling us on 0115 951 9666

Despite the apparent cost benefits of DB2 over Oracle (especially with Oracle's price rises last year) a  quick straw poll  asked;  What are the inhibitors to migrating from Oracle to DB2? The answers were pretty consistent.

1. Cost and time of application migration and

Using production data for test and development could be illegal under the Data Protection Act or European Human rights laws, however what are the alternatives?

Three choices are available; create new data, encryption/scrambling and masking.

In an economic environment where every penny counts the thought that an "average" data breach could wipe £5million off the bottom line is a sobering thought for those responsible for an organisation's information policy. The majority of this cost is seen through loss of business, with the Ponemon Institute stating that a single breach could cost 1/3 of an organisation's customer base. When margins are squeezed and competition tight the impact of poorly protected information is only going to grow.

The issue is not however with production systems. These should  and often are "locked down" and protected so that only those authorised have access to information and that those visits are tracked. Far harder to protect are the test and development systems that are cloned from production disks. Whilst the data is the same sensitive information that is fully managed in production, the environments in which they are placed are far from secure. Securing the environment locks the data but makes that same environment unfit for purpose. Opening the security allows the developers to perform their tasks yet exposes sensitive information.