Bernie Spang, Director of Strategy and Marketing for Database Software Systems at IBM, sat down with Wikibon Chief Analyst Dave Vellante on theCube to talk about Big Data in memory. Spang first states that IBM has such insights into enterprise solutions because they look at the complete problem when aiding their customers. He says that instead of focusing on just data, just analytics, or any one technique to solve a problem they encompass all angles of attack.

In regards to the lifespan and relevance of relational databases management systems (RDBMS) in the Big Data age, Spang highlights that just because there is a new tool that does something new and better than an existing tool, it does not mean that the new tool does everything new and better than all existing tools. This fits for RDBMS because, as he states, it’s about the right tool for each job and relational systems still have many places of usage where they address the problems of the enterprise. Not all problems require venturing from the well-established track record of RDBMS.

In order to enhance and extend the relational database management system, IBM offers a set of technology innovations (Blue accelerations) that can work in conjunction with a RDBMS. Spang explains that dynamic in memory columnar data management is how this technology works. It processes the data in memory, but is has the intelligence to dynamically move data from storage into memory as needed. It utilizes columnar storage processing instead of row based. The software can be spread across multiple processors, and it can run analytics on compressed data without decompressing the data. And then lastly the software has the intelligence to know when it can skip data that doesn’t need to be processed in a given task. These innovations can significantly increase the time it takes to complete a task, allowing speed of thought analytics.

After more in depth discussion on the technology and examples of how it’s worked for some clients, Spang outlines that IBM’s four fundamental deployment options consist of software flexibility, appliance simplicity, System Z quality, and cloud agility. There options range to cover the various strategies that their customers would want to utilize in their data solutions. IBM seeks to help their clients use the best tool for each job, look across all the available data they have, and extract more value and information from it.

Spang’s final advice to CIOs seeking solutions and opportunities is to first take a look at the broad picture to see how Big Data can help your enterprise. They should come up with a strategic method of how the technology will be utilized. Once the plan is laid out they should start small and specific so that they can see success prior to a full out deployment that might go down the wrong path.

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