Blog Archive

I am hosting a series of Data Literacy Workshops for the MTC. Read More ›

Software Implementation Decision Calculus

Here is the decision matrix I use when evaluating software purchasing, implementation, and deployment decisions Read More ›

MTC Data Science-as-a-Service

At the MTC we offer a service for our customers that I call Data Science-as-a-Service. You could also call it Rent-a-Data Scientist. In this article I will show you some ways to leverage this offering. Read More ›

Top 10 Data Governance Anti-Patterns for Analytics

More companies are adopting data lakes and self-service analytics. The problem is data governance has not kept up with the new technologies and the needs of modern analytics. In this article I'll show you some ways to modernize your governance strategies to achieve your business objectives. Read More ›

The Dashboard is Dead, Probably?

Some data vendors are claiming _the dashboard is dead_. Doubtful. But some of the underlying premises are worthy of discussion. You just might be doing it wrong. Read More ›

Data-Driven Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value is one of those key metrics every business needs to know. But traditionally that's been difficult to do. Read More ›

Do This Before You Outsource Your Next Analytics Project

Are you convinced that your outsourced analytics project will succeed? Every day at the Microsoft Technology Center I talk to customers that are underwhelmed with their consultant partners. I wrote an article where I show you THE ONE THING that you should do to guarantee success in your next outsourced analytics project. To my consultancy friends: read on to see what you should be doing to bring your practices into the Prescriptive Analytics Age. Read More ›

altdata Ideas You Can Leverage Today

Here are some actionable ideas to get you thinking about how to leverage altdata Read More ›

Data Sharing as a Replacement for ETL

ELT/ETL is dead. Think 'data sharing'. Read More ›

Gaining Information Edge with AltData

We are living in a data sharing environment. Here is how you can leverage altdata in your data analytics Read More ›

Design Thinking for Data and Analytics Projects

Why Design Thinking is a key tenant of successful analytics projects Read More ›

Build vs Die

For years the IT debate was 'Build vs Buy'. That's the wrong way to look at it in the age of Cloud. It's really 'Build vs Die' Read More ›

Data Quality Doesn't Matter

DQ does kinda matter. Why data quality and master data management projects fail and what you can do to remove risk. Read More ›

What TikTok Can Teach Any Company About Data Analytics and User Engagement

Data scientists and Marketing Departments: you can learn a lot more from TikTok than just how to dance Read More ›

No, you don't need a data warehouse (and data kwality doesn't matter)

I was the Season 5 premiere episode guest on the Data Driven Podcast. Being controversial as always. Read More ›

Marketing Trends for 2021

Some trends we are seeing for 2021. Read More ›

E-Commerce is Dead, Long Live A-Commerce

E-commerce isn't really dead, it's just 'table-stakes' now. We should be preparing for The Next Thing: A-Commerce Read More ›

What I Learned from Re-Reading The Goal

There are a few books worth re-reading every few years. The Goal is one of them. Read More ›

PolarisCon Conference Speaker

I presented 2 successful sessions at the annual Berkadia PolarisCon. Read More ›

Forrester 2020 Enterprise Architecture Award Winner

I helped one of my customers win a Forrester 2020 Enterprise Architecture Award. Read More ›

Blockchain Ideation and Hackathon at Global 2020 Summer Azure DataFest

I am hosting a blockchain ideation & hackathon for the next virtual Azure DataFest scheduled for July 2 Read More ›

MTC MLOps Workshops and Hackathons

Bring your data scientists, developers, and Ops Guys together for the MTC MLOps Workshop and Hackathon Read More ›

AI Envisioning Workshop at Philadelphia Azure DataFest

I'm hosting an AI Envisioning Workshop at the Philadelphia MTC on January 7. Read on to learn more. Read More ›

MTC Ideation Workshops

Get your business and IT leaders aligned on strategy Read More ›

Convert Databricks DBC notebook format to ipynb

DBC files are difficult to work with. Here's the fast way to convert them to ipynb files Read More ›

New Presentations and Workshops

Due to time constraints I haven't updated my presentations and workshops page for over a year. Here are the updates. Read More ›

The Top Mistakes You'll Make When Moving to the Cloud

I should've posted this article 3 years ago. I still see customers making the same mistakes they did 3 years ago when they move their workloads to the cloud. I'll show you the most common mistakes and how to avoid them. Read More ›

Case Study in End-to-End Self-Service Analytics in the Cloud

My client was a FinTech that needed to add self-service analytics to their customer solution. You too can do this quickly. In this post I'll show you how I focused on small MVPs and showing value quickly. Read More ›

I'm Speaking at 'Philadelphia Azure DataFest: Advanced Analytics and Big Data Conference' on Friday, December 7

Building a Self-Service Data Lake: From Ingestion to Analytics Read More ›

How to run a Discovery Workshop

In this post I'll show you what a Discovery Workshop is and why it is so valuable for my clients Read More ›

Case Study: Data Analytics in FinServ

'We have a product idea that will revolutionize our industry. Help us move quickly.' This post is a case study in how I did it. Read More ›

Azure Databricks Demos

A great Azure managed Spark offering, now with a few good demos Read More ›

Chicago BI User Group Presentation: So You Want to Be a Data Scientist?

Let's discuss one of the hottest topics for database professionals today. Read More ›

I'm Speaking at 'Philadelphia Azure DataFest: Advanced Analytics and Big Data Conference' on May 11

Come learn about Azure SQL Datawarehouse performance tuning Read More ›

So you are starting a blockchain project...

You've just been asked by your business to start a blockchain project, how do you begin? Let me tell you how I think about blockchain projects. Read More ›

How I Manage Successful Customer 360 Projects

Starting a Customer 360 initiative at your company? Not sure what's next? Let me show you how I show value quickly and run a project with a high rate of success. Read More ›

Why your EDW projects fail

Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) projects have a high fail rate. In this post I'll show you why...and how to achieve a better success rate. Read More ›

Cloud Vendor Lock-in

I often here the comment made that 'We do not want to use Azure and be locked-in to one vendor'. Let me show you why that is not really an issue if you design your architecture smartly. Read More ›

Case Study: Scaling Your Data Scientist

'Can you help us scale our data science team?' is a common ask I get from customers. This post is some case studies in what customers really need and how I have helped them. Read More ›

Jekyll is so much better than Drupal and Wordpress

I migrated my website to a static site generator. Let me tell you why. Read More ›

New Book: SQL Server 2017 Machine Learning Services with R

I was the book reviewer for a great new book on SQL Server and R integration. Read More ›