Acronyms, once primarily abbreviated expressions for Depression-era government programs, have devolved into a parallel pop language that is rapidly turning web-based communications into a modern Tower of Babel. How many times over the past year have you run a Google search on an acronym you weren’t certain you had identified correctly, if at all? Come on now, be honest. It doesn’t matter how young or old you are, chances are good that if you have even a modest intellectual curiosity, you have done it sometime over the past year. And you know what? That’s an interesting allocation of your time when you consider that the acronym is supposed to speed communications.

The use of acronyms among IT (Information Technology!) workers have become a code-language implying some kind of insider knowledge or presumed expertise by the emitter of the acronym. At their worst, acronyms have begun to work more as a refuge, or as some kind of verbal shill – increasingly conferring legitimacy on basically empty claims, views or comprehension. It’s been happening for a long time but the emergence of abbreviated messaging in social media and through texting seems to have doused the fire with gasoline. Acronyms apply a thin veneer of sophistication to our communications and usually not much more.

Having said that, we all use acronyms and many of them have become a recognizable part of the vernacular … but that still doesn’t mean we are speaking the same language. Take the acronym SMB (or its derivative SME). What’s that mean to you? If you are a marketing person, it stands for “small and medium business.” Great, what does that actually mean? Well, to some that defines small and medium businesses (or enterprises) as doing less than $1 billion in business annually. Another sees that cutoff as $500 million. Some see “medium” as running in the $100 million to $250 million range. So, we really are not talking about the same specific idea, even though we sort of “get it.” Or do we? I just received a message from a reader who thought “SMB” was an acronym for “server message blocks.” And you know what, the confusion was not amusing and looking up the “definition” was a waste of his time. I get that sentiment completely.

So, here is my humble recommendation moving forward. Return to the practice of spelling out the expression first in every document, to define the acronym. For example, we use the acronym “DBTA” all the time, but in every communication we send out we spell out our trade name “Database Trends and Applications (DBTA)” first. It’s a good rule and it takes your reader into consideration. It’s worth letting folks know what you are really speaking or writing about, if for no other reason than to make sure you actually are expressing what is on your mind. You can do it in business correspondence and email, documents, presentations, speeches and discussions, webcasts, blogs and in all types of media. You can’t really do it in text messages and social media doesn’t give you much room either. So, that’s an interesting dividing line and a point of departure for another time.

Intel Corporation signaled that it intends to take direct aim at the
heart of the data center market with the latest release of its workhorse
Xeon processor, the 5600 series.

The processor giant says a single Xeon 5600 processor-based server can
replace up to 15 single-core servers. Intel also says the new series can
improve performance by 60 percent, while reducing energy consumption by
up to 30 percent.

That’s not a bad start, considering IBM claims it can replace hundreds
of servers with its System z and System i boxes. Most of the leading
server vendors have signed up to market Xeon, including IBM itself,
which offers competing chipsets in its POWER series, as well as System z
for large-scale operations. Additional vendors read like a who’s-who in
large data center computing: Cisco, Cray, Fujitsu, HP, Oracle and SGI.
(Interesting to see Oracle, formerly an all-software company, join this
bunch – this is via its Sun acquisition, of course.)

I remember when I first met with the Intel folks back in 1998, when they
were first unveiling Xeon. Intel’s Larry Michel told me that for the
first time, Intel was targeting the $25,000-and-up server market, an
area where the chipmaker’s presence was been weak or nonexistent.

Clearly, things have changed a lot since then, and Intel running either
Linux or Windows-based systems powers quite a few fairly large
operations. Now, taking a cue from analysts and vendors discussing the
need to reign in server sprawl (a lot of caused by Intel-based servers),
Intel is looking at the green data center and server consolidation
market as an area of opportunity.

And the increased competition only makes things better for data center
managers.

Many companies may have enterprise data warehouses and the latest
analytical technologies, but the capabilities are not employed to their
full potential. Often, a change in organizational culture and governance
is required to make the most of these solutions.

Such was the challenge for Gap, Inc. At the recent National Retail
Federation show in New York, Mike Jones, Senior VP for Gap, Inc., discussed how the
retailer re-aligned its corporate data framework to meet the challenges
posed by the recent rough-and-tumble economy. Economic recovery won’t
offer much respite, either – for retailers, things will only get more
competitive.

The company didn’t have a single enterprise view of its data. The
challenge was to bring together data from its five brands – The Gap, Old
Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta, and Piperline – often managed with
separate tools, Jones explained. In addition, the retailer has partners
in 25 countries that need actionable data. “Our challenge was to provide
timely information across the entire enterprise, while at the same time
maintain that brand distinction,” he said. “We needed to be able to
update the data and information where we could measure the results of
business initiatives.”

Key in this model has been the transition from independent data marts to
an integrated logical data model. Corporate data has been systematically
incorporated into a Teradata enterprise data warehouse which facilitates
business intelligence across the enterprise. “We used projects for
specific lines of business to drive what went into our data warehouse,”
Jones explained. “We didn’t have an enterprise view. We had separate
data marts, and had to go back many times to our operational systems for
data, which was a burden.”

The shift for Gap has been to move away from the use of analytical cubes
throughout the enterprise for decision-making, and instead, rely on one
source of the data. Initially, Jones said, there was resistance from
heads of business units who had grown comfortable with doing their own
analysis. “A centralized data model is a key tenet we needed to get our
executives comfortable with.”

Plus, building and generating reports had become a burden to the
company, Jones said. “We didn’t want to be in the business of building
reports, we’re not a report-building organization. We were a little bit
coin-operated. When people needed reports they would come to us.” Now,
with an enterprise data environment, he said, “users across the
different brands are now able to build their own reports and queries.”

In addition, he reported, economies of scale have kicked in as the data
warehouse has grown. “As our enterprise warehouse grew, we needed
incrementally less data and required less effort to enable new
applications and business value,” he said. “The value to effort ratio
increased significantly, and the amount of effort required went down
substantially.”

Key selling points for this centralized approach included the ability to
ask more questions of the data once it was integrated from various
functional areas. For example, Jones illustrated, about 15 questions
could be answered from the sales-related data systems, and 25 from the
inventory systems. When combined as enterprise data within the
warehouse, there were 96 questions that could be answered from the data.

“We’ve shifted to where we’re providing an enterprise view,” Jones said.
“Last year, we spent a lot of time thinking about promotions. The
biggest challenge for us was engaging more with the business and talking
about data, not technology.”

Gap even now has a “data czar” who reports back to the steering
committee, which in turn answers to the CEO. “They meet every quarter
with our CEO and CFO, who make the final decisions.”