Category: Tech Talk

Gain control of your SharePoint Data

Most medium to large companies have a sizable Microsoft SharePoint space, containing thousands, if not millions of data files – but do you know what exactly is in them? In this post, we’ll lay out three core elements for gaining control of your SharePoint data, below, and most importantly why. Outlining the strategy and tooling…

Prefect: Should you utilise the next generation of data pipelining software?

What is data pipelining, and why does it matter? Data pipelining, or orchestration is an everyday activity performed by companies to move their data from one place, likely the primary storage location, to another, such as a cloud-based data lake, often including transformations during this process. Whilst this is a standard operational activity, the number…

Replicating Data Warehouse with Databricks Lakehouse

Introduction In a recent post, we outlined what a Databricks Lakehouse encompasses and why you may want to utilise one rather than a Data Warehouse and/or Data Lake. Following that introduction, this post will walk through an example use case, including code, for how the Databricks Lakehouse replicates some common warehousing patterns while having the…

The Pro’s and Con’s of using Data Lakehouse

When using your Data Platform to improve your Business Intelligence with useful dashboards, and reports, you’ll more than likely want to use a Data Warehouse. Add on your data science builds and storing your raw data cheaply, plus adding a Data Lake just for good measure, and the costs soon start adding up. Running both…

2020’s closing cloud releases – what’s new for tech consumers in 2021?

Technology is not an entity that stands still, this is evident from the myriad of new releases, both small and large, that can be seen from companies like AWS and Azure, who continuously push the capabilities of what they can offer. However, this constant barrage of incremental gains can seem overwhelming and often will not…

Intelligent Forecasting Using Databricks

Anyone who’s ever been involved with project management will understand how quickly a project can turn into a web of information, with data on schedules, finances, locations, assets and resources (to name a few) all rapidly expanding. Further complexity can arise from the dependencies between these projects – a single project may impact the delivery…

Modelling waste-water resource management via graph theory.

A data engineer, some waste-water and graph theory walk into a bar….. Sludge 101 Right, before we delve any deeper into this, there’s clearly a few questions that need answering. Whilst I imagine the majority of people could have a good stab at telling you what a data engineer does and that graph theory is…

Realising value through cloud based rapid prototyping

The move for organisations to better utilise their data has become unanimous across all industry sectors over the past few years. However, starting this journey can be difficult for many companies, who likely haven’t had a defined data strategy from the outset and possess a wide variety of data, ranging in both quality and usefulness….

COVID-19 Sees Cloud Demand Soar

We are seeing huge demands in cloud computing due to the global request to stay home in this current Corona Virus crisis. With many of us now working from home, placing increasing demands on capacity and online usage, this is likely to continue long after the virus has passed its peak. Recently Barclays boss Jes…

6 Tips to Make Sure Your Hackathon Runs Smoothly

We love a good hackathon for the purity of the data science. “Here’s the data. Have fun!” It is all the best bits of data science crammed into one session. Here at Oakland, we recently held a successful hackathon with one of our clients. They came with clear expectations, we analysed the data, provided answers…

Why data quality matters

Introduction – Why Data Quality matters and the Great Expectations library Over the last decade or so companies have been striving to make better use of their data. The use cases for such projects have generally fallen under two categories, improve operational efficiency or drive customer sales/behaviour. However, in order to utilise this data it…

Are we really prepared for AI?

At the end of last year, we visited Big Data London and took the opportunity to listen to Chris Wylie – infamous for his role with Cambridge Analytica – talk about ethics in data science. He explained how unlike medicine or other professions, data science does not have a code of conduct that drives ethics…