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Several dozen Connecticut entrepreneurs gathered at the headquarters of Applied Physical Sciences in Groton to discuss the state’s startups, and the possibility of a tech community centered on New London County. Groton is already home to a Pfizer campus, and the pharmaceutical corporation is set to open up a new lab space as part of a project in conjunction with Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE). Pfizer will donate a 24,000-square-foot building for CURE to establish an incubator, which will have room for science and technology startups to work in.

CURE, Pfizer and several business networks, including the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, organized the meeting in order to attract emerging science and tech firms. The plan is to have several startups sharing the same space, with the hope that that openness will lead to greater advances than they could achieve by working in isolation from each other.

As reported on this blog, small businesses are thriving recently in Connecticut thanks to government-sponsored programs. Private efforts such as this can also go a long way toward further improving the prospects of the state’s SMBs and opening Connecticut up to new sectors. For startups to thrive in this newly competitive market, they can turn to business software solutions, which are available from locally based providers.

A certified Connecticut FileMaker developer can create customized databases that will help run an SMB’s operations smoothly. FileMaker is a versatile piece of software that allows companies to gather and analyze all their data, from financial information to production numbers. Its ease of use enables employees to focus on the research and development that will lead a tech startup to continued success.

The 2014 edition of IT research company Gartner's hype cycle, published this week, shows an overwhelmingly positive outlook for custom database development, database management, data science and big data over the next decade. The cycle is a graphic representation of where emerging technologies stand in terms of industry perception and their permeation with their potential audience, and it also predicts when said technologies will have reached enough exposure to no longer be considered emerging.

Big data, which last year was classified as the most hyped technology, has now moved past the "Peak of Inflated Expectations". According to the cycle's progression, the next step will be supplier consolidation, followed by a second and third wave of venture capital influx, which will set big data well on the path to the so-called "Plateau of Productivity", the final stage, which it will reach, according to Gartner, within the next five to 10 years.

By that time, data science will already be a productive technology — in fact, it is projected to be the fastest mover in the coming months and years. Now only at the beginning of the mass media hype stage, Gartner nevertheless predicts that data science will quickly proceed on to the subsequent waves of investment that eventually lead to consolidation. Also plateauing in less than five years will in-memory database management systems.

Given this positive outlook, it's clear that data management, already an important part of any business, is only going to become more relevant with time. Business managers would be wise to engage the services of database consultants, who can provide custom database software which will not only assist in the running of the business's operations but also help them keep up with the current trend.

There is a moment in some action movies when the hero, who is framed for a crime, gets pulled over by a police officer and a tense moment follows where they nervously wait for the database to be accessed that shows a warrant out for their arrest. While it makes for a memorable cinematic moment, it is something that happens on a much smaller scale many times a day in real life.

According to a recent article from KHOU — a Houston, Texas news outlet — officers in Dallas have computer systems in their cars that access two-important databases – National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the Texas Crime Information Center (TCIC) – to look up a person's criminal history, outstanding warrants and stolen vehicles. These databases are critical to not only stopping crime but also keeping officers safe. It is always dangerous to walk into a situation without knowing all the facts.

However, recently an issue arose where 123 officers, 62 of which are out in patrol, were locked out of these databases. Some of these officers found out when they were on the field and attempted to login.

This happened because the Dallas Police Department failed to keep up with regulations. Officers are required to take a training course for two years to get or remain certified to access these databases. Any officer that is not certified or allows it to lapse, is considered unauthorized. The officers that lost access were the victim of a slow training process that caused them to fall behind and an issue plagued deployment that cost $4 million.

"The training team has been assigned the last two months almost on a full-time basis to RMS," Maj. Scott Bratcher told the news source.

Several officers who lost access spoke off the record about the fact that they have not been able to enroll in new classes to get certified. One went as far as saying that because of this, there is an increased level of danger for not only the officers but also the citizens because these standard criminal background checks can no longer be run.

Most businesses do not have potential life and death circumstances attached to their databases, but that does not make them any less important to handling daily operations for the company. With the help of custom database software, any organization can create a personalized solution and ensure that all employees are trained on it.

For every organization, there is a growing need to collect and organize information in a timely manner. Many companies turn toward spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel or Apple's Numbers, and while these work for basic data, it is not enough for more complex solutions.

A recent article from the Worthing Herald features an in-depth interview with Heather Godfrey, a software developer at CM Databases. In the course of the conversation, the biggest takeaway is that every company needs to have a database and not rely solely on spreadsheets.

According to Godfrey, spreadsheets can be useful, but they are also limited. For instance, a spreadsheet is not the right tool for handling contact-management. While it will provide a way to get the task done, it is by no means the most effective tool for the job. In this example, exporting this information from a spreadsheet requires human interaction with the data, which opens the door for mistakes.

"Spreadsheets are bad news for business management, because inconsistency equals mess, and mess equals inefficiency," Godfrey said. "A good CRM system will allow the entry of a name only once, and then feed this through to wherever else it is needed."

By using a system like FileMaker, it becomes much easier to not only compile this kind of data but also use it in an effective way like for automatic email lists, labels and data sharing. With the right database solution, any company can find a way to improve the working environment and run more smoothly.

According to an article from the Wall Street Journal, Bank of America has announced that it is using a custom software database that has been created by a top financial regulator. The goal is to flag any potential payday lenders that could violate New York state laws.

One of the challenges that Bank of America and other financial institutes run into is the possibility of working with a merchant customer that may be engaged in illegal lending. By using this database, the bank will be able to identify any lenders that have issued illegal loans to customers in New York and notify other financial institutes of this. This will prevent them from taking an unnecessary risk.

Andrew Plepler, the Global Corporate Social Responsibility and Consumer Policy executive for Bank of America, told the news source that this tool will help protect customers from "predatory lending practices."

"In the past, merchants have been responsible for their own compliance with laws and regulations specific to their industry," said Marsha Jones, president of the Third Party Payment Processors Association, which represents processing firms. "Recently there's been an expectation that banks and processors should know every law in every state for every industry, and that becomes problematic. It's impossible to keep track of all of that, and be able to process efficiently."

With the use of custom database software, any organization can find a better way to deploy information. While not every company is trying to stop crime, there are plenty of better practices that can be had by using this idea.

There are some members of the IT department that will tell you a good database can dramatically change a business. While some may think this is a bit of an exaggeration, nothing could be further from the truth – just ask Google and Autism Speaks.

According to an article from the Verge, these two groups have partnered to start creating the largest database of sequenced genomes in existence when it comes to people with autism and members of their families. It will include genomes from 10,000 people, 1,000 have already been mapped. The goal is that this "open source" database will be able to facilitate research into the causes of the autism spectrum and possible treatments and diagnosis.

"The [Autism Speaks Ten Thousand Genomes Program] holds the potential to radically transform our understanding of autism and redefine the future of medical care for those affected by the disorder," Rob Ring, Autism Speaks' chief science officer, said in a statement. "Working with Google is a game-changer in this story."

According to David Glazer, the director of Google Genomics' engineering, there are similar genetics databases in existence, but none of them are close to this scale with regard to information specifically about autism. He added that modern biology has become a data-limited science, but that is changing as the limits are being removed by modern computing.

It is clear that organizations will be able to do great things when information is brought together. With the use of custom database software, any organization will be able to take this idea to and start changing the world.

Over the last six months, there have been several high profile security breaches. These include Target, Michaels, Neiman Marcus and eBay. While the tactics used to breach the networks all vary slightly, it is believed that the use of constant database monitoring could have helped prevent this.

Recently, the Ponemon Institute released the results of a poll of 595 U.S. technology experts. Nearly two thirds of respondents ranked monitoring as the best form of database protection. Second on the list, being mentioned in 56 percent of responses, was advanced database activity monitoring. Database encryption rounded out the top three with 49 percent.

Using a database activity monitoring solution allows users to capture and record activity related to the use of Structured Query Language (SQL). It is used by administrators for several tasks and alerts can be set up that will trigger whenever an activity run with the data violates protocols. While there have been tools similar to this in the past, they are often expensive and unreliable, causing more harm than good. In recent years this has changed and the tools used to keep a database safe are more mature and will not break the bank.

These new tools can be used to locate active databases that the company may not be aware are being used and they are better at catching rogue software that could have been installed by a hacker to gather data and store it before sending off to a remote server where it is used for nefarious purposes.

"Continuous monitoring, looking for unusual or anomalous type of behavior, becomes very important," Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, said. "The more you monitor, the more things you can see and the more things you can stop."

According to a recent article from CSO, there are some that are questioning the conclusions that were reached.

Kevin Johnson, chief executive of Secure Ideas, said that database monitoring will not detect SQL attacks. The reason for this is that by the time a monitoring program sees it, it will look just like another query from any other application. This kind of solution is reactionary, but if you do not know that a problem is there, how will you be able to prevent it?

This is why the best practice in this situation is to have more security.

"I believe in a layered approach that perhaps should include a database firewall to mitigate the risk of SQL injection, combined with continuous monitoring of the database along with continuous monitoring of normalized network traffic flows," Paul Henry, a senior instructor at the SANS Institute, 

This not only helps fight SQL attacks but also many other tools of the cyber criminal trade. This is needed because the study found that 60 percent of respondents believed SQL injection was only a component of an attack they suffered.

Businesses in every sector are building databases at an increasing rate. With more systems going digital, this is becoming easier than ever before. It also makes it more important that custom database software is secure and constantly checked to ensure that the tools used to keep the information safe are up-to-date.

The data warehouse is something that many organizations are looking to take advantage of. With the growing amount of digital data that is being created, businesses need to harness this infomration if they want to be relevant.

Customers are gaining insights with big data from multiple sources and analysts need to draw conclusions from that information as fast as it is coming through the door. But this is easier said than done.

A recent article from TechRepublic features an in depth interview with BitYota CEO Dev Patel. According to him, for companies to better understand their business, they need to analyze the interactivity with customers at a granular level. The problem is that traditional systems will not allow that at an aggregated level because companies are going to lose some features in the data that you need to get better insights.

"And you need to be able to get better insights from data from multiple sources, and your traditional systems will not allow you to take data from multiple sources to get your insights," Patel said. "Traditional systems don't let you obtain detailed insights on raw data, or very granular data, or get insights from data from multiple sources, where the velocity of the data could be very different from each source. That is something they don't do very well."

Patel goes on to talk about three major trends that are impacting the business database marketplace. These include:

Data speeds/variety – Organizations find themselves dealing with data coming at different speeds as the solution becomes more popular. Because of the digital age, data is being created with every click of the mouse and from every device that is connected to the internet. On top of that, it is being created in real-time.

All of this new data, is also creating a need to combine the new streams with the older, static data sources. This, in and of itself, can become quite the challenge.

Direct access to data – One of the problems with traditional analytic solutions, is that data needs to travel through multiple layers from the time it is collected until it is able to be analyzed. Engineers need to transform or translate the data to make it consumable by an analyst.

The latest trend involves cutting out the middle man and speed up a process that has been slowed down by what is not considered unnecessary formatting and language changes.

Velocity of analytics – Finding the temporal value of data is now becoming more critical. This means that organizations need to figure out a way to not only collect the information that is being gathers at a breakneck speed, but also look for ways analyze just as quickly. Some businesses are looking to acquire hourly reports which would require a company to analyze the data as soon as it comes into the system.

Many organizations are currently looking for ways to optimize their incoming data. One of the best ways to do this is by partnering with an solution provider that can help create the custom database that is designed to work with their a companies specific business needs.

The use of database solutions is growing across the business landscape. With more systems going digital, the amount of information that can be gathered and analyzed is increasing exponentially. With all this raw data now available, companies need to find a way to harness it and that means proper databasing and analytic solutions have become more important.

A recent article from Database Trends and Applications makes the case that in the current digital landscape, data has become king. The marketplace is heating up and the number of solution providers is increasing in size and public awareness, resulting in the IT community quickly realizing the opportunity specific business systems like NoSQL, Hadoop and FileMaker.

According to a Wikibon forecast cited in the piece, this database marketplace topped $540 million in 2012 and in the next five years that will increase to nearly $3.5 billion. That is a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent.

"Database solutions today must be able to support extremely diverse application use cases that cross all major verticals for core business and mission applications," the article reads. "Data is king, and the demand to find new ways for storing, processing, analyzing, and mining data continues to provide green fields of opportunity for traditional relational database vendors."

For many organizations, custom database development can be the best way to take on the need for a database solution. While any organization can buy a system off the shelf, to truly optimize it, companies should tailor the solution to what they actually need.