The Great Divide

I remember the first time I wandered into a server room.

I was 24 and just starting my first full-time job as an operations agent managing corporate travel. The office manager was helping me get set up with the equipment I needed at my desk, and so we entered the server room looking for a keyboard, mouse, and (if lucky) an extra monitor. In addition to being a room filled with large, black towers of humming servers, it was also the IT graveyard where former employees discarded their old equipment.

The server room was a foreign planet to me. I’d never done anything remotely technical in my life and the cords, buttons, and lights intimidated me. I found my keyboard, and mouse (no monitor) and got out of there fast.

For decades this has been the divide. IT teams and database administrators rule the dark arts of the basement server rooms. Managing their domain using opaque lingo and the ever-scary terminal window.

The business teams stayed in the daylight above ground, venturing to talk with IT only when necessary. As long as an analyst’s or accountant’s reporting tools worked correctly, there was never a need to bridge the divide.

But the gap between data teams and business has closed significantly in the last decades. There are key reasons why that's happened. And even more important implications for you and your career on either side of the business/data divide.

That's what we are going to spend this week exploring.

I’m on your team,

Sawyer

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