“Own the Data” Trademark Renewal: The Content in the Message
On December 7, 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted SNA’s application for trademark renewal for the phrase “Own the Data.” As with most companies, SNA Software, in coming up with the phrase to boil down the value of its offerings, sought something pithy that would convey its core message to the market. So what does it convey or does it need any elaboration?
“Own the Data” means several things to people in the information management world, and to specific technical domains, particularly in the area of project, program and portfolio management, inclusive lately of the subdomain known as Program Planning & Control, or PP&C.
Disrupting the world of Proprietary Data
The world of information consists of a lot of data that is collected as a result of performing work and registering progress. Much of this data is collected ad hoc, such as through Excel workbooks. In other cases, it is collected through end-point, hard-coded niche solutions designed to perform one function in a domain that consists of many functions. In this environment, each application acts as a barrier to effective information use, where each stream of data requires proper association, integration, and contextualization in order to derive significance. The barrier is that almost all of this data is built in proprietary structures.
Throughout the initial decades of digitization leading up to the present, proprietary data structures meant that your data was essentially owned by the publisher of the software. Some software companies even went so far as to insert language into their licensing agreements to forbid the extraction of data from their data structures.
This is the world that “Own the Data” disrupts.
The Customer Owns the Data
“Own the Data” explicitly asserts that the customer owns their data. SNA Software brings this about by turning virtually any data source into open data and, in cases of periodic data, into flat files and industry schemas that accurately capture the originating source at 100% accuracy. SNA does this through a COTS data extract, transformation, and load capability (in the software industry known as ETL) that saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in each instance of import customization.
Taking this concept one step further, SNA Software adapts its visualization, analytical, and application configuration framework to allow our customer subject matter experts to determine how to receive and apply analytics and integration to the data, converting it into information and deriving timely knowledge that can applied both tactically and strategically to assist in business success.
You own your data. Make the most of it with SNA Software.
Published by Nick Pisano
Mr. Pisano has over 30 years of extensive experience in the software, project, business and acquisition management fields in both government and private industry. He is a retired “mustang” U.S. Navy Commander having been assigned leadership positions of increasing responsibility throughout his military and civilian careers. He has served as a project management policy expert, government contracting officer, contract negotiator, as business manager for nine multi-billion dollar programs in NAVAIR, as a Chief Information Officer, and as a government program manager, aside from various assignments at sea and overseas.
He is internationally recognized as the developer and co-developer of several project management techniques and methodologies integrating risk and technical performance, and in the establishment of the DoD policy and vision for an integrated digital environment. In recognition of his contributions in this field he was awarded the 1997 Acquisition Research Symposium David Acker Skill in Communications Award. While serving on active duty he also received numerous personal awards, citations and commendations.
He completed his career on the staff of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (OUSD(A&T)) where he developed new project management processes and participated in the development of acquisition policy.
Since his Navy career Mr. Pisano has held senior positions in various high tech project management companies. Among those were as Senior Director of EPM Product Marketing at Deltek after a successful career as director of sales and marketing of C/S Solutions, Inc., a software company that developed and sold the wInsight and Risk+ products. In this latter position he advised and counted among his customers virtually every major A&D and federal support contractor; U.S. DoD, OMB, and federal agencies; and defense-related agencies in the U.K., Australia, and Japan.
Mr. Pisano holds a B.S. from the University of Maryland (Honors), an M.S. from Pepperdine University, an M.A. from the Combat Studies Institute of the Army Command and General Staff College (Honors), and is a graduate of the senior executive program of the Colgate-Darden School of Business of the University of Virginia. He has also successfully attended advanced formal education in software engineering, project management, contracts law, and on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).
His articles have appeared in various acquisition and project management journals and publications, and his posts on major project management websites. He is an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), a former board member of the College of Performance Management (CPM), is currently head of the National Defense Industrial Association Program Management Systems Committee (NDIA PMSC) Contracts Working Group, and a charter member of OSD’s PARCA advisory group..
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