Data vs Strategy

Introduction With stricter data protection requirements in Europe, conducting a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is becoming a mandatory step when implementing cloud services like Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This is especially true for government and large corporate clients in the Netherlands and Denmark. This report is based on current GDPR requirements, national regulations, GCP…

Many companies migrate to BigQuery and unknowingly bring one of the most expensive architectural habits from legacy analytics platforms with them. Instead of storing events in a single partitioned table, they create a new table every day. The pattern usually looks familiar: At first, everything works perfectly. Queries are simple. Engineers understand the structure. Reporting…

Every growing BigQuery deployment eventually reaches the same architectural crossroads. Should the company continue paying for queries using On-Demand Pricing, or is it finally time to purchase BigQuery Reservations? The internet is full of simplified recommendations. “If you process a lot of data, buy slots.” “If your workloads are predictable, use Reservations.” “If you’re serious…

One of the most persistent myths in the BigQuery ecosystem is surprisingly simple. Materialized Views always reduce costs. The statement sounds logical. Google recommends them for accelerating repeated analytical workloads, conference presentations demonstrate impressive benchmark improvements, and architecture diagrams often present Materialized Views as the obvious solution whenever dashboards become slow. The problem is not…

Every BigQuery optimization guide mentions partitioning. Almost none explain what happens when partitioning exists, is correctly configured, and still saves absolutely nothing. This investigation started after a routine FinOps review at a European fintech company processing approximately 480–520 million events every day. The analytical platform had grown steadily for nearly four years and consisted of…

The Backup Worked. The Business Didn’t. Most executives sleep better after hearing one sentence from their infrastructure team. “Everything is backed up.” It sounds reassuring. Unfortunately, it answers the wrong question. The question that actually matters is not whether the data exists somewhere else. The real question is whether the business can continue operating after…

Everyone Blamed Google. Nobody Looked at the Queries. At 8:12 on a Monday morning, the CFO forwarded a screenshot to the CTO with a short message. “Can you explain this before today’s board meeting?” The screenshot came from the monthly Cloud Billing report. There were no alarming spikes in Compute Engine, no unexpected networking charges,…

When Data Starts Managing the Business Instead of Informing It Every executive wants a data-driven company. Very few want to admit that a company can become dashboard-driven instead. The difference seems almost philosophical until it begins affecting investment decisions. Data-driven organizations use information to validate strategy. Dashboard-driven organizations slowly allow dashboards to become the strategy…

The Dataset Nobody Dared to Touch Every company talks about becoming data-driven. Very few companies ever ask whether they have become data-addicted. The distinction matters more than most executives realize. During the last decade, cloud platforms have fundamentally changed the economics of storing information. In the era of on-premises data warehouses, storage was expensive enough…