Blog Category
When Oklahoma companies need a data consultant, what data problems cost the most, and how to fix the databases, pipelines, and reporting your business depends on.
Microsoft says you can pause an F SKU Fabric capacity to save money when it is not in use. The same docs say the remaining smoothed usage and overages are summed and added to your Azure bill when you pause. Oklahoma companies that schedule overnight pauses often see a one time spike and wonder if the pause failed. Here is what is happening and how to plan around it.
Node.js 20 reached end of life on April 30, 2026. AWS Lambda already lists it as deprecated, Azure Functions no longer shows it as supported, and Google Cloud will decommission it on October 30, 2026. Here is how Oklahoma companies can find the small Node jobs that still depend on it and move them before updates get blocked.
Python 3.10 reached end of life on October 1, 2026. AWS Lambda and Google Cloud now have dates for blocking updates to functions that still use it, and the big data libraries already moved on. Here is how Oklahoma companies can find the scripts that still depend on it and move them without breaking a nightly load.
Extended support for Windows Server 2016 ends January 12, 2027. After that date Microsoft stops shipping security updates for that operating system. Many Oklahoma shops still host SQL Server and other data platforms on Server 2016 boxes. Here is what ends, what Extended Security Updates can and cannot do, and how to inventory before year end planning.
Oracle moved MySQL 8.0 onto Sustaining Support on April 21, 2026. That means no new bug fixes and no new security alerts from Oracle. On Amazon RDS, standard support for 8.0 ended July 31, 2026, and Extended Support charges started the next day. Here is what Oklahoma companies still on 8.0 should do now.
Microsoft is retiring Q&A, the box in Power BI where people type a question and get a chart back. Starting in February 2027, reports that still use it will show an error where the visual used to be. Here is how Oklahoma companies can find those reports and choose what to do about them.
The PostgreSQL project ships its final update for version 14 on November 12, 2026. After that there are no more fixes, and the big cloud providers start moving version 14 into paid extended support in early 2027. Here is how Oklahoma companies can find their version 14 databases and plan the move.
Microsoft stops all support for SQL Server 2017 on October 12, 2027. No more security fixes, no more help. If your company still runs it, the upgrade belongs in the budget you are writing right now. Here is what Oklahoma companies should know and how to plan the move.
The FBI and CISA have warned that ransomware crews like to strike on holidays and weekends, when offices are closed and IT staff are thin. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year are close. Here is how Oklahoma companies can plan who watches their data while everyone is away.
People move all the time, and most of them never call to tell you. Old addresses in your customer, vendor and payroll systems put year end tax forms and unclaimed property notices at risk. Here is how Oklahoma companies can keep address data current.
Year end is when many companies clear out old servers, shared drives and mailboxes. Some of that data has to be kept for years under Oklahoma and federal rules. Here is how to know what you can delete and what you cannot.
Intuit stopped supporting QuickBooks Desktop 2023 after May 31, 2026. If your company file still runs on it, payroll taxes no longer calculate, bank feeds no longer download and security updates no longer arrive. Here is what that means for your books as the year closes.
A friendly email from a supplier says their bank changed. Someone updates the record, the next payment goes out and the money is gone. Here is what the FBI numbers say and how to set up your vendor data so one email cannot redirect a payment.
Gartner says memory prices more than doubled over the past year and the squeeze will last through 2027. If your 2027 budget has a bigger database server in it, check first whether the server you have is set up and tuned to do its job.
For payments made in 2026, the federal line for reporting contractor pay rose from $600 to $2,000. That sounds like less work. But if your vendor records, tax IDs and reports are still set up for the old rule, January will be harder, not easier.
At 2 AM on Sunday, November 1, clocks in Oklahoma go back to 1 AM. People get an extra hour of sleep. Databases get an hour that happens twice, scheduled jobs that pause, and timestamps that no longer say which pass of the hour they came from.
Federal regulators have settled a string of HIPAA cases after ransomware and phishing attacks. Nearly every one points to the same missing piece. The organization never did an accurate and thorough risk analysis of where patient data lives and what could go wrong with it.
A customer chatbot answers in your company's name. When it gets a refund rule or a price wrong, a court may treat that answer as yours. The fix starts well before launch, with the policies, price sheets and help pages the bot is built to read.
Yield maps, planting records and machine logs pile up every season on Oklahoma farms and ranches. Most of that data flows to an equipment maker or software company. Who controls it depends far less on who farms the ground and far more on the agreement someone clicked through.
Plenty of Oklahoma business owners would never call themselves a financial institution. Federal rules may disagree. If you arrange car loans, prepare tax returns or broker mortgages, the FTC expects a written security program, and since May 2024 it expects to hear from you within 30 days of certain breaches.
In July 2026 the Department of War suspended the second phase of its CMMC cybersecurity program. Some suppliers heard that as a reason to stop. The fine print says the opposite. Self assessments, yearly sign offs and the older contract clause on protecting defense data all still apply.
Most companies have one spreadsheet that quietly runs something important. Pricing, commissions, inventory or the numbers that go to the bank. Research on real spreadsheets shows that most of them carry at least one error, and nobody finds it until it costs money.
Microsoft support for Windows Server 2016 runs out in January 2027. Many companies will swap out old servers and laptops in the next few months. The risk is not the new hardware. It is the customer data still sitting on the old drives when they go out the door.
Six years ago this week, ice brought down lines across central Oklahoma. More than 375,000 people lost power and some waited ten days to get it back. Most companies plan for the outage. Fewer plan for what happens to their data when the lights come back on.
Half of American workers have been with their employer for about four years or less. If one person runs your databases, reports and nightly jobs, the day they leave is already on the calendar. You just do not know the date yet.
On October 13, 2026, Access 2021 joined Access 2016 and 2019 past end of support. No more security fixes are coming for those versions. If an Access file still runs your orders, jobs or billing, now is the time to decide what happens to it.
Your payroll provider, your cloud software and your managed IT firm all hold your data or a login to it. Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found third parties involved in 48 percent of breaches, up from 30 percent a year earlier. Most companies cannot name every vendor with access.
In Flexera's 2026 State of the Cloud Report, organizations estimated that 29 percent of their cloud infrastructure and platform spend is wasted. It was the first increase after five years of decline. For Oklahoma companies that run data warehouses and pipelines in the cloud, much of that waste comes from resources nobody is assigned to watch.
Oklahoma's new consumer data privacy law takes effect January 1, 2027. Covered companies will have 45 days to answer a customer who asks what data they hold, and the Attorney General can seek up to $7,500 per violation. Every one of those duties starts with knowing where the data lives.
In ShareGate's 2026 State of M365 research, 93 percent of organizations were confident their governance was ready for AI, and 29 percent had already had an AI tool surface sensitive data it should not have reached. Copilot was not the cause. The permissions underneath it were.
Shadow AI incidents more than doubled in a year in IBM's 2026 breach research, reaching 43 percent and averaging $5.39 million per incident. The tools are already in your office. The question is whether your data rules are.
Attackers targeted the backup repository in 89 percent of ransomware cases in Veeam's 2025 research, and only 10 percent of victims recovered more than 90 percent of their data. A backup job that runs every night is not the same as a recovery that works.
Gartner predicts organizations will abandon 60 percent of AI projects that lack AI-ready data through 2026. The problem is rarely the model. Here is what Oklahoma companies must fix in their data first.
Microsoft ended support for SQL Server 2016 on July 14, 2026. The databases kept running, which is exactly why so many companies have not acted yet. Here is what end of support actually changes, and how to choose your next move.
Tulsa companies in energy, healthcare, and manufacturing run on data that has to be reliable. This guide covers common Tulsa data problems, the services that fix them, and how to hire data talent.
From energy to healthcare, Oklahoma City companies run on data. This guide covers the common OKC data problems, the consulting services that fix them, and how to hire data talent locally.
Power BI can create beautiful dashboards, but the dashboard is only as reliable as the data model, pipeline, definitions, and source data behind it.
Data architecture is the structure behind your databases, pipelines, warehouses, dashboards, and analytics. Without it, companies often build more reports on top of messy foundations.
A consultant fixes a defined problem. An employee owns the systems every day. Choosing wrong is expensive in both directions, here is how Oklahoma companies decide.
Dashboards do not become trustworthy because they look beautiful. They become trustworthy when the pipelines, transformations, and data quality checks behind them are reliable.
Most Oklahoma companies do not decide overnight to hire a data consultant. The need builds slowly, through slow reports, manual spreadsheets, and numbers nobody quite trusts.
The cost of bad data is hard to see because it almost never arrives as a single bill. It shows up as wasted hours, delayed decisions, and quiet mistakes that compound over time.
Book a consultation and we'll help you put these ideas to work on your own data systems.