Draft:William McKnight (entrepreneur)

William McKnight is an American computer scientist, consultant, entrepreneur, analyst, speaker, and author. He consults, writes and speaks about corporate information management, the information revolution and the use of information to achieve business goals.

Education
McKnight received a BS in Computer Science and a Masters in Business Administration.

Career
McKnight started his career as a software engineer of the DB2 product at IBM. After 4 years there, he moved to Platinum Technology and Information Technology leadership positions at Visa Inc. and Anthem Inc. as IT Vice President, leading some early data warehouse successes, before starting his first consultancy, McKnight Associates, Inc. in 1998. He sold the company to a public firm in 2005. In 2009, he started McKnight Consulting Group. He is author of the books “Information Management: Strategies for Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data“ and “Integrating Hadoop” (with Dr. Jake A. Dolezal). He has authored hundreds of thought leadership pieces including hundreds of white papers and articles, and is extensively quoted in the press. McKnight was a 12-year columnist at Information Management Magazine. He has given hundreds of international keynotes and public seminars. He has keynoted several international industry conferences, road shows, virtual shows, and vendor conferences. He has several virtual classes online. He has a TEDx talk on “Information: The Next Natural Resource”. He has taught at Santa Clara University, UC-Berkeley, and UC-Santa Cruz. McKnight acknowledges the pivotal role of information and analytics across industries and advocates for tailored data platforms and disciplined data architecture. He emphasizes demonstrating ROI in data projects and the necessity of master data management, considering big data as a future competitive advantage. McKnight stresses the importance of expertise and focus in effective data management and highlights the transformative impact of the cloud on technology careers. McKnight believes that in any business, information and analytics are crucial, and he emphasizes the need for specialized data platforms. His consulting is about how establishing a strong data architecture discipline is key to success. He demonstrates the ROI of data projects including master data management. He believes big data offers a competitive edge and these projects are achievable through knowledge and focus rather than increased time and budget. Finally, he emphasizes prioritizing data quality measurement as vital, as is organizational change management. McKnight has published dozens of benchmarks in the industry, comparing offerings in databases, data integration, AI, data fabric, streaming data, vector databases, application development, data pipelines, automation, containerization, data lakehouses, digital analytics, data security, log management and APIs. William has a monthly webinar series, 2019-date, “Advanced Analytics”, at Dataversity.

Awards

 * Thinkers360 Top Global Thought Leader and Influencer: Big Data 2023
 * Thinkers360 Top Global Thought Leader and Influencer: Cloud 2024
 * Thinkers360 Top Global Thought Leader and Influencer: Cloud 2023

Published books

 * Integrating Hadoop.
 * Information Management: Strategies for Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data. (2013)
 * 90 Days to Success in Consulting. (2009)