Recently in Business Intelligence Category

At this point in BI's history, it is clear that the technology behind reporting and analytics must be easy to use. Otherwise, who would/could use it? Vendors have spent tremendous time, effort, resources, and money on making their technology the best and easiest at accessing, engineering, controlling, and formating data. We are now able to manipulate tremendous amounts of data -- terabytes and pedabytes -- with "ease".

Unfortunately, what our industry has not focused on particularly well is how the human can comprehend the firehose of data the technology now aims at them.

That is where the "easy to consume" idea comes from. Yes, I have read many articles, blogs, white papers, even twitters, on data visualization and display and we have made some good progress along these fronts. Yet, still today, whenever I get briefed by vendors, they still lead with the worn out slogan that they are easy to use. And the ability to display the data in a more "ergonomic" fashion is useful but not sufficient.

Consuming data is more than just putting it into pretty pictures or colorful splotches. It is more than just an isolated vewing of data points or reports or the manipulation of said reports or pictures. Consuming data requires a fundamental shift for BI implementers toward an understanding of the business processes that occur leading up to and continuing after the "consumption". That is, we must understand how the BI information integrates into the overall business workflow.

This requires that the BI consumption add to the business person's complete and full comprehension of a situation, event, or activity. It must be embedded seamlessly (another worn out slogan -- sorry) into the workflow so business users can perform the next activity with confidence and -- yes -- ease.

Until we change the BI slogan from "easy to use" to "easy to consume", I fear that BI will continue to be relegated to back office analysts or be limited to showing the pretty pictures to non-technical users. Technologists, let's focus on when, where, and how people use information instead of just how easily they can select data, format a report, create a graph, and so on... 

As always -- Yours in BI success! 

Claudia 

I have many friends who have lovely, perfectly decorated trees at this time of the year. Our tree is probably the embarrassment of our neighborhood but to us, it is a microcosm of many Christmases past. Let me explain:

1. First there is the tree skirt -- Wen we were first married almost 22 years ago, we had very little money but more time. To hide the rather ugly tree stand, I sewed a red felt tree skirt -- complete with little bows and other decorations on it. In the intervening years, we continue to use the skirt even though our finances have improved and my free time is now non-existent. The skirt may be worn and rather sad-looking now but somehow it still makes it to cover up the tree stand. It makes us laugh every time we see it...

2. Then there are the lights -- every year we hold our breath to see if they will actually light up when we plug them in. They are about as old as the skirt and we have a few that are dark. One year, I will buy new bulbs and replace the burned out ones -- just not this year.

3. Finally there are the ornaments -- ah, these are the best part. Some are actually quite lovely and were handed down from our parents to us. They are quite fragile and we have lost a few over the years which is a shame. But then there are those that are not -- um -- so pretty. In fact, they are pretty hideous and probably why we would never win the neighborhood tree decorating prize -- if we dared to enter that is. However, they are the ones I truly treasure the most. Let's start with the ones given to us for our first Christmases as a married couple. Our relatives gave us ornaments with sayings on them like "Our first Christmas together", "Holy Moly -- our Second Christmas together", etc. Maybe they were betting that we wouldn't make it that long. Showed them!

Then along came Jess, our daughter, and a whole new set of precious ornaments. We have the usual ones that say "Baby's First, Second and Third Christmas". People stopped after three -- I guess they had made their point by that time or maybe Hallmark didn't make ones after three...

There is the snow man Jess made in kindergarten. It is made from a white tube sock, has a basket on its head instead of a top hat (no clue why...), buttons for eyes, yarn for a mouth, and these scrawny branches for arms. His cotton stuffing which made him quite jolly when new has become rather compacted so he now is somewhat skinny. Nonetheless, he gets a position of honor on the tree (much to my daughter's chagrin) and is packed in his own box to make sure he makes it to the next Christmas.

There are the paper ornaments we made one Christmas when I somehow misplaced the boxes of regular ornaments. I thought the construction paper ornaments and chains were a good substitute -- I had no idea they would live on after that Christmas. What was I thinking? Now they are somewhat faded and the glitter has worn off and yet, there they are on the tree again this year. I must admit that I do occasionally throw one of them away when no one is looking...

There are the strange ones that we made over the years from styrofoam balls, sequins, and feathers. It was our attempt at creating something "pretty" for the tree. They now resemble something that came down with bird flu and managed to survive. These are truly the ugliest things on the tree...

We have beads from God-knows-where hanging on the tree. I have no memory of where they came from and, somehow, can't bring myself to toss them... The gold is worn off and there are beads missing and cracked -- just lovely. And we have some given to us by dear friends -- like ornaments with hand-tied fishing flies in them (Scott, we almost have enough to decorate the tree with just them alone -- many thanks to you and Megan for these), hand-made sleds, Santas, cross-stitched reindeer, and crocheted snowflakes.

Then there are those I collected from my travels all over the world. Wooden snow flakes from Germany; straw figures from Scandinavia, filagreed baskets from London, truly heinous chili peppers from Texas (what WAS I thinking?), blown glass humming birds from Colorado, and so on.

I know -- you are wondering why I don't throw these things out and buy new, shiny, pretty ornaments. I guess the answer is that these represent our family's years of holidays. They are our data warehouse of memories, laughter, some tears, and a lot of love. How could we throw out such history? I guess we will just have to keep the curtains closed so we don't make our neighbors ill -- again. My apologies, neighbors.

So, at this time of best wishes, I guess mine are that you all have a holiday data warehouse filled with wonderful memories and love. And may 2009 be kinder to us than 2008 was!

See ya next year!

Claudia

Internet fraud has finally reached the big time -- that is, it is now such a large business and is so embedded in legitimate online activities, it is getting harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad ones. Or so says Uri Rivner, RSA Security head of new technologies in a September 25 briefing. There are two trends in fraudulent activities. Here's how the one that uses SaaS works:

Fraudsters are now using a hosted fraud model (perhaps we need a new acronym -- FaaS = fraud as a Service...). He or she can simply order phishing or other criminal business services online and pay a paultry $299 a month to participate "as an investor in order to share in the profits". Rivner says that the $299 a month fee "puts you in the food chain of [identity] harvesters, phony ATM card makers, delivery specialists - a whole infrastructure of criminals". It opens up a whole new career path for criminals. As if we didn't have enough to worry about... The bottom line lesson -- don't trust any of these anonymous people online.

Gee, I hate to see the SaaS model get a black eye from such criminal activities. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would figure out how to use this new technological offering for nefarious purposes.

In case you are interested, the second trend is a variation on an old trick:

It involves new super-Trojans that hijack legitimate bank web sites and fool people into entering personal information into the phony web site. You get the Trojan through the normal means -- download a questionable file and open it. Then when you go to your bank's web site to make a transaction, the Trojan is alerted and waits... for you to log in. As soon as you do, it brings up a false site that looks alarmingly just like your real bank's web site -- except for one difference (spoiler alert to fraudsters). It has two more lines of information it asks for: an ATM account number and your PIN. Once you enter it, you can bet your account will be drained within minutes... Sigh.

Sorry to start off my new season of blogging with such a negative one. But I guess it is better to be forewarned -- and forearmed -- in this season of financial upheaval. It is my fervent hope that you weather the economic storm safely and that we all learn from the disasters occurring on Wall Street. I promise to have happier blogs in the future.

As always, I welcome your comments on this and any other topics. Send me your thoughts on blog material as well. I am always looking for new ideas!

Yours in BI Success,

Claudia

Technorati Tags: fraud, software as a service, SaaS, Business Intelligence,

I plan to focus a lot of my attention on operational BI this year and next. It is a fascinating and critical form of business intelligence but it is also quite foreign to traditional BI implementers for one very big reason -- it requires climbing back into the world of operations and truly understanding the processes, procedures, and workflows of operations. We in the BI space were happy to turn our backs on operational procedures and processes, choosing to create a completely separate world where we could store our data and then analyze it until the cows come home. We gave little thought or care about what was happening in operations. That was the operational IT folks' problem...

Well, operational BI changes all that!

For operational BI to be effective, it must be injected into the ordinary operational procedures and processes at the right moment to impact the decision-making process of the operational personnel. so what should BI implementers be thinking about before starting down the road of creating operational BI applications? Here are two suggestions:

1. Start small -- sound familiar? It should. It is what we have always said about BI projects but in this case, I mean really small. I recommend that you examine well-documented operational processes (that is the first trick -- finding well-documented operational processes) to see where in the process you can inject a bit of BI. Perhaps the process is inefficient or requires considerable manual intervention (of the analytical kind) before moving to the next step. Look for productivity gains that can be acquired through the use of BI. And make sure you consider collaboration in the overall process flow. Why small? Because you are not only creating the analytic capability -- you are also impacting a standard operating procedure. These may have to be rewritten, the operational personnel may have to be retrained, the interfaces between the involved applications may have to be recreated. And so on. My first piece of advice -- Don't try to make big changes to operational processes. You open a can of worms when you do. Just speed up or make more efficient the processes you already have in place.

2. Second suggestion - Perform a honest assessment of your existing data warehouse and BI delivery capabilities. What technologies do you have? How suitable are they for operational BI? How mature is your overall DW and BI architecture? What about your existing DW and BI personnel? Are they suitably experienced and skilled? Why do I ask these questions? Because I guarantee that any weaknesses that you discover in your assessment will only be exaggerated as you speed things up -- as you squeeze out any and all latencies in your DW creation and BI delivery processes. For example, if your ETL infrastructure is weak, it will only get worse. If your data quality processing is fragile or inefficient, speeding it up will only make it shoddier. If your ability to delivery data is frail, trying to drive out latencies in it will only cause it to fall apart.

Once you have picked an appropriately sized project and have assessed your ability to delivery on it, you can begin implementing the operational BI application. I hope these tips have convinced you that an operational BI application does has ramifications way beyond the project’s immediate boundaries. It also has significant benefits to the enterprise if integrated appropriately into the operational procedures and processes.

Good luck to you on this exciting and new adventure. I encourage those of you that have experience with operational BI to share your thoughts on getting started as well. I look forward to reading them.

Yours in Operational BI success!

Claudia

Technorati Tags: operational BI, Operational Procedures, BI, Business Intelligence, business performance

Yes, indeed -- a website described as "The free Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Library is a community of business professionals that provides guidance in identifying and prioritizing the KPIs that really matter for your organization's success." The categories include business, compliance & legislation, environmental, finance, HR, IT, outsourcing, procurement, project portfolio, R & D, supply chain & logistics, and many others. Warning -- you have to register to use the site but I found it quite useful.

The site contains (at the time of this posting) 943 KPIs. Here are a few by name:

Market share gain comparison %
Ad click-through ratio (CTR)
Cash dividends paid
Share price
Perfect Order Measure
Average customer recency
Average number of trackbacks per post
Number of past due loans
% of service requests posted via web (self-help)
Total energy used per unit of production
Cumulative Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)

With each entry, you get a definition, the category it belongs to, and the ability to share it using any number of book marking applications. You can also comment on the KPI and add your own to the listing. As an example, here is the entry for Cumulative Annual Growth Rate (CAGR):

"This tells the story about any company as to what rate the company has grown over years irrespective of consistency in growth YoY basis. A company might have one successful year and then a bad year. If you compare the growth rate YoY basis it may give a different picture and be concluded as lack of consistency in management. But if one looks at the CAGR, it will explain the real growth over years. It is calculated as:

=Power(Revenue Year (n)/Revenue Year(1),1/n) - 1

Where, Revenue Year (n)= n-th year Revenue Revenue Year(1) = 1st year Revenue"

And on it goes...

There are also blogs filled with tips, techniques, most popular KPIS by category, etc. And most pragmatic, you can save KPIs to your own area ("My KPIs") for future reference.

Many thanks to Mirror 42 , a performance management company, for initiating this website. Check it out. I think you will agree that it is a most practical and valuable resource!

If you know of other similar websites, please post them in the comments section -- and thanks!

Yours in BI success,

Claudia

Technorati Tags: key performance indicators, KPI, KPIs, Business Intelligence, business performance

Yes indeed. In just the past few weeks, BI and MDM companies have scored big -- like almost $80 million BIG! Two of the biggest occurred yesterday and today -- even with the stock market chaos. Certainly says a lot about the confidence venture capital firms have in our space. So if you are looking for big bucks, talk to these venture capital funding companies - they seem to really like what we are doing.

Here is a partial list of who got what in terms of funding.

1. ParAccel snagged $20 million on December 10, 2007 to further fund their Analytic Database product. Happy Holidays to the employees of ParAccel. The funding will be used to expand engineering, sales and support, and to open their Cupertino office according to Scott Humphrey, their marketing communications person. Their funding was lead by Walden International (who has $1.8 BILLION in committed capital), Mohr, Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners, and Tao Venture Partners. Good decision, ParAccel!

2. Greenplum - another data warehouse appliance company like ParAccel - cleaned up yesterday when it received $27 million in venture capital. And this only 11 months after a $15 million venture round! Hey Greenplum, can you spare a few million? They plan to use the new funds to continue development on Greenplum's database and to expand their sales and marketing efforts, especially internationally. Their funding was led by Meritech Capital Partners, a VC company that invests in late-stage companies (Could an IPO be in the offing soon?), and includes strategic investments from Sun Microsystems (yes, the same ones that just bought My SQL) and SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG (which just bought Business Objects). Guess they think this fruit is mighty tasty!

3. Finally today, Siperian, developer of MDM software, announced that had closed and "oversubscribed" $25 million. The big bucks will be used to expand their European presence, develop their channels and further advance their MDM Hub technology. The funders were led by Investor Growth Capital plus all of Siperian's prior investors -- now that is confidence! Way to get it together, Siperian.

And those are just the ones that come immediately to mind that have received major funding during a very troubled economic time. And just look at all the acquisitions that have taken place in the past 3 months... These are certainly companies to watch!

Am I enthusiastic about our industry? You bet I am. Corporations all over are realizing now more than ever in these stressful times that their very survival depends on their ability to make the right decisions. What better time than now to invest in the very companies that make that possible?

Congratulations to all the well-funded BI and MDM companies. Now, make us all proud!

Yours in BI (and funding) success!

Claudia

Technorati Tags: ParAccel, Greenplum, Siperian, Business Intelligence MDM Venture Capital Funding

Indeed, for 2007, we in BI had a banner year. It started off with all sorts of surveys of CIO's stating the BI was either number 1 or number 2 on their list of must-have initiatives. That stimulated all aspects of our industry from incredible innovations from vendors to job security for consultants to report after report from industry analysts.

Here are some of the highlights I remember from 2007:

1. The stock market took note of two new high profile entrants: Teradata and Netezza. Both became public companies to much fanfare and ringing of the stock exchange bell.

2. This was the year of the major merger -- Hyperion, Business Objects, and Cognos all acquiesced to high ticket bids for them. This opened up room for many of the smaller, privately funded companies to strut their stuff.

3. The Data Warehouse appliance arena got more crowded with the entrance of Dataupia, ParAccel, and InfoBright. These bright new technologies have given BI a shot in the arm in terms of low-cost, highly scalable and performing environments.

4. Open source BI starts to get real traction. Pentaho, JasperSoft, Actuate, Open BI, Talend, and a whole slew of other vendors are making in-roads into the BI mindset (see number 2).

5. Operational BI not only gets attention but also gets good technological underpinnings -- Cognos' Celequest acquisition is a good example of the technology available for this new form of BI.

6. Software as a Service comes to BI. In keeping with the pressure to reduce the costs of BI environments, many new and old vendors turn to SaaS as an alternative pricing model. New entrants here like LucidEra and Xactly sit side by side with older BI companies like Business Objects and Cognos in offering this appealing alternative.

7. HP comes out swinging with its offering of NeoView. With the annoucement of this version of a Data Warehosue Appliance along with the acquisition of Knightsbridge, HP declares it is in the BI business. Mark Hurd and Randy Mott -- both hard core BI executives -- let the world know that they plan to storm the traditional BI beach heads.

These are a few of the outstanding movements in our ever changing world. Please add your own thoughts to this blog on what 2007 meant to you.

Many thanks for your support of me and my blog. I do truly appreciate all your comments and ideas -- please keep them coming.

Have a safe and fun New Year's!

As always, yours in BI success,

Claudia

Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence, BI Trends, 2007 Trends, BI acquisitions open source appliances

My friend, Stephanie Clark (IBM Analyst Relations) sent me the press release just . Cognos snagged $5 billion from IBM as its price tag - heady money but well spent, I believe. IBM now has a complete end to end solution - it is a one stop shop for everything BI. A top notch BI tool was the only thing missing in their offering and now they have one.

From the press release:

“This is an exciting combination for our customers, partners, and employees. It provides us with the ability to expand our vision as the leading BI and Performance Management provider,” said Rob Ashe, president and chief executive officer, Cognos. “IBM is a perfect complement to our strategy, with minimal overlap in products, a broad range of technology synergies, and the resources, reach, and world-class services to accelerate this vision. Furthermore, this combination allows Cognos customers to leverage a broader set of solutions from IBM to advance their information management driven initiatives.”

Wow -- that leaves Microstrategy and SAS as the last of the original big name BI companies standing. Hyperion now Oracle, Business Objects now SAP, and Cognos now IBM. It's been a wild ride these last few months.

It does open the space up though for the new entrants. Open source vendors like Actuate, JasperSoft, and Pentaho may find they are getting more attention. Software as a Service vendors like LucidEra and Xactly may see that the forest of BI tools has been thinned a bit and they are now getting some much needed sunlight. We'll see -- IBM is certainly one fierce competitor and they now have one of the best BI and BPM tools on the market.

Yours in BI success,

Claudia

According to their website news, Teradata President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Koehler rang the opening bell at the NYSE this morning. He was accompanied by a bunch of Teradata's senior executives. What a thrill that must have been for them all!

My friend, Kim Dossey (Analyst Relations), sent me an email with the following information about the newly independent Teradata:

1. The spin-off will have 5,500 employees in over 50 countries worldwide
2. It has over 850 customers worldwide. Most are household names like Ace Hardware, ABN AMRO, American Red Cross, Bank of America, Air Canada, Bank of New Zealand, Bed, Bath and Beyond... And that is only a few of the names in the A's and B's section of their customer listing.
3. And speaking of customers, Teradata's customers have been recognized for the innovation and business impact demonstrated by their BI solutions through such award programs as the Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) Best Practice Awards, DM Review World Class Solution Awards, Peppers & Rogers 1:1 Impact Awards, NCDM Database Marketing Excellence Awards, and so on.
4. Finally, Teradata has a new tag line - "Raising Intelligence".

The company seems to be off to a good start. The stock opened at $26.45 and, as of this blog, it was up $1.17 ( or +4.42%). Teradata guidance said following the spin-off it expects to earn $1.12 to $1.17 a share and to increase its revenue by between 7 and 9 percent in 2007. Its 2006 revenue was $1.56 billion.

Congratulations to Teradata Corporation and its employees. You all must be quite proud of this achievement.

Yours in BI Success,

Claudia

Technorati Tags: Teradata Corporation, BI Company, NCR spin off, Business Intelligence

According to AWhere's website, the company's software is "a desktop map mashup solution for data visualization and analysis. ...You can quickly map data from spreadsheets or business intelligence databases. This data can then be "mashed up" with data from other sources, such as U.S. Census, weather or scientific studies, on-line mapping services like Microsoft Virtual Earth, etc."

How is the company helping African countries? This week, AWhere's CEO, John Corbett (BTW, a very thoughtful guy), is flying to Oslo, Norway for the annual African Green Revolution Conference to participate in workshops on database mapping. He states "Climate scientists hate averages" because they mask real trends and patterns. For developing countries dealing with climate changes that affect their very survival, they must have precise, accurate, and location-specific climate data.

AWhere is working with the Stockholm Environmental Institute, an "independent, international research institute specializing in sustainable development and environment issues... working at local, national, regional and global policy levels". The two hope to merge climate research with policymaking to promote sustainable development. Hear, hear!

The resulting maps will help scientists and government leaders visualize how global warming is affecting water supplies, weather patterns, arable land, and disease outbreaks. Armed with this information, governments and other agencies can determine what resources are needed to help people deal with these conditions. Also, according to the article, a not-so-insignificant side benefit is that, by mapping the large volumes of data and making them extremely understandable, the everyday Joe -- like me -- can understand what is happening to our world and take our own actions to protect or preserve it.

While many may see this situation as a glass-half-(or more)-empty kind of thing, Mr. Corbett believes that the world can navigate its way toward fixing the problems it has generated but, to do this, it will need a good map. He and his company plan to deliver just that map!

Thank you, John and the good folks at AWhere.

Yours in BI (and fixing global warming) Success!

Claudia

Technorati Tags: AWhere, BI Company, John Corbett, Global Warming Technorati Profile