Organizations that are unable to decide whether SAP NetWeaver BI should be used to store non-SAP data should assess SAP's dominance in their structured data landscape. Although NetWeaver BI is ideal for SAP reporting and analysis, organizations with large volumes of data from many sources will find more benefit from a hybrid approach, using both NetWeaver BI and generic.

IT View Quick Take, by J. Paul Kirby

The enterprise architecture (EA) group is a staff function; it is not directly involved with either production operations or solution delivery to the business. However, EA provides a critical element in harnessing the value from IT, so IT's goals and the need for the "forward look" that EA provides end up determining the optimal size of the EA group. When deciding the staffing level for an EA group, start with the size of the IT organization and a ratio of EA staff to IT staff. Modify this ratio based upon the structure of IT, the goals of EA, and the dynamics of the organization.

IT View and Business View Quick Take, by Alex Cullen

Enterprises burned by years of overspending on ERP, SCM, and CRM deployments are increasingly demanding that these applications enable actual end-to-end business processes. Vendors are responding, with big players such as Oracle and SAP moving business processes out of applications and into infrastructure. This creates a centralized, shared store of processes that are used uniformly across the company. Enterprises' implementation and deployment of such software must shift away from laundry lists of features, instead focusing on the evaluation of which vendor has the experience and technology to help companies successfully automate and optimize specific business processes like order-to-cash and lead-to-opportunity.

IT View and Business View Trends by John Ragsdale