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Blog: Claudia ImhoffApril 1, 2008Free KPIs! No Fooling...If you are struggling to define your company's key performance indicators (KPIs), here is a useful bit of information. I recently discovered an interesting website dedicated to identifying KPIs for just about every category you can think of. And it is FREE! Continue reading "Free KPIs! No Fooling..." » January 23, 2008There's Money in Them Thar Companies - BI & MDM Funding!Given the harrowing day in the world's stock markets yesterday and today's roller coaster ride in US markets, you would think that venture funding for start-ups and small companies would dry up like sub-prime lending. Well, maybe in other sectors but funding for BI and MDM companies is doing just fine! Continue reading "There's Money in Them Thar Companies - BI & MDM Funding!" » December 27, 2007It's Been a Most Interesting YearFor my last blog of the year, I want to wish each of you Happy New Year! The year, 2008, promises to be as good a year for Business Intelligence as 20007 was... Continue reading "It's Been a Most Interesting Year" » November 12, 2007The Other Shoe Finally Drops - IBM Buys CognosA few minutes ago I got the news that IBM had just bought Cognos. There has been so much speculation about this purchase after Hyperion and Business Objects were bought that it almost was anti-climatic. What does this mean for BI? Well, I have a few thoughts... Continue reading "The Other Shoe Finally Drops - IBM Buys Cognos" » October 1, 2007Teradata Rings the Bell at the NYSE!The oldest "new" company goes public today. Yes, Teradata, a Division of NCR, is no longer. It is now Teradata Corporation, a fully independent company with the NYSE symbol of TDC. Let's look at the stats of this born-again Business Intelligence / Data Warehousing company. Continue reading "Teradata Rings the Bell at the NYSE!" » August 31, 2007A BI Company Does Something Good for Our PlanetHeavens! It is not often that I read about a company (especially a small company) doing something for altruistic reasons. And so it was that I read with great interest an article in yesterday's Denver newspaper about AWhere and its commitment to help African countries adapt to climate change. Continue reading "A BI Company Does Something Good for Our Planet" » June 28, 2007When is Data Quality Processing a Bad Thing?I just finished reading an interesting article in the latest TDWI newsletter (dated today)titled "Data Cleansing versus Auditability: Achieving Competitive Advantage in a Cautious Era" It was written by Michael Mansur, Simon Terr, and David Stanvick from HP Services' Information Management Practice. It got me to thinking about the notion that there may be times when we destroy the usability of data by fixing it up too much... If you are interested in reading their article, click here and sign up for the newsletter. It is worth reading. Continue reading "When is Data Quality Processing a Bad Thing?" » April 26, 2007A Sad Day for TechnologyI read with increasing sadness and futility about the massive effort launched to find Jim Gray, world-renown computer scientist. He disappeared on January 28, 2007 while sailing out of San Francisco Bay. After 16 days of intense searching using remarkable technologies, the ad hoc search was disbanded. The conclusion was that he was lost at sea. Continue reading "A Sad Day for Technology" » March 22, 2007Data Integration Does NOT Equal Data WarehouseI have read with interest a number of blogs and articles, and listened to a number of presentations about data integration technologies from a number of people. It seems to me that we need to clear the air regarding the role of data integration and what projects use it in our enterprises... Continue reading "Data Integration Does NOT Equal Data Warehouse" » January 31, 2007Beyond Data Warehousing -- WAY BeyondQuick -- what do you think of when you hear the acronym, ETL? Construction of a data warehouse? Implementing a BI environment? Well, think again. ETL is no longer just the integration tool for decision making environments... Continue reading "Beyond Data Warehousing -- WAY Beyond" » December 13, 2006HP Acquires Knights(Bridge) in Shining ArmorYesterday I got a call from my friend, Jonathan Wu, a senior principal at Knightsbridge Solutions, letting me know that the company had been acquired by HP. Quite a coup for HP. All the pieces are beginning to fit together for HP to become an outstanding BI company... Continue reading "HP Acquires Knights(Bridge) in Shining Armor" » November 18, 2006Happy Thanksgiving!Yep -- it's the Saturday before Thanksgiving and I have much to be thankful for. Here are just a few that bubble to the top of my list... Continue reading "Happy Thanksgiving!" » October 19, 2006From Patent Infringement to Partnership - It's Been a Strange Road for Hyperion and HyperRollInteresting... How does a company go from being the object of a nasty patent infringement suit to forming a warm and fuzzy partnership with the very company suing it? Apparently easily and rather quietly. On October 10, 2006, Hyperion announced its plans to bring Hyperion System 9 together with technology from HyperRoll. And the good feelings toward HyperRoll didn't stop there... October 9, 2006Oracle to buy Sunopsis!The merger and acquisition activity continues unabated in the BI world! Today Oracle announced plans to enhance its Oracle Fusion middleware offerings through the acquisition of Sunopsis, a provider of heterogeneous data integration products. Continue reading "Oracle to buy Sunopsis!" » September 27, 2006An Interesting Conference - MMISI just got back from a most interesting conference in Providence, RI, dealing with US states' Medicaid agencies. It was the MMIS conference. Here is a case study from the conference dealing with one state's BI efforts. I hope you enjoy reading about it. Continue reading "An Interesting Conference - MMIS" » September 24, 2006How to Compete Using Analytics - Tom Davenport's TakeI just returned from attending the Teradata Partners conference in Orlando. Besides being a lot of fun, it was also quite informative. I think my favorite session was Tom Davenport's in which he discussed competing on analytics (the title of his book as well). Here are a few brief points from his keynote. Continue reading "How to Compete Using Analytics - Tom Davenport's Take" » August 8, 2006A Different Kind of ConferenceFor the past five years, I have been privileged to participate in Scott Humphrey's highly anticipated Pacific Northwest BI Summit. Without a doubt, this is the highlight of my year. Read on to find out why and what we discussed at the comfortable and charming Weasku Inn (pronounced We Ask You Inn... Cute huh?). Continue reading "A Different Kind of Conference" » April 17, 2006Get Your BI Expert Right Here -- in This BoxAre you short on BI expertise? Stumped about how to maintain the right metrics for your business community? Tired of inconsistency and a lack of integrity in your BI metrics? Don't even know where to start in creating critical metrics? Well, help is here -- It's called PROOF but I call it "a BI expert in a box"... Continue reading "Get Your BI Expert Right Here -- in This Box" » March 10, 2006Practical Master Data Management - an application we all can use.Having just gone through a move back into my newly renovated house, I have had an epiphany about master data management. We consumers should demand our own version of this functionality... Continue reading "Practical Master Data Management - an application we all can use." » March 2, 2006Dashboard DesignI got a note from a friend of mine the other day. He wanted to know if I knew of some tools that could help him rapidly design dashboards. I do not know of anything but thought you might. Here is his note in full. Please comment if you can help him with his question. Continue reading "Dashboard Design" » March 1, 2006A Good Company Does a Good ThingSometimes in the hustle and bustle of mergers and acquisitions, a not-so-glitzy story gets lost that really deserves our attention. So it was with FirstLogic. Most of the news has been about Business Objects acquisition of this data quality software vendor but -- you know -- there was another recent news story about FirstLogic that was even more important IMHO but it got lost in the shuffle... Continue reading "A Good Company Does a Good Thing" » January 31, 2006The Best of the Best Joins the B-EYE-Network!My friend and cohort for many years, Jean Schauer, has accepted the position of Editor-in-Chief with the B-EYE-Network. It just doesn't get any better than having her back in my professional life again. Jean was my editor at DM Review for many years and I was greatly saddened to read about her departure. I knew she would resurface again and that I would happily work with her wherever that was. How wonderful that she decided to join the happy B-EYE-Network family. Jean is a superb editor, her good sense and solid ethics will reflect on all of us writers -- you can bet that she will make all of us look good! Congratulations to Ron and Shawn for getting the best of the best. And thank you, Jean, for accepting their offer. I look forward to seeing your edits in my articles! January 26, 2006Informatica Buys Similarity SystemsIreland is about $55 million richer today after Informatica announced that it will buy Dublin-based Similarity Systems for that price tag. Similarity is a data quality software company who itself recently (July 2005) purchased Evoke software from CSI. Continue reading "Informatica Buys Similarity Systems" » January 6, 20062005 - That was the year that wasI'm back from the holidays, somewhat refreshed, probably a couple pounds heavier (gotta get back to the exercise regiment), and looking forward to what 2006 will bring. Hopefully you also had a good holiday. But before I completely leave 2005 to the history books, I thought it would be interesting to take one last look at what happened -- maybe even learn a thing or two from it. So -- here is my rendition of "That was the year that was"... Continue reading "2005 - That was the year that was" » December 9, 2005Getting the Most Out of Your External ConsultantsImplementing a data warehouse? Creating a BI environment? Need help gathering requirements, managing the project, getting the executives' attention? These are all services offered by external consultants or contract employees. They can help you move forward much faster than you could by yourself. However, just as in all things, if you are not familiar with how to use them, you may not be getting the maximum from your expensive resources. Here are some practical tips on getting the most from these resources. Continue reading "Getting the Most Out of Your External Consultants" » November 29, 2005Dashboards - They are no silver bullet eitherI read an article recently titled "Dashboards: The Key to Breaking the Dependency on BI" by Steve Ricketts. In it, he claims that you don't need to build data warehouses -- they are complex and hard to implement. All you really need is a dashboard to present "vital information in an at-a-glance graphical format..." Continue reading "Dashboards - They are no silver bullet either" » November 14, 2005The Love Affair is Over - Pitney Bowes and FirstLogic Call Off the AcquisitionLast September 1, Pitney Bowes announced that it would acquire the remaining 95% of FirstLogic for $50 million. If you recall, I wrote in my blog that I thought it was not a particularly good deal for FirstLogic. Perhaps they agreed since the acquisition is now officially called off. Here's the exclusive news... Continue reading "The Love Affair is Over - Pitney Bowes and FirstLogic Call Off the Acquisition" » November 4, 2005Protecting Your Personal Data - Not?I usually don't like to blog about the political wranglings that occur in our esteemed nation's capital but this one caught my eye -- mostly because it will have a significant effect on BI technologies as well as all of us personally. Yesterday, House Democrats and Republicans got into a royal fight over how best to protect consumers' personal data, as they moved legislation to reduce identity theft and fraud onto a fast track in Congress. What does this really mean? Continue reading "Protecting Your Personal Data - Not?" » October 18, 2005Get a free Blog!The Business Intelligence Network has launched a new Blog site and you’re invited! So if you've ever wanted to have a voice in our industry here is your chance. The site is free and you can have your blog up and running in less than 5 minutes. Act fast, space is limited! To reserve your free blog click here. September 21, 2005Teradata Partners' Conference Very Enlightening and EntertainingI just got back from the Teradata user conference - PARTNERS -- in not-so-sunny Orlando. The weather was not the greatest but the conference, in which 3200 attendees showed up, sure was. From an excruciatingly funny keynote address given by Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic strip) to numerous informative sessions to interesting conversations in between sessions with customers and employees of Teradata, it was a most enjoyable time. Here is a highlight from just one session I attended. It was given by Mohan Sawhney, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Continue reading "Teradata Partners' Conference Very Enlightening and Entertaining" » September 8, 2005Are Your Good Customers Really That Good?The rule of thumb is that 20% of your customers generate 80% of your company’s revenues. These are your “most profitable” customers but are they really? Unless you are studying your cost-to-serve analytics, you may have it all wrong… Continue reading "Are Your Good Customers Really That Good?" » August 31, 2005Best BI Blog AwardsOK -- here is your chance to let me know how you really feel about this blog. SearchCRM.com is holding a contest to find the most outstanding and popular blogs in the CRM and BI markets. Anyone can nominate a blog, but it must be on the topic of CRM, BI or a related field, and it must be maintained on a regular and consistent basis. Be sure to get your nomination in by September 30. To nominate a blog, click here. Thanks for reading -- and voting! Yours in BI Success, Claudia August 19, 2005And a Good Time Was Had by All at TDWI...This week the Data Warehousing Institute held their Summer conference in lovely San Diego, CA. The theme this time around was bringing the business and IT organizations together. The attendees, vendors and presenters alike learned a great deal about how to do this. In addition, I tried my hand at pod casting... Read on to find out more. Continue reading "And a Good Time Was Had by All at TDWI..." » August 17, 2005Capitalizing the Data Warehouse and Making it a Real Asset!I attended a most interesting “night school” at the Data Warehousing Institute’s conference this week in San Diego. It was taught by Sid Adelman and dealt with the new accounting requirements that companies assign a “fair value” to their data warehouses and BI environments. Read on about this controversial and confusing new accounting practice. Continue reading "Capitalizing the Data Warehouse and Making it a Real Asset!" » August 9, 2005BI Listed as a Top Priority in Corporations for the Next Few Years!A recent InfoWorld Research Report on Business Intelligence gave very high marks to the use and adoption of BI among its readers. The results found that nearly two-thirds of respondents rated BI as high-to-critical priority for the next few years. This certainly bodes very well for BI in corporations worldwide but there were a few dark clouds looming too. Here are some of the results from the survey. Continue reading "BI Listed as a Top Priority in Corporations for the Next Few Years!" » August 3, 2005Scott Humphrey Does It Again!There is nothing like floating down a magnificent river in scenic southern Oregon to stimulate good discussions about Business Intelligence... That's right. I said floating down a river. For the fourth year, Scott Humphrey , the founder and sponsor of the Pacific Northwest BI Summit, treated a number of innovative BI vendors and four leading BI experts to a highly stimulating and memorable weekend. Continue on to read what we talked about. Continue reading "Scott Humphrey Does It Again!" » July 26, 2005IBM and Hyperion Part Ways MaybeOn July 21, I got a surprising email from Stephanie Clark - IBM's Analyst Relations person. In it, she states that IBM and Hyperion are ending their OEM agreement and each company will go its merry way. Read on -- it gets even stranger. Continue reading "IBM and Hyperion Part Ways Maybe" » July 21, 2005A 25 Terabyte Data Warehouse Appliance!Wow -- when I started in the BI business 17 years ago, I never dreamed we would be able to store more than 100 GB of data. That seemed like an astonishingly large amount of data. In fact, my first warehouse project implemented a whopping 25 MB and we thought we were really pushing the envelope. To be honest, I didn't even know what a terabyte was back then. My, how times have changed. This week, DATAllegro announced its newest product, the C25, a high capacity data warehouse appliance that can hold 25 TB at a cost of $20,000 per TB! Amazing, just amazing. Continue reading "A 25 Terabyte Data Warehouse Appliance!" » June 24, 2005BI Schedule Busters; Mitigating ETL SurprisesThere is one task in virtually every BI project that seems to cause the most surprises and to be the biggest schedule buster -- that is estimating how long the ETL or data integration process will take. While the reasons for this are numerous, it seems that a lack of business understanding leads the pack. My friend, James Schardt, Chief Technologist for Advanced Concepts Center, sent me a suggestion for how he mitigates this serious problem in his DW projects. Continue reading "BI Schedule Busters; Mitigating ETL Surprises" » June 20, 2005Global Issues in BII received an email the other day from someone working for a large international financial institution. I thought his comments were worth publishing with the hopes that you have some ideas on how a global company can truly get to visionary "single version of the truth" when it comes to global customers. Read on for some enlightening and thought-provoking global issues. And please -- if you have any thoughts on the topics, enter them in the comment area. As always - yours in BI success! Claudia Continue reading "Global Issues in BI" » June 16, 2005BI Becomes Integrated into Business ProcessesAnd it is about time! For years, I and others have been touting the need for business intelligence to move from simple data gathering and reporting to having an active role in business process improvement. Well, we are finally starting to see this progression as a survey of 300 business-technology executives shows. Continue reading "BI Becomes Integrated into Business Processes" » June 9, 2005Business Process Outsourcing threatens SAP and othersThere is a new acronym for everyone -- BPO or Business Process Outsourcing. According to Yankee Group, this is the integration of multiple business services in your enterprise with a single provider. "The whole delivery mechanism for ERP is changing" because of this trend, according to Phillip Fersht of the Yankee Group. "Suddenly ERP is no longer the core strategy of the enterprise". This spells big trouble for SAP and other large ERP vendors unless they can adapt. Continue reading "Business Process Outsourcing threatens SAP and others" » May 20, 2005Operational Risk and BII recently just finished giving a talk at the Warburg Pincus IT conference in New York on operational risk (OR) and BI – basically what OR is and how BI can help not only monitor it but also manage and mitigate it. Here are the highlights of that talk... Continue reading "Operational Risk and BI" » May 3, 2005Gartner's Magic Quadrant Strikes AgainGartner recently published a new magic quadrant for Customer Data Integration (CDI) hub products. For those of you struggling to create a single view of the customer for your business users, you may want to listen up! Continue reading "Gartner's Magic Quadrant Strikes Again" » April 28, 2005Encryption to ensure privacy?There have been a number of reports recently about security and privacy breaches involving customer data -- ChoicePoint, Lexis-Nexis and other information providers come to mind. What do you need to do to ensure that this never happens to your corporation's data? Continue reading "Encryption to ensure privacy?" » April 22, 2005Is open source BI for you?An excerpt from the Open Source Initiative explains why open source is important to the technologists. They state "The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing." So what does this mean to you? Continue reading "Is open source BI for you?" » April 15, 2005Tax Day -- Are you ready? The IRS sure is!Did you know that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has one of the most sophisticated analytical environments to detect tax payer fraud? Yep, it's true according to the technology company supporting it... Continue reading "Tax Day -- Are you ready? The IRS sure is!" » April 13, 2005What technology buyers really want...Recently I spoke with Doug Laney (formerly an analyst with META Group and now CEO and Chief Research Officer of Evalubase Research) about the results of his company’s latest research results. I found the BI results particularly intriguing. Continue reading "What technology buyers really want..." » April 8, 2005DCI's April Business Intelligence ConferencePicture it -- San Diego, 70+ degree days, balmy nights, and some of the best BI discussions around. That was DCI's Business Intelligence conference this week. I was fortunate to be invited to speak and also came away with a few gems. Continue reading "DCI's April Business Intelligence Conference" » March 25, 2005Data Quality in Business IntelligenceI had the opportunity to do a web cast for DataFlux this week entitled “Reaping the Dividends of Data Quality”. In it, I talked about the five building blocks for successful data quality management. Here is a brief overview of those blocks. Continue reading "Data Quality in Business Intelligence" » March 23, 20052005 Editor's Choice Awards from Intelligent EnterpriseDave Stodder, the Editorial Director for Intelligent Enterprise, has chosen the dozen most influential vendors driving the intelligent enterprise for 2005. Congratulations to all winners AND the companies to watch as well. There were 12 categories this year spanning from information strategy to performance management to on-demand leadership to unstructured intelligence. Quite a range. The winners were mostly well-known names in our industry but there were a few surprises. Here are the highlights. Continue reading "2005 Editor's Choice Awards from Intelligent Enterprise" » March 21, 2005Failure of data warehouse projectsWhere is this coming from? Gartner recently “predicted” the 50% of data warehouse projects will have limited acceptance or be out right failures. Why? And what fact is this dire prediction based upon? Continue reading "Failure of data warehouse projects" » March 16, 2005CIO Software Survey on Business IntelligenceI got an interesting email today from Ed Maquire, a research analyst at Merrill Lynch. Attached to his email were the results of the Merrill Lynch February 2005 CIO Software Survey of 100 North American IT executives. The results are very encouraging for software vendors, especially BI ones! Read on for more information. Continue reading "CIO Software Survey on Business Intelligence" » March 3, 2005Chats with BI vendorsFrom the vendors that I talked with at the last Data Warehousing Institute conference, it is obvious that there is no end to the innovation coming from the Business Intelligence technologies. I met with many different vendors in most areas of BI implementation. I wish I had had more time to meet with all the vendors but there are only so many hours in the day… Here are just a few highlights from my meetings. Continue reading "Chats with BI vendors" » March 2, 2005The Data Warehouse Institute Winter Conference: Las VegasWere you there? If not, you should have been. Sure seemed like there were a lot of new as well as familiar faces there. Certainly it was not a bad time to catch up on the latest and greatest from the BI front at this year’s TDWI Winter Conference. According to TDWI, there were somewhere around 800 attendees! A banner conference for the dead of winter AND for business intelligence in general! The vendor line up was not shabby either. The major players were all there but so were a number of exciting newbies. See more on the vendors in tomorrow’s blog. Continue reading "The Data Warehouse Institute Winter Conference: Las Vegas" » February 17, 2005CIOs: Vendors should be your friends not your enemiesI ran across a very interesting blog from CIO Magazine written by Monte Ford. Mr. Ford is a Vice President and CIO of American Airlines. He starts off by castigating CIOs with the accusation that they don’t spend enough time trying to be good customers with their vendors. Instead, he thinks they spend too much time and energy trying to find fault with them – to the point that this exercise has almost become sport in IT shops. Here are some tips from him as well as myself on becoming a good customer with your vendors: 1. Put aside your own interests and ego to consider what the enterprise and vendor want / need from this relationship. It is mandatory that all parties – your staff as well as the vendor – focus on the overall success of the project. For example, make sure everyone understands the goals and objectives of the vendor and the company. Continue reading "CIOs: Vendors should be your friends not your enemies" » |
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