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Krish Krishnan

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein.

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

I would like to use this blog to have constructive communication and exchanges of ideas in the business intelligence community on topics from data warehousing to SOA to governance, and all the topics in the umbrella of these subjects.

To maximize this blog's value, it must be an interactive venue. This means your input is vital to the blog's success. All that I ask from this audience is to treat everybody in this blog community and the blog itself with respect.

So let's start blogging and share our ideas, opinions, perspectives and keep the creative juices flowing!

About the author >

Krish is an expert in the strategy, architecture and implementation of high performance data warehousing solutions. He is a recognized data warehouse thought leader, writing and speaking at industry leading conferences, user groups and trade publications. He is a certified Bill Inmon professional and holds all major DBA certifications. In his 18 years of professional experience, he has been solving complex solution architecture problems spanning all aspects of data warehousing and business intelligence for Fortune 1000 clients. With his "get it done" approach, he has implemented data warehouse solutions ranging up to hundreds of terabyte data volumes and drives performance tuning into existing BI/DW investments to realize greater than 90% performance gains. Krish leads the Data Warehouse Appliance Expert Channel at BeyeNETWORK.com and is helping drive and mature the data warehouse appliance market. Krish also serves as Associate Vice President of DAMA Chicago. He is a BI Principal at Daugherty Business Solutions in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Editor's note: More Krish Krishnan articles, resources, news and events are available in the Krish Krishnan Expert Channel on the BeyeNETWORK. Be sure to visit today!

In any given organization, there are a few BI projects that are marked as "suffering." I have been asked many a times as to why some projects in the BI psace are very successful and others suffer? The answer is very simple in my opinion. If your BI project is owned and driven by the business, the project has a potential to be very successful, on the other hand if your IT owns and drives the BI projects, chances of business aligning to use the end solution and adopt to it are not very high. Is organizational alignment the only answer?.

Not at all. The key to getting a successful BI implementation lies with both Business and IT teams. But the underlying goal is to identify the business pain of the organization as related to BI and then implementing a solution to address that pain. But it does not stop there, you need a strong business sponsor and a strong technical sponsor to go toe to toe on solving the problem. I'm seeing certain large corporations fail because of issues from Business or IT communities within the organizations. My thought for these companies is to get your internal act together with a steering committee, sort out the issues and establish the goals of how your BI projects will succeed. Without a shared vision and a joint ownership of the solution architecture, the BI project will definitely suffer before it becomes successful.

While organizational alignment and project governance are enablers to these goals, the people from the different parts of the organization coming together is the fundamental key to ensure success. I wish all the projects in the BI space to be a success and raise a toast in this anticipation.


Posted May 7, 2008 8:03 PM
Permalink | 1 Comment |

1 Comment

Krish, I'd like to point out that it is a nearly universal misconception that organizations are divided between IT and business. This duality does not exist. The "business" itself is composed of a ragged hierarchy of formal and ad hoc organizations. I strongly believe that any analysis of the situation that is based in "alignment" of these two non-existent groups is faulty.

Shared vision still entails an IT organization delivering tools for others. This hasn't worked and it never will.

-NR

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