One of the topics which will be a BI buzz for this year will be Textual ETL. As companies try to retain and attract customers, a key area of knowledge that they will turn to is within all the textual data in the organization. To gain any value from these data assets, they will need to integrate the data into their data warehouses and datamarts; this will be the reason for Textual ETL Watch my channel in the next week for an article on this subject for more information.

Textual ETL will provide a lot of value in unlocking the hidden trends and issues that will enable the companies to improve their service offerings and this provide for more opportunities to retain customers and acquire more new customers through effective and targeted campaigns.

Christmas of 2008 was memorable for Data Warehouse Appliance vendors. Gartner's latest Magic quadrant, released on December 23 2008, positions several vendors in significant positions from the last year. Whatever be the underlying criteria, my predictions about data warehouse appliances going mainstream is indeed happening. Year 2009 will be a significant year for all types of data warehouse appliances and their vendors. In the first quarter of this year, I will be announcing my own analyst positioning of the data warehouse appliance vendors. Watch my channel for details.

Wishing all of you a happry new year 2009.