http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/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! en Copyright 2008 Wed, 07 May 2008 20:03:57 -0700 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 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?.]]> http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/05/why_do_bi_proje.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/05/why_do_bi_proje.php Wed, 07 May 2008 20:03:57 -0700 Over the past years we have all been using the structured data content in the data warehouse to perform BI activities. But is that all the intelligence about a business there is? No, there is a lot more to the intelligence factor in the form of unstructured data. Unstructured data is embedded in documents, reports, emails and notes. It is knowledge capital that is very useful when integrated for use in the data warehouse. Why do we need to wake up to this requirement? Consider an example scenario: there are hundreds of applications processed everyday in credit cards and consumer credit, insurance, etc. Not all of the decision-making notes are captured to the application. If this data was available for data mining and analysis purposes, we could build smarter decision-making engines since more pattern data is available. This is just a scratch of the surface, and there are more useful things that can be accomplished with unstructured data in the data warehouse. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/05/why_unstructure.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/05/why_unstructure.php Thu, 01 May 2008 06:12:13 -0700 Whenever one looks at Mt.Rushmore or the Eiffel tower, one admires the architecture and the technical finesse behind these constructions. Similarly when we see a fully functional data warehouse with all the bells and whistles on the input and output side, which provides sustained performance, we call it the perfect balance between hardware and software architectures. When it comes to data warehousing and business intelligence programs, the tools that are needed to implement the pervasive side of the solution is one piece of the giant puzzle. The core of any initiative in this spectrum lies with the architecture. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/its_all_about_t.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/its_all_about_t.php Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:29:14 -0700 Microsoft has started its plans to compete in the cloud i.e internet cloud computing. With the announcement of SSDS featuring SQL Server services with storage being offered on pay per use, Microsoft joins amazon and Google in the cloud quest. While there may be differences in all the three offerings from the three vendors, the concept and Web 2.0 behind it as a key driver is powerful. Let us watch the moves as they happen. Yahoo! hope you are listening to all this chatter. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/microsoft_unvei.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/microsoft_unvei.php Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:57:39 -0700 I have been looking at this model of building a data warehouse by organizations where a corporate data warehouse is built and all its users are grouped by divisions or departments and charged for using the data warehouse. This is certainly a good model for the data warehouse team, especially if a corporate It team is owning the data warehouse. But there are a few issues that arise from this model http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/successful_char.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/successful_char.php Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:42:04 -0700 Let us look at "ever hot" topic of Data Warehouse Architecture. What I define as the Data Warehouse Architecture, is a different perspective. The data warehouse ecosystem consists of layers of infrastructure ie. hardware, network, databases, storage, filesystems, operating systems, business intelligence tools and visualization layers. This is the first half of the spectrum. The second half of this spectrum is the data architecture, data model, data loading, data aggregation, data visualization, master data, metadata which presents a complete inside out perspective of the data warehouse architecture. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/data_warehouse.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/04/data_warehouse.php Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:14:58 -0700 In the last quarter of 2007, I had listed Operational reporting as a leading BI project for 2008 across the industry. Though I have no official surveys to check against, the feeling from the industry is that more companies are seeing the need for operational reporting and there is one project somewhere in the organization which is an operational reporting project. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/03/operational_rep.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/03/operational_rep.php Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:28:03 -0700 An spurt of activity is seen in the analytic appliances area. There are a number of companies working on this technology space in stealth mode. Why is all of this attention in this subject, is a matter worth discussing. There are several key factors here, notable among them are 1. BI Acquisitions - With SAP and IBM acquiring players like BO and COGNOS, there is more room for new companies to compete with offerings. 2. Predictive Analytics - This area is going through a second coming. With the ability to process large volume of data, analytic appliances may provide a robust platform for predictive analytics. There are more thoughts here to discuss. Let us see how this market shapes this year with the current established players and the yet to enter competition. Till then, your perspectives are welcome comments in this discussion. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/03/analytic_applia.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/03/analytic_applia.php Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:41:03 -0700 Data management and architecture is becoming a nightmare for corporations. While the demand for more volumes of data at a greater detail keeps driving the IT resources, there are several issues that often get put on the shelf since the price point to manage the data and get it through the data warehouse becomes the focus of the implementation. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/03/why_data_manage.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/03/why_data_manage.php Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:45:34 -0700 We have been hearing and reading about the content of unstructured data and the potential it may unleash when integrated into the data warehouse. What is the operational value of this content and how to measure the value of such an integration effort. Well if you are a healthcare or a pharmaceutical company, think of the vast amounts of data in your companies notes, emails, documents, research findings etc. Well if you rely on a document management system for all your document needs except the email portion, you have a good library. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/a_closer_look_a.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/a_closer_look_a.php Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:11:52 -0700 In the past few months there have been a number of success stories on the Amazon.com cloud computing services for web developers called AWS - Amazon Web Services which include storage database and computing platforms. At a first pass this may seem like a reinvention of the ASP hosting model in the dotcom days. The key difference here is the simple service model and the infinite scalability offered by Amazon.com. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/the_data_wareho.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/the_data_wareho.php Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:07:38 -0700 We have been seeing the latest surge in discussing the lifecycle of data and how to manage the same. Bill Inmon discussed it years ago and more recently has authored the DW2.0 methodology, one part of which is data lifecycle management. We have database vendors talking about data and different types of data and how they are proposing solutions to manage the same. Well all of this is great, but how do we measure the value of data in your business and thus determine its lifecycle and manage the same? data warehouse and ODS data have different requirements for lifecycle from transactional systems. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/lifecycle_value.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/lifecycle_value.php Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:19:35 -0700 Breaking news on Feb 1st 2008, Microsoft is offering to buy Yahoo. Well this one will be very interesting for Microsoft. It will give the company the ability to compete in many areas where it wanted to. We will have to wait and see where this goes, but certainly a Microsoft - ATT partnership from this buyout means VOIP calling from Windows desktops instead of SKYPE is a real possibility. From a data perspective too there are endless opportunities that will evolve. Another offering of the future is an integrated appliance that will be your TV+VOIP Phone+Desktop+Search Engine+.... Till all shakes out.......................... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/microsoft_to_bu.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/02/microsoft_to_bu.php Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:35:33 -0700 The consolidation spree has not yet stopped. A week ago IBM announced the acquisition of AptSoft. What is the driver behind this acquisition?. AptSoft platform provides a Complex Event Processing (CEP) design and execution engine to address real-time, event-driven applications characterized by the ability to detect patterns of events occurring over different time periods across the extended enterprise IT infrastructure and responding by intelligently orchestrating system and human activities. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/01/ibm_acquires_an.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/01/ibm_acquires_an.php Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:05:49 -0700 IS this the year of the Data Warehouse Appliance. With the consolidations in the technology sector still going strong, the opportunity for the new and young companies in the Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence space is emerging stronger. The new offerings will need platforms based on commodity hardware and storage offerings. This is where I see a huge opportunity for the Data Warehouse Appliance. http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/01/the_year_of_dat.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/krishnan/archives/2008/01/the_year_of_dat.php Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:26:39 -0700