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March 22, 2008

vBusiness Expo in Second Life April 24-27

There is much angst and trepidation about moving real life business activities into virtual worlds like Linden Labs' Second Life. Why? The unknown, mixed press stories, large start up time to learn the "ropes", griefing/harrassing behavior, work place distractions, Internet addictions and pornography including virtual sex. Despite these very real concerns, virtual worlds and the 3D Internet are here to stay and will become more pervasive. So what should adventurous people in the business intelligence/decision support community do? How can you get on top of the 3D wave? I think a good starting point is attending the upcoming vBusiness Expo, April 24-27 in Second Life. Virtual Business opportunities including decision support are numerous. Our imaginations, our personal discipline and our intellectual capabilities are the only barriers.

What is the vBusiness Expo? The conference aims to cover 4 key areas: 1) Virtual Workplace, 2) Virtual Education, 3) Virtual Marketing, and 4) Virtual Commerce. Check http://cleverzebra.com/vbusiness/expo .

vBusiness Expo Day 1: The Virtual Workplace. "Virtual worlds are being used as a collaborative environment, as well as a distance management tool and for employee education. The virtual workplace discussions, panels, interviews and lectures will focus on sharing ideas, and broadening knowledge of how virtual environments can be used by companies as collaborative work spaces and viable alternatives to carbon heavy travel."

vBusiness Expo Day 2: Virtual Marketing. "In many ways marketers are still feeling their way in virtual worlds. We’re only just getting started, and there’s a long road ahead."

vBusiness Expo Day 3: Virtual Commerce. "The promise that virtual worlds hold for commerce is exciting and full of possibilities. Day three of the vBusiness Expo will look at how companies are using virtual worlds to sell real goods and services. We’ll discuss the technicalities of setting up shop in a virtual world, study how others are experimenting in the space and debate the future impact virtual worlds will have on retail."

vBusiness Expo Day 4: Virtual Education. "There are already over 150 universities represented in Second Life and like the virtual workplace, education is an area where we can already see clear and measurable benefits for organizations."

The sponsor of vBusiness Expo is Clever Zebra. Clever Zebra is a virtual company. According to the Web site, "We live and work in virtual worlds, and in fact have never met in the physical world. We operate from the US, Canada and Denmark. Our 'office' is a connection to the 3D web. The company was founded on the principle of promoting virtual worlds as a platform for business. Our ongoing goal is to make it easy and inexpensive for companies to work in virtual environments. We do this by providing the buildings, code and tools needed by organizations for free, and adding value through optional paid services." The movers and shakers of Clever Zebra are Caleb Booker, Jenn Lortz, Josh Eikenberry and Nick Wilson. In Second Life known respectively as Onder Skall, Jenn Hienrichs, Lordfly Digeridoo and 57 Miles.

I am attending the vBusiness Expo and I am presenting a session on "What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Second Life for decision support?" Hope to see all of my decision support friends in Second Life. If you need help, email me power@dssresources.com . If you can't make the Expo, visit me in Virtual Iowa (IowaMetaverse.com) or at Decision Support World Headquarters (DecisionSupportWorld.com).

Posted by Dan Power at 12:46 PM |

November 13, 2007

Oracle Fusion -- Hope for Innovative Decision Support

My visit to Oracle OpenWorld is wrapping up on a tired, but hopeful note. For almost an hour from 3-4pm today, I listened to the product "brain trust" at Oracle discuss current developments, strategy and hopes. Chuck Rozwat, Ed Abbo, Thomas Kurian, Andy Mendelsohn and Steve Miranda reiterated the Oracle product message to a global press/analyst group.

Rozwat stressed Oracle wants/has the leading products in every category it participates in ... The goal is 1) complete solutions, 2) openness of the product line, and 3) adopting industry standards.

The message for Oracle Fusion middleware from Rozwat and Kurian is "we are on target" and some components will be released in 2008. The commitment to a service oriented architecture, Web 2.0, an integrated development "stack" and a secure, scalable deployment environment is more than marketing.

It seems that Oracle wants to pull together its diverse product line and that can only be positive for building innovative enterprisewide decision support. Whether we have IT folks who can step up and exploit the integration and diverse capabilities is more problematic. Why? Just coping with the increased complexity and rapid change in the current business IT environment is hard.

Oh well ... we'll muddle through somehow.

Mark Hurd, CEO of HP, is a good tennis player and regularly thumps Larry Ellison (inferred from Hurd's comments). Nonetheless, I don't see HP integrating forward and buying Oracle in 2008. Hurd answered "man on the street" videotaped questions in his keynote and didn't have a clear message.

Paul Otellini, President and CEO of Intel, reassured a crowd of 8-10,000 that Intel will deliver more computer processing speed and capacity using less energy. He noted data centers currently account for 1.5% of the energy consumption in the United States. By videotape, Paul introduced us to 3 Intel engineers working on the microprocessor architectures of the future. The videos were not inspiring ... incremental change, no breakthroughs from my vantage point.

Thomas Kurian, the middleware fusion guru at Oracle, gave a keynote and he was very impressive. It wasn't what he said as much as how he said it. If anyone can create the integrated development and administrative environment envisioned in Oracle Fusion Middleware, I think it is Kurian.

I did get to a Hyperion session and spoke briefly with some Hyperion partners. Perhaps some new customers are being exposed to Hyperion here, but Oracle decision support including business intelligence needs a more dedicated conference and showcase.

Well we are all using the futons for catnaps ... the days and nights are busy and long. I hope everyone walks away from Oracle OpenWorld with one good idea for improving enterprisewide applications where they work.

I'll be on a "red eye" heading back to Cedar Falls later tonight.

Posted by Dan Power at 5:10 PM |

November 12, 2007

Oracle's 30th Anniversary

Last night, Sunday, November 11, 2007, Larry Ellison reminisced for approximately 45 minutes about the early days of Oracle. Larry dedicated the opening session at Oracle OpenWorld to Bob Miner, the first President of the company that became Oracle. Bob died of cancer in 1994. Larry, Bob and Ed Oates co-founded Software Development Laboratories in November 1977.

After listening to Larry, I am once again impressed with the dominating influence that vision has on creating a successful company. Larry, Bob and Ed wanted to create the first commercial relational database product and they did. They knew little about business and their efforts were under capitalized, but they sold the idea and then delivered the product and kept pushing to innovate and improve the product. The initial capitalization was $2000, but a "big" contract and risk taking got Oracle started and on it's way to success. The first release of Oracle was version 2. Larry joked who would have wanted to buy version 1.

This morning I listened to Charles Phillips, Oracle co-President, and Hector de J. Ruiz, President of AMD. Phillips with help from Chuck Rozwat basically provided a high-level product demo with a focus on various "needs" including using business data for actionable insight, i.e., operational data-driven decision support. I was bothered that Phillips and the Oracle product people call the business intelligence, performance management and other data-driven DSS development products middleware. Perhaps use the term development tools, but I don't think use of the "middleware" category will catch on.

Integration of operational business decision support and transaction processing was the message, but the example presented of a manager seeing a sales problem caused by insufficient product and then directly processing an order in an inventory system seems unrealistic. We will need to consolidate a number of distinct roles in the organization hierarchy to create that type of task integration. It is not enough that technology can support task integration ... but will organization roles allow, encourage, and permit it?

Ruiz with help from customers and partners identified 3 business needs that are the "point of the arrow" for technology innovation: 1) improved global communication and collaboration for project teams, 2) real-time analytics and compelling web content, and 3) simplifying IT management and reducing IT maintenance so more time can be spent on creative applications. Shane Robson briefly mentioned HP's Halo which is a high cost solution to need #1. John Fowler of Sun focused on the real-time solution for MLB.com. Finally, Mark Jarvis, a Dell Marketing guy, tried to address the simplification/creative applications need and failed. Oh well Mark, we don't know the answer yet! Keep trying.

I spent 2 hours on the exhibit floor and toured around with an Intel guide. So far I have only been in the South building of Moscone for exhibits. The West building has another exhibit area. I am already information overloaded and I can only imagine what customers must be feeling.

I'm heading to hear Mark Hurd discuss the information challenge in the technology sector. Information technology is enabling and creating business opportunities, but perhaps sometimes the industry folks get ahead of the management crowd. We will see.

Posted by Dan Power at 2:10 PM |

November 11, 2007

Oracle OpenWorld--Getting Started

My trip from Cedar Falls to San Francisco was uneventful. My son Alex met me at the airport and I spent the night with him. We stopped by Google and I signed the non-disclosure so not much to say. We drove up to my hotel/motel in Colma. Then we took BART into the city. By the time I decided to attend OpenWorld, the hotels downtown were full. ... Well I get to experience a commute.

I registered Saturday afternoon and today came straight to Moscone North and the press room. This is a "huge" event. In about 48 real-time hours, DBAs, IT staff of various sorts, CIOs, and some non-IT managers will have the opportunity to attend more than 1600 sessions, 350 live demos and various social events.

I'm already feeling the information overload. My plan is to attend sessions at the "vision" level primarily and attend a few Hyperion sessions. Later today I plan to spend 4-6pm on the vendor show floor (100s of vendors), listen to Larry Ellison and Safra Catz in an opening keynote and then attend the welcome reception in the Howard Street and Yerba Buena Tents.

Oracle claims that it is dedicated to helping "harness the power of information." From my vantage point Oracle is generating too much information at OpenWorld. My goal is to see how the diverse Oracle applications come together to improve business decision making. Also, I am curious to find out where Oracle executives are headed in terms of innovative decision support.

As part of my "vision" approach to OpenWorld, I'm looking forward to hearing keynotes by Mark Hurd, CEO HP, and Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel. I met Hurd a few times back when he was leading NCR Teradata. Both Hurd and Otellini are shaping the possibilities for computerized decision support and I am curious about how explicit they will be on mobile platforms and real-time decision support.

Well in addition to Oracle, the other major sponsors of OpenWorld include AMD, Intel, Dell, Hp, Sun, NetApp and EMC.

Posted by Dan Power at 1:15 PM |

October 24, 2007

Oracle OpenWorld and Decision Support

Friday, November 9, 2007, I'm taking a late flight to San Francisco for Oracle Open World (URL http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2007/index.html).

A few years ago, I covered an Oracle Developer's Conference, but this will be my first Oracle OpenWorld. Why Oracle? Why now? Oracle is the enterprise database company and with acquisitions, Oracle is focused now on much more than transaction processing. When it comes to deploying customer relationship systems and tactical data-driven DSS, Oracle has some definite advantages over competitors. As far as the timing, I can fit the conference in my schedule, Oracle approved my media/press/analyst credentials, and my son Alex is now in the Bay area, so I can visit him, check out his new apartment and see what the Google campus is like. Alex seems to be enjoying his job as a site reliability engineer on the search team at Google. The Google work environment sounds outstanding based on his phone comments.

But my quest is to kick the Oracle product tires, listen to the operational BI and CRM sessions, especially case studies, and sort out how much commitment Oracle is making to decision support applications.

Readers probably know Oracle acquired Hyperion. The program materials claim "With the acquisition of Hyperion, Oracle offers the industry's most complete business intelligence product line for our customers. In this track, you'll learn how Hyperion's enteprise performance management software, coupled with Oracle's business intelligence tools and analytic applications, forms an end-to-end performance management system that includes planning, budgeting, consolidation, prebuilt operational analytics, and compliance reporting. Find out what's new and how to get better results with business intelligence and analytic applications from Oracle." I'll spend most of my time in this track. OpenWorld has more than 1,600 sessions! Clearly, I'll take the decision support slice of the pie.

If you are at Oracle Open World, check for me at sessions of the Business Intelligence and Analytic Applications track.

Well, the CSI: NY episode featuring Second Life should be starting soon. I'm teleporting to Kim Smith's aka Rissa Maidstone's CSI PARTY at Dr. Dobb's Island. Kim (Rissa) asks "Will we survive the 20,000 people expected to log into SL tonight for the CSI NY and SL episode?" I am sure I will survive, Second Life will too.

Posted by Dan Power at 6:23 PM |

October 16, 2007

Teradata, Electric Sheep and CSI: NY

Thursday, October 11, I took a "red eye" flight from Las Vegas and Teradata Partners back to Cedar Falls, Iowa. Then, I taught my Business Planning and my Decision Support Systems classes that afternoon. My body and brain are still recovering from the lack of sleep and the caffeine. So why did I go? To learn about Teradata products and those of their partners, to meet with vendors, to identify sources of articles and case studies, to meet with people in the front lines of data-driven DSS in Fortune 2000 companies. Mission accomplished!

Since then I worked on a new article, caught up on grading and prepared an Excel assignment on Pivot Tables for my DSS students. At Teradata, I especially enjoyed talking with Kristina Kerr, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Business Intelligence. The team in Redmond seems to finally be taking decision support as a serious market niche. "Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2007." But it is Excel 2007 and PerformancePoint Server that are the future of decision support at Microsoft. Kristina was in London today for the UK launch of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Hope it went well Kristina -- check http://www.microsoft.com/bi/ .

I also met with Michael Whitehead, CEO of WhereScape. WhereScape is all about prototyping tools for building data warehouses. I'm looking forward to an article for DSSResources.com from Michael and Marc Demarest on data warehousing prototyping. Marc is working with WhereScape.

Well back here in Cedar Falls I have also been working in Second Life. I added some SLUrls to the DecisionSupportWorld.com web page. Also, I met with colleagues from Midwest Association for Information Systems (MWAIS) about a workshop we are holding in Second Life on November 17, 2007.

This morning at 8am SLT, I attended an interview with Giff Constable aka in SL Forseti Svarog, VP of Business Development for The Electric Sheep Company, conducted by Mitch Wagner aka in SL Ziggy Figaro, Executive Editor of Information Week. About seventy people met at Dr. Dobbs Island in Second Life for the interview. Television is finding Second Life. The October 24, 2007 episode of CSI: NY will send detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) into Second Life to solve a murder. Electric Sheep has been working with CBS's Anthony Zuiker to create the media integration. CSI: NY will invite fans (16 million) to visit Second Life with a new "easy-to-use" viewer from Electric Sheep. The CSI fans can visit a virtual New York and solve crimes. Sounds like a game, but this development demonstrates the media convergence that is occuring. Also, the new SL viewer sounds exciting for bringing managers into Second Life and for integrating the 2-D and 3-D webs..

Also, on October 25, the comedy called The Office will visit Second Life. As Mitch Wagner jokes The Office will paint Second Life "as yet another haven for slightly twisted, socially inept, loser oddballs." I'm not a fan of The Office, what do those losers know!

Also, I'm not a gambler. Only Shawn Rogers, Hugh Watson and I discussed Second Life at Partners ( recall my prediction in a previous Blog posting). The reality is that after October 25, 2007, Second Life and virtual worlds will be a much more viable platform for business decision support. I may even have a chance to attend a future Teradata Partners Conference hosted in Second Life or a similar virtual world in the not too distant future. I'm sure you will soon find workshops on business intelligence and decision support in Second Life. I'll even host some of them. Stay tuned. It will sure be nice to reduce the "red eye" trips and the caffeine.

Please IM me when you visit Second Life, Dan Power aka in SL Leinad Meriman, attend a decision support workshop, or come chat at my virtual office. Also, join the SL Decision Support group.

***************************

10/12/2007 - Microsoft is positioned in leaders quadrant of latest magic quadrant for data warehousing, check http://dssresources.com/news/2269.php.

Wagner, M., "'The Office's' Dwight Joins Second Life," posted Oct 15, 2007 06:13 PM at
www.informationweek.com. Check http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/the_offices_dwi.html;jsessionid=VJAEAKZSBQ5SMQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN .

Disclaimer: Teradata provided financial support for my participation in the Partners conference.



Posted by Dan Power at 8:44 PM |

October 10, 2007

BI Network friends at Teradata Partners

Actions speak louder than words and the Teradata Partners conference demonstrates the commitment of BI Network experts to bridging the gulf between the realm of practice and the realm of teaching. Let me cite some examples:

Tuesday morning Jill Dyche, Claudia Imhoff and Ron Powell took the time to attend the Teradata University Network (TUN) board meeting. I've covered the board meeting for 6 years and TUN has made extensive progress, but the key is getting the "real world" experts to interact with those in higher education who are teaching the next generation of data warehousing, decision support and business intelligence practitioners. That's happening thanks to people at Teradata like Ron Swift, Scott Gnau and Mary Gros and University Faculty like Hugh Watson, Jeff Hoffer and Barbara Wixom.

Ron Powell and Shawn Rogers have been recording podcast intereviews here at Partners and they even interviewed a few academics. I'll listen to the podcasts and point to some of the best ones in a later blog entry. My major problem is finding time to listen to all of the podcats at b-eye-network.com . Perhaps I'll spend a few days and try to catch up and put together my list of the 10 "best" podcasts on the b-eye-network.

Finally, last night I chatted briefly with Richard Hackathorn. Richard taught DSS for many years and he understands how important it is that we share our knowledge. Richard has a Thought Leader interview in today's Teradata Times. A few quotes:

Hackathorn: "I think anybody who is following current best practices is realizing business value from their data warehouse."

Hackathorn: "We need to tap into what frontline workers are doing, seeing and experiencing and feed that knowledge back into the data warehouse."

I've gotta run to a meeting with Shawn Rogers about enhancing DSSResources.com, PlanningSkills.com, DecisionAutomation.com and DecisionSupportWorld.com. I wish I had time to report on the great sessions here at Partners ... more in my trip report.

Posted by Dan Power at 11:29 AM |

October 8, 2007

Tactical Data-Driven DSS

Insights into Action is the theme of this year's Teradata Partners User Group Conference. The conference started for me on Sunday, October 7. It was a busy day with a workshop from 8am-12:30pm conducted by Stephen Brobst, Chief Technology Officer of Teradata on Active Data Warehouse Deployment. Stephen's workshop was a great blend of strategic concepts and technical issues associated with building and deploying tactical DSS.

This morning Michael Koehler, President and CEO of Teradata, reminded an opening session audience of approximately 3000 that Teradata was the first database product designed especially for decision support.

According to the new slogan, Teradata is "focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing and enterprise analytics". The reality is that Teradata provides an array of products that can help information Technology staff build and deploy strategic and tactical data-driven decision support systems.

Until about 1999, users of data warehouses and data-driven DSS focused on periodic reporting, ad hoc queries, strategic analyses and creating decision support special studies. Today once the data warehouse infrastructure is in place and a need is established, we can build and deploy data-driven DSS that assist in frontline, operations decision making and real-time performance monitoring.

Brobst draws a distinction between Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems, traditional DSS and tactical DSS. What I call tactical data-driven DSS have many characteristics that are similar to OLTP as far as systems performance, flexibility of queries, systems availability, update frequency, query type and indexing. The major difference is the contrasting purposes of OLTP and tactical data-driven DSS, i.e. recordkeeping/bookkeeping versus supporting operations decision making. A tactical data-driven DSS will also have more integrated data, historical data as well as current OLTP-like data.

This blog isn't the right format to explain tactical data-driven DSS, but perhaps in a future article or column I can expand on the concept. The conclusion is clear -- the technologies are available today to build sophisticated data-driven DSS to support business logistics decisions, customer service decisions, inventory management decisions and many other operations decisions that can benefit from current, timely facts.

I'll prepare a trip report on Teradata Partners for the next issue of DSS News that will be published Oct. 21, 2007. Yesterday's DSS News included my column titled "What are common DSS architectural patterns or styles?"

Posted by Dan Power at 11:12 AM |