In about 6 weeks WiseAnalytics will launch an online community targeted to the needs of small and mid-sized organizations. One of the main goals of the community is to create a centralized access point for information, advice, and collaboration for SMBs implementing or managing their business intelligence environments. Since developer portals and other technical resources abound, this community is targeted towards business users at all levels who are looking for ways to optimize how they interact with technology to make more informed decisions.

Features to be developed over time will include:

1. BI best practices
2. Informative presentations and podcasts
3. Online events
4. Access to advisory services and vendor information
5. Community forums
6. Additional services

Your comments and ideas are important to help us develop the best community possible. In addition, if you’d like to be a beta tester or have early access to the community, please let me know.

I really do believe in keeping religion and politics out of the workplace as well as my personal feelings out of my blogs and writing. But today is a little different.

Yesterday, Canadians lost a political giant – Jack Layton, the leader of the NDP and opposition – after losing his battle to cancer. Even though we lose public figures all the time, and sometimes with not much more than a mention, losing Jack is different. For those of you who know anything about the dryness of Canadian politics, it is fair to say that no matter which side of the fence a person falls on or who they voted for, Jack made politics interesting and had a true sense of integrity by actually making people believe that it is possible to be a politician and still care about people and by being committed to doing what is right. And more importantly, that it is possible to change the status quo while staying within the political framework to do so.

With all of the current global political turmoil, general economic uncertainties, environmental disasters, and the like, sometimes it’s important to step back and take notice of the people in the world of politics who maintain their integrity and really, truly care about those around them (whether or not you agree with their political views). And most importantly, because life can be so fleeting, losing Jack makes us take a step back and appreciate what we have and those we love around us and take stock of where we are, what we’ve done, and what we hope to achieve.

On an interesting note to those fascinated by social media, aside from Jack Layton becoming a top worldwide trend on twitter, it was estimated that in the hours following his death, over 10,000 tweets went out in the form of condolences, links to information, and the like. Social networking really has helped change the way people interact and share information. All of the incoming tweets were literally a blur within my TweetDeck, so it was hard to follow and a little overwhelming. It was probably the first time that I’ve ever really been affected by the power of social media and realized the full opportunity it provides for people to connect with others.

On August 20th, days before he passed away, Jack wrote a letter to Canadians that he wanted published should his treatment not go well. I am including some of the excerpts below:

“To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don't be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.”

“To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.”

“And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one - a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change.”

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

Over the past couple of weeks I have had the chance to attend both Teradata‘s Third Party Influencers event and TDWI. I always enjoy getting updated on the latest technologies and speaking to vendors about what they are doing in relation to expanding their product offerings and providing value to their customers. Here are some of the takeaways from both events:

Teradata Third Party Influencers

This year a lot of the discussion focused on general strategy and growth. For instance, the recent acquisition of Aprimo enables Teradata to expand the use of business applications within their data warehousing platforms by integrating Aprimo’s integrated marketing management suite within their current processes, etc. with the goal of developing a more comprehensive suite of integrated analytics. With Aster Data, Teradata hopes to provide a broader level of support for big data projects within SQL MapReduce environments and provide support for complex data processing and high volumes of information that require processing in a way not natively available within Teradata’s product offerings.

In addition, although Teradata still holds on tightly to the importance of developing an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), they are expanding their focus towards what they call an Integrated Data Warehouse (IDW), which implies starting small for companies not ready to implement an EDW and growing through data warehouse expansion into an eventual EDW. Even though not a total change to their general positioning, what this shows is that there is a greater focus on providing organizations what they need (or want) as many companies do not subscribe to a single EDW or do not find it feasible based on their BI use.

Overall, Teradata’s strategy is threefold which is highlighted by their recent acquisitions as well – it includes:

1. Helping customers integrate data for analytics (with an estimate of the data warehouse market being $27B)
2. Supporting big data -through the acquisition of Aster Data (estimated market of $2B)
3. Increasing the use of integrated applications with Aprimo being one example of the development of strategic partnerships (market estimate $15B)

TDWI

I really enjoyed catching up with vendors and colleagues at TDWI. Some interesting discussions centered on data management (i.e. governance, data integration and data warehousing platforms in the cloud, etc.) and its increasing relevance to SMBs as more expand their BI use and as technologies are more supportive of their environments – i.e. hosted offerings, and lower entry points. In addition, the demos I received from Roambi and Metric Insights were great. Roambi provides mobile BI applications and are expanding the offerings they provide on the iPad and eventually will provide mobile BI on other platforms. But despite their limitations, the look and feel of their offerings helps push the bar for companies looking for a self-service feel to BI interactivity and use through mobile access. Metric Insights, on the other hand, is deployed through a browser and reminds me of the Lyzasoft‘s and Yellowfin‘s of the world in the sense that founder Marius Moscovici has put a lot of focus into the integration of collaborative functionality while maintaining a high level of ease of use. As more and more vendors start to integrate collaborative features within their offerings, hopefully more traditional vendors will also move towards providing higher levels of interactivity as well.