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Lyndsay Wise

Hi and welcome to my blog! I look forward to bringing you weekly posts about what is happening in the world of BI, CDI and marketing performance management.

About the author >

Lyndsay is the President and Founder of WiseAnalytics, an independent analyst firm specializing in business intelligence, master data management and unstructured data. For more than seven years, she has assisted clients in business systems analysis, software selection and implementation of enterprise applications. Lyndsay conducts regular research studies, consults, writes articles and speaks about improving the value of business intelligence within organizations. She can be reached at lwise@wiseanalytics.com.

Editor's Note: More articles and resources are available in Lyndsay's BeyeNETWORK Expert Channel. Be sure to visit today!

Looking at an integrated approach to BI and DW architecture

Organizations are generally on a BI continuum - either they are looking at a way to optimize their analytics through better BI and DW architectures, or they are looking at implementing new platforms that will enable strong and strategic analytics. Either way, the goal is the same even though the path to get there might be different. 

When selecting and information management platform, there are two ways to proceed. The first involves general purpose databases that can be optimized for analytics and the second is the adoption of an analytical data warehouse that is developed purely for business intelligence and analytics use. The differences between the two are quite broad even if not always obvious from the start. While general purpose DBs customized for business intelligence applications can enable organizations to get access to the information they require, the way to optimize analytics and ensure support for more complex and diverse analytics is to adopt a framework developed for BI and analytics specifically. The reasons include the ability to expand use and add data sources more easily, take advantage of a wider variety of analytics, increase storage and take advantage of various data latency needs, scalability, etc. And even though traditional database technologies may provide some of these features, the reality is that in most cases they are fairly limited when it involves BI and analytics optimization.

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Posted September 19, 2012 7:27 AM
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Does data discovery really exist?

The terms self-service and data discovery are widely used to identify ease of use and greater levels of interactivity. The promise of data discovery (with added ease of use) is the new buzzword floating around the business intelligence space. On the one side, vendors are building out more interactive dashboard and reporting access that includes the ability to interact with information more broadly. And on the other side, businesses are becoming more savvy with their business intelligence use and want to delve into insights that fall outside of standardized and predefined analytics. Consequently, one of the ways organizations will evaluate their current BI offerings is on their ability to provide this enhanced set of business discovery. And if not, the market seems ripe with offerings headed in this direction.

The real issue though is that many vendors claim to already have mature offerings. The reality within organizations might be much different. What do you think? Fill out this survey and have your say. You will also be automatically entered into a draw to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

Posted June 7, 2012 5:37 AM
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The changing state of data integration - looking at Informatica 9.5

One of the great things about the business intelligence industry is the fact that the market is in a constant state of change with the goal of helping organizations use technology to take advantage of the vast amounts of information available for analysis. The way in which data is handled has changed from traditional ETL jobs and data warehouse storage that required batch processes to deliver results, towards more real-time and ad-hoc interactive capabilities. As we've seen, the market is now able to handle large and complex data sets from a wider variety of sources that include social media and unstructured sources. The addition of cloud also makes it easier to to develop alternate frameworks external to the firewall. 

All of these changes, as well as the countless other trends within the marketplace beg the question - what about data integration? After all, it is fine to load data and use ETL to transform data, but what about the complications of gaining valuable insights out of data in a constantly shifting world that demands up to date information that can be acted upon immediately? How can data be securely and successfully placed in the cloud? How will unstructured data sources be supported as social networking becomes a more prominent way of identifying customer sentiment and business opportunities? These questions are a subset of what organizations are asking themselves as they try to adopt technologies that will help them stay ahead of their competitors. 

Although many vendors are meeting these newer challenges head on, since Informatica 9.5 was released earlier this week, it makes sense to take a closer look at how they are handling the changing data landscape. Informatica has always provided a wide range of data integration solutions. Their 9.5 release actually ties in the aspects mentioned above - such as cloud, big data, social media, etc.- to provide organizations with all of the pieces they require to develop a data infrastructure that addresses all of the key aspects of BI related trends. For instance, Informatica 9.5 provides:
    • Embeddable cloud service that sends data where it is required through the use of a hybrid IT platform, leaving control for information in the hands of the organization
    • Support for big data through broader data virtualization and replication, as well as partition to use resources more effectively
    • The use of Natural Language Processing to analyze social data from sources that are becoming more relevant to organizations, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, social networks, etc.
    • The ability to stream data and support real-time events through CEP (Complex Event Processing) to provide alerts and notifications to be able to act upon important issues that arise
    • Interoperability with Hadoop to support big data processing
All of these areas are becoming increasingly important to organizations. What interests me most aside from the ability to access a large stack of offerings that cover the key aspects required for a strong data integration platform, is the additional focus on data stewardship and ensuring that the full data integration process is governed effectively to ensure that data quality or other issues that arise can be dealt with in an effective manner by data owners.

Most organizations want to focus on dashboards and getting the insights they require. In some cases, this occurs at the expense of strong data management. The reality, though, is that to gain an understanding of what is happening within the realm of Facebook or on Twitter, or to access relevant information through Hadoop, a strong set of data integration processes are required. Consequently, Informatica seems to be focusing their efforts on the areas that will most matter to businesses to maintain competitive edge within the marketplace today.




Posted May 17, 2012 9:25 AM
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The increasing importance of collaboration

Most BI offerings have some level of collaborative feature sets. What this really means in many cases, is that users can email dashboards or share links, and in some cases add annotations or notes. Essentially, when it comes to capabilities that let people collaborate the way they naturally would by the water cooler or in a meeting, much is lacking in the world of BI. Whether this is because of the limitations that exist due to vendor infrastructure or a lack of imagination, most solutions are far from providing organizations with the ability to interact with their BI solutions in a way that enables broad collaboration. 

Despite this lack of innovation in the area of collaboration, there are a few vendors that seem to be getting it right. The ones I think of first are Yellowfin and Lyzasoft - they both build their platform in a way that takes advantage of social media concepts and expectations. While at QlikView Qonnections, I also noticed that their view of collaboration extends to support the way in which business users interact with technology. Aside from being able to share screens and work simultaneously, there is a strong focus on the user experience and how people interact with technology and each other.

In an age where Facebook and Twitter mark the way people interact, annotations within a solution just doesn't cut it. Sending a link to a colleague is no longer enough. Now people need to be able to share their screen, work together, and create real-time conversations to help identify what is happening and how to deal with it. Until BI can do this effectively, solutions will continue to lack in overall effectively. 

Obviously, until more recently, this was not the purpose of business intelligence at all. The ability to consolidate information across disparate business sources, and make sure that targets were being met provided a large part of the value add. Now, with market trends such as mobility, social media analysis, and collaboration focusing around better and immediate access to information in an easier to consume way, it makes sense that the importance of collaboration is increasing. 

Overall, the fact remains that the majority of the BI market is missing the point of collaboration and what it needs to be. Where QlikView provides the ability to work simultaneously on dashboards and Lyzasoft lets people create real-time conversations around analytics, the same cannot be said for many other vendors in the marketplace. And even though many of these solution providers are working towards providing this functionality, unless these tools are provided in an easy to use and intuitive interface, their value proposition will continue to be low at best.




Posted April 29, 2012 11:31 AM
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Understanding data virtualization

This week I interviewed Bob Eve at Composite Software to understand the value proposition of data virtualization for mid-sized organizations. The interview itself can be found on the WiseAnalytics BI4SMB Community. Bob and I discussed what data virtualization is, how it differs from traditional data integration approaches, and how it enhances business agility. In addition, Bob provided some examples of use within mid-sized organizations. 

One example of data virtualization adoption being Compassion International that provides charitable support services to children in developing countries. Their goal is to quadruple the number of its beneficiaries.  To achieve this goal, the IT team needed to modernize the organization's information infrastructure. Bob shared that, "data virtualization has enabled Compassion to both scale their BI infrastructure and meet demanding new information requirements much more easily and quickly than before.  Time-to-solution for new information requests has improved by more than 50%.  And data quality and integrity have improved as well." 

Bob also shared, that "like the larger enterprises, mid-sized organizations share substantive business pressures and face significant technology transformations.  In every case, they were willing to look beyond traditional data integration methods and try something new, data virtualization.   And as a result, all are seeing significant business decision, time-to-solution and resource agility benefits."

Based on what I've seen in the market and what Bob shared, I definitely feel that the broader BI market is ready for a shake up. Traditional ETL and simple data integration activities are no longer as effective within more complex data environments. Before selecting one style over another, businesses should really look at what options exist. Even for organizations that may need to be more creative with their resources, stepping outside of the box might help when looking at the best way to access information assets.



Posted March 8, 2012 5:57 AM
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