Ambient Data and DataStreams instead of DataWarehouses 19 November 2009
Posted by Magnus Carlsson in Architecture, Datawarehouse Architecture, Information Architecture.Tags: data stream, Data Warehouse, real-time data analysis
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Microsoft has done quite some research on capturing high volumes of event data, the idea is that in many cases it is not viable or even possible to build a DW to analyse data streams and also real-time analysis might be needed. Example applications could be click-stream analysis in real-time or analysis of all calls in a phone-netowrk, events generated in a manufacturing plant. The analysis can also be done on historical data, which means that this approach overlaps with traditional DataWarehouses.
The technology is called StreamInsight and can be tested right now, it will be publically available in first half of 2010 as an addition to SQL Server 2008 R2.
Report from Microsoft PDC – Codename “Dallas” 17 November 2009
Posted by Magnus Carlsson in Architecture, Information Architecture, Technology and products.Tags: BI in the cloud, Data Visualization, Microsoft
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I´m currently at PDC in Los Angeles, it is heavy focus on the shift towards the cloud and spicically Windows Azure. From a Information Management and Business Perspective, the new Windows Azure components “Dallas” is extremely cool and will give us a platform where providers and consumers of data can meet. This will be the AppStore for data. Microsoft will take care of billing and also do some quality assurance of the data provided.
Data can be structured, unstructured data, BLOB, images, videos and so on. The really big question is how we are going to use these amazing capabilities. Some obvious usages is distribution of demografics, company information, such as DUNS and all sorts of statistics.
Take a look at: http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/default.aspx for more information on “Dallas”.
What do you see we can build to our clients using this cool technology?
Do you want to impress your audience with Data Visualization? 17 November 2009
Posted by Magnus Carlsson in Technology and products.Tags: Data Visualization, Google, Trendalyzer
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Do you want to present data and also impress your audience? A tool that has been available for some time is Trandanalyzer. I have (a bit late, I admit) started to use Trandanalyzer and I must say that this is really useful in many cases, not just for just for web metrics.
Take a look at: http://www.gapminder.org/ for very inspiring examples and if you havent seen his presentations, Hans Rosling is a role-model for data visualization.
Do you want to do your own visualizations, take a look at:
http://www.gapminder.org/upload-data/motion-chart/
More advanced users can do much more advanced things using the Google visualization API (some of my collegues at Acando is using this), se http://code.google.com/intl/sv/apis/visualization/documentation/gadgetgallery.htm for more on that topic.
Happy visualization!
Business domains – will IT finally be managed effectively? 01 November 2009
Posted by Ola Wallinder in Architecture, BI management, Business Improvements, General.Tags: assessment, business case, business domain, business domains, business intelligence, information management, requirements, ROI
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Following the discussions we´ve had of ERP and BI integration, it is natural to move into the domain thinking. The usual definition of a domain is a rather general interpretation, i.e. a territory, space, knowedge area but also including some kind of managerial or power.
Looking at the integration of ERP and BI, with a managerial perspective, it is interesting to discuss Business Domains, i.e. a domain of business with managerial power to improve the business value of information systems.
The tricky part here is the budgeting and governance part, i.e. the division of budget between IT, business units and a “virtual decision forum” of a Business Domain. The line of thinking leads us to the opportunity of actual movet budget from IT and business units to a new (virtual) managerial body – a Business Domain. By doing that, it is usually possible to gain more business value of the integration of ERP + BI. However, the major obstacle here is the knowledge level of the participants in the domain decision forums and the ability of those preparing decision proposals to present ERP and BI challenges at a management level.
There are a number of examples where the ability to take decisions needs to be improved:
- How do you present masterdata on management level for investments ?
- How do you understand the complexity of a target state ERP+BI landscape ?
- How do you present the performance and cost drivers of alternative BI target states ?
- How do you prioritize target group information need trade-offs vs. efficicent ERP installations ?
etc. etc.
The paradox where ERP+BI is squeezing out BICC 01 October 2009
Posted by Ola Wallinder in Business Improvements, ERP.Tags: BICC manager, business domain, ERP, information management
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A recent reflection from the market is that while ERP suppliers are integrating BI into their platforms – this opens up for a more coherent and common view of the IT strategy – which means that BICC will not have such as a strong position anymore.
The paradox is that while BI is stronger integrated into ERP platforms – this seems to mean that BICC is loosing momentum in IT departments and becomes a less independent unit.
The new challenge might rather be to deal with information management as a part of integrating operational ERP with management oriented BI and tie it all together in an IT strategy.
The new way would rather be to integrate the ERP and BI perspectives towards each business domain. The coherent and common view on IT from a business domain would (with this line of thinking) be better than sliced independent view of BI and ERP, respectively.
Bad information – a management problem 24 September 2009
Posted by Ola Wallinder in Business Improvements, Data quality.Tags: business case, business rules, definitions, information models
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A year ago I did not know of any CEO who had master data or data quality on the top management agenda. Now I know several of them – and it seems that the more I ask, the more interest I get from C-level executives. The thing is that while BI users and sponsors have built data warehouses for a decade or so – and nowadays competition and cost reduction demands increase ever as much – the need for high quality data rapidly increase.
The problem is that most C-level executives – and their BI managers and owners – do not know HOW to approach this issue. What´s your experience of improving data quality ? What´s the best practice approach to HOW ?
One approach is of course to start by using data quality tools with a set of predefined business rules. By using those you will fairly quickly being able to identify fundamental issues and improvements. However, the root causes are usually not easily found (ask why, why, why, why and why again). After a while you will probably come up with some key areas such as:
- Lack of commonly implemented information models
- Various ways of doing the same business activities in support systems
- Different data definitions implemented in support systems
- Lack of business rules of who and when to create, update and delete critical data
Now – this is a management problem !
But, back again – HOW do you solve this. HOW do you involve the business ? What´s the business case ?
Mixing Social Web and Business Intelligence 10 September 2009
Posted by Magnus Carlsson in Collaborative BI, Enterprise 2.0.Tags: business intelligence, Collaborative BI, Enterprise 2.0
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We had a very interesting seminar today att my company on Enterprise 2.0 and how the social web thinking comes to the enterprise environment.
One area that will benefit a lot from this development is Business Intelligence. A few months ago, Gartner published an article in this direction, that I think is owrth reading. The article is publicly available at: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article8/article8.html.
My collegues have a very interesting blog on Enterprise 2.0 at www.thecontenteconomy.com.
Bringing a new BI+ABC product to life 26 August 2009
Posted by Magnus Carlsson in Uncategorized.add a comment
There is a common understanding that many decisions today are based on a vague, or in worst case, a totally wrong understanding of what generates net profit. A popular way to solve this issue is to apply Activity Based Costing (ABC), this was particularly popular about ten years ago, but then had dereasing popularity, at least in Scandinavia, but is now very popular again. A large number of big enterprises have used this this methodology, some with great success, others have left the idea. A problem has been the cumbersome process of implementation, very costly tools and the facts that it has been a problem to process the amout of data required. Now, with great focus on profitability and with the recent years advancement in available technology, it would be possible to create more easy to use and powerful ABC-tools, integrated with leading BI-stacks. The solutions currently available in the market are in general old, hard to integrate and not updated very often. I think the market need a new, modern tool to do this type of analysis. We have already startd development of his type of product and has choosen the Microsoft BI stack to implement it, since no really good ABC tool exists today (that I know of), that is well interated with SQL Server, Sharepoint and Office. This will be an interesting task. More inforatin will son be available on an official product website.
