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14 ottobre

BI Scorecard & Fractals & Project 10 to 100th

I don't see many companies running comparative exercises as to which toolset would best suite their organisation these days - must be a reflection of industry maturity and/or the intricate vendor relationships that currently exist along with some consolidation of software accounts.
I have stated previously that there are the Forrester, TDWI and Gartner sites that offer product comparions - for a price - but the one that has always stood out has been http://www.biscorecard.com/evaluations.asp#BO.
Cindy deserves some recognition, not only for her consistant net presence and posts, but for providing a Blank Scorecard for those unable to purchase a pre-loaded comparative scorecard!
 
Fractals for the pure Maths and Stats beings http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ 
 
Entries Close on 10th October  http://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html
 
 
 
       
13 ottobre

Excel on Steroids?


 
Gemini seems to be the topic of the day and it raises ye age olde debate of the so called 'runaway power user' - Chris has a pretty good overview http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/  
I have never been one for trying to diminish the possiblities of the desktop analyst, and/or trying to herd everyone into a DWH enclosure as the most analytical people in an organisation should be enabled in every way possible. The only focus should be on ensuring that there be some governance and expanded insight into what they're doing so as to ensure continuity and correctness.
Not sure what the Gemini and MS 2010 implications are for the likes of http://www.jedox.com/en/enterprise-spreadsheet-server/excel-olap-server/palo-server.html and the enterprise excel server endeavors. 
 
12 ottobre

Stats & OSS (Open Source Stats)

 
Most generic BI tools are not very statistical orientated, and rightly so as statistical calculations rely on a tight integration with the RDBMS. Now that the RDBMS vendors such as Oracle and MS are heavily investing in DWH, BI, Reporting components of their own, it will be interesting to see if they stick to traditional / generic information delivery options, provide a stat's stack or focus more on industry specific solutions that require statistical formulae of a more complex level. 
There are a few companies that tend to specialise more on the stats front - SAS being the most known - but there's an interesting discussion as to leveraging stats AND soa http://boulderbibraintrust.org/brain_trust_blog/2008/10/spotfile-does-data-viz.php - the key comment being the interaction with the big vendors such as Cognos and BO etc.
 
Comparison of SAS, SPSS, R packages and functions http://rforsasandspssusers.com/
 
 
Aside - supported MS components with virtual servers http://bisqlserver.blogspot.com/
08 ottobre

BI, DWH, CRM etc Links - Mother of All ..

Complete Performance Management Suites


Business Intelligence

Query, Reporting & Analysis Solutions

Business Intelligence from Smaller Vendors

Front-ends & MS Excel Add-ins on top of MS Analysis Services


Corporate Performance Management

Scorecarding

Financial Consolidation & Statutory and Financial Reporting

Planning, Budgeting, Forecasting

Profitability Modeling, Activity Based Costing / Management

CPM-software from Smaller Vendors


Open Source Business Intelligence & CPM - software


Predictive Analytics & Data Mining


Enterprise Data Integration & Extraction, Transformation, Loading (ETL)


Data Quality Technology


Relational DataBase Management Systems (RDBMS)


"Technologies to watch" to support Performance Management

Change Management & Strategy Software

Data Visualisation Solutions

Geographical Information Systems

Meta Data, Data Storage & Movement Technology


Business Intelligence dedicated Hardware / Appliances


Analytic Applications

Analytical CRM based Applications

E-commerce Analytics : Webmining & reporting

Anti-Money Laundering & Fraud Detection

Risk Analysis Software

Vertical Market Specific Analytic Applications

CPG (FMCG) & Retail

Performance Management Magazines & Sites

Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing Resources

... in French

Business Intelligence Blogs

Business Intelligence User- & Newsgroups

Data Mining Resources


BI & CPM Industry Research Providers

07 ottobre

PPS & MOSS & .....

Microsoft 2008 BI conference feedback re Analysis services and BI components http://www.biguru-online.com/.
MS components that apear to be making steady gains on the collaborative front: Performance Point Server and Sharepoint Server.
 
System management gets some new focus: http://www.zenoss.com/ 
With so many components and diverse solutions, integration is still a high priority for most: http://www.jitterbit.com/Solutions/index.php 
 
.... the latest visa run cost me more than a day to get back ... but Dubai was a blast!
02 ottobre

BI in Review

Thanks to http://www.microstrategy.com/ for:
  Gartner’s 2008 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms Report
  Gartner’s BI Platforms User Survey
  TDWI Best Practices Report: Pervasive Business Intelligence
 
The subscription was painless and these reports are always worth a once over - especially when considering how much you normally have to pay for them.
 
Oracle makes it's Appliance announcement http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/exadata.html and I still maintain that it's an RDBMS appliance and not a DWH or BI appliance. Sure, it boosts performance for all possible data exit points, but the promise of x10 faster data retrieval needs to be evaluated in it's context i.e. faster than what? Give us real specs, costs, processing, h/w, s/w for the comparisons.
In fact - the appliance is called a Database Accelerator .... 
 
Nice to see another Open Source practitioner sharing experiences http://www.nicholasgoodman.com/bt/blog/ - I like Kettle ... 
There is actually no debate re running Kettle as an ETL tool as opposed to MS SSIS - it's all related to a sites RDBMS technologies, resources and procedures.
Pentaho does not quite have the sharpness and colours the big players but it's all about functionality and cost - if it suites your requirements, it's definitely worth considering!  
 
Thinking of Operational BI http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/8514
 
..... off to Dubai to renew my Q8 visa .....  
 
 
      
01 ottobre

BI Institute

I encountered a post today calling for the creation of a Business Intelligence Institute to help resolve the issue of the Biz not being aware of the possiblities of BI.
I agree with the concept but disagree with the solution.
Until such time as the business AND IT dedicate key resources and time - for as long as it takes - this just side steps the premise of the BICC.
 
I'm waiting for the big players to jump on the latest global economic governance bandwagon as to marketing their products to help avoid the same again ....
 
There's a new community - SAAS for BI - the net can be a fickle place, so one can only watch and see if it takes off http://saasbi.ning.com/
 
Yet another solution http://www.mits.com/ - clever use of MIT...    
 
And with server virtualization all the rage, I'm about to try http://www.embotics.com/download