The Business Intelligence Blog

Is building an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) the best path to business intelligence (BI)? It’s a perennially vexing question that — thanks to a couple of recent trends in BI and data warehousing (DW) — has taken on new life.

The value of the full-fledged EDW seems unassailable. Over the last half-decade, however, some of the biggest EDW champions have moderated their stances, such that they now both countenance the existence of alternatives and, under certain very special conditions, are even willing to admit they’re useful. The result is that although the EDW is still seen as the Holy Grail of data warehousing, departmental (and even enterprise) data marts are now countenanced as well.

Active EDW giant Teradata Inc. is the foremost case in point, but other players — including relative newcomer Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), which is in the high-end DW segment (by its acquisition of Knightsbridge Solutions) and markets Neoview, a DW appliance-like offering — are staking out similar ground. (In addition to Neoview, HP also partners with both Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. to market appliances in the 1 to 32 TB range.)

Interesting debate on TDWI.

A fantastic postcard history of Business Intelligence from Microsoft BI.

The “Microsoft SMB Insight Report” reflects the insight of Small Business Specialists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Brazil. The following are some of Microsoft’s key findings on the technologies most likely to drive growth and profitability for SMBs in 2009:

— Fifty percent of the surveyed Small Business Specialists identified virtualization or IT consolidation through a small or midsize server as the technology most likely to reduce operating costs.
— The Small Business Specialists expect a 20 percentage point increase this year in the number of SMBs that use software as a service.
— More than 50 percent of the Small Business Specialists considered customer relationship management (CRM: 34.05, 0, 0%), virtualization or IT consolidation through a small or midsize server as the best investment for maximizing business growth in a down economy.
— Nearly 40 percent expect an increased interest in business intelligence and identified it as a critical tool for helping improve a customer’s experience and increase loyalty.
— More than half of the surveyed Small Business Specialists anticipate an increase in the number of SMB remote workers, and nearly 60 percent expect that the shift to more remote workers also will lead to bigger roles and more responsibilities for those individuals working remotely.

The key here is the increased interest in business intelligence which I think makes total sense given the state of business. From the PRNewswire[Fox]

The challenging economic climate has caused many organizations to take a closer look at their IT strategies in an effort to reduce costs while still maintaining quality. One particular emerging area that is being reevaluated because of its significant licensing, maintenance and specialized support cost is that of business intelligence platforms.

The release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, with enhanced business intelligence features, has provided Innovative Architects, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner located in Duluth, GA, with several clients ready to migrate from various competing platforms solely to SQL Server. Innovative Architects has developed proprietary conversion accelerators that provide software automation for converting from other competing point products to the Microsoft BI platform. Innovative Architects’s BI conversion accelerators can reduce the time and cost of replatforming by as much as 50%.

“Our clients rarely use the sophisticated modeling features that they are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for and, ultimately, ‘export to Excel’ to actually perform much of their data analysis. When we demonstrate the full capabilities for information insight that the combination of SQL Server 2008 and Excel 2007 can provide, our clients have been amazed,” said Tony Baldwin, Director of Enterprise Solutions at Innovative Architects.

More from PRNewsWire

A blogpost on BI Vendors by Doug Henschen on Intelligent Enterprise -

In the “Advanced Analytics” camp, IDC’s stats show that Microsoft, SPSS and SAS were the fastest-growing vendors among the top five with 20.0%, 17.8% and 15.2% sales increases, respectively (see chart at left). Visual Numerics grew 9.3% and Teradata treaded water with 3.0% growth. Mind you, SAS and SPSS are in a league of their own with $440 million and $205 million in revenue, respectively, while all the others were in the Single-A, sub-$50 million ballpark.

SAS has plenty to crow about in IDC’s stats, so it has once again purchased rights to distribute an excerpt of the report as a free download. Unfortunately, this year’s excerpt only covers the top-five vendors in each category (last year’s excerpt covered 21 BI tools vendors and 13 analytics vendors). If you’re prepared to pay $3,500, you can purchase the complete “Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2007 Vendor Shares” report, which details sales among the top-15 vendors in BI in 2007 — a list that adds MicroStrategy, Information Builders, Actuate, QlikTech, Panorama Software, IBM (without Cognos), and TIBCO to the companies mentioned above.

From Business Week article -

Microsoft is buying Powerset, developer of what it hopes is a smarter way to search the Web. Powerset uses so-called “semantic Web” technology that brings up results based on an understanding of a word’s meaning and the context of its use. That’s in contrast to the method used by the major search engines, which work primarily by matching words in queries to those on Web pages. Microsoft announced the acquisition July 1 on a blog, saying it shares Powerset’s vision “to take search to the next level by adding understanding on the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.” News of Microsoft’s interest in Powerset was reported June 26 by industry blog VentureBeat. According to the article, Microsoft has offered more than $100 million to acquire the company. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The purchase could give Microsoft a big leg up in efforts to catch Google. Powerset and other semantic search engines outperform Google in some cases (BusinessWeek.com, 9/17/07). They respond particularly well when users want detailed answers to questions in specific subject categories for which there are a lot of Web pages with similar keywords, such as health or law. “Semantic search takes it to the third level,” says Eric Tilenius, an early investor in Powerset and Kango, which applies semantic search technology to travel.

From RedmondMag article on Microsoft’s Sharepoint

Financially, SharePoint represents a big plus in Microsoft’s product stack. The SharePoint 2007 product generated $800 million in revenues in Microsoft’s fiscal-year 2007, Creese said. That figure is $50 million more than the total revenue generated by Salesforce.com — a hosted customer relationship management solution provider — in its fiscal-year 2008, he added.

Creese offered a caveat for organizations expecting SharePoint to work right out of the box. The solution may require some customization to meet an organization’s needs.

“SharePoint has been a huge success in the market,” Creese said. “However, what we’re starting to find is that a high-tuned SharePoint installation requires custom coding and third-party” support, including perhaps third-party software.

Here’s a follow-up to the previously posted series, Breakthroughs in Analytics, from Tech News World.

In the latest update, Ned Madden talks about the various tools and vendors in the Analytics domain. Read more.

Today’s software packages are much more focused on the actual application of analytical approaches to specific types of decision problems and specific types of industries, according to Anthony Milano, GMI’s VP of professional services.

“In the old days, tools were typically very general purpose in nature,” Milano told TechNewsWorld. “Now, oftentimes, tools are much more focused on helping users solve specific types of problems in business verticals and industries.”

Vendors are even adapting their core analytical engines to specific needs by creating a packaged solution that includes a version of the engine, analytic models, processes, methodologies, add-ons and extensions that allow the product to solve a very specific need, Milano said.

“Importantly, this type of solution minimizes the amount of time required to solve the problem and makes it easier for the client to get the job done without requiring a deep topic expert,” he added. “In effect, these packaged solutions embed the expertise in the solution.”

Milano stressed the importance of analytics solutions that are provided under the rental model from an application service provider (ASP) as Software as a Service (SaaS).

“These software delivery models have proved to be very cost-effective and efficient for customers, particularly when all the costs of owning and installing your own software are understood,” he said.

Another reason why cloud computing is the in-thing these days. From WP -

Microsoft Corp sees tens of millions of corporate e-mail accounts moving to its data centers over the next five years, shifting to a business model that may thin profit margins but generate more revenue.

In an interview ahead of the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, Chris Capossela, who manages Microsoft’s Office products, said the company will see more and more companies abandon their own in-house computer systems and shift to “cloud computing,” a less expensive alternative.

Cloud computing is the trend by Internet powerhouses to array huge numbers of computers in centralized data centers to deliver Web-based applications to far-flung users.

Microsoft built its business selling software to run on local machines, both computer servers and personal computers, but, in recent years, it has invested billions of dollars in massive data centers, which are the basic infrastructure for a wide range of Web services.

Microsoft’s Advance08 – the advertising conference featuring James Cameroon & Bill Gates, starts today at Redmond.

The prime focus is on digital advertising and how the future of digital media will touch people’s life. This event is also looked forward as this will be Bill Gate’s one of his last public appearances as a full-time Microsoft employee.

The global advertising community’s most influential leaders have come together at advance08 to debate and discuss the factors affecting the future of advertising media:

How is new media reshaping the relationship between brands and consumers?
How do marketers work and communicate with their target audience?
Where is the future of media heading, and what does it look like?

Building on the successful format of SAS, advance08 focuses on the main themes that are reshaping the landscape of digital marketing. Learn more about these topics from prominent figures in the global advertising community, from Michael Eisner and James Cameron to visionary Bill Gates.