The Business Intelligence Blog

This CDWA has served us well the last twenty years. In fact, up to five years ago we had good reasons to use this architecture. The state of database, ETL, and reporting technology did not really allow us to develop something else. All the tools were aimed at supporting the CDWA. But the question right now is: twenty years later, is this still the right architecture? Is this the best possible architecture we can come up with, especially if we consider the new demands and requirements, and if we look at new technologies available in the market? My answer would be no! To me, we are slowly reaching the end of an era. An era where the CDWA was king. It is time for change. This article is the first in a series on the flaws of the CDWA and on an alternative architecture, one that fits the needs and wishes of most organizations for (hopefully) the next twenty years. Let’s start by describing some of the CDWA flaws.

The first flaw is related to the concept of operational business intelligence. More and more, organizations show interest in supporting operational business intelligence. What this means is that the reports that the decision makers use have to include more up-to-date data. Refreshing the source data once a day is not enough for those users. Decision makers who are quite close to the business processes especially need 100% up-to-date data. But how do you do this? You don’t have to be a technological wizard to understand that, if data has to be copied four or five times from one data storage layer to another, to get from the production databases to the reports, doing this in just a few seconds will become close to impossible. We have to simplify the architecture to be able to support operational business intelligence. Bottom line, what it means is that we have to remove data storage layers and minimize the number of copy steps.

Great read from BEye Network. Part 1 and Part 2.

From the Press Release -

Greenplum, a leading provider of database software for business intelligence, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced that Reliance Communications is using Greenplum Database, running on the Sun Data Warehouse Appliance, to power a range of applications, from legal and regulatory compliance to call detail record analysis.

Greenplum Database is the world’s fastest, most cost-effective solution for analyzing the massive amounts of information generated by surging worldwide usage of wireless and broadband services. The Data Warehouse Appliance powered by Sun and Greenplum is the industry’s first cost-effective, high-performance super-capacity data warehouse appliance. Purpose-built for high-performance, large-scale data warehousing, the solution integrates best-in-class database, server, and storage components into one easy-to-use, plug-and-play system.

“The Sun Data Warehouse Appliance running Greenplum Database is helping Reliance meet its goal of superior responsiveness in a challenging data environment — one that is characterized by rapid growth and increasing user demand,” said Raj Joshi, VP and Head (Decision Support Systems) at Reliance Communications Limited. “Deploying the joint Greenplum and Sun solution improved our response times and enabled Reliance Communications to improve our data management.”

Reliance Communications Limited is the telecommunications company of Reliance ADA Group which is one of India’s largest industrial groups. Reliance Communications is known for its innovative market offerings and practices. As Reliance has grown to more than 40 million subscribers, providing accurate and timely data support and analytics to all parts of the business has been a challenge. Turning an ad hoc request from historical records could take multiple hours; even loading a day’s worth of data into the system could take up to three hours.

Chris McAllister at TDWI jots down in a convincing manner , the reasons behind the need for real-time data access. Not just that but why these trends will peak in 2008. A very interesting read.

With a growing number of business users and activities dependent on real-time access to real-time information, it is nearly impossible to find a company or function that wouldn’t benefit from having accurate, up-to-date data. For equity markets and currency changes, account balances and user authentication, help desks, marketing promotions, supply chain, patient care, and sales and manufacturing, any organization can justify a demand for faster and more accurate information. Key trends will drive the demand for real-time data in 2008, including: standardization of low-latency data integration across disparate systems, stricter regulations and service level agreements (SLAs), heterogeneous IT environments, management and maintenance of very large database (VLDB) implementations, and globalization.