Business Intelligence Lowdown

BI to Fight Crime

English county Gloucestershire is deploying business intelligence (BI) solutions from SAS as part of its efforts to reduce crime and the fear of crime, and become one of the most effective opertional forces in the UK. The county is improving the quality of and standardizing its data to comply with the deadline of March 2006 for the Cross Regional Information Sharing Project (CRISP), which mandates that all 43 forces in England and Wales allow other forces access to their data. Vnunet reports:

The BI software from supplier SAS is helping employees to search records and generate error reports, says Reg Barnard, Gloucestershire Constabulary's information services development manager. 'Instead of having a large pile of data that we never looked at, we want to look at it as an asset, and use it to try to gain value for the organisation,' he added.

High-Speed Data Processor From IBM

System z9 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP engine), the new high-speed data processor from IBM, is expected to enhance and expedite data processing tasks related to customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and business intelligence (BI) computing processes. The data processor is built to work in tandem with IBM's DB2 database. Users of IBM z9 mainframes can upgrade to the zIIP engine for $125,000.  Biz Intelligence Pipeline reports:

The zIIP processor comes on the heels of other specialty processors that IBM has been adding to the mainframe, including the zAAP processor made available in 2004 for speeding Java applications. The zIIP specialty processor will be available before the end of the year, but IBM officials would not be more specific.

Enterprise Search - A useful BI tool

Companies and businesses everywhere are now realizing that their volume of data doubles every 3 months. This snowballing nature of data today makes enterprise search all the more relevant. It basically goes through your file system and indexed documents via your Web browser.

The look and feel of the search result pages is completely customizable using ASP and SQL. Enterprise search can find information stored in many different containers, including e-mail servers, desktops, enterprise application databases, content management systems, file systems, intranet sites and external Web sites.

Enterprise search applications become a sort of virtual repository of corporate information, uniting these disparate sources behind one interface. Now Google seems to be getting into this monopoly, which was controlled by 2 European companies. Call centers, AT&T, IBM, Siemens, and General Motors and other global companies have been using it to spot trends and answers. 

Google hopes to undercut the specialists with its Google Search Appliance.  Google Search Appliance looks inward, indexing and sifting the digital data to answer specific questions pertaining to that firm alone. Not only has Google been successful at providing an enterprise search tool for some companies but also has their end users derive a reasonable level of satisfaction and at much lower costs.

It is just a matter of time given the future in it, before the Internet Giants like MSN and Yahoo invest time, money and effort into bettering their own Enterprise Search engines to catch up. Enterprise search is different from the usual consumer search as the information is not stored on Web pages or Web sites and the standard of relevance is also different.

Inside the enterprise the relevance is different from that of the internet while sifting through the data. And, relevance algorithms that work well for consumer Web search don't apply inside the enterprise. Inside an enterprise you might with an enterprise search come up with thousands of relevant data and all could be equally relevant and this is the main concern that is being addressed by the providers.

Informatica Extends Reach

Data integration solutions provider Informatica has tied up the European IT company Bull to establish a reseller, support and integration network spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The partnership includes exchange of technology to port Informatica's PowerCenter and PowerExchange Itanium 2 suites into Bull's NovaScale server family. Data Warehouse Knowledge Base reports:

Combining PowerCenter and PowerExchange functionality with the power of Bull's NovaScale and Escala servers is expected to extend data integration, migration and synchronisation and datawarehouse population for organisations.

IBM to Invest in Data Management

IBM is planning to cash in on the need for better information management in all organizations. The computer vendor publicized its plans to invest an additional $ 1 billion toward data management software and services over the next three years. The investment is spurred by the innovative technological advances in hardware and software, pressure from new data-intensive technologies, and the need for quality data throughout an enterprise. Computer World reports:

IBM sees a solid business reason for the investment. Steve Mills, an IBM senior vice president and Software Group executive, said customer demand for information management-related software and services is expected to give the company "double-digit" growth in those areas.

Analytics and Performance Management

It is difficult to draw the line that differentiates analytics from performance management in a call center. Analytics tools are usually integrated within performance management software, hence the confusion between the two. Analytics refers to the use of information from various sources to generate quantitative and comparative reports of past and ongoing call records. Performance management applies quality measures on analytics to derive quantitative information from them.

A report listing the number of calls, the people who attended those calls, the duration of the calls, and the customers who called, can be generated from the Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). Analytics can add an extra dimension to the report by combining it with sales figures and drawing parallels between the amount of time spent on calls that translates directly into increased sales. With performance management, call recordings can be analyzed and judged to gauge customers' responses and agents' performance. This information can then be used to regulate how calls are routed handled, and how service personnel are scheduled. 

Reporting, analytics and performance management can thus be visualized as three layers of the same application __ that of improving performance and reducing costs in a call center. If reporting has a single dimension to it, analytics is two-dimensional, while performance management is three-dimensional.

Another way of perceiving the difference between analytics and performance management is by looking at the user of the information generated from each application, says David Middleton of AIM Technology. Analytics generally provide the top management of the company with an overall picture of what is going on in the call center. Performance management on the other hand, is used to enhance the functioning style of agents who handle calls.

Though performance management does help in giving answers when analytics cannot, most vendors do not differentiate between the two. They are both types of business intelligence software that are being increasingly used to add value and quality to the call center, and integrate its operations with that of the enterprise.

Business Objects Leads BI Vendor List

Business Objects has topped the list of leading business intelligence (BI), database, and application vendors, according to a survey conducted by Forrester Research. Ten vendors __ Actuate, Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, Information Builders, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Oracle, SAP, and SAS __ were subject to an in-depth evaluation across 92 criteria. Close on the heels of Business Objects in BI platform leadership were Cognos, Hyperion, and MicroStrategy. SAS gained top points in enterprise analytics, while Actuate and Information Builders scored in enterprise reporting and scalability. The report also found that Microsoft's latest BI offering provided better integration capabilities with Microsoft Office. Oracle and SAP were mentioned as emphasizing integration with their own enterprise applications over stronger reporting capabilities.

Data mining - A BI threat to Security?

"Data mining" - is associated with Business Intelligence and it helps gather information. Unknown to many an internet user, it is being used by several companies to learn about who you are and what you do. Initially they were introduced as personalized pages.

Sure it looked good to have a web page with a layout you had set when you last logged in - the same colors, themes and contents. It is also amusing to have a small window pop up which says "Hello James... looking for a house loan". But, how on earth did they know that you were looking for a loan or a house or a car?

Data mining is also a concern with governments eavesdropping on citizens. Computer technology is used to extract knowledge that's buried in enormous volumes of undigested information. With the speed at which computers can crunch data today searching through a few hundreds of thousands of lines of data to filter out a few key words - it is easy.

So if you searched for “Hijack” and related words…its easy to pick you up. Similarly the contents of your chats can be searched in no time to detect possible pedophiles and murderers or even tax evaders. While these are the high points of Data Mining, it can also be used to search and sort through trillions of bits of raw data culled from telephone calls, e-mails, the Internet, airlines, car rentals, stores, credit card records and other sources.

To a common man are these not the very threats he was trying to shield himself from by using a firewall and anti spy software and anti virus software. And here reputed companies and makers of search engines are doing the same thing. What’s more worrying is that these are the very useful sites you just cannot do without. So in a creepy way even the innocent citizen has been given the same"preferential" treatment as Bin Laden. Now is that not a misuse of technology and invasion to one's privacy?

IBM Ties Up with Business Objects

Business intelligence (BI) solutions provider Business Objects and IBM are collaborating their resources to provide value to the healthcare and life sciences sphere. IBM's Clinical Genomics is now integrated with business intelligence capabilities from Business Objects to provide access to information across a wider subscriber base. Database Trends and Applications reports:

"Things that used to take 12 weeks can be done in a matter of hours now," Kerri Atkins, IBM alliance director for the Americas, explained. "Being able to bring patient information together quickly and more easily allows them to improve patient care, as well as research with patients."

Teradata Data Warehouse Heads East

ABN AMRO, the international banking services provider, will implement a data warehouse platform from Teradata, provider of enterprise analytic technologies and services, to support business development for its consumer businesses in Asia. The regional data warehouse (RDW) will first be rolled out at the bank's Taiwan branches, followed by those in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and China, to analyze customer revenue, monitor credit risk metrics, and handle customer relationship management (CRM). Data Warehouse Knowledge Base reports:

"ABM AMRO is deeply rooted in Asian financial markets," said Jim Brown, head of the Asia Consumer Client Segment of ABN AMRO. "To better serve our customers and fulfill the needs of the company's marketing management and risk control, we need a robust decision support platform. After a thorough vendor evaluation process, we decided to work with Teradata to deploy our data warehouse and CRM solution."

Business Objects to Improve Budget Preparation

Meridian Health, provider of health services, facilities, and programs across New Jersey, has deployed planning solutions from business intelligence solution provider Business Objects, to increase efficiency in the preparation of budgets and to improve functionality in its financial reporting applications. Crm2day reports:

Meridian can now calculate net patient service revenue budgets, and fixed cost center budgets and margins with more accuracy and in less time. Additionally, Meridian ensures reports are reflective of the changing needs of the end user by automating processes and eliminating the need to develop reports that provide only marginal business value.

SAS Supports Open Metadata Architecture

Business intelligence (BI) and analytics provider SAS has tied up with Meta Integration Technology Incorporated (MITI) to provide its Data Integration clients with the ability to integrate and manage metadata from disparate sources, thus expediting implementations at a lower cost. MITI's Meta Integration Model Bridges (MIMB) will offer support for open metadata architecture through which users can exchange metadata between different products. Crm2Day reports:

"The partnership between SAS and Meta Integration Technology Inc. brings added value and an innovative competitive advantage to customers," said Christian Bremeau, president and CEO of MITI. "The ability to import and export metadata leverages metadata for analysis increases the value for business intelligence and enables better management decisions."

BI Vendor Targets India

Business Objects is foraying into the Indian business intelligence (BI) market with plans to triple its customer base over the next three years. Besides the existing BI users like the telecom, retail, and financial sectors, new segments like the BPO industry and the government will be targeted, said Business Objects' Company Business Development Director India/SAARC Sanjay Deshmukh. Hindustan Times reports:

In the next two years, the government will be the biggest customer in BI space with huge data to be managed, said Deshmukh. "Many government departments have compiled the data and are ready for the next level of business intelligence applications," he said, adding they were in advanced level of talks with a few for the software.

BI in the Retail Industry

Implementing business intelligence (BI) technology in the retail industry can provide value to the business by driving sales and profitability, reducing operational costs, and presenting a better understanding of customer buying behavior. BI and analytics are being deployed by leading retailers worldwide like Wal-Mart, Foot Locker, Staples, Williams-Sonoma, and Amazon.com in the United States, Carrefour and Karstadt in Germany, Marks & Spencer and J. Sainsbury's in the United Kingdom, and Pao de Acucar in Brazil to take various strategic decisions including the location of retail outlets, the number and color of each item to include in a store, and the amount of discount to offer.

Applying BI to areas like merchandising, marketing and operations has set the cash registers ringing in retail outlets. Business units are using the large amounts of data generated to extract useful information that can help outsmart the competition, optimize space usage, take advantage of credit and loyalty card usage to drive more sales, and use the Internet as a channel for sales.

Analyzing past sales data and predicting future trends, retailers can decide on the optimal allocation for each store. BI can help in optimizing space and manpower usage. Through effective segmentation and profiling, customer preferences and buying trends can be used to drive future sales.

An effective BI system will have to combine data management procedures like cleansing, classifying, and consolidating data across disparate systems, with predictive analytics like data mining, forecasting, and optimization, to provide insights into customer, supplier, product, and operational data that can be used to increase profits. The future of BI in the retailing industry lies in how valuable it is in maximizing customer satisfaction and profitability with the optimal mix of products of good quality, and efficient and courteous service.

Hybrid OLAP Tools

Online analytical processing (OLAP) tools are now using visual presentations like charts, maps and diagrams to help users detect data patterns that help in the decision-making process. A few vendors have come out with innovative implementations of the OLAP technology.

• Tableau from Tableau Software generates tables from standard structured OLAP and relational data sources, has an interactive display, and can hold embedded charts with multidimensional data views within cells.
• Kheops Technologies' JMap Spatial OLAP extension presents a multidimensional view of data through interactive maps, tables and diagrams. It also offers Web map navigation and manipulation with a modular architecture.
• Text OLAP that is a part of Megaputer's PolyAnalyst suite of data and text mining tools delivers an interactive, structured analysis of text documents. The difference between conventional text mining is evident in the use of extracted terms and concepts as dimensions. Entities are displayed in the matrix form with linked charts and color-coded extracts from the reference documents.

BI From Call Centers

Instead of just serving as customer service hubs, call centers are evolving as business intelligence gathering points. Quality monitoring technology and analysis tools are being leveraged to extract customer intelligence from conversations with clients.

Customer interactions hold a hoard of information about buying trends and competitive products and services. This information can be mined using speech analytic tools that map words and phrases to find the root cause of customer problems. Word and phrase identification implements can be used in conjunction with emotion detection tools to recognize and detect spoken and unspoken information about each call.

However, only only a minority of call centers use quality monitoring and business intelligence tools, as many business units are still separate from the centers that handle their customer service obligations. With the trend slowly but steadily gaining popularity, there will be more organizations joining those who are using analytics to generate more revenue.

Sutter Deploys BI Solution

Northern California-based Sutter Health is deploying Autonomy Corporation's Intelligent Data Operating Layer infrastructure software to allow easy search, analyze, and retrieve operations from unstructured sources like the Internet, scanned articles, and emails. The software will integrate structured and unstructured information from multiple text, speech and video repositories across the 26 hospitals that Sutter operates. Information Week reports:

Autonomy' search engine software will help Sutter identify new markets, health-care services, and business opportunities, such as enabling Sutter to be among the first health-care provider in a community to offer services utilizing important new medical devices or pharmaceutical products, says Jim Harrison, who was recently named to the new position of VP of business intelligence and is heading up Sutter's new business intelligence group, which formally had been called the strategy and business development team.

Enterprise Information Integration

Enterprise Information Integration (EII) is being touted as the solution to the ills __ regulatory compliance, real-time business intelligence (BI), and the daunting task of converging structured and unstructured information __ plaguing the business world. EII is defined as the integration of data from multiple systems into a unified, consistent and accurate representation geared toward the viewing and manipulation of the data. It integrates the information assets of an enterprise by providing access to diverse information sources from a variety of disparate siloes of information.

Probably this definition of EII reminds you of traditional information integration techniques like ETL-oriented data warehousing and customer data integration. The difference lies in the fact that EII accesses, instead of moving the information. EII provides a consolidated view of data through virtualization techniques that hide the combined query processing system that pulls data from various sources, while ETL moves data to data repositories and data marts.  EII focuses on less data movement and transformation while combining disparate definitions of data elements using strong global query optimization. EII is not a replacement for data warehousing; it complements the technology by bringing in data from minor or non-standard sources, and presenting it to the client on demand.

Other pivotal elements of EII include metadata management and robust data modeling. Metadata supports data reusability by creating and maintaining the logic and interfaces needed to preserve virtual views of customers and products. EII tools help maintain and enhance security of metadata and data in diverse sources. The technology is vital in providing an integrated platform that blends data access standards with data about the sources and the information needs.

In a nutshell, EII aims at providing a unified, on-demand view of data by creating access to multiple and different sources of data securely and efficiently.

Re-branded Data Integration Platform

Similarity Systems' data quality software Athanor and data profiling tool Axio will be integrated into newer versions of Informatica Corporation's PowerCenter data integration platform in the near future. Maintenance releases of PowerCenter in April this year will incorporate Athanor's data cleansing, rules definition and quality metrics monitoring capabilities, and data discovery tool Axio's data asset structuring and cataloguing capabilities, to enhance content coverage, performance and platform support. Computer Wire reports:

Both maintenance releases are being rolled out to coincide with the official launch of PowerCenter 8 (codenamed Zeus) this April, which Girish Pancha, executive vice president of products for Informatica said will radically improve data quality rules definition, data profiling and reporting capabilities for business users.

HP Tests DB Archival Waters

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is spreading out into the database archiving market with the impending purchase of database archiving specialist Outerbay Technologies. The computer manufacturer is establishing its acquisition on the belief that database volumes will grow rapidly. Computer Wire reports:

OuterBay's software prunes databases of infrequently accessed data, moving older data to lower storage tiers in order to maximize application performance and reduce tier one capacity usage. Financial details of the purchase by HP were not revealed.

BI Benefits

What do users of business intelligence software solutions look for in their BI suites? A Ventana Research survey of 471 information technology and line-of-business users in large and midsize companies identified the following benefits in vendors' business intelligence applications, in decreasing order of importance:

• Improved competitiveness
• Improved customer service
• Improved profitability
• Improved revenue generation
• Improved capacity

Fighting Future Crime

The utility of business intelligence (BI) is spreading across all fields; BI software is being deployed for a variety of purposes ranging from preventing theft to deterring crime. The Richmond Police Department (RPD) in Virginia is implementing data mining, predictive analysis, and BI tools from enterprise business intelligence software solutions providers SPSS and Information Builders to prevent future crime from happening. The application, which combines SPSS' predictive analysis and Information Builders' enterprise BI capabilities along with an analytic framework from RTI International, an independent scientific research and technology development corporation, will aid the RPD in deploying police power to the right places at the right time and thus preventing crime. The software and implementation make sense since criminal activity follows predictable patterns, and the police are natural data miners who excel at wading through data to derive solutions to crimes, says Colleen McCue, senior research scientist at RTI International. Eweek reports:

"By better characterizing crime trends and patterns to predict where crime was likely to occur, the police department could anticipate criminal activity and proactively place their resources," McCue added.

Healthcare Provider Deploys Cognos BI Suite

QualChoice, Arkansas' premier healthcare insurance provider, has standardized on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for its BI platform and warehouse. The BI solution from Cognos will be used to build an enterprise-wide data warehouse to hold all information relating to medical claims, provider contracts, financials, and business operations. CRM Knowledge Base reports:

With Cognos 8 BI, QualChoice of Arkansas can replace the numerous and siloed Excel spreadsheets and SQL queries with one single product that can provide an accurate, consolidated view of the company's performance. "Having Cognos 8 BI as our standard BI platform in place will help us better serve our members, brokers, providers, and employers," said Michael Stock, COO and CFO, QualChoice/QCA Health Plan, Inc.

Support for Open-Source DB

The new release of MicroStrategy 8, the business intelligence (BI) solution from MicroStrategy Incorporated, comes with certification for popular open-source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL, in addition to support offered for all major databases. With advances in the latest version of its BI software, MicroStrategy Inc. is moving closer to its goal of supporting open systems and open-source standards that affect business intelligence. CRM Knowledge Base reports:

Other open source/open system capabilities of MicroStrategy 8 include support for the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Apache/Tomcat web servers, the Linux operating system, and the Pluto portal. "The new release of MicroStrategy 8 is designed to offer added options for customers that choose open source relational database systems for their enterprise," said MicroStrategy COO Sanju Bansal.

DB Vendors Jump on BI Bandwagon

The BI market is continuing to thrive, which is why application and database vendors are also hoping for a piece of the pie. The market, which was till now being catered to by specialist third-party providers like Business Objects, Information Builders and Cognos, is now being permeated by Oracle and SAP.

Appliance vendor Whirlpool is one of those who have ditched BI tools from specialist vendors to invest in SAP's Netweaver Business Intelligence suite, which will help in closing gaps in front-end visualization and reporting capabilities, ease integration requirements, and eliminate the need for employees with multiple skill sets. Others are also switching to BI tools from their database providers as they wish to avoid the isolation that occurs when back-end software is upgraded before the BI vendor can support the update.

But traditional BI vendors still have an advantage since they support disparate data sources, whereas the platform providers generally focus on their own data sources, says John Hagerty, an analyst at AMR Research. This edge will not last for long though, since IBM has already introduced a BI tool, the DB2 Data Warehouse Edition, which overcomes some of the issues facing other platform vendors by supporting multi-vendor data sources.

SAS Records Record Growth

SAS, provider of business intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions, has announced that its revenue for the year 2005 stood at $1.68 billion, an increase of 10 percent over 2004. The growth was propelled by the increased demand for SAS Enterprise BI Server, and for applications designed for industries including banking, sales, insurance, retail, education and government, reported SAS. The Americas stood first in contributing to SAS' sales with 46 percent, while Europe came in second with 44 percent, followed by the Middle East and Africa, and the remainder from Asia. Biz Intelligence Pipeline reports:

SAS 9 Enterprise Intelligence platform includes data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence elements. The company intends to continue pushing the tools this year. "That's our focus for 2006," said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight in a statement.

Driving Factors in the BI Market

The worldwide demand for business intelligence (BI) tools and solutions is growing exponentially, with license revenue expected to touch the $3 billion mark by the year 2009, according to a survey from research firm Gartner. The factors that are driving the growing trend in the BI market are:

• Business performance management (BPM), which is also known as Corporate performance management (CPM)
• The growing level of data generated from other application areas like Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Customer relationship management (CRM)
• The need for data of the highest quality
• The need to comply with regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and Basel II

Embedded Databases - Open-Source Vs Commercial

With the multitude of options available in the open-source database market, many organizations are questioning the need to pay for a commercial database product. The deciding factor in the choice between open-source and commercial lies in identifying the key business requirements of an organization. If you place emphasis on stability and functionality issues, you'd be better off with a commercial database since open-source offerings cover just the basics, says Les King, program director for DB2 Marketing Information Management Software Group at IBM. He adds that an enterprise should deliberate on seven key comparison points when making the choice __ scalability, availability, transaction throughput, larger capacity, support for mixed workloads, autonomic features, and integration with other products.

A key selling point for open-source databases is that they can be tailored to suit an organization's specific needs. In reality though, those who deploy open-source solutions do so mostly because they are looking for a free, embeddable, distributable database, and not because they are looking to customize the software.

But on the downside, open-source technology will not be able to meet the demanding changes in the needs of database users, contends Microsoft's Carol Dullmeyer, senior product manager for SQL Server. The morphing of database needs and features will drive customers' abilities to grow their databases, build reports, analyze the business, or distribute data to mobile employees, she adds. Security of data is another cause for concern, besides cost and flexibility issues. Organizations should consider if the code in open-source offerings is secure and stable.

In the meantime, the bigger players in the commercial database market like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, are also joining the open-source fray by offering free, scaled-down versions of their products to lure basic users, in the hope that they will be tempted to upgrade at a later date.

Utility Provider Adds Intelligence to Grid

CenterPoint energy Houston Electric LLC, an electric and gas utility company based in Houston, has deployed intelligence technology from IBM to enhance the efficiency of its power grid. The company is using the pilot version of an intelligent grid that will automatically enable the power grid to report power outages, component failures and other information over a real-time, IP-based broadband-over-power-line (BPL) system. The five-year, $300 million project will use strategically placed sensors and smart electric meters installed in all customer locations to add a layer of intelligence to its operations. Computer World reports:

Don Cortez, vice president of distribution support for the company's electric operations, said the new technology would help the utility to virtually upgrade its power lines, substations and other electrical transmission equipment without needing a complete and hugely expensive physical replacement.

New Version BPM Tool

BEA Systems Inc. is set to launch AquaLogic Interaction Process 1.5, a business process management (BPM) tool that will aid in the building and management of collaborative business processes. AquaLogic was developed based on Plumtree Software's Plumtree Process Server, after BEA took over the reins of Plumtree. The tool will allow users to interact with processes instead of just tying together business processes from existing back-end systems with Web services to build composite applications, according to Christine Wan, BEA's director of product marketing. Computer World reports:

AquaLogic Interaction Process 1.5 can attach collaboration documents to work items, map a business process to a collaboration project and allow users to participate in threaded discussions within a process. Potential use cases include expense approval, benefits administration, customer management, field service management, inventory management and sales cycle management.

Oracle Snaps Up Open-Source DB Vendor

Oracle Corporation has extended its embedded database product line with the acquisition of open-source database vendor Sleepycat Software Incorporated. Berkeley DB from Sleepycat is embedded in various open-source products like Linux and BDS UNIX operating systems, Apache Web server, OpenLDAP directory and the OpenOffice productivity suite. Sleepycat isn't Oracle's first open-source purchase. Last year, it bought Finland's Innobase, which makes the InnoDB database engine used at the heart of MySQL AB's database. Computer World reports:

The moves by software vendors to snap up open-source companies are seen partly as a way to attract additional developers, in the hope that those developers will upgrade to paid-for products for wide application deployments.

Healthcare Provider Deploys Data Warehouse Solution

Providence Health & Services (PHS) has deployed an enterprise data warehouse solution based on the Ensemble universal integration platform from InterSystems Corporation. PHS, which operates acute care facilities, freestanding long-term care facilities, and low income and assisted living facilities across five states in the Pacific Northwest region, is using Ensemble to integrate information from 12 systems including 30 data repositories. Database Trends and Applications reports:

The integration project highlights the growing trend of leveraging a wide range of data sources to enable optimal healthcare decisions. More than 400,000 encounter records will be streaming into the PHS warehouse annually. In addition, more than 1.5 million encounter records will flow in from more than 150 physicians' locations and clinics.

Information Lifecycle Management

With the need to store virtually every item of data nearly forever, and the rising costs of data storage and maintenance, Information lifecycle management (ILC) is becoming an increased concern for organizations today. ILM is the process by which data is classified and sorted according to it worth to the business. The data so classified is then stored, managed and protected according to its importance.

Though ILM brings with it the benefits reduced storage costs, maximized utilization, minimized redundancy, and security in regulatory compliance situations, the process is often ambiguous and difficult to implement. This is because the definition of the value of data is a complex process, as data keeps changing with time. The criticality of data, its frequency of access, and the length of time it needs to be stored are factors that contribute to the calculation of its value.

ILM is a continuous process that can only be improved, never complete, according to Cliff Dutton, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Ibis Consulting, Inc., a provider of electronic discovery and compliance solutions. The concept of cataloguing and classifying huge volumes of data is too daunting a task to attempt, so organizations are better off identifying the subset of data that is critical to business processes and has certain meaning.

Though technologies like HSM software, content management systems, virtualization tools, e-mail/database archiving products, backup software, SATA arrays and content-addressable storage arrays help in the discovery, classification, storage, archival, and automatic movement of data, the ILM decision should focus on the business policies of the organization rather than the ILM infrastructure.

The most time-consuming and laborious part of the ILM strategy is the definition of the business requirements for data storage and protection, says Dutton. By delineating the goal of the organization in implementing ILM, be it disaster recovery, business continuity, regulatory compliance, or meeting service level agreements with external or internal clients, a decision can be reached on how much money should be spent.

Today, the term ILM is being used more to describe the implementation of good management practices to reduce costs, says Jim Damoulakis, CTO at Glasshouse Technologies.

Dashboard Solutions Deployed

Single-source provider of business-to-business IT solutions and services, Software Spectrum, has deployed dashboard solutions from Celequest, provider of operational performance management solutions, with implementation services from data integration and data migration solutions provider, LoganBritton. Celequest Operational Dashboards will help in monitoring key elements of corporate performance, including employee training and retention, sales and profitability, customer satisfaction and retention, and business growth. Database Trends and Applications reports:

The dashboard solution will provide executives, line managers and decision-makers with instant access to the business-critical information they need to monitor and manage business performance, according to the company.

Decision Support Systems

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are interactive, computerized information systems that lend support to the decision making process. There are five specific types of decision support systems:

1. Communications-driven: A DSS that emphasizes communications, collaboration and shared decision-making support.

2. Data-driven: A DSS that emphasizes access to and manipulation of a time-series of internal company data and occasionally, external data.

3. Document-driven: A relatively new form of DSS that is focused on the retrieval and management of unstructured documents.

4. Knowledge-driven: A DSS that suggests or recommends actions to managers through expertise or knowledge about a particular domain, understanding of problems within that domain, and skill at solving some of these problems.

5. Model-driven: A DSS that emphasizes access to and manipulation of statistical, financial, optimization and/or simulation models.

Nike Launches BI Strategy

Shoe manufacturer Nike has launched the Nike Business Intelligence Strategy to facilitate faster and more standardized access to its worldwide data. Over the last five years, the company has replaced its transactional and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with five datamarts, which are to be consolidated into one Business Workflow-based warehouse from SAP AG, said Marianne Faro, Nike's European information manager, at Gartner Inc.'s BI summit in London. InfoWorld reports:

Nike is tapping BI applications to arrive at "one vision of the truth" for analyzing its financial health and for dealing with how to incorporate new acquisitions into their system.

HP to Deliver Combined Tools

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is looking to tie up with Itron Incorporated as part of its efforts to integrate partners in specific vertical markets to deliver combined tools that will help address specific industry issues. HP has merged its OpenView BPI (Business Process Insight) with Itron's metering, data collection, data management and knowledge application suite via open adaptor to enable a utility to track and measure business metrics. Itron is a technology supplier focused on the energy and water industries with more than 3,000 global customers. InfoWorld reports:

HP is likely to target the automotive and high-tech industries in relation to supply chain management (SCM) and product lifecycle management (PLM), according to Margaret Herndon, vertical solutions team lead for HP OpenView. HP is also looking at the pharmaceutical industry in terms of modeling SCM and the clinical trials process, she added.

Executive Dashboards

Managers and executives of most organizations use executive dashboards to enhance and expedite the decision-making process. An executive dashboard acts as an intranet for a group of select employees in an enterprise. The dashboard operations revolve around the key performance indicators (KPI) of the organization. To perform effectively, a dashboard has to identify data sources, means of extracting the data from these sources, and methods to validate and structure the data for the key performance indicators. The dashboard performs the following functions:

1. Helps answer questions about the business and its processes.
2. Helps alert users to any problems that arise.
3. Helps make decisions.

Repositories for Metadata

To understand data and work efficiently with it, one has to grasp the idea of metadata. To put it simply, metadata is data about data, its context and semantics. Though the concept of a repository to store metadata sounds useful, it is theoretically hard to achieve. The metadata storage houses available today are complex, expensive and do not integrate well with modern tools as they tend to follow very formal processes and methods.

However, a few vendors like Xcalia, BEA Systems, Informatica and IBM are working on easy to implement, cost-effective metadata repositories. Xcalia is implementing an XML table-based metadatabase in its Intermediation Platform, which allows the creation of metadata-based transformation rules that allow services and data sources to interact consistently, in parallel with the data's context and semantics, while Informatica is using a metadata repository in its PowerCenter Data Federation data-integration platform.

Cognos BI for Supply Chain Solution

As part of an agreement reached between business intelligence software provider Cognos, and IBS AB, provider of distribution and supply chain software, the Cognos 8 BI solution will be offered as an integrated part of the IBS Business System, to allow customers more efficiency in controlling the supply chain. IBS Business Systems is used to handle operations related to the supply of goods, customer relations and financial control. Business Intelligence Network reports:

"In combining our data warehouse with Cognos' reporting capabilities, the customer receives optimal business support. This is a major competitive advantage for our customers," said Mark Cockings, Vice President of IBS Global Software.

Business Objects Buys Data Quality Provider

Business Objects SA has moved closer to providing its customers with data quality management solutions along with its data integration software. The business intelligence software provider has signed a deal to acquire data quality software vendor Firtstlogic Inc. for US$69 million. IT World reports:

Business Objects said that it expects the acquisition to make it more competitive because customers are looking to standardize on a single platform that can deliver a complete information management tool.

Data Mining Helps Database Marketing

With growing emphasis on the need for maintaining the quality and integrity of data, organizations are spending their time, resources and money in cleaning up their databases. This cleanup process involves replacing outdated data and consolidating data from various sources. But in enterprises that employ database marketing, the purging process can often be leveraged to segment the market in such a way that the most-likely-to-purchase customers can be targeted to help increase profits.

Data mining can be used to the company's advantage if combined with effective market segmentation techniques. Instead of the brute force approach in which all customers are targeted in a marketing campaign, segmentation techniques identify those clients who will perform the best, and thus ensure profitable returns on the campaign. Market segmentation intelligence should be applied to the database to add value to each of the customer records, which can then be used to prioritize customers and rank them according to their order of importance.

Some organizations use a segmentation technique that links multiple customer and prospect databases in a relational manner. These test segments or "cubes" are then tested using discriminating identifiers to decide which segments are of most value to the enterprise. Market segmenting intelligence thus gained can be utilized to build future marketing programs for bigger databases, which in turn will lead to higher returns for the organization, within the given marketing budgets. The bottom line is that sales increase in a timely manner at a lower cost.

Master Data Management

Organizations are being compelled by regulatory demands to define and implement data governance processes that ensure that the definition, quality, security, usage, and management of data are consistent across all business units and IT departments. But while most companies have established data governance programs, there are very few who have taken steps to include master data management (MDM) in these processes. A survey of 220 companies conducted by Ventana Research has found that while 59 percent of them have implemented data governance programs, only 26 percent have proper MDM procedures in place. As a result, very few have total control over their data.

In the data governance process, a team is created to document the lifecycle of information, from the creation of data, to its consumption. The team is also responsible for investigating how data is being reviewed, copied, manipulated and shared, and for identifying the information technologies used to carry out these manipulations on data.

MDM involves integrating data by creating and maintaining common definitions and contexts of data, including data usage, security, and quality. In order to take control of their data, organizations should implement standardized data definitions and a centralized store of key data with mechanisms to check and maintain accuracy, consistency and integration, across the enterprise.

RFID-Oriented BI Tools

Though more and more companies are leveraging radio frequency identification (RFID) for business intelligence (BI) purposes, there is a shortage of BI tools for mining RFID data, according to Keith Gile, research director at Forrester Research Inc. RFID uses radio frequency waves to transmit data from a tag mounted on an item, back to a transponder and database for processing. Though various researches and surveys are predicting increased spending for BI in the coming years, there is not much being done to develop RFID-oriented BI tools. The reason why vendors are not rising to the RFID challenge is probably because they do not have the technology to do so. Successfully linking RFID and BI entails leveraging intellectual property about manufacturing and supply chains that these vendors probably don't have, explained Gile. But things are looking up, with Business Objects being in the process of building relationships with partners that are heavily involved with RFID, according to Russ Hill, director of worldwide consumer packaged goods and retail marketing.

Big Spenders for ERP

Microsoft leads the list of enterprises with high ERP budgets for the year 2006, followed closely by Oracle and SAP AG. "The Enterprise Resource Planning Spending Report, 2005-2006," from AMR Research, compiled after surveying 271 midsize and large companies about their budgets and costs towards enterprise resource planning (ERP), also names SSA Global, Infor, Geac, Lawson, Intentia, IFS, and QAD, among the top spenders for 2006.

BPM Within SOA

Software solutions provider Tibco has merged its business process management (BPM) suite with its business integration offerings to provide BPM capabilities within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Services like customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and legacy applications, can be reused as Tibco posits within business processes. These posits then act as building blocks that can be combined and structured to support other business processes. CRM Daily reports:

According to Tibco, the layering of BPM on top of an SOA will allow the company's customers to reduce the time it takes to bring a product to market. It also will lower development costs because customers will not have to buy multiple process-management suites.

Analytics Ambiguities

An informal survey of users of business intelligence (BI) products conducted by Gartner Incorporated has brought to light the different perceptions of the word "Analytics". Data mining, reporting, monitoring call centers, and online analytical processing (OLAP) were a few of the diverse answers to the question "What does the term analytics mean?", according to Gartner analyst Andreas Bitterer. Gartner defines analytics as a tool to leverage data in a particular functional process (or application) to enable context-specific insight that is actionable. Bitterer said that SAP AG, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have no perceptible definition for the term, but that they, along with Siebel Systems AG, were the best providers of analytical capabilities.

Storage Certification Program

IT managers and database administrators looking to put together high performance storage networks that can speed up I/O-intensive databases, online transaction processes (OLTP), online analytical processes, modeling, content streaming, and high volume data acquisition environments, will benefit from Texas Memory Systems' storage certification program __ Fast Access Storage Tested (FAST). Customers who would like to avoid buying various small products from multiple vendors to build a comprehensive solution will now be able to purchase third-party products bundled together with solid state products from Texas Memory Systems. Database trends and Applications reports:

Texas Memory has tested 4-gigabit host bus adapter and switches certified them "FAST" under the program. All FAST certified products passed Texas Memory Systems interoperability tests and demonstrated performance or features critical to Texas Memory Systems' solid state disk customers, according to the company.

Enhanced BI Solution

DecisionCentric, the business intelligence solution from Decision Technology, is now available with enhanced join capabilities, the technology used widely in data-intensive environments, for use in small and midsize enterprises. The software is based around the concept of data federation, which provides consolidated access to various databases for IT and business users, both with and without ETL or a data warehouse environment. Database Trends and Applications reports:

"There are lots of customers out there that need these join capabilities," said John Owen, director of business development at Decision Technology. "This will enable them to do a lot more with their existing data sources, in terms of flexibility and analysis," he added. "Data keeps growing, and it's impossible to get your arms around it all without the right tools."

Free Data Server Download from IBM

IBM's DB2 Universal Database Express-C (DB2 Express-C) is available as a free download for those looking for a flexible and easy to deploy data server. DB2 Express-C allows any number of users and does not limit the size of the database. Database Trends and Applications reports:

DB2 Express-C offers the same core DB2 data server in a smaller package specifically designed for use in software development, deployment, redistribution and embedding within applications. No charge community support for DB2 Express-C is available via a new public forum on developerWorks, IBM's resource for developers, with optional for-fee support offered by IBM.

Storage Needs of an Organization

The storage strategy of an organization is determined based on certain criteria. Business criteria include assessing the growth stage your company is in, and the backup and restore storage requirements. Technology criteria encompass the types and growth rates of data, and the operating systems and network technology. Lifecycle criteria include the costs associated with scaling, total cost of ownership, administration, maintenance, and hardware and software.

Customer Data Integration

Effective data management is not that easily achieved, according to a Forrest Research report which states that even though 92% of companies surveyed believe that a consolidated and integrated view of customer data is vital to the success of an organization, only 2% of them have managed to successfully deploy what is known as customer data integration.

Customer data integration (CDI) is defined as the process of consolidating and managing customer information from all available sources. Customer contact details, customer valuation data, and information garnered through various interactions with customers are structured and organized to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the customer database.

This aspect makes CDI a key element of customer relationship management. It is a business necessity these days to clean, manage, process, and maintain customer data because CDI projects, though technically complex, can deliver meaningful customer data to the entire organization.

OLAP Survey 5

The results of OLAP Survey 5 conducted by Nigel Pendse and Survey.com provide a detailed view into BI implementations and customer experiences with BI products. The annually conducted survey covers a select group of perceived equal BI application providers known as the "Peer Group". The fifth survey "Peer Group" included the products MicroStrategy, Hyperion Essbase, Cognos PowerPlay, Business Objects, and Oracle Discoverer.

The survey revealed that all the products differed significantly in the number of users or data volumes supported. Most users of OLAP were interested in expanding the use of their solutions. Organizations that conducted a formal evaluation of various products before deciding on the right solution for their processes achieved more success from their OLAP product. Customers were divided over the loyalty issue; while some were happy to stay with their existing provider, others were considering jumping ship to the competition.

The survey also concluded that clear trends have emerged in key areas like customer loyalty, product support quality, data volume, web deployment rate, prevalence rate, and number of seats purchased and deployed.

Data Warehouse Modes

A data warehouse can be designed and structured in three different ways:

1. ROLAP or Relational online analytical processing: Data in this mode is stored in relational databases.

2. MOLAP or Multidimensional online analytical processing: This is the traditionally used mode in OLAP analysis in which data is stored in the form of multidimensional cubes.

3. HOLAP or Hybrid online analytical processing: This mode combines the best features of both the ROLAP and MOLAP modes. MOLAP is used to provide summaries, while ROLAP is used to dig deep into the database for details.

The Value of Datamarts

You have probably come across the term data warehouse, but have you heard the expression "datamart" used in conjunction with the former? Both terms define the storage of data, but on different levels. While a data warehouse is concerned with storage details that focus on the organization of data, a datamart involves the way data is displayed and presented.

A datamart is defined as a logically related subset of data extracted from the complete data warehouse, meaning that the subset of data is related to a single business process or a group of related business processes. Usually, data meeting one or more criteria is extracted to form a datamart, and many datamarts can be used to extract data from one central data warehouse. Here, the focus is on providing customers ease of use, up-to-date and quick reporting capabilities, and effortless mining of sensitive data.

Datamarts are advantageous because they can be designed and built separately from the data warehouse, by just following the underlying architecture of the data warehouse. Marts that are built asynchronously can be used in conjunction with each other. This provides customers a simpler way of working only with data that is related to their processes, rather than being concerned with the complexity of the entire data warehouse.

Development teams also find datamarts useful in designing and maintaining customer applications, as the entire data warehouse design is broken down into simple, uncomplicated structures.

Data inside a datamart can be aggregated, summarized, and averaged according to the specific needs of businesses. Reporting is enhanced while using datamarts since smaller queries performing on a small subset of data are easier to process.

Energy Saving Trends

Of late, the spotlight has shifted to energy saving and pollution control measures to reduce environmental degradation and the greenhouse effect. A two-day conference organized by Sun Microsystems and other large technology firms in Santa Clara, to thrash out the finer points of energy efficiency and conservation in data centers, highlighted this issue.

An average-sized data center, measuring 50,000 square feet, consumes the power needed to light up 2,500 houses. The power is used to run and cool the numerous computer servers housed in a typical data center.

With companies expanding by the day, more employees are added, which in turn translates to more computer systems and more cooling units. The cooling units guzzle the same amount of energy required to keep the systems running. With uninterrupted power supplies for data centers running all day long, it is no wonder that some companies spend up to $2 million towards their data center costs.

"If we can reduce the amount of power data centers consume, we could probably reduce the number of blackouts and slow down the need for new power plants," said Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. He concurs with Sun's proposition that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should develop an Energy Star program that can be used to measure the performance of network servers by a particular metric yardstick, like on a per-watt basis. The challenge lies in providing metrics for the whole data center, he adds.

The Energy Star program is a voluntary label for all consumer appliances to certify that they use less energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Though the program was first applied to certain computers and monitors when announced in 1992, it was extended to include consumer appliances as well.

Sun, on its part, is implementing new low power consumption chips and servers on its systems.

Maintaining Data Consistency

Though firms are giving the highest priority to the quality, consistency, and integrity of data these days, the recovery of data during disaster management manoeuvres still poses a problem. This is because data that is held on standby for emergency purposes is usually not consistent with the data in the production database. The release of Veridata 1.0 promises to ensure consistency and eliminate discrepancies between an organization's standby and production databases. The product comes from the transactional data management (TDM) vendor, GoldenGate Software, and compares source and target data in relational databases to ensure that they are identical. Biz Intelligence Pipeline reports:

Veridata has three components: Veridata server, client agent(s) and the Web/command interface. The server processes comparisons of data served by client agents, which reside on the database servers and connect to the production and standby data sources. Users configure, execute and report on comparisons using a command-line interface or the simple Web interface.

Layers in a BI Suite

Any organization looking to increase revenues by leveraging the benefits of business intelligence should be willing to invest in a comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) solution. Typically, a BI suite is an analytical application with multiple, connected, layers, each usable by employees at different levels of the organization.
The monitoring layer sits on top of the application, and alerts users to the changes in the functioning of processes and activities, through dashboards and scorecards. The analysis layer helps users get to the root cause of any problem using multidimensional analysis. The reporting layer provides detailed operational data so that damage control measures can be effected after a problem has occurred. The planning layer enables the creation of plans, models, cases and scenarios using the output derived from the analysis stage. These plans are fed back to the monitoring stage to be set as targets to be achieved or thresholds not to be crossed.

Read more about harnessing the power of BI

New Data Integration Platform

Siperian Hub XT is the latest data integration platform to hit the market. The multi-product platform comes from the stables of the award-winning master data integration and management software provider Siperian Inc., and promises to facilitate firms in creating and delivering precise, unified views of customers and related locations, products and assets in a real-time operational environment. Data Warehouse Knowledge Base reports:

With Siperian Hub XT, customers can create more efficient and profitable customer relationships, increase the accuracy of regulatory compliance efforts and achieve better insights into the complete customer relationship all while reducing traditional operational costs.

Compliance Rules Affect Data Centers

A survey conducted by Unisphere Media has revealed that most companies had effected changes in their data center processes to comply with new regulatory requirements. Nearly 70% of the respondents of the study, ‘Compliance Management: All Roads Lead to the Data Center’, said they had implemented additional security measures like encryption and additional layers of approvals and documentation. Database Trends and Applications reports:

The study was sponsored by SHARE, the premier IBM user group, in cooperation with its 2005 Alliance Vendors - American Power Conversion, Computer Associates, EMC Corporation, Innovation Data Processing, Isogon: An IBM Company, ISPW BenchMark Technologies Ltd., Luminex Software, Inc., Mainstar Software Corporation, and Siemon.

Complete BPM Suite to Monitor Processes

Business Process Management (BPM) users and developers are being offered a comprehensive BPM solution that allows modeling, execution and monitoring of the entire business process, through the tie-up effected by Celequest, provider of operation performance management solutions, and Intalio, open-source BPM solution provider. Celequest’s business activity monitoring (BAM) will integrate with Intalio’s IntalioIBPMS to allow non-technical business people to monitor processes in real time, without the help of custom monitoring tools. Database Trends and Applications reports:

"The community edition of Intalio|BPMS runs on MySQL with Geronimo Application Server and requires no licensing fees, a great starting point for companies," said Ismael Ghalimi, founder and CEO of Intalio. "And if they want to upgrade to a different database, say Oracle or SQL Server, they can purchase an enterprise license," he added.