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March 5, 2007
In The Trial-and-Error Method for Data Architecture I discussed some common data architecture mistakes. In this article, I point out areas where companies tend to go wrong in […]
January 18, 2007
As a coach of my sons’ soccer teams, I’ve noticed something that occasionally holds back the ambitious players. Rather than focusing on basics, such as learning […]
January 17, 2007
Technical people often think that delivering great solutions is the key to satisfying business users. It is not. Delivering the solution users want is the key. […]
January 16, 2007
What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. – Captain in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke What is the most likely cause of failed business […]
January 12, 2007
Data warehousing (DW) appliances aren’t the only hardware appliances shaking up the industry. New on the scene are business intelligence (BI) appliances, which also have the […]
October 12, 2006
Data warehousing (DW) appliances are being touted as potential market changing technology by technology and financial analysts alike. Vendors say these bundles of hardware and software […]
September 5, 2006
Before operational business intelligence (BI) came on the scene, classifying BI applications was simple: enterprise applications and BI/DW activities were clearly separate domains with their own […]
July 14, 2006
A couple of IT managers recently approached me with a thorny issue. The key business sponsor for their data warehousing effort asked them if they should […]
July 11, 2006
Are data governance projects doomed? According to the searchDataManagement.com article “Data governance requires checks and balances, Gartner says,” a recent Gartner study predicts that “by 2008, less than […]
June 12, 2006
Earlier this year, at the 2006 Gartner Business Intelligence Conference, I heard a market prediction that made me wonder if industry-watchers are focusing too far into the […]
June 2, 2006
How trustworthy is the data that you provide? Not very, if it has quality problems. Data quality is one of the biggest roadblocks to trusting corporate […]
May 11, 2006
Does this sound familiar? Your business users are complaining that they constantly have to debate and reconcile the numbers in different reports. They complain that the […]
May 10, 2006
As Martha Stewart would say, getting information into the hands of business users is a “good thing.” Every enterprise needs to provide accurate, timely information for […]
April 14, 2006
If you work in IT, you better like alphabet soup: master data management (MDM); customer data integration (CDI); corporate performance management (CPM); business intelligence (BI); enterprise […]
March 12, 2006
Business groups are empowered by knowledge — and knowledge comes, in part, from having access to accurate and timely information. It is generally up to IT […]
February 12, 2006
In Align Metadata and Business Initiatives, we discussed the two types of metadata: technical and business. The fact that there are two metadata types may be old […]
February 10, 2006
Plenty of business intelligence (BI) or data warehouse projects have been blindsided by complications related to data quality. Sometimes these issues aren’t apparent until business users […]
January 12, 2006
You don’t often hear “metadata management” and “business initiatives” in the same sentence. It’s time for that to change. Metadata management is the secret ingredient that […]
January 12, 2006
Each week millions of people watch the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or one of its offspring, CSI: NY and CSI: Miami. The premise of […]
November 12, 2005
As we discussed in my previous column, big data warehouses are back in style. In a 2004 TDWI study, 60 percent of respondents indicated that they were adopting […]
November 12, 2005
Just like boot-cut jeans and fuel-efficient cars, big data warehouses are coming back in style. Take a trip down memory lane, when IBM introduced the corporate […]
October 12, 2005
Our high-tech culture suffers from a not-invented-here syndrome. If we weren’t the masterminds behind a project, we think it can’t possibly be a good one. When […]
September 29, 2005
While data warehousing technologies and methodologies have evolved over the years, ideologies, in many cases, have not. Taking a narrow-minded approach to your data warehousing strategy […]
August 12, 2005
It’s been 20 years since the term “data warehousing” was first coined. Since then, it has evolved into a mainstream activity for Fortune 1000 companies, with […]
June 12, 2005
In part 1 of this article we discussed the ugly duckling called an operational data store (ODS). Rather than discussing the conventional wisdom and, quite frankly, the […]
June 12, 2005
What do you call that thing that’s holding your data? Don’t know? Then it must be an operational data store (ODS). No term has been muddied […]
May 12, 2005
Religious wars. We have them in IT all the time. Everyone debates architecture. The “high priests” of our trade guard it. The approaches espoused by Ralph […]
April 28, 2005
The current king of business intelligence (BI) tools is Microsoft Excel. Microsoft states that there are over 150 million Excel users, with many of them using […]
April 12, 2005
The thought of meta data management doesn’t exactly inspire whoops of joy from the average IT manager. However, like flossing, it’s one of those things you’ve […]
March 12, 2005
If you’re trying to architect or build a cost-effective, productive business intelligence (BI) program, it’s important that you thoroughly understand the data franchising component of the […]
December 12, 2004
Key components of the data integration framework (DIF) are the software tools used to create, deploy and maintain it. This month, we discuss tools used for […]
October 12, 2004
Data standards ensure the consistency, accuracy, integrity and validity that are critical to your success. Data is not usually clean and consistent, especially when gathered […]
September 12, 2004
In my earlier column “Do You Need a Data Integration Center of Expertise?,” I discussed these key points: You need to integrate data, not just create another version of […]
August 12, 2004
This month, we explore the impact of several business intelligence (BI) trends on data integration. These trends include: business (or corporate) performance management (BPM or CPM), […]
July 13, 2004
Reining in the proliferation of expensive, redundant data silos requires a methodical approach that includes establishing a data integration center of expertise. In their quest for […]