If you are looking for a book that describes the process of implementing a Business Intelligence project, authors Larissa Moss and Shaku Atre have done an excellent job. Their book Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications describes a ground plan for BI from a vendor neutral perspective. With the number of BI offerings that are available, each touting their own style, it’s refreshing to finally get an outlook that focuses on managing the project over selling specific features. This book certainly fills that void. [More…]

January 31, 2008. The IBM purchase of Cognos is complete. Following the SAP purchase of Business Object, and the Oracle purchase of Hyperion and now BEA, finalizing the purchase of Cognos must be a relief to IBM. The deal had been in the works for months, and with the approval of Cognos shareholders has now come to pass. [More…]

Business Process Management (BPM) is an activity focused on the continuous improvement of business operations and the technology that supports it. Business Process Management uses Process Modeling techniques to analyze, design, implement, monitor, and optimize, business functions. From an Information Technology (IT) perspective it is similar to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The IT aspect of Business Process Management is often called Business Process Modeling, and included as part of an Enterprise Architecture. [More…]

Enterprise Architecture is the process of planning, designing, and implementing the structure of an organization’s knowledge assets, information processes, and workflow, to support and align with its business goals and strategy. The underlying purpose is to ensure that business processes, their organization, and performance, is directly addressed by current and future information technology, including hardware systems, application software, and data storage mechanisms. [More…]

Business Intelligence encompasses a range of techniques to collect, integrate, analyze, and present information about business operations. Business Intelligence tools draw upon historical data contained in a relational database, Data Warehouse. or Data Mart. Current information is compared with historical data as well as predictions from models to generate reports that help decision makers evaluate performance. Data Visualization techniques combined with Data Mining tools may be applied to financial, production, and sales data to identify trends through the use of statistical analysis and machine learning techniques. [More…]

Digital Signage could soon be coming to a display screen near you. Imagine Google AdWords tied into a network of Internet-driven kiosk advertisements. Combined with RFID technology it might identify the items you are purchasing and offer coupons through a store display or in a checkout line. The Google patent Allocating Advertising Space In A Network of Displays describes the format in detail. Here is an excerpt… [More…]

Why do some teams work well together and other do not? A great deal of research has been done over the years to determine why some collaborative efforts excel while others fail miserably. While the reasons vary, ten major factors are consistently present in teams that are successful. Here are the top ten, including the number one. Take a look! [More…]

On January 16, 2008, Sun Microsystems announced that it will purchase MySQL AB for a cool $1 billion. MySQL AB is known for the widely popular MySQL database. Sun Microsystems is the creator of the Java programming language and the Solaris Unix-based operating system, as well as Java support technologies such as NetBeans. [More…]

On January 16, 2008, Oracle Corporation announced that it will purchase BEA Systems for $8.5 billion. The announcement comes three months after BEA rejected an initial offer of $17 a share. The new offer of $19.38 a share is 14% higher than the original, and 24% higher than the closing price of $15.58 on the day the deal was made. [More…]

A Data Warehouse is a repository for historical business data. A data warehouse is used to consolidate large amounts transaction and operational data into a form that can be queried for analysis. Typically the data in a data warehouse has been cleansed and normalized in a process known as ETL (extract, transform, and load). The data is them organized by specific dimensions and stored in a Data Cube. Dimensions include time (day, month, year), geographic locale (country, region, state, city), and product type. [More…]

Data Mining is part of the Business Intelligence process. Data Mining is centered on the extraction and analysis of useful information from large data sets. Data mining uses an extensive collection of techniques and algorithms, including statistics and artificial intelligence approaches, and also pattern recognition and machine learning. [More…]