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September 29, 2007 Cognos Acquires Applix: What's the Deal With That? Earlier this month, the BI vendor world grew just a tad smaller when BI giant Cognos announced it was acquiring performance management vendor Applix for $339 million. Craig Schiff provided some insights on what the acquisition means to the BI/analytics world here. Craig, a leading business performance management analyst, observes that the acquisition gives Cognos a leg up in the financial performance management arena, an area it has been angling for in recent years. He adds that "Cognos will now have its own profitability analysis solution. Also, the combined entity will be a force to be reckoned with in the mid-market." The main negative that Craig sees with the acquisition is product overlap between the two companies. "Although I have not seen PowerPlay and [Applix] TM1 go head to head in many deals and they have very different strengths, the products have been presented in a similar manner from a marketing perspective." The Applix acquisition may only be the beginning for Cognos. As CFO Magazine's Roy Harris observes, Cognos CFO Tom Manley recently hinted that Cognos is looking to acquire more vendors in the analytics and performance management space. "We want to be the independent supplier of performance management solutions," he is quoted as saying. Posted by joemckendrick in Performance Management  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0) BI 101 There's no doubt that business intelligence has crossed the chasm from the exclusive domain of specialists sifting through mounds of archived data to an everyday operational tool that leverages real-time data feeds for all kinds of workers. If you've been using these tools for a while, you probably know the lay of the land. For those just starting to explore the possibilities, the choices and levels of capabilities can be overwhelming. In this new report in InformationWeek, Mary Hayes Weier provides a practical overview of how to sort through the maze of business intelligence products on the market. Weier then reinforces points made in my previous post -- proceed with caution to BI democracy. "It's great that software vendors are creating BI apps for all kinds of workers, but proceed cautiously. If people aren't properly trained or if they query data in unconventional ways, the end result could be imprecise information, sluggish system performance, and ultimately bad business decisions. Choose the right tools, set policies, train users -- then outpace the competition with the power of your analysis." Well said. Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0) September 27, 2007 BI 'Democracy': Too Much of a Good Thing? One theme that is constantly being voiced by BI vendors and proponents these days is the deployment of these tools in more of a "democracy" setting -- making analytic capabilities to as many employees across the enterprise as possible. In essence, moving toward an analytocracy. (Like that word?) This is in line with the long-term drive to flatten the organization chart -- pushing decision-making as close to the line as possible. As I mentioned in a post a couple of months back, in a survey I helped conduct with Cognos and the Oracle Applications User Group, we found that we're still a long way off from the ideal analytocracy. BI reporting remains tied up in IT departments, and is still limited to analysts or certain decision makers. The majority of respondents to the OAUG survey report that it takes more than three to five days to get a report out of IT. Overall, the survey found, fewer than 10 percent of employ­ees have access to BI and corporate per­formance management tools. Lately, Ann All over at IT Business Edge has wondered if perhaps we should tread with caution before rushing into unfettered access to BI. She points to a Computerworld article that describes the challenges two major corporations had when they opened up their BI more to the masses. For example, Del Monte had to wrestle with having several departments using different sets of business rules and filtering to produce reports, resulting in multiple different versions of the truth. The company’s director of business systems and decision support is quoted as saying that “too much flexibility and ad hoc capabilities in the hands of the wrong person can result in islands of autonomy, homegrown subsystem processes and the proliferation of multiple versions of the truth.” Valero Energy Corp. also encountered similar issues, with users running reports on multiple different versions of data before it consolidated all its reporting into a single data warehouse and set of front-end reporting tools. However, the company had to provide a great deal of end-user training and education to build usage of the new environment. “'Don’t assume, ‘If we build it, they will come,'" the IT director said. Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0) September 22, 2007 A Tussle Over Semantics About Semantics In my most recent post here at BI in Action, I attempted to wade into the often-arcane waters of Semantics. Many pundits have taken to calling the phenomenon -- whatever form it takes -- "Web 3.0," implying that things will move to a whole new level. Now, it seems Gartner has voiced its displeasure at the term "Web 3.0," saying that new technologies such as virtual worlds and the Semantic Web do not deserve their own new label. According to Gartner analysts, speaking at a recent conference and quoted in Network World, since things such as Semantic Web and virtual worlds are “not providing the same kind of fundamental change as blogs, wikis and social networking tools,” they don't qualify as a dot-oh release. As analyst Gene Phifer put it: “It’s not going to be another era like Web 2.0. However, there will be some very interesting innovative things coming out. If you’re in love with numbering schemes, maybe it’s Web 2.1.” Gartner projects a 42% compound annual growth rate in the Web 2.0 market through 2011. Best of all, much of the stuff is cheap, they said. Phifer pointed out that “mashup technology might cost a few hundred thousand dollars, while blogging and wiki tools could cost a few thousand. But that’s not as expensive as acquiring and managing a traditional software infrastructure. You’re not looking at humongous investments.” Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0) September 20, 2007 Semantics: What's the Deal With That? How relevant are Semantics to business intelligence and analytics? The irrepressible James Kobileus, a fan of all things Semantic (whom I frequently join in the SOA BriefingsDirect podcasts, aka the Gardner Gang), points to a post by Bill Inmon, the guru of gurus in data warehousing and analytics, who questions the value of semantics to the business: "I admit it. When it comes to Semantics, I don’t just get it. You can call me misguided, an old fuddy duddy, or just plain dumb. In one way or another, perhaps all of those names fit. But at the end of the day, I just don’t understand Semantics." A definition is in order here, but that definition can get pretty fuzzy. Even Wikipedia gets tongue-tied and convoluted trying to explain the concept. Essentially, Semantics is identifying the meaning that is attached to data, whether it's through tagging or associations or other means. It's not that Bill Inmon doesn't understand what Semantics are, but, rather, how they ultimately benefit the business. For example, he doesn't see the value proposition to ontologies in software development. Inmon found semantic logic to be quite interesting, in that it reminded him of "a really good crossword puzzle." But still no business logic. Finally, Inmon found linguistics to be "perhaps the biggest disappointment of all." That's because despite the fact that it has been around for years, and plenty of time, money, and resources have gone into linguistics, no apparent business application has emerged. Folks have been talking up the "Semantic Web" (or Web 3.0) a lot lately, which, in theory, puts a great deal of data analysis capabilities out in the cloud versus having to buy, install, and maintain a lot of analytic tools on your own. Jim noted that one of things he likes about Semantic Web "is that one can pretty much connect it to anything one wishes on a philosophic, ontologic, metaphysic, technologic, or sociologic level." In other words, it throws open vast storehouses of information -- formerly locked away from view -- and enables any type of interpretation or leveraging the end-user sees fit. Isn't that ultimately the vision of BI and analytics in its purest form? To be able to ask any question, of any information source, at any time, and get an answer back. An InformationWeek article from May discusses how a couple of companies are already putting some aspects of Semantics into practice. At GlaxoSmithKline, an abstraction layer of semantic data is being tested in an effort to provide a more flexible IT infrastructure and increased productivity through automation. The goal, the article states, is to apply computer-based reasoning to evaluate and filter massive amounts of experimental data. At Eastman Kodak, Semantic Web tools are helping customers manage growing collections of digital images by inferring meaning from visual data. As Kodak chairman and CEO Antonio Perez put it, the goal is to have pictures "begin to recognize each other--so, without human instruction, a picture will use its metadata to find another picture with related metadata, so that all the pictures keep assembling in new groups, depending on how they relate to each other." Lorraine Lawson of IT Business Edge also puts Semantics in their proper perspective, quoting Uche Ogbuji, partner at Zepheira, a knowledge management company specializing in Semantic Web standards. Ogbuji stated (or understated) that Semantic Web technology “has suffered a lack of pragmatic focus.” However, "where the technology really shines, at least at this stage of development, is when it’s used with enterprise data architecture." Currently, most enterprise data architecture efforts are vendor-driven, rather than standards- and Internet-driven. Still, these are pilot efforts, and Bill Inmon ponders whether Semantics will ever show value in the market. "Perhaps semantics just doesn’t have a commercial application and never will. Perhaps the point of semantics is not to have commercial success. Another possibility is that semantics is a technology whose time has not yet come." Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0) September 18, 2007 Competing on Analytics When There's Too Much Data Tom Davenport coined the phrase in the title of his impressive book a couple of years back, and now everyone wants to do it: Compete on Analytics. It sounds so good -- but how close are we to this nirvana? That's a question I set out to answer in one of my latest articles in Database Trends & Applications, and it looks like there's plenty of movement in this direction. The challenge is that we've gone into overkill mode with the data we're gathering, and the technology to better help sort things out is still just arriving. Many companies are inun­dated with data, and are still mired in earlier generations of query and report­ing products. As Eric Blankenburg, vice president of application and integration solutions at Avanade, told me, "Most organizations are barely at the toddler stage when it comes to analytics... We are drowning in information. It’s past the point where it is even possible for us to interpret the data and make reasoned decisions without some significant level of analytical support.” I also worked with Cognos, the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and Unisphere Research to assemble a survey of 296 data applica­tions managers, who agreed with this prognosis: The study found that 91 percent of companies said that their decision-making capabilities were stymied by a lack of complete information. Yet, three out of four also report they suffer from ‘information overload.’ Identifying and separating out the pieces of data that have the most value may be like looking for a particular piece of straw in a haystack. Also, the majority of respondents to the OAUG survey report that it takes more than three to five days to get a report out of IT. Overall, the survey found, fewer than 10 percent of employ­ees have access to BI and corporate per­formance management tools. The key to successfully competing on analytics is embedding analytic functional­ity in every mission-critical application across the enterprise -- not treating BI and analytics as standalone applications run separately from the action. Marc Andrews, director of strategy and busi­ness development for unstructured information at IBM, told me that “Most companies are using BI for traditional querying and report­ing, not for real-time operational busi­ness intelligence. They’re not using it as part of their business applications - as part of processing a claim, as part of helping a customer resolve a problem, or as part of processing a transaction.” This also places a greater urgency on data quality as well. Mary Crissey, analytics marketing manager at SAS Institute, said that many companies may rush too fast to rely on real-time or near real-time data without vetting it for accuracy or timeliness. But the bottom line is prices for sophisticated analytic tools and software is coming down, to the point where more companies can afford to compete on analytics, and thus be in a position to reap the benefits. But it's going to take time. Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)