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Business Intelligence Tips
Cognos Tip: The Importance of OLAP Reporting
Cognos.com Tip: The aggregated business intelligence marketplace is an extremely dynamic and vital part of the enterprise software industry. For the potential buyer of these products, information on market share (and ranking of vendors within that market) is a valuable management aid in purchasing decision-making. It’s a good idea to examine market share analytical data through OLAP reporting. The OLAP report tracks the OLAP segment of the BI market sector.
The OLAP Report estimates that the size of the 2006 market grew just over 16 percent, about 2.5 percent more than 2005. They report that the growth of the OLAP segment was the strongest of the enterprise software sectors. In terms of vendors, Cognos ranked third in 2006 with 12.9 percent market share.
Stability in a growing market still equals growth and Cognos has demonstrated that “growth through stability” admirably.
Note: The OLAP Report is a free content site that also offers subscriber-only information, including detailed reviews of most OLAP products.
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Where BI Is Heading
Real-time business intelligence is driving the future.Charles Nicholls, CEO of SeeWhy, a software company in the UK, observes, “business users don’t want to wait for information … why should business intelligence be any different?”This will create change within organizations to accommodate and exploit “real-time flows of business data” notes Nigel Stokes, CEO of Data Mirror Corp. of Toronto.
This is manifesting itself within the newly established moniker of ‘BI 2.0,’ described as a real-time analog to traditional BI data retrieval, manipulation and exploitation of information.Are you ready for it?
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Cognos Tip: Vendor-Written BI White Papers As A Research Tool
Cognos.com Tip: Researching a technology-related procurement problem as complex as business intelligence can be challenging to the most seasoned manager. Thankfully, the advent of the Internet has opened avenues of information that were formerly available only to academics and, rarely, certain subject matter experts. Generalized research can be performed on various help sites. More specialized leads can frequently be found on university, professional association and not-for-profit informational sites. An important source of research materials is frequently overlooked or bypassed as being somewhat biased or prejudiced – BI white papers. These documents can be invaluable for the context they provide as they relate various product offerings to successful case studies of current installations. Cognos, for one, has no fewer than forty papers listed on their website. Use these sources wisely and remember they represent an important view of this complex subject.
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Observations On Three Top BI Vendors
The OLAP Report identified the top three OLAP vendors as Microsoft, Hyperion and Cognos in that order.Other indicators show that those companies fall near the top across the realm of business intelligence software.In this abbreviated forum, it is impossible to provide exhaustive insight to differentiate these quality BI players, yet a few observations are in order:
·Microsoft – Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 represents a significant presence in the BI marketplace.It apparently offers all of the important features couched in a framework of familiar legacy systems.Building on the widely deployed Office suite of products, they incorporate tools known to most, especially non-IT users.Microsoft has found a symbiotic blend of a huge deployed base with innovative add-ons and acquired adjuncts that set them apart from their competitors.It is no wonder they are at the top and growing in market share.
·Hyperion – Hyperion’s System 9 is a significant and powerful suite of business intelligence tools geared to the extremely valuable concept of performance management.However, it is apparent that the System 9 foundation is somewhat tied to financial management applications.This may not be all that bad, since IT grew up in MIS and financial reporting.It does make one wonder if by de-emphasizing other business function areas, their declining market share may have suffered.
·Cognos – Cognos 8 is a truly comprehensive product line.It appears to be integrated and directed to all areas of enterprise activity.There is also a keen emphasis on performance management.This richness of scope seems to be more competitive with Microsoft and possibly explains Cognos’ maintenance of share in a wildly growing market.
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Cognos Tip: BI Competency Center
Cognos.com Tip: Is your business looking to maximize the growth and profitability potential of enterprise performance management? Look to the concept of the BI competency center as a needed resource. A competency center is a formalized training and execution facility whose main aim is to promote and deliver corporate-wide consistency through BI standardization, sharing of knowledge, and ultimately, to enable effective BI implementation.
Make sure your vendor of choice offers interoperability similar to this and your BI competency center will help you achieve enterprise performance management.
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Cognos Tip: Open Data Strategy And BI Competency Centers
Cognos.com Tip: The one area of importance with the business intelligence competency center concept is the need to facilitate the organization’s entire BI/IT installation to interoperate with a host of data sources. One vendor’s flagship product-line, Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, utilizes an open data strategy to enable complete data access, regardless of source. Included in this capability are integrated hooks to: ·Relational databases from IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Teradata, and Sybase, SAP BW ·Widely deployed ERP systems, including mySAP (R/3), PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle eBusiness Suite, and Siebel CRM ·Enterprise data warehouses and marts, with both 3NF and star schemas ·All widely used OLAP sources, including IBM DB2 OLAP Server, Cognos PowerCubes, Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Oracle10G, and Essbase ·Modern data sources, such as XML, LDAP, and WSDL ·Planning and budgeting data ·Satellite data sources, including Excel files, PowerPoint files, Access files, flat files, and more ·Mainframe sources, including VSAM, IMS, IDMS, Cobol copybooks, and others ·Content management data, including FileNet, Documentum, OpenSoft, and others
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Cognos Tip: Understanding The BI User Community
Cognos.com Tip: Business intelligence standardization seeks to define and homogenize each of the many facets of the technology to enhance corporate understanding among user groups and functional disciplines within the organization. Make sure you recognize the various users and their particular needs. There are six general user groups: ·Executives ·Managers ·IT Administrators ·Professional Report Authors ·Suppliers and Customers ·Business Consumers
Executives, managers and business consumers make up fully ninety-five percent of the BI user community. The following characterizes each user and identifies their basic BI needs.
Executives are the key decision makers within the organization. Their influence spans the strategic and tactical operations of the business and they are the main drivers of most policy components. Their needs are somewhat unique compared to other users and include information regarding key metrics, function appropriate updates and status alerts, and secure access to information.
Managers comprise at least a quarter of the community and consist of the tactical-level executers of corporate policy and are responsible for directing most functional business area activities. Their broad functional responsibilities require individualized right of entry to many BI capabilities, including multi-dimensional data query (e.g. drill-down/through) for subtle informational kernels, user-friendly Web-based BI authoring, and, infrequently, analytical and performance measure management.
IT Administrators are a key BI user group, including information architects, technical support, and other IT professionals that configure, deploy and support the entire BI technology suite. This vital assemblage requires the complete range of BI access, functionality and control for all users. They also require vendor-provided systems and tools that possess ease of maintenance and infrastructure compatibility.
Professional report authors, also called ‘power users’, are expert authors that are the developer’s ‘users of choice’ for BI software, despite representing only five percent of users. They require advanced BI capabilities in the areas of report authoring tools, large-scale distribution ability, comprehensive BI capabilities for data sourcing and outputting, speed of data access, and capability response.
Business consumers are the rank and file members of the organization’s functional business area teams and share their basic needs with the supplier/customer group. Each group requires little interaction with the reports they are privy to, yet require the information to be presented clearly and succinctly.
