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