BI information security

Friday, November 16th, 2007 by Peter Scott

These days there are a wealth of restrictions or regulations (SOX, UK Data Protection Act to name but two) on data access and coupled with the simple commercial need to hide sensitive information that means unfettered access to data warehouse data is a thing of the past. Fortunately products such as OBI EE (and SE-One) […]

More BI consolidation

Monday, November 12th, 2007 by Peter Scott

As widely predicted the number of independent reporting tool vendors has diminished. Today’s takeover target is Cognos (who fell into the arms of IBM for 5 billion USD). With the earlier assimilation of Proclarity (Microsoft); Hyperion, Siebel Analytics & Sigma Dynamics (Oracle); and Business Objects (SAP) little remains of a diverse independent (or was […]

BI tools market

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 by Peter Scott

Three weeks ago I wrote that the for sale sign was up at Business Objects, Mark Rittman (who seems to be turning into a newshound with other hot topical stories such as Tom Kyte’s beard) flagged the proposed acquisition by SAP soon after the story broke on Sunday. Although there is still a chance that […]

Looking at the unstructured

Saturday, October 6th, 2007 by Peter Scott

Curt Monash has been talking about text mining a lot this week, he also notes that, from a text point of view, that the four preeminent database vendors (data store not query tool) are Oracle, Microsoft, Teradata and Netezza, this seems to reflect my experiences of what is going on in the BI space as […]

Data-centric BI trends

Saturday, October 6th, 2007 by Peter Scott

I managed to miss Mark Rittman’s recent keynote addresses in two locations this week, but I did take a look at the slide deck and the blog post. Mark is making five very sound points on the Oracle BI stack. As most regular readers of this blog might expect, I am probably more data driven […]

My topic today is…

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 by Peter Scott

Business Objects, which may seem a bit of odd choice from someone who writes mainly about data warehouse design and often Oracle. True I can, and do do the whole BI piece, but again, my preferences are heavily Oracle infused.
Business Objects has hit the press a few times in recent days. First, the French press […]

Meetings and other stuff

Thursday, September 6th, 2007 by Peter Scott

First up in this hotch-potch (or is it hodge-podge?) is a reminder of a BI meeting in London in a few weeks time; Tuesday September 25 in fact. The UKOUG BIRT SIG meeting (wasn’t BIRT SIG a Punk Rocker?) This looks an exciting event - the first one where I get hear about how the […]

Is there a place for pervasiveness?

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 by Peter Scott

I guess I am going to come across as a BI heretic here, but is there a place for BI at the heart of all business life? In part this piece springs from a few points made by Jerry Brown of Bloor Research in a recent article. The whole Jerry’s piece really encapsulates the need […]

Product dimensions

Friday, June 8th, 2007 by Peter Scott

The other day a colleague invited me to sit in on workshop session with a customer to discuss changes to an attribute of product. On the face of it it sounds a bit of overkill to spend two hours discussing the meaning of just one attribute, but when that attribute is cost and the impact […]

Are ad-hoc query tools less used now?

Monday, May 28th, 2007 by Peter Scott

For once I don’t have a strong opinion of my own, so I am seeking your input.
Over the past few years pervasive BI is the big must-have in corporate intelligence systems; that is, making the whole organisation intelligence consumers by giving users performance dashboards and embedding fixed queries into line of business applications. But what […]