Some items that have fallen on the blogging scraps floor from the last couple of weeks:
BEA AquaLogic Product Future
There have been a lot of rumblings of the future of the AquaLogic product suite, primarily because of the rumor that the professional services group from BEA is folding into WebLogic team. A component of the platform, among other things, is a set of Web 2.0 technologies and Enterprise social computing. It would be surprising to see these products go away based on the current market, but stranger things have happened.
Sharing Information to Make Decisions
After September 11th, the intelligence community was chastised for their lack of information sharing. The “need to know” culture impeded sharing nuggets of knowledge that could help the different intelligence departments make better decisions. To change this mentality, the CIA developed the Intellipedia platform. The CIA will be sharing their story at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week in Boston. It is certainly an interesting case study of how an organization, public or private, can leverage social computing to improve information sharing and collaboration.
And Finally, For the Artistic Crowd
I happened across this site “Dashboards by Example”, which provides a wealth of information for those considering implementing a dashboard within your organization. There are some great examples and best practices crossing a broad range of subject areas including web analytics with Google Analytics (we are a user and big fan) to an IT related dashboard. The author provides his perspective on Dashboards versus Scorecards which is always an interesting topic for debate.
Showing posts with label oracle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oracle. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Day 1 is in the books!
Just finishing up day 1 of DIG. We had a great first day with the clinics and a cocktail reception to welcome the conference attendees. I have a couple of observations from the day I wanted to quickly share:
1. Glyn Heatley delivered his CPM overview clinic in the morning. He had a pretty diverse group of IT and business functions in the room, which was great. There were a couple of observations from the group that I found interesting. One was the lack of statistical capabilities in a majority of the BI vendor platforms. I found this interesting and is something that I would like to research a bit to see where the gaps are. I am not in anyway knowledgeable in the area of statistical packages like SAS, so it would be interesting to see how big of a functional gap exists.
2. I sat in the Enterprise 2.0 clinic with Jevon and Thomas in the afternoon. This was a great session with a ton of learning. It was a bit like drinking from the fire hose. There were a couple of things that came up that we discussed in the session. The first was the concerns around privacy and sharing of certain types of data. I was surprised to hear that there are some E2.0 software vendors that are focused on becoming SOX compliant. The second interesting discussion was the differences between business taxonomy and folksonomy. Business taxonomy is the practice of establishing structure around things like enterprise data, while folksonomy is the practice of allowing the collective group to describe "objects" as they see them. An example would be tagging of content, like this blog post. The two worlds are very different but when done correctly, specifically creating the appropriate linkages between taxonomy and folksonomy, will enhance an organizations collective ability to describe information.
3. The reception was a great informal setting to meet and great with attendees. I had an opportunity to spend some time with our platinum sponsors Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. They will be participating in our "megavendor" panel tomorrow. Looking forward to the discusson.
That's it for me. It's been a long first day. The good news is that I am even at the tables thus far. The same can't be said for a couple of other folks who will go unmentioned.
1. Glyn Heatley delivered his CPM overview clinic in the morning. He had a pretty diverse group of IT and business functions in the room, which was great. There were a couple of observations from the group that I found interesting. One was the lack of statistical capabilities in a majority of the BI vendor platforms. I found this interesting and is something that I would like to research a bit to see where the gaps are. I am not in anyway knowledgeable in the area of statistical packages like SAS, so it would be interesting to see how big of a functional gap exists.
2. I sat in the Enterprise 2.0 clinic with Jevon and Thomas in the afternoon. This was a great session with a ton of learning. It was a bit like drinking from the fire hose. There were a couple of things that came up that we discussed in the session. The first was the concerns around privacy and sharing of certain types of data. I was surprised to hear that there are some E2.0 software vendors that are focused on becoming SOX compliant. The second interesting discussion was the differences between business taxonomy and folksonomy. Business taxonomy is the practice of establishing structure around things like enterprise data, while folksonomy is the practice of allowing the collective group to describe "objects" as they see them. An example would be tagging of content, like this blog post. The two worlds are very different but when done correctly, specifically creating the appropriate linkages between taxonomy and folksonomy, will enhance an organizations collective ability to describe information.
3. The reception was a great informal setting to meet and great with attendees. I had an opportunity to spend some time with our platinum sponsors Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. They will be participating in our "megavendor" panel tomorrow. Looking forward to the discusson.
That's it for me. It's been a long first day. The good news is that I am even at the tables thus far. The same can't be said for a couple of other folks who will go unmentioned.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Heading to Vegas for DIG
Well, the week of the DIG conference is finally here. Looking forward to the three days. My guess is that the week will go by quickly. Here are some random thoughts and things to look forward to:
1. The clinics on Tuesday should be a good opportunity to roll the sleeves up on some great topics. I will be helping out Glyn Heatley during his clinic on CPM and BI architecture. I took a look at the content this afternoon and there is a lot to cover in the 3.5 hours, but it should provide people with some follow up actions for their organizations! Mark Lorence's talk on analytics is great, especially if you are struggling with what are the right measures for your organization (one thing to note, Mark's clinic will be in the afternoon on Tuesday, not the morning). I am very interested and will be attending Jevon MacDonald's and Thomas Vander Wal's clinic on Enterprise 2.0. If you aren't currently signed up for a clinic, there is still time to register!
2. If you didn't notice the Twitter update box on the right side of the blog, take a look at the talkdig Twitter user. If you aren't familiar with Twitter, it is a "micro-blogging" technology that uses text messaging to make posts. I have been using Twitter for about 3 months and it is a fun way to communicate with friends and colleagues. We are hoping that DIG attendees sign up and use it as a way to receive conference updates, ask questions during the Q&A, or simply try to informally organize with colleagues while at the DIG conference. It will also be a way to stay connected after the conference ends. Signing up is free and all you need to do is start "following" the talkdig user once you are setup.
3. We have one speaker change for Thursday. Bo Cowgill from Google will unfortunately not be able to join us, but instead we will have Mat Fogarty presenting on the topic of prediction markets. Mat is the founder of Xpree, which focuses on providing enterprise prediction market solutions. Prior to starting Xpree, Mat was the Director of Financial Planning on Electronic Arts where he was responsible for running prediction markets forecasting key metrics. Mat's session will be titled "Using prediction markets to tap employee wisdom". We are excited to have Mat speak at DIG!
4. On Wednesday, we have a "mega vendor" panel planned with our three platinum event sponsors Oracle, Microsoft and SAP/Business Objects. I am looking forward to have all three vendors on stage together in a moderated discussion on future technology trends. Since this is a bit of a unique opportunity to have them all together on stage at once, we are going to video tape the discussion and make it available in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
5. Go Celtics - could you at least win one road game during the playoffs!!!
That's it for now. Looking forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas. Stay tuned for updates during the week. We plan on blogging at the end of the day and hopefully get some pictures posted.
1. The clinics on Tuesday should be a good opportunity to roll the sleeves up on some great topics. I will be helping out Glyn Heatley during his clinic on CPM and BI architecture. I took a look at the content this afternoon and there is a lot to cover in the 3.5 hours, but it should provide people with some follow up actions for their organizations! Mark Lorence's talk on analytics is great, especially if you are struggling with what are the right measures for your organization (one thing to note, Mark's clinic will be in the afternoon on Tuesday, not the morning). I am very interested and will be attending Jevon MacDonald's and Thomas Vander Wal's clinic on Enterprise 2.0. If you aren't currently signed up for a clinic, there is still time to register!
2. If you didn't notice the Twitter update box on the right side of the blog, take a look at the talkdig Twitter user. If you aren't familiar with Twitter, it is a "micro-blogging" technology that uses text messaging to make posts. I have been using Twitter for about 3 months and it is a fun way to communicate with friends and colleagues. We are hoping that DIG attendees sign up and use it as a way to receive conference updates, ask questions during the Q&A, or simply try to informally organize with colleagues while at the DIG conference. It will also be a way to stay connected after the conference ends. Signing up is free and all you need to do is start "following" the talkdig user once you are setup.
3. We have one speaker change for Thursday. Bo Cowgill from Google will unfortunately not be able to join us, but instead we will have Mat Fogarty presenting on the topic of prediction markets. Mat is the founder of Xpree, which focuses on providing enterprise prediction market solutions. Prior to starting Xpree, Mat was the Director of Financial Planning on Electronic Arts where he was responsible for running prediction markets forecasting key metrics. Mat's session will be titled "Using prediction markets to tap employee wisdom". We are excited to have Mat speak at DIG!
4. On Wednesday, we have a "mega vendor" panel planned with our three platinum event sponsors Oracle, Microsoft and SAP/Business Objects. I am looking forward to have all three vendors on stage together in a moderated discussion on future technology trends. Since this is a bit of a unique opportunity to have them all together on stage at once, we are going to video tape the discussion and make it available in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
5. Go Celtics - could you at least win one road game during the playoffs!!!
That's it for now. Looking forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas. Stay tuned for updates during the week. We plan on blogging at the end of the day and hopefully get some pictures posted.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
In Search of BI Mashups
An area that has had a tremendous impact on the consumer aspect of the web is the concept of a “mashup”. The history of the term goes back to DJs and mixers combining different songs together to create new music. The term has evolved to more generically represent an application that is built by combining two or more data sources (if this isn’t the definition of a business intelligence application, I am not sure what is). The Senior Director of Engineering at Adobe put it best when he said
“a lot of talk about Web 2.0, web mashups, Ajax etc., which in my mind are all facets of the same phenomenon: that information and presentation are being separated in ways that allow for novel forms of reuse.” - Sho Kuwamoto
The same statement can be applied to enterprise data…separate the organization’s data from the different ways it can be presented. Where mashups come into play is when enterprises start presenting this data beyond grids and charts. In addition, as I have discussed on this blog, enterprises can combine traditional and non-traditional data sources to provide further context. Thus, the case for BI mashups.
If you perform a quick search for examples of BI mashups, you primarily find sample applications from different BI platform vendors. The first example I came across was from open source BI vendor Pentaho, which combines sales data with Google Maps to plot customer performance. Additional examples from Information Builders and Oracle offer similar examples. The trend with the majority of these examples is that they plot spatial data into geographic maps to show enhanced visualization. Not quite what Tufte would recommend, but certainly an enhancement over traditional BI. Adding non-structured data into the mix such as blogs and customer surveys through RSS feeds would enhance the experience even more..jpg)
For the technical audience, here is a very in-depth article by Larry Clarkin and Josh Holmes on mashups including examples, architectural components and key considerations when developing your first enterprise mashup. There is a wealth of information within the article, but one of the key elements applicable to a BI mashup is providing “rich visualization of data” for users that they won’t get from a typical chart or grid of data. If you are considering your first enterprise mashup, I would get familiar with this article as a first step.
There are some great resources available if you are looking for more examples of mashups. The most well known site is Programmable Web, which tracks interesting mashups, Web 2.0 applications and new web platforms. And if you have a short attention span and would prefer to see a video, check out this YouTube video.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
And now a word from our sponsors....
I am happy to announce that Microsoft, Oracle and Business Objects/SAP are Platinum Sponsors for the Decision, Information and Governance conference. We are excited to have all three organizations as sponsors. Each vendor provides a technology platform that addresses the three themes of the conference: creating one version of the truth, insights from advanced analytics, and Enterprise 2.0. As part of the conference agenda, Palladium will facilitate a "Future Visions Technology Panel" with all three vendors. The panel of vendor experts will address questions and opportunities associated with technology market consolidation and share their vision for Enterprise 2.0.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft® is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft Business Intelligence is a complete, fully-integrated offering, enabling all decision-makers to drive increased business performance at strategic, tactical and operational levels. Microsoft BI enhances the performance of all employees by providing reliable access to information they need to make informed decisions, and respond appropriately to changing conditions that impact their business. With Microsoft Business Intelligence you can take advantage of your information assets, create competitive advantages, improve customer satisfaction and make well-informed decisions.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft® is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft Business Intelligence is a complete, fully-integrated offering, enabling all decision-makers to drive increased business performance at strategic, tactical and operational levels. Microsoft BI enhances the performance of all employees by providing reliable access to information they need to make informed decisions, and respond appropriately to changing conditions that impact their business. With Microsoft Business Intelligence you can take advantage of your information assets, create competitive advantages, improve customer satisfaction and make well-informed decisions.
Oracle’s business is information—how to manage it, use it, share it, protect it. For nearly three decades, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world’s largest enterprise software company, has provided software and services that enable organizations to get the most accurate and up-to-date information from their business systems. Today, Oracle has over 275,000 customers—including 98 of the Fortune 100—in more than 145 countries.
Whether you are measuring profitability, achieving cost-reducing synergies, accelerating time to market, or simply reporting results in a more compliant and timely manner, SAP solutions for enterprise performance management can help you deliver answers, drive decisions, take action, and manage your business. With these solutions, you can capitalize on the value of your corporate data to drive organizational alignment, increase business agility, and create competitive advantage by controlling performance. You have the visibility required to understand current performance, the tools you need to develop effective strategies, and the resources to drive execution across all levels of your organization.
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