Telecom Business Intelligence: The Five Forces of a Highly Competitive Industry

Telecom Business Intelligence: The Five Forces of a Highly Competitive Industry: "Below are five areas that exemplify the concepts of the �five forces� and show how trends can really be pressures on an organization�s competitive nature:

Industry Consolidation: As we have seen in the wireless / cellular service provider market, this can mean threats from existing companies who consolidate their position and acquire additional market share by purchasing their competition (Rivalry).
Wireless Local-Area Networks: The Internet and broadband-based VoIP market could soon face competitors from the wireless / cellular service providers (Substitutes) via wireless local area networks, WLANs.
Security/Fraud: When you think about using a free VoIP service, like Skype, you do not necessarily think about fraud. However, when you start looking at the pay VoIP services, fraud becomes a much larger issue. Carolyn Schuk has written an excellent article on VoIP Fraud detailing these issues (Barriers to Entry).
Pricing: Wireless / cellular and traditional phone service providers have seen demands from consumer�s drive their price per minute via lower tiered minute and flat rate plans. Pay VoIP providers are entering not at the top, but closer to the bottom of these pricing levels (Buyers).
Broadband Access: The penetration rate of broadband access in the United States, the lifeblood of pay VoIP services, is around 55 to 60 percent. This effectively caps the number of customers that have access to VoIP services and places more power in the hands of the broadband access providers (Suppliers)."

Security Could Sidetrack BI

Security Could Sidetrack BI: "Mike Gailey, managing director with business and technology risk management practice at CSC Consulting, says a striking number of non-compliance and non-remediation types of projects were put on the back burner in order to get through the next audit. 'I don't know it was so much a budget issue as it was a lack of resources. Everybody who has anything to do with SOX lately has been as busy as they can stand.'"

Report Builder Video Presentation

This clip has the quote of the day: "Developers hate users." Nice! You should get that on a tshirt!

Thomas Pagel BI Blog : Report Builder Video Presentation: "Did you ever search for a short (10 minutes) high quality presentation of Report Builder? Well, this video is high quality (from the stream quality), however it's not perfect (the demo fails in one step)... Pay attention to the last seconds of the presentation just after the logo is displayed... (link in article)"

The Truth Will Keep You Free: Analytics, BI, and Compliance

IT Compliance Institute - The Truth Will Keep You Free: Analytics, BI, and Compliance: "If you sense there's opportunity in the alignment of BI and ERM, you're right. Consider these potential benefits:

1. ERM reporting becomes more reliable if it's based on a single version of business 'truth' that also supports BI
2. Use of existing reporting software reduces dependency on expensive manual analysis and problematic financial spreadsheets
3. Access to drill-down reporting gives auditing committees and accountable executives greater confidence in results
4. BI systems adhere to technical and process controls over the management of financial data
5. Companies realize business value from ERM and compliance investments
6. Businesses are better able to meet SOX section 409 'real-time' reporting requirements
7. Analytical software provides early warnings of trends that might impact SEC filings "

Financial IM and E-mail Storage Mandate

If it's stored.. it can be mined and analyzed.

IT Compliance Institute - Financial IM and E-mail Storage Mandate: "While the SEC didn't specify exactly which rules the companies broke, there are several possibilities. For example, notes Erica Rugullies, an analyst with Forrester Research, 'SEC Rule 17a requires that certain business records and communications be readily accessible for two years and accessible�not necessarily online�for the year after that. Transaction-related communications must also be kept and made accessible for seven years after the event.'"

How To Leverage Business Intelligence Tools

Business Intelligence Pipeline | How To Leverage Business Intelligence Tools: "Custom development vs. commercial off-the-shelf tools
Once project goals are well defined, the next decision is how much custom software to develop (whether in-house or outsourced). Generally, unless there's a very specialized need, you should start from the assumption that someone else has probably built a tool that will do at least 80% of what you need. "

Microformats : The Next Big Thing on the Web

Sadagopan's weblog on Emerging Technologies,Thoughts, Ideas,Trends and Cyberworld: "et users have envisioned a web that presents information that can not only be read by humans but also be understood by computers. This could usher in entirely new ways of doing business. The web could evolve from a collection of loosely linked pages to an enormous database that could be searched and filtered and re-assembled in new ways. "

Sun plans to make all its software free

Nope,It's not a joke.

Sun plans to make all its software free | InfoWorld | News | 2005-07-21 | By Paul Krill

Is IBM a Player in the Relational Database Market?

Is IBM a Player in the Relational Database Market?: "While attempts have been made to educate the consulting side on DB2 for Unix, Linux, Windows old habits die hard.

The result is that a IBM consultant recommends something other than DB2 more than 70 percent of the time, according to at least one senior IBM consultant I spoke with last year and confirmed by a number of clients. "

What CIOs Tell Their CEOs - Editorial - CIO

What CIOs Tell Their CEOs - Editorial - CIO: "Question: If you had only a few minutes to tell your CEO about IT, what would you say?"

Oracle Caves on Multicore Licensing

Well, I called their previous policy as stupid. Now it's stupid AND weird.

Oracle Caves on Multicore Licensing: "Oracle has finally caved�a little�to industry outrage over its refusal to get in line with competitors IBM and Microsoft and update its licensing policy to accommodate multicore chips.

Licensing terms for the Oracle Store Web site now state that, for the purposes of counting how many processors need to be licensed, a multicore chip with 'n' cores will be multiplied by 0.75. Oracle will then round up fractions to the next whole number."

For the record, Microsoft and IBM make no special terms for multi-core processors. One processor is one processor. The article has some more detail, my prediction is they'll go farther. It also touches on the multi-core vs. virtualization question.

It isn't unusual now to see IT departments using VMWare Server, and running a dozen or more virtual machines on it. Ever wonder how the software is licensed in those cases? To the letter of license agreements, software is licensed to the hardware capabilities... period. As this article explains:

Right now, Microsoft charges based on hardware capabilities irrespective of software partitioning or virtualization. A user site might have 1,000 virtual machines running 1,000 instances of the same application, deployed on a four-processor computer, he said. Under current policy, the user would be charged for four processors, not for running the application 1,000 times.

So, the savings on operating systems alone offset the cost of hardware for a nice VM server. It's a no-brainer.

The Fable of The 90-Day Data Mart: One Manufacturer's Experience

The Fable of The 90-Day Data Mart: One Manufacturer's Experience: "Many of us have experienced this first hand. The following story is the real experience of an organization that received their data mart in 90 days�only to pay again to have it done right."

Budgeting for a Data Warehouse

Budgeting for a Data Warehouse: "Everyone believes that data warehouses are expensive. We attend conferences and swap stories about multi-terabyte data warehouses and the conclusion that we reach at is that data warehouses are expensive. But does it have to be that way? Stated differently, what is the most expensive, consuming part of the data warehouse? What is the largest determining factor for the expense of the data warehouse? You may be surprised at the answer. The answer is that the largest determining factor for the data warehouse is�you!"

Cautious Optimism on SQL Server 2005: TDWI

The CLR is definitely a BIG deal. Glad to see it is getting some attention. For those that have been under a rock (and the DBAs that don't have a developing background), the CLR will allow someone to write a stored procedure (if they have permission) using any language that .NET supports, which is just about any language ever made. Java? Perl? C#? You name it, it can be done.

Obviously, there is a hiden message here - if you don't have a developing background, it would pay to get familiar with a little scripting as a DBA...

Wonder what the long term effects of this might be. It IS possible that SQL Server 2005 could become an application server. Smart? probably not, but it is possible.

Cautious Optimism on SQL Server 2005: TDWI: "When Microsoft Corp. finally ships SQL Server 2005, enterprise programmers�many with little or no experience programming directly to a SQL Server database or data warehouse�are going to get a crack at doing just that. That worries some business intelligence (BI) and data management pros, who argue that clumsy programming by inexperienced code jockeys could seriously impact the performance and reliability of SQL Server data warehouses

Today, coding for SQL Server 2000 typically involves one of three approaches: learning Transact-SQL (T-SQL); using ADO.NET clients or other bridging technologies to build middle-tier and front-end applications; or using a third-party Common Language Runtime (CLR) assembly that isn�t natively integrated into SQL Server 2000."

Where Did Oracle Come From?

Where Did Oracle Come From?: "It is important to have an appreciation of your profession's history and origins. Often times, we take for granted the functions an RDBMS performs. But where, exactly, did the concept of the relational model come from? "

SimonS' SQL Blog : Have your cake and eat it (Free SQL 2005 training)

What a great deal - this is for real, with a nice selection of courses.

MS is making a major push to lay the groundwork for rapid adoption of SQL Server 2005. By all accounts, it gets great reviews all around.

SimonS' SQL Blog : Have your cake and eat it (Free SQL 2005 training): "Thanks to Euan G for pointing out that there is freed training available for the next 90 days for SQL server 2005
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/sqlserver2005/
All you need is a .Net Passport"

Oracle and PHP

Oracle and PHP: "However - the most obvious and probably most widely used web script language PHP is supported in the Oracle database (RDBMS) now.
to be precise AFAIK they implemented a PHP-client adapter to use Oracle-Calls and OCI directly from within PHP scripts or pages, this does not mean, that you can implement the stored procedures in PHP vs. PL/SQL vs. Java ..."

Cool, it's about time.

PHP is makes writing web apps insanely easy. On a side note, the article has a nice graph with the growth of PHP since 1999. Looking at these is always fun for me, because my first PHP article was written in Sep 1999, and I spoke about using PHP at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in August 2000. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

What's not funny to me, but actually gives that feeling that I let something pass right on by me, is that despite writing articles, speaking at conferences, etc, I never made a penny from writing, or building a PHP website, although I built many, many for friends and myself. Some might say that is open source in its truest form - altruisticly sharing knowledge with others for the pure pleasure of sharing. All sounds good in theory eh? Maybe I built up some good karma. I have to admit though, that although I have moved on, sometimes I feel, when I see all the books out there, and the companies that support and write PHP, and all the people out there that actually do make quite a good living doing what i did for free, like the joke is on me.

Chris Webb's BI Blog: Free AS2005 course from MS

Chris Webb's BI Blog: Free AS2005 course from MS: "Seen on Euan Garden's blog:
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/sqlserver2005/
Free SQL 2005 courses! Including one course on new features in AS2005:
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=66791
Have to download it and check it out - it looks like there's some info there which hasn't made it into BOL and I don't know about..."

Top 20 Tips for OLAP Success

The author is Nigel Pense, who coordinates the olap report every year, so he has seen more than a few things go right, and go wrong in the OLAP world. You've gotta raise an eyebrow reading these though, as a good number are completely counter intuitive. Such as, I wouldn't agree with "14. Don't assume that the Web is always the best BI architecture." or "15. Try and deliver end-user applications via Excel add-ins." Those sound pretty blurry, but the explanations af the bullets are much more rigid in recommending against using web based delivery, something I think any solution should include.

Or:

3. Don't spend forever collecting user requirements.
If you know what you're doing, you can get all you need surprisingly quickly. Focus on application categories, not long lists of mundane features which every proven product is bound to include.

To me, that is the most important part of a whole project, and increase with the cost of the project. And what is the measure of true success for the project? Newsflash: it's satisfaction of the user. If you don't consider this your primary goal, the only way the project will succeed is by accident(!)

Top 20 Tips for OLAP Success: "Here are 20 quick tips, some obvious, but others counterintuitive, which are all based on real-world experience and research data."

Database Change Management Tips and Techniques

Database Change Management Tips and Techniques: "One bright Monday morning, Freddie's boss comes bounding into his cube at XYZ Manufacturing with a large grin on his face; 'Freddie I've got GREAT news. We just acquired ABC Manufacturing, our biggest competitor! Now all we have to do is migrate their data into our systems and shut down their data center. I told management it'll be done in three months. So, when can we start??'"

What Makes an Enterprise Data Warehouse?

Straightforward article... gotta disagree with fully normaized EDW though. That's something you'll try once, then you'll "get it."

What Makes an Enterprise Data Warehouse?: "Opinion: It's time to define terms. If an EDW is what you need, here's what it should offer. "

Kirk Haselden : Making SSIS a Clustered Service

Kirk Haselden : Making SSIS a Clustered Service: "Pros:

Allows SSIS Server to run an a different node so SSIS and SQL Server won�t compete for CPU time
Since most of SSIS Server functionality (except MSDB store) doesn�t depend on a SQL Server it is reasonable to run it in a separate group
Once SSIS Server runs in a separate group it can be moved to another node faster.

Cons:

When UI, SSIS Server and SQL Server runs on 3 different machines MSDB Node is unavailable. This is IDW15 design that may or may not be changed.
When SSIS and SQL Server run on the same node operations against MSDB may be faster and generate less network traffic."

Data Portion and Used threshold

Data Portion and Used threshold: "When Database Administrators manage multiple databases on multiple servers, it is difficult to keep track of and monitor the used percentage of data portion on every database. Though SQL Server has the capability of auto growth whenever the data portion reaches 100%, it is always advisable to increase the database size manually when it comes to VLDB. This article examines monitoring the percentage used on the data portion of every database and alerting the DBA using threshold settings. This article has been written for SQL Server 2000 server."

The New Science of Siting Stores

The New Science of Siting Stores: "It used to be that when IHOP (IHP) wanted to open a new restaurant, the chain would hire a real estate agent to drive around and collect information on potential neighborhoods. The agent would see if a lot of single-family houses were nearby, how many other restaurants were located there, the presence of a large mall or retailer and would also gauge traffic patterns. The entire process would take several weeks. "

Reviews: Web Analytics Products

A review of 7 Web Analytics products:

Business Intelligence Pipeline | Reviews: Web Analytics Products

BPM in the trenches

A good read, gives some real world perspective on BPM

BPM in the trenches | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2005-06-27 | By David L. Margulius: "With all the talk about BPM and its various permutations, many wonder how enterprises are using it. Has it lived up to its promise? What lessons have early BPM adopters learned? To get answers, we talked with four enterprises in various stages of deploying BPM initiatives. "

Treemap demo : Map the sizes of files on your disk drives

SimonS' SQL Blog : Map the sizes of files on your disk drives points to a free product called Sequoiaview that scans your hardrive (or a directory) and maps out the sizes and types of files in a treemap. It is a small download and worth a look. Pretty slick.

Mosha Pasumansky : CubePort: Essbase to Analysis Services conversion wizard

Mosha Pasumansky : CubePort: Essbase to Analysis Services conversion wizard: "Last week ExoLogic annonced general availablility of the CubePort product. CubePort is a wizard driven application which migrates Essbase cubes to Analysis Services cubes. Previously CubePort was available only with assistance from the consultant, but with the current version improvements it can be run directly by the customers. "

Download details: Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer v2.0 (for IT Professionals)

Good resource - should be a part of every DBAs toolbox, whether or not SQL Server is your database of choice (it includes a tool to find all rouge MSDE instances on a network).

Download details: Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer v2.0 (for IT Professionals): "In response to direct customer need for a streamlined method of identifying common security misconfigurations, Microsoft has developed the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA). Version 2.0 of MBSA includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems. MBSA runs on Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, and Windows XP systems and will scan for common security misconfigurations in the following products: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0, and 6.0, SQL Server 7.0 and 2000, Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 and later, and Office 2000, 2002 and 2003. MBSA also scans for missing security updates, update rollups and service packs published to Microsoft Update."

SQL Server Team Releases PSS Locking/Blocking Tool

Don Kiely's Technical Blatherings : SQL Server Team Releases PSS Locking/Blocking Tool: "The SQL Server Team has released a PSS Locking/Blocking analysis tool called Sherlock. Looks to be interesting for diagnosing problems. Here is part of the description from the PowerPoint presentation in the download:"

Who's Afraid of Self-Managing Databases?

My comments below:

Who's Afraid of Self-Managing Databases?: "The major database vendors (Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft) have invested greatly over the past decade to improve the manageability of the relational database.

The goal is to increase the ratio of DBAs to databases supported, thereby lowering the total cost of ownership for a database.

The problem is that some DBAs and consultants that provide DBA services want you to believe nothing has changed.

They say that even though all of this built-in self-tuning functionality is in the database software, it is optional and not intended to replace standard DBA activities.

They will make statements like 'automation features are aimed at shops that do not have the manpower or expertise to manually perform the tasks.'

As an IT manager, you must see the absurdity in such statements."

A hot topic, sure. And he has a point. Smaller databases don't need much DBA involvement, hardly at all nowadays. And they don't get any hardly in companies I have been in.

But where does Charles acknowledge that the volume of data stored in databases is growing? By some measure as fast as Moore's law? and not linearally, but exponentially?

And the visibility for the value of business intelligence has moved from finance, to marketing, to operations, to.... the list goes on? Not to mention the security that will be involved in such initiatives.

And that access times to storage are not increasing as fast as volumes are?

There's more need for DBAs, albeit with a more focused skillset, today than ever. Luckily, any CIO is going to look right this article as he remembers the meeting last week on the latest RFID initiative, and how it was stressed that the volume of data it will produce borders on insanity, and redefines what was a "reasonable" size for a database a couple of years ago - just as that expectation has to get readjested every couple of years, and will continue to be.

Yes, that CIO will think you don't have clue, Mr. Garry.