I watch a lot of webinars and every now and then I come across one that really stands out. And one I really would like to recommend is:
A Guide to Building a Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Solution in the Cloud
Recorded on July 9, 2009 by Open-source BI vendor Pentaho, Cloud DBMS vendor Vertica and BI Cloud systems integrator OpenBI, Ithe webinar provides a very insightful overview how any concerns around performance and security with Cloud have been overcome for use with BI applications. In particular, the webinar covers:
Cloud overview (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud)
Operational expense vs. capital expense project funding
Technology selection
Provisioning BI hardware and software in the Amazon EC2 with Vertica and Pentaho
How a BI demo was created and lessons learned using Pentaho and Vertica
New BI opportunities enabled by the economic advantages of cloud computing
A segment I found especially helpful was the configuration considerations when setting up BI in the Cloud. This included security, cost management, user access, ETL, performance etc.
A new partnership recently announced between four open-source and proprietary vendors heralds a big step forward along the BI Cloud roadmap. Vendors Jaspersoft, Talend, Vertica and RightScale have formed an alliance to lead the integration stack of open source BI into cloud environments.
Jaspersoft – open-source BI
Talend – data-integration technologies
Vertica’s – analytic database
RightScale’s – management software for cloud-based application deployments.
At first light it appears the integration is at the technical and sales levels only. Customers will have to form form contractual agreements with each vendor; each vendor naturally responsible for supporting their own technology. This signals a hiccup in such a fast paced IT integration society.
But the good news is that customers will be able to use the pay-as-you-go pricing model integral in cloud computing. The offer is expected to be attractive to smaller enterprises that do not have a full developed BI capability and to smaller resellers or consultants who will add their domain expertise.
Cloud is also used by larger enterprises for periodic BI projects or experimental analytics outside their enterprise analytical framework.
One of the biggest constraints about enterprises moving data and services into the Cloud is Trust – trust that access will be reliable and available, and trust that their data is safe. Trust is a key attribute of brand, and preivous behaviour of brand owners either contributes to or erodes brand.
It is this very trust issue that puts me in two minds re Dells latest rollout of a Cloud enabled SaaS package to European businesses.
Whilst I am a great supporter of getting applications with low frequency usage and high processing requirements into the Cloud, I worry about Dells ability to deliver. The reason for my concern is lack of trust.
In my opinion, Dell has failed to adquately manage the power their laptops, so why would I trust them with assuring availability of a whole data center in which I would trust such important services as Distributed Device Management, Software Inventory, Online Backup and Restore, Laptop Data Encryption, Email Management and Crisis Management.
I would like to clarify that I am a fan of Dell computers in general, my own laptop is a Dell as are the laptops of my partner and mother – all procured with the assistance of moi. No other provider gives more bang for the buck.
But the power management systems in these Laptops have been problematic from Day 1. And Dell has consistently failed to accept responsibility for this issue. As I said earlier, brand is a big part of trust – and we would like to think that when something goes wrong that is critical to business continuity, we don’t have the vendor shutting down the issue with ‘not our problem’.
Dell – if you are the Cloud service provider it is your problem. And the issues with the power management in your laptops is your problem – so is the very poor quality of the laptop batteries which last little longer than a year.
With availability and reliability key elements underpinning the trust a client puts in their Cloud vendor, I suggest that Dell needs to be more consistent in managing that trust.
When I am happy with trusting Dell with my laptop power, then and only then will I trust them with Cloud services. And that day is not today!
Just downloaded a very good whitepaper from Quantivo that provides an overview of how we can dig deeper below our normal web analytics to gain more insight into customer behaviour. Those of you who know me know how much a fan of cloud computing and business intelligence I am, and Quantivo has developed a great cloud SaaS application to enable all businesses to gain access to this valuable insight. I know this sounds like an ad [no, I am not getting paid to say this] – but I am just such a fan of making BI available for everyone.
Identify specific behaviour after:
Purchasing a product
Viewing a page or ad
Interacting with online content
Watching an online video
This helps you categorise each visitor as either “actively researching information, ready to purchase, or simply looking”
Take a quick look at this short video [4 mins]
The application also has an affinity database which provides relationship insight from relevant behavioral patterns to help you identify that big grey hole – the one where you don’t know what you don’t know!
The latest Gartner 2009 CIO Agenda survey of 1500 CIO’s has revealed some surprising and not so surprising results.
Firstly, the not so surprising is that BI has been voted as the top technology for 2009, after all BI has held this spot since 2006. What is surprising is that the focus is not on analytics – the survey indicated that the top CIO business expectation was in improving business processes. This surprised me, as many companies have supposedly already been through this era – or maybe is just wasn’t done well enough. The other inference I have made is that BI is now focusing on the operational value it contributes – what we refer to as OBI.
The rankings of exectations and technologies are:
Expectations
Reducing enterprise costs
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
Attracting and retaining new customers [#2 in 2008]
Creating new products or services [#3 in 2008], however innovation is forecast to move up the ladder to top spot by 2012.
IT Strategies
Tighter link between business and IT strategies
Reducing the cost of IT [#10 in 2008]
Delivering projects that enable growth
Attracting, developing and retaining IT personnel
Technologies
Business intelligence [BI] [ since 2006]
Enterprise applications such as CRM or ERP
Servers and storage technologies.
The survey results overall are not surprising. As the current market is hardly conducive to growth strategies for most businesses, it is an ideal time to refocus on core business and get better at the basics. BI is known for its ability to improve productivity whilst reducing costs. We can not overlook the past carnage of poorly implemented BI projects and tools that were too difficult for most business users to integrate into their daily operations. However, in the past two years this scenario has changed signficiantly, with tools much more business oriented and the knowledge base of implementation best practice taking learnings from the past and crafting far better BI program practices of today. The other missing link I will personally add is the level of education the business receives, not in using BI but in why they should be using it, and exactly how it improves a business from single user self performance management all the way up to the boardroom strategy.
Virtualisation, cloud computing and software-as-a-service [SaaS] are also acknowledged as cost reducing strategies but many IT managers are still cautious around availability, security, and a full functional fit. Such technologies are gaining favor with mid to small enterprises that may not have the full IT capabilities of larger corporates.
Overall, although BI is voted the top technology for 2009, the ‘killer app’ is ‘Leadership’. Companies don’t want consultants giving them a set of options – they want strong leadership paths to drive their businesses through the current downturn and still come out having advanced in some way. It may not be with customer growth and revenue growth, but I expect we will see leaner and meaner businesses forging ahead with renewed vigor and tighter focus.
Survey base: N=1500 CIOs worldwide, Duration= 3 months to Dec 15, 2008. Average company size = 400, average IT budget = $90 million.
Gartner has released its Top Tech list for 2009, and BI sits at #9. This years top strategic technology is very much based at the infrastructure, rather than the application level with Virtualization, cloud computing, computing fabric, web-oriented architecture and unified communications. This has somewhat overpowered the strategic value of BI, but is significant to BI in that it focuses attention to the underlying capability that BI requires to perform at its best.
To be included on Gartners list, the technology must possess more than just inherent features and funcitonality. It must be capable of being applied across multiple platforms and have real value to business.
Virtualization – is transforming corporate IT infrastructure at both the server and desktop level.
Cloud Computing - is the buzz phrase in IT today, so it is no wonder that it hit the strategic list at number two. Cloud computing will have a signficant impact on the way technology is deployed in organizations and will add support to SaaS models in all application fields.
Comuting Fabrics – at number 3, [#8 in 2008] server technology ‘Computing Fabrics’ combines server technology resources to enable them to be dispensed with their underlying pools of small, medium and large servers. Blade servers have some computing fabric capability – being able to move memory and processor capability.
Following the top three are:
4. Web-oriented Architecture – impacting the SOA model for services delivery, this architecture uses Web standards, identifiers, formats and protocols.
5. Enterprise Mashups - up from #6, applies the wizardary of contentmashups to allow users to employ public APIs to quickly combine various services and capabilities; extending the flexibility business users have to combine data inside and outside the enterprise.
6. Specialized Systems - new to the list, includes all those specialized appliances for Java, data warehousing and other processes. Not quite sure where this one will end as it is a dumping ground for all the less significant technologies, that when applied together become significant.
7. Social Software and Social Networking – up from #10, these tools extend collaboration efforts across organizations.
8. Unified Communications – aligned to number 7 above, and down from the second spot last year, Gartner anticipates a major consolidation of communications vendors through unified communications.
9. Business intelligence – new to the list, although surprising it hasn’t made it in the past. However, the reality of BI has dawned with the increase in computing power making BI tools more effective and efficient. The focus on BI has moved from core analytics as a distinct function to operational BI, embedded into business processes supporting automated decision making and exception management.
10. Green IT – the top contender in 2008 has lost ground to the bottom spot but has not diminished in importance. Sustainability is now woven into the fabric of IT strategy and as such is no longer seen as a separate capability but an inherent requirement of all corporate operations and technology.
Just as business intelligence is revolutionizing business logic; virtualisation and cloud computing are revolutionizing computing power.
Cloud computing is the latest method of accessing computing power and according to ICT analyst IDC “this will be the prevailing form of ICT service delivery for a couple of decades”. Cloud computing is also known as onDemand applications and Software as a Service [SaaS].
The computing model has been transformed from in-house systems to outsourced, centralised systems and is predicted to become the norm for all businesses over the next 20 years. Even in remote countries such as New Zealand, media giant Google is to provide access to applications via the internet to 50,000 students, staff and alumni.
Google Apps
Google is just one cloud computing front-runner, as yet the market has yet to be measured but as a sign, Google claims to have 500,000 business customers worldwide for its internet-delivered Google Apps, and is reportedly signing up new ones at a rate of 3000 a day. Google Apps is very popular with academia, with education customers provided with free access rights to Google Apps Education Edition, which includes email, Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software), a shared calendar, instant messaging, website creation software and the ability to create a customised web home page using their own domain. This is providing a far superior service to that currently offered by most Universities.
Commercial customers are charged US$50 ($71) per user, per year.
For all organizations, cloud computing removes the development and hardware overheads of standard corporate applications and frees the IT resources to concentrate on more strategic technology.
Speed
The main constraint is relying on fast, reliable Internet access. In many countries, such as New Zealand, India, South Africa and Australia this is far from a current reality. Speed is the number one thing to users in terms of such services.
Reliability
Many businesses also have a perception hurdle to overcome if the servers hosting the applications and corporate data are hosted outside of their own country. Im most cases, large vendors of such services have extremely reliable geographic fail over redundancy and the location of the primary server is of little consequence. It is more of a emotive issue than a technological one.
Even Google doesn’t disclose where its data centers are located but it does reveal that its services network is distributed across global infrastructure …”for redundancy and availability and ensuring continuity of service.”
Google attempts to overcome the connectivity issues by designing its service to be efficient across all kinds of connections and ‘Google Gears’ – a platform that allows users to take web services offline. They are also investing in infrastructure to the overcome service latency and ensure services can be delivered at high speed in the Asia-Pacific region.
Other Cloud Contenders
Other companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, EMC, Cisco and Oracle are building massive cloud services delivery capabilities. We can expect a major market impact within the next 2 to 3 years.
The BI Cloud
Cloud computing offers a major boost for smaller businesses seeking the insight of business intelligence. Most do not have sufficient in-house infrastructure or budget to sustain their own BI hosted solutions. SaaS models offer a viable alternative, even if the feature set is somewhat constrained.
