I'm at the Enterprise Data World in Tampa. It is sunny and not humid, the conference this year has been abuzz with the launch of "DAMA-DMBOK". For those of you who are wondering what this is, DAMA International (The Data Management Association) has been working with the community to develop a Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK).

The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge (DAMA-DMBOK)
By DAMA International. Written by over 120 data management practitioners, this is the most impressive compilation of data management principals and best practices, ever assembled.

From a audience perspective, it provides a concise guide to executives, data management professionals, educators, and researchers with a framework to manage their data and mature their information infrastructure. The DAMA-DMBOK provides information on: Data Governance, Data Architecture Management, Data Development, Database Operations Management, Data Security Management, Reference & Master Data Management, Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence Management, Document & Content Management, Meta Data Management, Data Quality Management, and Professional Development


I have read the DAMA-DMBOK and found it to be the equivalent of the PMBOK. If you are in the business of data management - that is Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, I strongly recommend that you look at the DAMA-DMBOK. It has been developed for the community by the community.

For more information on the book, visit the DAMA-DMBOK webpage You can buy this at AMAZON.COM or at Technics.com

In about two weeks from now, at the Enterprise Data World, I will be teaching a course on Data Warehouse Architectures, covering both older and newer data warehouse architectures and associated implementations.

I will answer questions on the subject both at that conference and the upcoming TDWI conference in Chicago where I'm teaching on "DW Performance Tuning" and "Requirements Gathering from an IT perspective"apart from two other courses on infrastructure.
If you are going to TDWI Chicago and are yet to get approval, send me an email and get a discount code for 35% discount on your conference fees.

Coming back to the subject from yesterday on Data Warehouse Architecture, it is interesting to see both executive and technical level people asking the same question - "what did we do wrong with our data warehouse?".  My word of advise again is, look for a pragmatic and practical approach to architect and design the data warehouse. Following a text book will only take you half way to the journey. Remember that you deal with people, process and technology to build the data warehouse. Cutting corners anywhere in these areas will result in the "tower of babel" or another "leaning tower of pisa".

Starting next week, I plan to post blogs on Analytics and implementing successful analytical platforms, post questions or ideas that you would like to discuss.

Where are we going with "The Data Warehouse"? this is a million dollar question. When everybody started building a data warehouse, the goal was a consolidated version of truth and an enterprise data repository. Then we moved on to build layers of applications and called it business intelligence. From all this chaos we delivered another vision with master data and metadata management.

Among all these issues and discoveries, somewhere we have created a series of stovepipes in the data warehouse environment. Fast forward to today, we are looking at "consolidation" of all the different silos into one data warehouse. To me it looks like we are running behind a tiger by holding its tail. How do we get this right? there is no one architecture that will fit everybody's needs nor is there one methodology that will answer every facet of developing and deploying a data warehouse for all situations.

Looking at the bigger picture, it is clear that everybody who has followed any architecture or methodology has implemented "their" own version of the methodology or altered some facet of the implementation to suit their needs. One can argue that it was the right thing to do. But on introspection, if we had paid some extra time to the architecture efforts, we could have avoided some mistakes. Well better late than never.

As we move to re-build and build new data warehouses, let us look at what we need

• Business Case
  
• Strong Methodologies - CIF, CIFE, DW2.0, DW Lifecycle, BI Pathway any of these are good methodologies
• Robust Roadmap - A strong roadmap to build the subject areas for the data warehouse is needed
• Robust data architecture
• Robust testing framework
• Business Applications
• USERS

If you need more information on any sibject area, you can check the following

BeyeNETWORK - for more general information
TDWI - the upcoming Chicago conference has dedicated courseware on this subject
DAMA - the DAMA conference next month has dedicated courseware on this subject

There are several fellow experts of mine who have published books on this subject. Before you use a book to follow the implementation, ensure that you have all the other material mentioed here available. Remember as Jack Welch said - "the team with the best players wins", empower yourself and your teams with the right knowledge and approach. By selecting the right architecture and approach, you can make the build and test cycles more manageable and possibly have cycles to extend the implementation to topics like MDM

I will be starting a forum on this network on "DW Architectures" soon, please post topic of interest to start discussions on.

Last week's announcement from IBM regarding the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, shows that we are not done with the buying spree yet. What are the benefits of this meger or acquisition?

If you see the market, Sun has very little server presence, compared to the Storage segment, Java, MySQL and the Open Cloud announcement. This will mean

• IBM can now extend its presence to the lower end of the market
• IBM can play in the MySQL space, and have a strong presence in integrating their Appliance portfolio
• IBM can have a stronger play in the Storage space
• IBM can have a large presence in the Open Cloud opportunity
• IBM can leverage the SAAS model for applications
• IBM will be the universal controller of JAVA - this is huge.
• A good chance of MapReduce being adopted by IBM
• Virtualization and Server consolidation will get a newer IBM offering
• There will be only IBM, HP and DELL left in the server market in the enterprise space

Well the list can go on and on. What does Sun get from the deal? it gets a strong "global" partner. Sun can augment the lower end and mid-size offerings from IBM well and of course the current partnerships that Sun has with Appliance vendors like Greenplum will be in question or maybe even extended to newer levels at IBM/SUN.


Well it is an interesting play that we will watch with great interest.

I'm at the McCarran Airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago; snow delays as usual. I have just begun to settle down after an exciting week at TDWI. The conference overall has been a great success. I was amazed at the networking that was happening at the conference, between attendees. The Executive Summit was a great crowd of BI sponsors and owners, who participated in all the sessions and workshops. On the last day, The Arizone State University BI team blew all of us with their "pervasive BI" deployment. Hats off to them for the efforts, someday soon, I will feature an article on them in the channel.

Apart from the executive summit, I had briefings with all the vendors and will post entries next week. We conducted night schools at TDWI on Text Analytics and Mining, DW Performance Tuning and other topics (which I taught) and also had Curt Monash and two other experts present at the night schoo. All of these were well attended and recevied by the audience. The feedback from the audience will help TDWI put new courses in a blend with current courses for BI.

There were two keynotes one on Monday from Executives at CISCO and the other today bi Claudia Imhoff and Colin White. Both the keynotes were insightful and practical.

BEyeNetwork has podcasts and entries from the event at the main page, if you are interested in exploring.

In the first article of the year, to be posted in the next two weeks, I will be discussing DW and BI Trends.

Till then, keep visitng and your comments are welcome.

If you need a specific topic to be discussed ot written about, please leave a comment.

In the economic state we are in today, companies still need to get business moving. To keep your core competencies going, start by leveraging your BI investments. The value of BI has not been recognized or realized by companies to the extent possible.  
 
How many companies have gone from "i need a system like this" to " i know how to use a system like this?". how does once leverage the current investment? the answer is a simple one, but a complex process. One needs to start by moving to standardize the BI message in the company, get the current BI system a company wide adoption, improve the measurement process of BI effectiveness and thus leverage the investment. As you start gaining efficiencies, you will start opening more doors for BI.
 
If you are interested in learning more on the "Alignment and Agility", please check the upcoming TDWI BI Executive Summit in Las Vegas. There is a wealth of executive training and discussion that is available.

One of the topics which will be a BI buzz for this year will be Textual ETL. As companies try to retain and attract customers, a key area of knowledge that they will turn to is within all the textual data in the organization. To gain any value from these data assets, they will need to integrate the data into their data warehouses and datamarts; this will be the reason for Textual ETL Watch my channel in the next week for an article on this subject for more information.

Textual ETL will provide a lot of value in unlocking the hidden trends and issues that will enable the companies to improve their service offerings and this provide for more opportunities to retain customers and acquire more new customers through effective and targeted campaigns.

Christmas of 2008 was memorable for Data Warehouse Appliance vendors. Gartner's latest Magic quadrant, released on December 23 2008, positions several vendors in significant positions from the last year. Whatever be the underlying criteria, my predictions about data warehouse appliances going mainstream is indeed happening. Year 2009 will be a significant year for all types of data warehouse appliances and their vendors. In the first quarter of this year, I will be announcing my own analyst positioning of the data warehouse appliance vendors. Watch my channel for details.

Wishing all of you a happry new year 2009.

As we draw to the end of the year, I have chose to reflect upon a fundamental subject, communication and the art of listening. If you ever want to be a good speaker, a good problem solver or a good writer, the first skill to develop is good listening skills. I have come across many smart and talented people who have limited listening skills. They often speak over any other person in a discussion or in a forum, which often results in a much lesser team participation in any forum or problem solving discussion.

So what exactly distinguishes a good listener

1. A good listener will wait to hear a problem completely. Wait for the presenter to finish before offering solutions.
2. A good listener in a forum setting or a discussion will wait to speak out their thoughts
3. A good listener will also explain the problem first before the solution; this will set the expectations and avoid any communication issues

I was once told very long ago by a famous public speaker that these are very important skills to develop. Today I share his words with you.

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays to all the readers worldwide.

Well, with the official word that US has entered into a recession, the next big question is how do we keep business moving. If you have not already started a business intelligence program, well guess what, this is the best time to start the same in your organization. Implementing a BI solution will give you a much needed boost about your own company and your customers. As long as you can retain your customers and keep them happy in this economy, you will be a winner when we all emerge out of this recession.

Next question is how to implement the BI program on a shoestring budget? there are a number of options and opportunities from cutting edge solutions like data warehouse appliances, BI appliances to offerings from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Teradata. Depending on the complexity and the sophistication you require, you can mix and match the solutions to implement a successful program. You will need MDM, DG and all the other bells and whistles, but they all can be implemented once you have figured out a solution strategy and a roadmap.

Better late than never.