The ITWeb Data Warehousing Conference, taking place at Vodaworld in Midrand from 9 to 11 September, will feature in-depth discussions and industry analysis on all things data warehouse-related, from implementation to the roles and responsibilities of parties involved.
The post-conference workshop, however, will also offer valuable insights. International speaker Barry Devlin, MD of 9sight Consulting, will delve deeper into an array of data warehousing issues, including operational business intelligence (BI) and the impact of SOA on the data warehouse.
According to Devlin, operational BI is a game-changing development in the field of data warehousing. It promises companies near real-time information and data sharing across multiple systems and platforms to support critical business processes, he says. Such timely information is vital as businesses struggle to make difficult decisions and have business processes run more effectively in these recessionary times.
For many years, information that was a day or even a week old was sufficient, but now, up-to-the-minute information is needed to compete effectively. “In some cases, it can make the difference between survival and going under,” he says.
Devlin cites the importance of operational BI in the retail space as a typical example, adding that operational BI is used to continuously monitor sales and raise requests for stock the second it runs out.
“By feeding the point-of-sales systems data directly to the data warehouse, decisions can be made in real-time on what stock can be ordered, based on its availability and location, avoiding empty shelves and disgruntled customers,” he adds.
“In this workshop, I show companies how to assess their readiness for operational BI in five key areas: the requirements process, architecture, technology choices, organisational issues and the roll-out of operational BI,” explains Devlin.
This workshop also emphasises the need to move from a pure data-oriented to a data-and-process view as service-oriented architecture (SOA) restructures both operational systems and data warehousing now and in the future.
As SOA is adopted in the operational environment, business processes and databases will become much more flexible and changeable. “This will pose immediate difficulties for the traditional extract, transform and load batch processes for populating the warehouse. However, in the future, SOA will enable data to be read directly from the enterprise service bus, providing access to the real-time information required by operational BI,” says Devlin.
This workshop addresses both business users and data warehouse professionals, Devlin says, noting that operational BI fundamentally changes the relationship between these two parties.
“The data warehouse developers will need to become directly involved in day-to-day business processes, while business users will have to change long-standing procedures to benefit from more timely information.
“If your company is serious about operational BI, you need to ensure that both business and IT attend,” he concludes.
Related stories:
Tackling data warehousing in a downturn
Conference delves into data warehousing
Share