There is nothing like a business intelligence roll-out to highlight issues in data - data quality issues, multiple versions, incorrect granularity and the business not having faith in the numbers. How does this happen? There a numerous reasons, from acquisitions and mergers to incorrect fields or uses, we know that businesses require fast implementations, that decisions are made using business intelligence, based on scenarios like this, Ixia Consulting, a South African business intelligence company has partnered with WhereScape; WhereScape is a privately held international data warehousing company; with offices in the USA, Europe and New Zealand.
WhereScape develops WhereScape RED, the world's only integrated development environment for building, managing and renovating data warehouses and WhereScape 3D, the industry's first data warehouse planning tool.
WhereScape was founded on the premise that data warehouses take too long to build; once built, they often no longer match their user's needs; and once in production, they are too hard to change.
WhereScape wants its customers to get their data marts and data warehouses right. Now. The company wants them to get those warehouses and marts right: the right data, at the right granularity, for the right decision makers, with operational control, extensibility and performance built in. And it wants them to deliver those warehouses and marts now: in day six, or week six of the project, not month six or year six.
Pinned to the wall in the founder's office is an old piece of paper. It's faded and tatty, but for WhereScape it's a kind of manifesto. Scribbled on this paper are the four things that WhereScape founder Michael Whitehead said he never wanted to hear again from a customer:
Now that I see what a data warehouse can do, I wish I'd come up with a different set of requirements.
My team will never be able to keep this going, let alone improve it.
I'd love to make some changes... I just wish I didn't have to throw away what I've already got.
Why does it have to take so long?
WhereScape's products are used in every kind of business intelligence project found in today's commercial environment: from normal-form enterprise data warehouses and data vaults, through user access layers and tiers of dependent data marts, to standalone data marts and reporting systems. WhereScape helps with managing workflow as well, transactional systems often have a very narrow view of data and some issues only become apparent when data is combined from different systems - the workflow must be flexible enough to cope with seemingly impossible situations (for example a sale for a product that does not exist, but already been sold).
With "big data" being a hot topic at the moment - Dan Wood's article in Forbes recently 'WhereScape's taming of the Data Warehouse' highlights one of the interesting developments in the past couple of years is the way that almost every leader in big data has publicly declared the need in one way or another for a data warehouse; http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2014/05/26/two-roads-to-instant-big-data/
Once customers start using WhereScape, they start optimising and making better use of their data warehouses. Creating new data warehouses for special purposes also becomes much easier. In this way, WhereScape enables the creation of data supply chains that are rapidly coming to life in the enterprise. With WhereScape RED you can rapidly build data warehouses in your database of choice, you can easily extend existing data warehouses, and you can simplify management and on-going support of your data warehouse or data marts. This becomes the lifeblood of the business intelligence deployment!
With more than 600 customers active, WhereScape customers are able to build data warehouses with fewer people, few if any diversions, missed deadlines or unmet user expectations, and in record time: in days or weeks, instead of months or years.
For more information, please visit www.ixiaconsulting.co.za
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