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Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
View the Q&A discussion from our SSAS for Tabular Cubes webinar. The audience asked insightful questions, focusing on this Microsoft's modeling offering for Self-Service and Gold Standard reporting, and how this technology compares to others.
If you would like to view the entire webinar, continue to the research center under webinars.
Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
By: Dave Crolene
Datasource recently completed a project where we helped a client evaluate and compare two business intelligence tools, both were data virtualization products. As an objective facilitator, Datasource Consulting was called up on to ensure that both products had a fair and even playing field and to help discover the strengths and weaknesses of both tools to help drive a decision. Whether you are evaluating Business Intelligence tools (BI) , Extract Transform Load tools (ETL), Relational Databases (RDBs), etc, this article provides a step-by-step approach that we use to compare and evaluate products.
Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
By: Steve Dine
I recently led a Enterprise Business Intelligence tool selection project for one of our customers that is classified in the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market. A business with 100 or fewer employees is generally considered small, while one with 100-999 employees is considered to be mid-sized (by this definition, our customer would be mid-sized). Having recently heard a number of the enterprise business intelligence vendors state that they are now targeting this market, I figured that they would be prepared for the differences that these customers require with regard to the sales process. Unfortunately, in most cases I didn't find this to be true.
Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog, Cloud
A few weeks ago I presented a full day course on BI in the cloud at the TDWI conference in Orlando. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of attendees and the overall interest in BI in the cloud from both vendors and BI practitioners. Having spent the better part of the past year working in the Amazon cloud, I took for granted the general confusion that still exists over how the cloud is defined and how it relates to BI. I believe that this is due in large part to the fact that the cloud is still taking shape, especially when it comes to BI. As an industry, we look at the expectation of large data volumes, a seemingly endless desire for faster response times and concerns over data security and wonder how BI infrastructures could possibly exist in the cloud. Given the fact that we are at the early adopter phase of the consumer lifecycle, these concerns are expected. However, these concerns may not be reality for as many BI programs as some might think.
Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
By: Steve Dine
A colleague of mine recently asked me to chime in on discussion thread about some business intelligence software, and specifically, ETL tools. Like many discussion board threads, it had drifted significantly from the original topic. As a general rule, I tend to spend little time on these boards, not because I don't think that they have value, but between Twitter, Blogs and instant messaging, I can't seem to find much time left for additional on-line interaction. I read through the thread and was immediately struck by the number of comments about the business intelligence software that were phrased as facts but were either based on outdated information, innuendo or rumor.
Topics: Tableau, Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
By: Yelena McElwain, BI Consultant
Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Cognos, Blog, Cloud
How many times have you heard a statistic such as "42 percent of respondents rate a business intelligence solution as moderately successful" or "more than 50 percent of all business intelligence solutions fail"? When I read these types of statistics I often wonder what's behind these numbers. I'd love to be able to drill down directly to the respondents and ask them how they defined success or failure when answering the question. I recently met with a company that asked if I could come in and help make their business intelligence solution more successful. Naturally, my first question was to ask them how they define success. Each person in the room defined success a bit differently and meeting turned into a healthy discussion on what constitutes a successful business intelligence solution.
Topics: Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Cognos, Blog, Cloud
In a few weeks I will be presenting 'BI in the Cloud' for Executive Summit at the TDWI Conference in Las Vegas. Based on my research during the creation of my presentation, I may be one of only a handful of BI practitioners that are excited about the prospects of leveraging the Cloud for Business Intelligence programs (Cloud BI). I am not sure whether this is because there are still formidable challenges with leveraging Cloud BI or because I spoke to the wrong people.
Topics: Tableau, Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
By: Yelena McElwain, BI Consultant
Topics: Tableau, Tool Selection, Business Intelligence, Blog
By: Yelena McElwain, BI Consultant
