What's in the Warehouse?

Partnering with Business Objects, IBM is releasing a BI appliance that simplifies installation by automating set-up tasks and easing configuration problems. That's the BI tool for me. I don't want to have to put a lot of effort getting a complex system running that, if implemented poorly and generates the wrong results, could ruin my company.

IBM have obviously pulled their renowned Noble Prize winning research labs into the area of data warehousing, and have developed something more important than innovation or advanced product features. They've created a new name, transforming mere data warehousing into Dynamic Warehousing. Now I'll have somewhere to store my dynamics as well as my data.

Irrespective what I decide for my company, the big question for me personally is: should I migrate my own BI system? This is a group of spreadsheets I've developed over many months to address the shortfalls in our departmental BI system — complete with really cool macros, buttons, drop downs and conditional formatting. I could use the new Excel Services that Microsoft has put into Office 2007, but that would mean migrating to Office 2007, which instantly eliminates that option.

Having exhaustively evaluated all BI products, and been pretty excited about the possibilities they raise for me, I checked what the consultants have to say on the matter, which checked my excitement.

Much of a Muchness

Gartner has been very vocal in the past few months. They say that vendor consolidation has made all BI products the same, so I now feel a bit foolish having bothered to differentiate them. Gartner also said I need to have a BI strategy, prepare for changes in technology and products, and first do a full application rationalization rather than piling BI on top of unnecessary software. The reason why I'm looking for a BI solution is to avoid me making all the decisions that they now tell me I have to make to implement it.

However, I can see their point. Just installing the software and paying for the customization may not, in itself, produce the desired result. Each BI vendor has excitedly shown me their integrated dashboard capabilities that deliver all the necessary executive information to one place, demonstrating significant advances in both bells and whistles. Each time, this reminded me that I have a dashboard on my car which tells me how fast I'm going and how much fuel I have, yet I still get speeding tickets and run out of petrol.

Other notes of caution include a survey of data warehousing professionals where 66 percent said they have run into "unanticipated" problems while designing and putting into place their data warehouse, and 44 percent of those said the problems had caused delays to projects. If only these companies had access to timely data to more accurately anticipate likely problems, such as BI tools and a consolidated data warehouse . . .

The clincher was buried in a recent article on one company's move to integrating their data. "St George Bank's outgoing general manager of IT relationships and data warehousing, Gary Carter, said about 90 percent of the bank's data warehouse integration is complete . . . " Note the word "outgoing".

There may be more to it, but I'm not taking any chances so I've put the project on hold. My BI (Bruce Intelligence) tells me to first consolidate my position before I consolidate my data.

Bruce Kirkham is a veteran IT satirist and professional speaker ­specializing in leading edge technologies and scepticism, who views the IT industry not so much as "dot com" as "dot comedy"