The Digital Dashboard
May 21, 2008
Taken from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/
“1) In information technology, a dashboard is a user interface that, somewhat resembling an automobile’s dashboard, organizes and presents information in a way that is easy to read. However, a computer dashboard is more likely to be interactive than an automobile dashboard (unless it is also computer-based). To some extent, most graphical user interfaces resemble a dashboard. However, some product developers consciously employ this metaphor (and sometimes the term) so that the user instantly recognizes the similarity.
2) Some products that aim to integrate information from multiple components into a unified display refer to themselves as dashboards. For example, a product might obtain information from the local operating system in a computer, from one or more applications that may be running, and from one or more remote sites on the Web and present it as though it all came from the same source. Hewlett Packard developed the first such product, which began as a tool for customizing Windows desktops. Called Dashboard, the HP product was subsequently acquired by Borland and then a company called Starfish. Microsoft’s Digital Dashboard tool incorporates Web-based elements (such as news, stock quotes, and so on) and corporate elements (such as e-mail, applications, and so on) into Outlook. Dashboards may be customized in a multitude of ways and named accordingly, generally, for example as a general corporate or enterprise dashboard, or more specifically, as a CIO or CEO dashboard.”
Successful Digital Dashboards are interactive and personalised. The most compelling digital dashboard solutions are built with Logi Info.
The Evolving BI Landscape
May 21, 2008
The BI Market is consolidating and continuing to evolve at considerable speed. The recent wave of acquisitions has resulted in 3 broad market categories:
1. Vertical Applications
2. Niche Value/Best of Breed Applications
3. Technology Platforms
The Vertical Applications market is evenly split between Oracle and SAP, both companies have acquired a multiplicity of BI tools and technologies and are focused on extending the value of the core applications offering.
Examples of niche/best of breed applications would be the newly emerging Qlikview or the Logi9 BI platform from LogiXML in the Reporting and Analytics space or Teradata/Netezza/Vertica in the high performance data warehouse space. Some of these products are new some have been around for a while and serve a particular niche well.
The third category Technology Platforms is dominated by IBM and Microsoft, both of these companies provide a complete ‘Information Server’ platform which can be used to source, package and deliver information to a multiplicity of different users.
Evolving in parallel to these 3 market categories is the open source BI movement, however despite offering a wide range of functionality at a compelling cost in terms of software acquisition. The costs which will be incurred over the full lifecycle of the solution are still far from understood.
However there appears to be a general reluctance among users of these platforms to deliver the end to end solution entirely from one vendor. The acquisition of the de-facto standard in enterprise reporting, Cognos 8, by IBM will definitely put this to the test.
Microsoft actively promotes both it’s own desktop/intranet focused tools and provides the platform for many niche players. An emerging alternative to the combination of IBM and Cognos in the coming year, will be the combination of the Microsoft ‘Information Server’ platform with the unified Business Intelligence offering from LogiXML, Logi9.
The successful entrance of Logi into this market was acknowledged by Gartner in the 2008 BI Quadrant.
Watch this space ………………….
Reports; the Building Blocks of BI
May 17, 2008
re·port (r-pôrt -prt)
n.
1. An account presented usually in detail.
Reports are the basic building blocks of Business Intelligence (BI) and like the humble building brick often ignored or underestimated.
Reports are the lifeblood of any business interaction, clear concise reports deliver the information which supports effective decisions and negotiations.
However the report as a source of requirements can prove to be unreliable.
Design your solutions to deliver information and then package the information into effective reports ……………….
OLAP and Analytics
May 17, 2008
an·a·lyt·ics (n-ltks)
n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)
The branch of logic dealing with analysis.
Taken from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/
“OLAP (online analytical processing) is computer processing that enables a user to easily and selectively extract and view data from different points-of-view. For example, a user can request that data be analyzed to display a spreadsheet showing all of a company’s beach ball products sold in Florida in the month of July, compare revenue figures with those for the same products in September, and then see a comparison of other product sales in Florida in the same time period. To facilitate this kind of analysis, OLAP data is stored in a multidimensional database. Whereas a relational database can be thought of as two-dimensional, a multidimensional database considers each data attribute (such as product, geographic sales region, and time period) as a separate “dimension.” OLAP software can locate the intersection of dimensions (all products sold in the Eastern region above a certain price during a certain time period) and display them. Attributes such as time periods can be broken down into subattributes.
OLAP can be used for data mining or the discovery of previously undiscerned relationships between data items.”
An important element of any Business Intelligence deployment, OLAP cubes deliver vital packages of data in a rich and readily consumable form. OLAP has suffered from a lack of standards and remains proprietary technology for most vendors.
The advent of MDX the multi-dimensional query language at the heart of SQL Server SSAS has opened this up slightly, this standard has also been adopted by Cognos in it’s Series 7 and 8 product lines and by the open source project Pentaho.
As hardware capabilities constantly improve and specialised data warehouse ready databases come to the fore the jury is out on the future of OLAP technologies.
OLAP however, for now offers unique functionality which enables rapid analysis of multiple fact tables at different levels of granularity. MDX queries also allow otherwise complex queries to be implemented quickly and easily with a few lines of code. An example of this capability would be the comparison of year to-date sales figures for this year vs. last.
The stand out OLAP implementation in today’s marketplace is Microsoft’s SQL Server SSAS and the best way to extend this capability inside and outside your organisation is by deploying Logi OLAP.
