April 28, 2009
Microsoft Project Gemini links
There's already a lot of information out there on the web about Microsoft's Project Gemini. Here is a collection on links to various items of interest. These are in no particular order, but there's plenty of good comment here covering the spectrum from highly supportive to highly critical. Lots of fun for all the family.
Videos of Project Gemini:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_sBgjOHvRk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzgMMO-P9F0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLSMGxbwfjg
Microsoft articles, blogs, etc:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-06BI08PR.mspx
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/mosha/archive/2008/10/06/so-what-is-exactly-project-gemini.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/jweston/archive/2008/10/07/project-gemini-are-you-a-gemini.aspx
3rd party articles, blogs etc:
http://blogs.forrester.com/information_management/2008/10/tactile-user-bu.html
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-BI-Just-Do-It-in-Excel-65595.html
http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?id=9386
http://www.olapreport.com/Comment_Gemini.htm
http://aristippus303.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/high-priests-quakers-karl-marx-adam-smith-and-gemini/
http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?id=9397
http://blog.gobansaor.com/2009/04/01/project-gemini-xxl-excel-on-steroids/
http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698,sid91_gci1334112,00.html
http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com/2008/11/17/project-gemini-and-excel-dashboards/
http://richfrombechtle.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/microsoft-business-intelligence-project-gemini/
http://blogs.simba.com/simba_technologies_ceo_co/2008/10/microsoft-gemini-and-kilimanjaro.html
http://www.tableausoftware.com/blog/microsoft-project-gemini-compelling-to-tableau-software
http://visualstudiomagazine.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=10269
http://esj.com/Articles/2009/03/25/Workgroup-BI-Poised-for-a-Comeback.aspx
http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/hackathorn/archives/bi_events/20081006-msbi/
Posted by Donald Farmer at 9:30 AM | Comments (2)
April 1, 2009
A future for BI? Signs point to yes.
It's a year now since Dr Jerry Lundegaard of the University of Eastern North Dakota at Fargo published his groundbreaking book "Behind the 8-Ball: Making Decisions in the New Economy." Like previous works setting out new approaches to business, Lundegaard shook up boardrooms with his insightful understanding of how business decisions are made. However, Lundegaard's radical idea was to avoid data-centric, cumbersome approaches such as the Data Warehouse, the Corporate Information Factory, or the Balanced Scorecard. Instead, Lundegaard realized that most decisions are made in spite of the data, not because of it. So he recommended throwing out the stale paradigms and replacing them with (and here's the clever part) the Magic 8-Ball.
At first, Lundegaard's radical vision was only slowly accepted, but his breakthrough moment came when he was the highlight of the Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters: One Version of the Truth." From that point on, software vendors flocked to support the 8-Ball methodology, including the five traditional Business Intelligence megavendors. We interviewed each of these software giants about their 8-ball tools and methodologies.
SAS spokesman Naeve Bayes is enthusiastic about the advanced 8-ball technology they have brought to market. "It's mathematically more spherical than the regular 8-ball. Business users no longer rely on obscure guess work. They can have more confidence in: (X-Xo)^2 (Y-Yo)^2 (Z-Zo)^2 = R^2. This is not just a Magic 8-Ball, it's an Enterprise Center of Eightness."
If a customer asks the wrong question? Bayes understands the problem well, "You'll get a mathematically more spherical misdirection. It's very powerful." She goes on to describe how financial services customers who had established a Center of Eightness not only failed more completely, they failed more quickly than those using traditional technologies. "This shows that not only is the 8-ball methodology more predictive, it is more efficient too," said Bayes. "Some 8-ball customers were way ahead of the downward curve - that's the kind of advantage you need in today's fast changing environment."
Nevertheless, when it comes to business decisions, many people still believe you cannot get fired for buying IBM. What approach should we expect from that most venerable of vendors?
"It's really a services play for us," said IBM's field manager Bill Ablours. "And most importantly, we are the only vendor who can provide the complete hardware, software and services 8-Ball solution." Challenged that even IBM's services may be overstretched to meet growing business demands, Ablours responds "Absolutely not. We have a huge global services division. In any major city of the world, you're never more than 5 minutes away from an IBM consultant talking Balls." It's a convincing claim.
At Redwood Shores they have adopted a different strategy again. A spokesperson was not available, but in a statement, Oracle announced: "Over the years Oracle has acquired a lot of balls. In fact, all Oracle 8-ball solutions come with a Teach Yourself Juggling DVD, to help you keep all these balls in the air." Some CTOs have been concerned at the implications if their IT department should drop one of these many juggling 8-balls. Oracle does not address the problem directly in the press release, but a spokesman acknowledged privately that "The balls are 'unbreakable.' But when they do break, this may be a problem for the customer, but not for us, so long as the ball was fully licensed." And if the customer wants support for the broken ball? "Of course, that's fine. Although, naturally, they do have to pay retrospectively for every time they didn’t drop the ball."
Not to be left out, SAP spokeswoman Kitty Herrballs was keen to describe their solution for those seeking 8-Ball insight. "Last Summer we released our natural language 8-ball application. You can simply ask the 8-ball a natural question such as 'Will my KNA1's VBUPs my MARD change?' And we'll return the answer instantly from memory." Faced with skeptical questions that this format actually appears rather un-natural, Miss Herballs noted that "It's quite easy, if you remember to put the verb at the end."
Many customers wonder if this technology will be integrated into the popular Business Objects stack. "Eventually," says Herballs, "But BO have only just heard about it." Pressed on how this could be, given that the SAP 8-ball technology was released last Summer, and Business Objects is now a wholly-owned SAP subsidiary, Miss Herrballs pointed out that "BO are still, in essence, a French company. They were on vacation last Summer, and are only just catching up on email."
Finally, what of Microsoft, the last of the megavendors to come to market with an 8-ball application? Director of Marketing for the recently re-organized Business Services Solution Services Business at Redmond, Skihni Lahti, described their approach as "partner friendly." Says Lahti "We're delivering the 8-ball functionality in the Excel box for our customers' convenience." Industry watchers have been critical of this approach, pointing out that "functionality in the Excel box" means a Microsoft customer can expect 50 blank index cards tucked into the packaging on which to write questions, and a link to an Excel macro that performs a lookup to a table containing 8-ball answers. Lahti is quick to point out the flexibility of this method, and defends it vigorously. "It's really an 8-ball platform. There is a strong ecosystem of partners supplying questions and answers for all your needs. And for our developer community, we include a Sharpie." We asked for customer evidence that the Microsoft approach is effective. "We have only a few external references just now, but we do use the technology extensively within Microsoft." An example? Look no further than the ongoing question "Should Microsoft buy Yahoo?" The answer "Reply hazy, try again," is right out of Lundegaard's Chapter 3 "The ambiguous answers: try another shake."
That concludes our roundup of the megavendors, and their approaches to Lundegaard's dramatically successful 8-ball methodology. Enjoy the rest of April, and do keep an eye out for Lundegaard's new book, due in booksellers later this month. Co-authored with Davenport, Gladwell and Kaplan, it is provisionally titled "Those Companies We Said Were Awesome? Not So Much."
Posted by Donald Farmer at 8:30 AM | Comments (7)
January 7, 2009
You say you want a resolution ...
Typically, I do not make New Year's resolutions, but having resolved to blog more (see item 5 below) it felt appropriate to start with some goals for 2009. Let's see...
1. I will radically prune slideware.
One of my great pleasures in 2008 has been the result of wiring my Zune so I can listen in the kitchen while cooking, and subscribing to numerous podcasts from BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. It is almost like being back home. Just over the last week or so, I listened to lucid explanations of the complex internal politics of the Abbasid Caliphate; the impact of our economic decline on East European migrant workers in the UK, with consequent effects on the growth of cut flowers as a secondary crop for organic farmers; and the details of the UK government's misuse of knife crime statistics: all this by the spoken word alone, without a bullet list, highlighted term or process diagram in sight. How different from the typical conference presentation, my own too often included, where every point is illustrated, bulleted or highlighted in the supposed interests of clarity.
All through 2008, I have been progressively simplifying and clarifying my presentations. At the Microsoft BI conference in October, my most effective presentation, as scored by the audience, included only graphical slides (here) and my second best had no slides at all, just talking and demos. This year, when I have material that I would like people to take away, I will make it available as a separate handout, written in prose, which they can pick up, or download later. I am gradually seeing others take a similar stand against bland slideware. Mark Madsen, of Third Nature and TDWI, has some excellent presentations at www.slideshare.com/mrm0 - even if he does use the occasional bullet list. (Hey, I am not a puritan in these things. To the puritan, all things are impure.)
I have simply grown very tired of the public presentation that is a document in disguise. We have all had to sit through these, especially from software vendors: the endless builds of detailed marketecture; the logos; the highlighted mission statements; the bullet lists; the boxes and arrows. O Lord, the boxes and arrows! If I use such presentation graphics in 2009, shoot me with the arrow and put me in one of the boxes.
Of course, I know where all this comes from. It is well intentioned enough, and Microsoft is far from the worst offender. Here's how it happens in a slide review meeting.
OK guys, slide 5. We want to talk about the new capabilities. The first bullet nails it clearly - scalable - right?
But if we say this new system is scalable, are we implying that the old version did not scale?
I see. Perhaps this version is more scalable?
No, that may have a similar implication. Let's say it has improved scalability.
But that suggests only incremental changes to the code. My team did serious redesign work under the hood, so let's say it has enhanced scalability.
How about enhanced scalability architecture? That would convey that you guys did a lot of work on this - which also helps to explain why we cut some of the usability work if anyone asks.
Good - all agreed - let's capture that in a bullet. Now, is it really integrated with this other system or just compatible?
Let's change the solid arrow between the boxes to a dotted arrow so we don't make too strong a claim.
Excellent. Better label the arrow with the name of the API just to be clear.
OK, but there are several APIs with different capabilities.
No problem. Another couple of boxes, with a callout line from the arrow, can list the APIs and services.
Yes, but let's not overlook SaaS.
OK, make one of the boxes a clipart cloud.
Now we're getting there ...
I have been involved in so many of these meetings: actually, I am rather good in them, and I guess that for the major conference keynotes they may even be politically unavoidable. To be fair, especially with release dates, we are carefully hedging commitments that may come back to haunt us. Our audience understands that when we say first half of 2020, we are carefully not putting in writing any commitment that could be used against us, so long as we ship by 5.30pm on the afternoon of June 30th. However, far too often we take this caution into every aspect of the presentation with the results that our slides groan with detail and suffer badly from the fallacy of false precision.
For my own presentations, I can only resolve to try to do much better, while working to improve the situation elsewhere, too. In 2008, I had a lot of fun building the Business Intelligence fairytale with Stacey, my Vice President's communications manager - and the VP was game enough to present it too. It was hugely successful. You can see Ted Kummert presenting it here - scroll to 1 hour and 16 minutes into the video if you like. I am hoping we can do more to keep our audiences interested in 2009.
2. Stop boring analysts!
Yes, that is an ambiguous statement. I will leave it so.
I am increasingly aware that analysts really do have a tough job, not helped by the presentations I have just described. I have always considered the worst mistakes we can make with analysts, are to be misleading or patronizing. I now realize that to be boring is a very close third.
3. I am going to stop talking about metadata.
Those who know me well, also know this is about as likely as forswearing the eating of fish or the drinking of claret, but let me explain. I will still be happy to talk about business metadata, or technical metadata, or lineage or impact analysis; but I am not going to talk about undifferentiated metadata in the abstract. The all-encompassing term just is not helpful, and leads to the hopelessly mistaken expectation that there might be a metadata solution. Asking a vendor for their metadata solution is like asking an architect for their door solution. You mean front door, elevator door, office door, cupboard door, or fire door? Rotating, sliding, or swinging?
4. I will try to stop using analogies.
Yes, I know. It is far too easy to reach for an inexact analogy when making a point rather than taking the time and care to construct a better account of the actual issue at the hand. Analogies can be useful in their place, no doubt, but I will use them reluctantly for I notice that I, and many others, fall back on this rhetorical device too readily. I have become convinced that they confuse and mislead as often as they illuminate. After all, Jesus did not use parables to make his message easier to understand: quite the opposite. See Matthew 13.
Perhaps I will use metaphor instead. Metaphor sounds deeper. Your metadata is an office door, opening onto the corridor of the enterprise. By the end of the year, I will publish The Little Book of B.I. Calm.
Finally …
5. I will blog more.
Carried over from 2008.
Posted by Donald Farmer at 10:45 AM | Comments (4)
