I just finished presenting at the TDWI “Cool BI” Forum in Chicago this week.  I had an interesting conversation after my presentation about identifying where to look for big data opportunities within one’s organization.  I’m a big advocate of starting with the annual report, and I’ll use this blog to discuss 1) where to look in the

InFocus Weekly Roundup May 11, 2012 “Stump the Bloggers” with your questions on Capitalizing on Cloud Services and Transitioning to ITaaS.  Post your questions for InFocus bloggers here – and they will be answered live from EMC World May 21 (simulcast on the EMC Community Network). This week, Wayne Pauley, Choong Keng Leung, and JP Morgenthal

Too many years ago, when I was at Verizon, a key problem was lack of consistent customer data – including the basics such as name, address and other customer information. Today’s blog explores some of the key customer data issues that persist in today’s IT systems… a sort of “Back to the Future.” The same

Yesterday I had the privilege of accepting the TSIA STAR Award for Best Use of Metrics and Business Intelligence on behalf of EMC. This is the third year in a row that EMC has won this award. EMC’s commitment to improving our customers’ experience is what this is all about. Our core metrics are designed

In my discussions about the assault of big data technologies on the traditional Business Intelligence (BI) and data warehouse (DW) markets, sometimes it is hard to identify specific use cases where a big data technology – like Hadoop – can help your BI environment.  Many of these big data use cases are really still being

InFocus Roundup May 4, 2012: “One Size Doesn’t Fit All…”  says Kevin Scanlon, with regards to customer Strategy.  “True return on a social media program is best seen in the cost savings.”    This week we welcome Dave Bagatelle from the Asset and Wealth Management division of EMC Consulting to the InFocus Community. Dave covers

Cloud computing is one of the high tech industry’s most significant and disruptive developments of the past few decades, changing the way organizations build, operate, and consume IT. Businesses are eagerly adopting cloud as a means to make enormous gains in the efficiency and agility of their IT, and to enable aggressive exploration of opportunities

What is the difference between data governance and data stewardship?  As the title of this post would imply, stewardship is a tactical function. And by tactical I mean short-term, specific, and local.   The common thread here is that these tasks all are executed against specific business terms or data elements.  Examples of tactical data stewardship tasks

Are you attending the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) Technology Services World conference next week? I’m looking forward to the conference, and also to co-presenting a breakout session there called, “The Artful Manager: How to Leverage Business Metrics to Greatest Effect.” I love this topic, so running a breakout session on it should be fun…

InFocus Weekly Roundup: April 27, 2012 “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Choong Keng Leong draws on Sun Tzu’s quote to explain the use of holistic strategies as the starting point for IT Transformation. Engage in a discussion with InFocus Bloggers on “Capitalizing on Cloud