Jon Page
Follow Jon on Twitter! @bi_bongo

Jon Page is an Advisory Solution Principle with EMC Consulting who advises clients on the deployment and usage of big data solutions. He has over thirty years experience in IT of which twenty-five were spent deploying a variety of information technologies. Previously, Jon was a freelance consultant focused on helping clients define strategies and evaluate, select, and implement solutions for data warehousing, data modeling, and data governance. Prior to that, he was the Vice President for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing for Oracle EMEA, where he was responsible for all product and solution sales across over 30 countries.

Prior to its merger with AT&T, Jon spent seven years as a founding member of Teradata Europe during which he was intimately involved in many very large data warehouse design and technology planning projects for major banks, airlines, telco companies, and retail organizations throughout Europe. He built a new and profitable Professional Services group within Teradata Europe and was a key person in building the Teradata UK organization.

Jon has a Bachelor of Science and post-graduate degree from Liverpool University in the UK, is a member of the British Computer Society, is a certified Systems Analyst (CCTA), and has authored several books including his new one “Building a BI Architecture Fit for the 21st Century.”
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Welcome to the ‘What Era’
Written on January 24, 2012 by in Business Intelligence / Data Warehousing

On the 6th of February I have the honour of addressing the audience of the Gartner BI Summit in London. I’m going to introduce the ‘what’ era and propose that today’s data warehouse implementations leave a good deal to be desired.

If we look at the current IT systems that companies have deployed today, be they data warehouses, data marts, or systems reporting directly from operational systems, we should rightly be dismayed by the lack of innovation displayed. Many surveys have been done in terms of profiling the usage of these systems, and my own research shows the following:

Forty percent of the time these systems are doing absolutely nothing.

Of the remaining 60%:

  • Eighty percent is spent producing standard reports, of which over 50% are not read.
  • Fifty percent is spent producing parameterised reports.
  • Less than 5% is spent running innovative queries or other tasks; I still call this last bit ‘real’ business intelligence.

Now, without being critical we should face up to the fact that this profile is pretty universal and has probably happened because of two things:

Operational reporting is very poor within the standard packages so common in businesses today (the ERP stuff especially) so new ‘BI systems’ start by simply doing what the ERP systems should already be doing.

End users are not used to being shown what’s going on in their business, they generally prefer to ignore facts and instead rely on their own unique experience.

So, welcome to the ‘What Era,’ an era where nearly our entire BI effort ends up generating reports that simply tell us what happened in the past. Stunning news such as:

  • How many of product ‘X’ did we sell last month?
  • How many new customers did we attract last week?
  • What was our most popular flight route this summer?

Now whilst the ‘What Era’ is a pretty frustrating place to be, it’s also pretty simple because it is so undemanding in terms of people and technology. Throw some data at a database, structure it well, provide a reporting tool, and the job’s pretty much done. Frustrating because all of this effort merely tells you what has already happened. Mind you, if something happened and it was ‘good’, then all is well, but what if it’s bad? Well tough luck, because as it’s already happened, so it’s too late to do anything about it!

 

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