Big Data Strategy

By now, we all know that big data and predictive modeling are at the heart of any successful and competitive corporate strategy. But making data-driven decisions means more than just selecting software or implementing a BI system; it means making sure the people in your organization understand their roles in applying these systems effectively when it […]

If you’re like me, you’re an exceedingly attractive, 50-something data geek with a love for aviation history who’s an amazing ice hockey player. You also spend a lot of lunches eating a sandwich while studying new technologies. This kind of on-the-cheap, self service training helps you keep up with changes in business intelligence / data warehousing / analytics /

A decent (and fun!) chunk of our business is assessing organizations’ business intelligence and data warehousing capabilities. In assessments we meet with business executives and IT staff to discuss what the business needs, and will need, from BI. We then contrast that with what the organization actually has at its disposal. The result is a findings report

Looking back on the work we’ve done over the past few years I’ve come across an interesting point: while companies may have mature data management organizations (DMOs), few of these DMOs have a set of principles behind their data management visions. In other words, they’re building data management infrastructures and tools without a clear sense of what they’re ultimately

Is your terminology causing your BI / DW team to head in the wrong direction? As a business intelligence and data warehousing consultant I constantly work with IT teams that, even internally, can’t agree on whether they have a data warehouse, a data mart, a reporting database, or something else. As a result they’re not sure what BI /

For those who’ve been wondering why schools don’t teach at least introductory programming, a large group of industry and government leaders have drafted and signed a petition asking congress to provide funding for this. While I graduated from an engineering university (Lehigh – our mascot actually was the Engineer!) – I went there for accounting. I gravitated to computer

Face the Facts – IT Does Interfere with Business Agility It’s a rare organization where the business staff doesn’t complain that IT is holding them back. This is, in fact, one of the key reasons why there is friction between IT and the users they support. Rather than just write this off to whiney users who don’t

If there is one question we hear from almost every Dataspace client, it is, “Do I have big data?” Many clients are torn about the prospect of big data. On the one hand, having big data represents a sort of badge of honor, i.e. “We do so much business and capture so much data that

I build data warehouses. I understand why they’re important, I make a living from them. I also see that traditional, relational data warehouses are on the way out. Their demise is coming from a few technological advances. One of these is the ubiquitous, and growing, Hadoop. But, for small to mid-sized companies, the biggest advance is the