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Archive for June, 2011

To BI 4.0 or Not?

By
Paul
Published: June 30, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Business Objects, SAP Business ObjectsTags: , , ,
To BI 4.0 or Not?

As SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 is finally about to move into general availability status, there is mixture of excitement tempered with caution amongst both customers and consultants alike.

It is undoubtedly a major new release of the long and successful BusinessObjects product suite. It includes a new semantic layer and universe designer, known as the Information Design Tool (IDT), with enhanced capabilities including native access to OLAP data sources. There are exciting new functionalities in Web Intelligence with hierarchal data analysis and new charting capabilities. Xcelsius 4.0 integrates with the new semantic layer and includes the query panel in the Designer tool allowing direct binding of universe objects to visualizations. There are two new versions of Crystal Reports and Advanced Analysis the new OLAP analysis tool that replaces Voyager. In addition there is a bunch of new functionality in the platform for monitoring, auditing, version control and event management plus a whole bunch more for integration with SAP and SAP BW. BI 4.0 is also based on 64-bit architecture.

All of this adds up to a lot of new code and new integration. While extensive testing has been underway in both the beta and ramp up releases, the new software is for the most part untried in the challenging production environments of existing BusinessObjects enterprise deployments. This is due to some degree to the fact that previous new releases of the BusinessObjects suite have had issues (XI 3.0 and BO 6.0 quickly come to mind). Most existing customers prefer to wait for one of two service packs (not fix packs) before venturing into a new release.

There is also the consideration that there are some pretty important items missing from the BI 4.0 release such as the Microsoft .net SDK’s (used by many 3rd party add-on solutions) and the integration with SharePoint .

Many existing classic BusinessObjects customers have large numbers of Desktop Intelligence reports which will no longer be supported in BI 4.0. This will be a huge conversion project for many of them that will be difficult to justify from a tangible return on investment viewpoint.

However, for many SAP ERP customers, BI 4.0 is long overdue and they need the better integration it offers as soon as possible so I would expect many of them to look to adopt early. Customers implementing BusinessObjects for the first time may also benefit from starting with BI 4.0.

As for the existing BusinessObjects ,Crystal and Xcelsius based customers, it would be good to use the next 12 months to try out the release in a test environment and start to become familiar with the new functionality while testing items from your existing deployment with the new platform. This would also allow you to better plan for what new functionality would benefit your business the most and to learn it thoroughly before deploying. For those with large numbers of Desktop Intelligence reports, it provides time to consider options and convert at a sustainable pace and, dare I say, for SAP to even reconsider the Desktop Intelligence support decision.

Image Credit: http://www.presentermedia.com/

The Big Splash of Business Intelligence

By
Ethan
Published: June 29, 2011Posted in: Business IntelligenceTags:
The Big Splash of Business Intelligence

After this year’s IBIS my family and I went to enjoy a few days in San Diego to relax and recuperate from a long week of being pampered at the Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel.  Actually, they got pampered and I needed to recuperate.  But enough of my sob story; just know that if you missed out on IBIS, well you really missed out!

In addition to the fabulous weather in San Diego, we took advantage of the tourist attractions including the world famous Sea World marine wonderland.  In addition to seeing the penguin exhibit, sea turtles, starfish and dolphins we had the opportunity to see the world famous killer whale shows.

The Splash Zone

The kids actually complained that after sitting on two occasions in “the soak zone”, they remained dry while Mom and Dad celebrated not having to buy a Shamu towel to dry off with.

After one of the shows, my eight year old daughter and I went down to take pictures with one of the animal trainers.  My daughter is now considering a new career dream – to train and work with the animals at the park.  I made the comment to the trainer that I had instructed my daughter to do well in school and study marine biology to get that opportunity.

Dreams of Changing the World

The trainer we were talking to then corrected me and made an interesting comment.  She said that while marine biology was a good skill to develop in pursuit of this job, the better college choice was psychology.  I was intrigued by her comment and prodded her for more information.  She went into more detail and explained how the training of the animals involved the application of traditional psychology fields and skills such as operant conditioning and associative learning.  So the work that she did was nothing more than applied psychology… and some strong swimming skills. 

The marine biology component is important and necessary focusing on keeping the animals healthy and maintaining a stable and ideal environment for everyone.  But the real job of the animals and the trainers is to change the world.  Indeed, the work is about changing people’s hearts and perspectives on the environment and the animals they meet ranging from teaching people to not drop their empty water bottles on the ground to conserving water and energy!  This is their true purpose and calling.

Even though I was trying very hard to stay in my vacation mental mode I immediately started thinking how BI is different from traditional IT disciplines.  If you asked me what to study in college to be a great BI person I would of course suggest taking classes in IT, as well as courses that build critical thinking skills, and maybe some accounting and management training.  But I wouldn’t stop there.  In addition to these traditional training disciplines, I would strongly suggest that you look at psychology and organizational effectiveness.  While a portion of BI is nothing more than building reports and working with data sets to support the business, conform to regulatory requirements and deliver information where it’s most needed, the real value in BI is more than that.  The reporting and documentation work that we do builds the environment and infrastructure to allow for the creation of what we really need and what really creates value…the great splash as you will.

The value of BI is to inspire people and provide them with information that will allow them to change their perspective, to change their behavior and ultimately to change their world.  The worst thing that a manager can do is to see BI as just that first piece of the puzzle as I did with the marine biology. 

The value of BI is to explore and expand into the unknown.  To help people see what they may not know or aren’t yet considering and to help them make well informed decisions and think in new and unique ways.  While our stated purpose is to visualize the data and other business information, the real purpose, the great splash is to inspire people to take action and maximize the potential of the organization.

Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

By
Paul
Published: June 27, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, XcelsiusTags: , ,
Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

The winners of the highly coveted InfoSol Best Xcelsius Dashboard awards were announced on Monday at IBIS 2011.  After each of the dashboards in the four categories was explained and demonstrated, representatives for the companies received the etched glass pyramid accolade that has become synonymous with the awards.

This year’s “Best Business Dashboard” award went to Rural Metro Corporation for their Daily Business Insight dashboard which was developed to show daily insight into operational, billing and financial data from different systems delivered in a simple and effective way. The interface was designed in a format that made sense to management and provided the ability to coordinate the distribution of matching Web Intelligence reports to their mobile devices. One of the key benefits of the dashboard was that it helped to create a consistent means of communication across the business.

The “Most Innovative Dashboard” award was won by McKesson Specialty Care Solutions for a dashboard they developed to provide a single view of all program enrollment and fill activity for a key client to quickly access the data they need in order to respond to internal data requests, in a timely, efficient and accurate manner. The dashboard made great use of different Xcelsius components including color coded maps, selection tables and a variety of different charts while using tabs and selection buttons to make the navigation both simple and powerful. The dashboard resulted in timely and accurate turnaround to requests that benefitted both McKesson and their client.

The “Most Valuable Dashboard” award was claimed by Banner Health for their automated dashboard used to analyze and monitor patient throughput within designated Emergency Departments within the Banner Health system. The dashboard is able to access a large number of key operational and clinical metrics providing standardization and trust in the data throughout the organization. One of the key benefits was an improvement in overall patient satisfaction by reducing the wait time between a patient’s initial arrival time and examination by a physician.

The fourth award this year was renamed the “Most Inspired Dashboard” award and was won by Sohar Aluminum from Oman for their dashboard to bring about accountability, transparency in daily work and ultimately consistent, accurate data. The dashboard was inspirational in both its design and functionality by making use of write back functionality enabling supervisors to enter their actual and target results through the dashboard itself. In addition, other alert dashboards were created that are automatically scheduled and emailed to supervisors who are late entering their data. The dashboard has been so successful that it has actually brought about a culture change in the way people look at data and processes at the company.

After the awards, many companies present vowed to enter even more amazing dashboards for the 2012 awards and I can’t wait to see them.

Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

By
Paul
Published: June 20, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, IBIS, InfoSol, News, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags:
Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

IBIS 2011 kicked off last night with its welcome reception and solutions showcase demonstrating some of the latest business intelligence solutions and one solution in particular created quite a buzz – MyBI Mobile.

As I walked around the showcase showing Xcelsius dashboards running on an iPad, people stopped with looks of disbelief mixed with wonder.

“How are you doing that?”

“Xcelsius doesn’t run on an iPad or an iPhone”

Well, I am happy to report that with MyBI Mobile, not only does Xcelsius run on an iPad and an iPhone, but also on an Android. And it not only runs but it sings too! It has a fabulous simple menu system to serve up different content on the device and that content can also be Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence in addition to Xcelsius. With Web Intelligence you can also create new reports from the mobile device – that’s cool! When viewing and interacting with the content, you can perform a “pinch and zoom” action on any part of the screen to automatically enlarge that area of the dashboard or report.

While many companies have invested in building both dazzling and effective Xcelsius dashboard business intelligence solutions, they have often been challenged when trying to find ways to move these to mobile devices. The operating system for the IPhone and IPad (iOS) does not support Flash and SWF outputs natively but with MyBI mobile the barriers have been lifted. You can now take your key Xcelsius dashboards and just serve them up on iPads, iPhones and Androids without changing them and interact with all the features just the same as on the PC.

I cannot express enough how incredible this is and what it means to the millions of Xcelsius users around the world who want to take their dashboards mobile  - you are free of your shackles and you can now deliver Xcelsius to the most popular mobile smart devices out there.

I recently heard there are an estimated 200 million iOS devices in use today and now all those users can enjoy the full functionality of the amazing data visualization of Xcelsius through MyBI Mobile.

If the excitement at IBIS is anything to go by, you will certainly be hearing and seeing a lot more of this solution in the coming months so stay tuned.

Happy Father’s Day

By
Yolande
Published: June 19, 2011Posted in: EventsTags:
Happy Father’s Day

Ocean breeze and wet sand – a perfect combination for a heartfelt wish.

Keynotes at IBIS 2011 Look Set to Inspire All

By
Paul
Published: June 17, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags:
Keynotes at IBIS 2011 Look Set to Inspire All

As the excitement mounts for IBIS 2011 which kicks off this weekend, there is a buzz emerging around the keynotes to be delivered on Monday and Tuesday mornings.

Paul Grill, CEO and President of InfoSol, will kick off IBIS 2011 under the banner of this year’s theme of Inspired Business Intelligence with a fascinating glimpse at some inspirational BI technologies, along with some truly creative and inspired BI solutions encountered in the last year. This will include showing fully functional Xcelsius dashboards with no modifications running on an iPad and other mobile devices. Not only is this cool but it takes Xcelsius and mobile business intelligence to a whole new level of capabilities and possibilities.

Paul will also be announcing the winners of the coveted 2011 Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards. There are four categories this year, namely :

  • Best Business Dashboard
  • Most Innovative Dashboard
  • Most Valuable Dashboard
  • Most Inspired Dashboard

The winning dashboards will be demonstrated during the awards.

On Tuesday morning, Yolande Grill, Vice President of Business Development at InfoSol will deliver a compelling and thought provoking keynote entitled “Conversations with Einstein on Business Intelligence”. The synopsis speaks for itself :

“I recently ran across this quote by Einstein stating that “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count” and that “everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” It echoed for me a sentiment that I had been pondering in the last couple of years about what it is that we measure in Corporate America. I am deeply interested and passionate about the experience of the “individual at work.”

Using the tools of Business Intelligence, we engage in a process that attempts to answer for us the questions that lead us to the efficient and profitable growth of our business. The data we gather informs us, we then choose what other data to gather, and we enter a cycle of gathering and reporting. We use the results internally to inform our day to day operation and decision making, and we share the results externally to engage and court our customers into remaining in relationship with us.

Our results are only as good as our questions, and in my search for finding the questions, I stumbled into a conversation with Albert Einstein.”

Ryan Goodman, Founder and CEO of Centigon Solutions and well known Xcelsius Guru and Evangelist, wraps up the keynotes with a presentation and demonstration on a couple of amazing Xcelsius dashboard solution case studies showing real world business problems that “inspired” swift action that not only affected the bottom line but also impacted lives.

IBIS 2011 is definitely the place to be next week. Really looking forward to being with everyone.

Happy

By
Yolande
Published: June 16, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags:
Happy

As part of our IBIS 2011 (InfoSol’s Business Intelligence Seminar), we are hosting a screening of the movie Happy from Academy Award® Nominated director Roko Belic.  Below is the trailer.

As part of our commitment to our Bii (Business Intelligence Institute) training program, in May after their exams, we welcomed three interns from the Computer Information Systems program at ASU (Arizona State University).  To help them think out of the box we gave two of them a problem for which they had minimal assistance.  We asked them to come up with a dashboard (applying BI technology) that attempted to measure a non-traditional metric of (Happiness).   Why? #1 reason is because it is fun!  And also, because the best way to learn is by doing.

WARNING:  please note that any data you enter in the dashboard that was created is not encrypted and no authentication is used in this current version – so just use a nickname – remember it so you can visit again – and have fun!

It is really inspiring for me to see what Dan Hicks and Joe Pearson were able to accomplish.  Here’s what they said:

“We set out on our mission to measure happiness unsure of what we would discover. Having never created a dashboard before now, we experienced many successes and struggles along the way. Ultimately, we learned a lot through the entire process of coming up with an idea, building the dashboard, and constant testing. It is important to realize that this dashboard and the way happiness is defined is a work in progress.  Happiness can mean many different things to many different people.  The intangibility of this emotion can lead to a lack of recognition.  The goal of our project is to inspire the discussion about often overlooked aspects in the workplace and in life.

“After using the Happy Dashboard, we urge you to further explore the subject.  Here are some links to get started, including a link to the Happy Movie which was our main inspiration.”

The Happy Movie- http://thehappymovie.com/

Oxford Happiness Survey- http://happiness-survey.com/survey/ 

Zenhabits 52 tips for Happiness- http://zenhabits.net/handbook-for-life-52-tips-for-happiness-and-productivity/

Living your life for happiness- http://www.bakadesuyo.com/how-should-you-spend-your-time-in-order-to-in

In no way am I or we (InfoSol) claiming to be experts or even know much about the science of happiness.  I believe that this project is something fun to work on and like Joe and Dan said, a great way to get the conversation started. 

I will update this post with more links and I hope that you will post comments with suggestions to links that you may feel contribute to further discussion on this topic.

They say that you are known by the company you keep – IBIS 2011 Partner Update

By
Paul
Published: June 12, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, InfoSolTags: , , ,
They say that you are known by the company you keep – IBIS 2011 Partner Update

With only 7 days to go until the start of our annual IBIS I wanted to blog about some of our partners that will be joining us this year.  They say that you are known by the company you keep and it is with great excitement that I get to welcome the following partners to our Inspired Business Intelligence seminar.

Centigon Solutions – Ryan Goodman and Evan DeLodder (California, USA)

Centigon provides add-on components for Xcelsius dashboards like GMaps for incorporation of Google Maps in your dashboards and a group of neat components know as the Essentials Bundle. InfoSol resells these offerings and includes the Essentials Bundle in our InfoBurst Dash solution. Centigon is an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating their solutions at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.  Ryan Goodman, Centigon Founder and Xcelsius evangelist will be delivering one of the keynote addresses on Inspired Dashboard Solutions on Tuesday morning. He will also be leading two sessions in the “Next Generation of BI” track (Track 7). Evan Delodder the CTO and product architect at Centigon will be delivering the 2-day FleXcelsius boot camp in the IBIS Post-seminar offerings on the Thursday and Friday after IBIS. This boot camp will teach you how to build your own Xcelsius components in Flex.

Keyrus – Klaus Binder and Aurelien Vadi (France)

Keyrus, a large Consulting company based in France has also developed some add-on solutions for BusinessObjects, like Version Manager for version control of universes and reports. We partner together, with Keyrus reselling InfoBurst in Europe, and InfoSol reselling Version Manager in the US.  They are an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating Version Manager at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.

Blueprint Management – David Searro and Mike Saunders (U.K.)

Blueprint  a specialist consultancy that creates business intelligence and data warehouse platforms for improved performance management and financial planning is also one of our partners and an InfoBurst Reseller in the UK.  David Searro is from the senior management team at Blueprint and Mike Saunders is a technical specialist.

Affecto – Jesper Schultz-Pedersen (Denmark)

Affecto is a BI Solutions Company in Denmark covering Scandinavia and the Baltic States.  Jesper is a technical specialist. 

CTTSI – Michael Ward (Michigan, USA)

CTTSI (Creative Technologies and Training Solutions Inc.) is based in Michigan. They offer training and consulting in BusinessObjects and have been a long time partner with InfoSol.   Michael is the President and Owner of the company.

You can find links to other InfoSol partners on our website.

image credit: presentermedia.com

Sapphire Scribbles and Quotes

By
Paul
Published: June 1, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BITags:
Sapphire Scribbles and Quotes

The 2011 joint SAP Sapphire/ASUG Annual Conference came and went in as large a blur as the size of the event itself. With an estimated 14,000 attendees and an overwhelming number of tracks, sessions, demonstrations, meetings and exhibits, the best I could hope for was snapshots and slices of information over the three days.

The panel discussion on the Monday morning keynote turned into a feisty debate between two of the panelists,  well-known scientist and co-founder of the string field theory, Dr. Michio Kaku and  innovative thought leader and author, Michael Schrage.

 Kaku painted a future where we move from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism and technology will change the world with imaginative new products like “smart” Barbie dolls! Schrage expressed that the line between infrastructure and applications has become blurred. However when Kaku said that technology enabled individuals will change the world and that we need to educate for the digital economy, Schrage disagreed by saying that a University degree is not going to make a difference and there is a lack of consistency and that we cannot mass produce minds.

 Kaku was not happy and launched into a passionate defense of his point by stating that the US has the worst education system in science in the world ranking top of the “stupid index” and that the only thing that has saved the US from falling behind as an innovator is the H1B Visa. He went on saying that almost 100% of PhD candidates in sciences in the US are foreign born and that there are distorted incentives for Americans in university to study sciences.  The danger the US now faces is that these foreign born scientists now have both choices and incentives to go to other countries besides the US.

The afternoon ASUG keynote featuring Michael Eisner, ex-CEO of Disney, was much tamer. Eisner promoted his new book about successful business partnerships and his seven guiding principles to being successful in business one of which was failure (to be successful you need to fail).

SAP heavily promoted HANA – their new High Performance Analytic Appliance (I know that doesn’t spell HANA but it almost does) with its in-memory database- throughout the conference. The keynotes on Wednesday were almost completely dedicated to HANA with multiple customer testimonials and examples of potential usages. Dr. Hasso Plattner, Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board and a great favorite at Sapphire meetings, did an excellent job explaining the technology.

Overall there was less emphasis on the SAP BusinessObjects suite compared to last year’s Sapphire even though BI 4.0 is a big new release this year. 

In the SAP Campus areas, there were some very good customer panel discussions with users talking about their successful solution implementations.

As always, there was plenty to see in the Exhibits area from a variety of vendors and the top entertainment award was a tossup between the racing cars at the CA stand and the ball jugglers at Oracle.

Here are a collection of my favorite quotes from the keynotes this year :

“Never confuse a clear vision with a short distance.” – Michael Schrage, Thought Leader and Author

 

“Big brother is not as much a concern as little bother.” – Dr. Michio Kaku, Scientist

“To punish failure is another way to encourage mediocrity.” – Michael Eisner, Former CEO of Disney

 

“The punch card system was aggregation free…. HANA mimics this…” – Prof. Dr. Hasso Plattner, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SAP AG

If you registered for the conference, you can still visit the sapphirenow website where you can watch on demand replays of some of the sessions.

Blog thumbnail/photo is of Gabriel Byrne talking about in memory computing in the opening keynote Imagining Business In 2015.