Some Mobile Business Intelligence Articles

Hello Folks!

Our latest research project on Mobile Business Intelligence has been a great experience and a great success. We had a chance to learn a great deal about new technologies, new market segments and get introduced to a number of wildly innovative organizations.

Thanks again to all of you that participated. Much appreciated!

We also received a good amount of press attention. Here's a short list of the many articles on Mobile BI that quoted our research:

• Lots of Change Ahead for Mobile Business Intelligence
  Published by IT Business Edge on Nov 12, 2010
• Mobile Business Intel to Skyrocket Next Two Years
  Published by internet.com on Nov 05, 2010
• The upcoming revolution in business intelligence systems
  Published by SearchCIO.com on Nov 05, 2010
• Mobile BI Survey Sheds Light on Use, Ubiquity
  Published by Enterprise Systems Journal on Nov 03, 2010
• Mobile Business Intelligence: The Next Big Thing
  Published by eCRM Guide on Oct 29, 2010
• Q & A With Howard Dresner on Mobile BI
  Published by SmartDataCollective on Oct 27, 2010
• Why Your Business Intelligence Apps Need a Tablet Strategy
  Published by Datamation on Sep 28, 2010
• Profound Shifts in Mobile Business Intelligence Are Afoot
  Published by Forbes on Sep 22, 2010

And, of course, our official Mobile BI Website is up and running for those that want to get the complete story!

NEXT: We're getting ready to announce our upcoming research project within a few weeks. So, stay tuned!!

Best,

Howard

Trip Report: Microsoft's Business Intelligence Conference

Hello Folks!

I'm just back from Microsoft's BI Conference in New Orleans. It was great to back in town after so many years.

I have to say that I really enjoyed the event, which was actually an event within the larger TechEd conference. In general, it was well organized and run, with few hitches. Very good show floor - with

more than a few Microsoft competitors; pretty good food and excellent WiFi. While there I had some great discussions with Microsoft folks, customers, partners and fellow analysts.

Not sure what the official attendance was. However, my guess is about 10,000 attendees for TechEd, who were allowed to attend BI sessions but not vice versa. To help gauge it, the BI keynote was held in a very large auditorium and probably had 1,000 people. Breakout sessions had overflow rooms. My own presentation on performance-directed culture was oversubscribed and filled both main and overflow rooms. And, to my surprise, there were a good number of senior IT folks (some CIOs) as well as Finance and other business professionals there.

Product Stuff:

From a product perspective, there's certainly a lot to talk about. At the highest level, Microsoft's strategy for BI revolves around Office, SharePoint & SQL Server. Under each, there are many components and options.

For instance, SQL Server includes the core relational database, Reporting Services, Analysis Services (OLAP), Integration Services (ETL) and data mining. Microsoft is also readying its release of its data warehouse appliance, based on the DATAllegro technology it acquired in 2008.

Office now features a new Excel add-on called PowerPivot, which is an in-memory data structure - supporting extremely large data models, rapid data loading and advanced compression. There's more coming, too, including a new SilverLight-based visualization tool on top of PowerPivot.

In addition to its core function as a collaboration engine, SharePoint Services includes the remnants of PerformancePoint (e.g., dashboards, scorecards, etc.) and the ability to store, index, and share PowerPivot models.

What does this all mean?

While Microsoft is late to the game for many of these new capabilities, they help to make them “mainstream”. For instance, in-memory, columnar data structures have been around for a couple of decades that I'm aware of (e.g., TM/1, Dimensional Insight, QlikView). Next, data warehouse appliances, offering high performance through parallel loading and query have also been around for a long while (e.g., Teradata, Netezza), and so on. So, this is a good thing in that it helps to make it "safe" for IT to begin to embrace "new" approaches to BI that would have been anathema heretofore. This is not unlike the role that Microsoft played with the release of Analysis Services over 10 years ago, which made OLAP (then ~ 20 years old) "safe".

What's the apparent strategy behind it all?

It seems to me that Microsoft may be trying to be "all things to all people". Each one of its offerings could well stand by itself - yet they apply to different audiences. In a sense it represents a “battle” between “bottoms up” and “top down”.

By bottoms up I mean user-driven solutions, which oftentimes operate without the knowledge or management of the IT department. These users abhor control and limits. They want to be free to explore.

Top down, is the polar opposite of this – where IT (or a COE) designs, delivers and maintains solutions for users.

Typically, BI vendors cater to one or the other segment, but not both. In my recent Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study ™, I identified three categories of BI vendors: Titans, Established Pureplays and Emerging Vendors. Most Titans and Pureplays support a top-down model, while Emerging Vendors align most closely with the bottoms-up model. In this sense, Microsoft is quite unique in that it has viable solutions for both. This also presents it with a problem.

Allow me to explain:

The bottoms-up phenomenon is best characterized by usage of Microsoft’s Excel. While we may malign Excel for the chaos that it encourages - we also love it for the freedom it gives to us. Microsoft, in my opinion, is the proverbial poster-child for bottoms up! And, Microsoft Office with PowerPivot takes it to the next level. In fact, users may not even need a warehouse or multi-dimensional cubes anymore. They can quickly load large sets of operational data right into PowerPivot and start slicing, dicing and analyzing. It's also worth noting that PowerPivot (IMHO) and the advanced Silverlight viewer were probably the two technologies showcased at the event that generated the most excitement. And, given Microsoft's dominion over the spreadsheet market, it's likely to be a high-volume selling product.

In contrast, SQL Server and SharePoint Server appeals more so to the IT Department. They are robust yet complex products, requiring IT technical skills for design, implementation and support. They further the IT Department’s mission to standardize models and enforce policy surrounding user access and interactions. In this scenario, dashboards and scorecards are designed and built using PerformancePoint and Analysis Services and are delivered broadly (and consistently) to management and users across an enterprise via SharePoint Services.

Both are valid models. However, the question in my mind is: would using all of these classes of products work well together in organizations where the users and IT are not all singing from the same hymnal? Probably not!

I can imagine a scenario where:

- IT creates a relational data warehouse for users and generates some standard cubes in Analysis Services.

- To drive adoption, IT follows conventional wisdom, and gives users “free rein” to create and share objects in SharePoint.

- Users download data from SQL or Analysis Services and create extensive PowerPivot models and then share them via SharePoint - where they are extended, modified and enhanced - enterprise-wide (much more efficient than email or simple file sharing).

- These end-user models become the primary data source for analysis and decision-making (not SQL or Analysis Services)!

- So, what has given Excel a bad reputation can now be done on a far grander scale with Excel and PowerPivot!

This is not to say that Microsoft ought to abandon its bottoms-up or top-down BI product-line. However it must recognize its unique position in the market and deal with the fact that users and IT buy BI products for different reasons and in different ways. Trying to position the entire BI product stack to both constituencies simply doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation.

In the end, Microsoft needs to figure out who their customer is: user or IT - and then sell to one - not both. Sales and marketing messages should be bifurcated into user and IT and not try to sell benefits of one to the other.

I'll be digging into some key market trends and doing a deep dive into vendor and product rankings - including Microsoft - at my upcoming Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study Webinar (TM) on June 22nd. Hope to see you there!!!!

And, of course, your comments are always welcomed!

Best,

Howard

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Blog Disclaimer Notice

Hey, I thought this blog was about BI and EPM!

Okay. I know that I haven't written about BI and EPM very much. Sorry about that. But I have some good reasons.

Most notably, I've been busy since the beginning of the year writing my second book - on enterprise performance. It'll be published by John Wiley & Sons at the end of 2009. The book focuses on a number of very in-depth case studies with some extremely interesting and innovative organizations. For me, it's been a great journey and an education. I've learned quite a bit about some key industries: health care, hospitality, manufacturing and TV and radio. I've also been exposed to some of very well run organizations, with superior leadership, focus and execution. So, even in these dark times, there are organizations that continue to thrive. My hope is that, when the book is published, other organizations - large and small - will be able to apply many of its principles - and improve their own performance.

More to come...

Best,

Howard

Check out my website for details on where I'll be speaking, presentation abstracts, articles, my book and more!

Happy New Year and a Look Back at 2008

With the holidays and 2008 behind us, I thought I’d take a moment a review my predictions from 2008 to see how accurate I was. Of course, nobody is perfect and I certainly missed a few. However, I managed to get a couple right. Below are my 2008 predictions along with my 2009 commentary:

January 2, 2008: The Economy: In my opinion, the “Big Kahuna” of predictions has to do with the economy. I may not be an economist, but I’ve been around long enough to know the signs of recession when I see them. A quick look in the local (US) newspaper tells part of the story: numerous housing foreclosures and auctions. I haven’t seen that since 1992. In addition, rumors a of a weak holiday retail season abound. Coupled with the current and unfolding lending crisis, a dismal Q4 earnings report could seal it. If I’m right, this means that 2008 budgets will be flat to down – especially for IT. The rest of my predictions are either caused by or accelerated by this prediction.

January 12, 2009: When I made this prediction, I had no idea how right I was going to be. From where I sit right now, I would suggest that we’re on the brink of an economic “depression” (aka “severe recession”). Having recently read Paul Krugman’s “The Return of Depression Economics”, I’m hopeful that, with appropriate intervention, things will stabilize by the second half of the year, even though it’ll likely be at a much lower level of economic activity. Earnings announcements due out soon will tell us how bad 2008 really was and will set the tone for the first half of 2009.

January 2, 2008: Market consolidation: As everyone is already aware, 2007 was a year of massive consolidation for BI and EPM software vendors. Although Hyperion, Business Objects and Cognos are gone, the fun’s not over yet. As the big guys feel even more pressure to boost revenues and profits, I believe they’ll gobble up any remaining, above-average software vendors of size (> $100M USD).

January 12, 2009: I was less accurate on this one. Acquisitions were far fewer than expected in 2008. This was likely due to a general lack of available credit, which made acquisitions harder to fund. The only BI/EPM acquisitions worth noting for 2008 were FAST and DATAllegro – both by Microsoft and few assorted smaller ones by Oracle (e.g., ATV). Not much else has happened on this front – even though there are some pretty good bargains out there. Perhaps as credit starts to flow again, the hunt for acquisitions will resume in 2009. Of course, I’m not suggesting that this is necessarily a good thing but, instead, a market reality.

January 2, 2008: Leveraging Existing Investments: With a combination of lower budgets and real urgency to improve business performance, I expect many organizations to try and get more value from software and systems they already own. This would be especially good news for systems integrators – especially those with deep expertise in key vertical and functional areas. So, I would anticipate consultancies become even busier than in 2007 and for a whole new crop to emerge in 2008. Caveat Emptor!

January 12, 2009: Certainly, doing more with less was a central theme in 2008 and will continue to be throughout 2009. However, I’m not sure that consultants have been the main beneficiaries. Budgets are flat to down and less will be spent during 2009 than in 2008. I saw a recent study from an analyst organization suggesting a 50% decrease in IT spending in 2009. I find that difficult to fathom. I believe a decrease of 10 – 20% is more likely. In spite of this, BI and EPM are still top priorities and organizations will concentrate efforts upon these and other critical business challenges - while working to save money whenever possible.

January 2, 2008: Rise of the Business Buyer: I don’t want to give Nick Carr (Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage - Harvard Business School Press) too much credit, but many IT Departments have become alienated from the business and less relevant than they could or should have been. An exclusive focus upon the largest software solution providers doesn’t help. In defense of IT, much of this may not be their fault and they may find themselves in an impossible situation. Nevertheless, emerging software vendors and consultants have caught on to the trend and are focusing selling efforts on business management – with the promise of implementing business solutions faster than IT can. Of course, these vendors may eventually have to deal with IT, but will avoid it (if at all possible) until business management is “on board”.

January 12, 2009: While some on the business side continue to seek BI and EPM solutions independent of IT, I have seen greater pragmatism on the part of some organizations and a more conciliatory approach between IT and business users. Having said that, BI and EPM initiatives will continue to be driven by both business and IT departments (often independently) with economic buyers and influencers varying by organization. Irrespective of who drives the initiative, I expect that there will be greater urgency and immediacy associated with it.

January 2, 2008: New Approaches Map to the Emerging Market: On-demand, open source and software appliances have been around for a few years and have experienced varying rates of adoption and success. However, with the above forces changing the shape of the market in 2008 – these options - offering lower cost and fast deployment - become vastly more appealing – especially to business users! Expect to see lots more of each at the expense of traditional software offerings.

January 12, 2009: Given the current recession, I’ve observed a growing interest in open source and Software-as-a-Service as alternatives to traditional enterprise software. Interestingly, some of the enterprise software providers have taken steps to address this by offering to match the open source total cost of ownership (TCO). However, given the different economics surrounding the two business models, I remain skeptical that they can succeed. In general, I believe that 2009 will be a good year for solution-providers offering rapid time-to-value, and a lower cost structure. Right now Software-as-a-Service is my top pick.

Best wishes to you and yours for a healthy and prosperous 2009!

Howard

A Fresh Look at Strategy (and a green energy update)

Most of us have been fixated on the current economic crisis that seems to worsen by the day. But, how many have used this as an opportunity to revisit strategy? At a moment when we're all riveted to current events it's also the perfect time to think about the future.

By way of an analogy, here's a quick update on my green energy initiative. BTW, thanks to those of you that have given me such positive feedback on it.

As you can see from these photos, we're continuing to make great progress and should be generating electricity very soon. The concrete pad is now sufficiently cured, the base of the tower is ready and the frame for the photovoltaic cells is in place. We already have the photovoltaic panels on site and are awaiting shipment of the tower and wind turbine - which should arrive within the next few weeks. And, the paperwork for "net metering" is being submitted, which will enable us to sell excess electricity back to the local utility.

The second photo offers a view to the west - the dominant source of wind. We're very fortunate to have such a great site - with an average wind speed of 10 - 12 mph! If you look closely, you might be able to see the the wind turbines (there are 12 of them) from New Hampshire's first commercial wind farm, which is about 10 miles away. This wind farm recently went online and will soon be generating 24 megawatts of electricity - enough for 10,000 homes!

Our wind turbine is the first residential one to be constructed in our town and will generate about 3KW. Like the commercial wind farm, ROI won't be achieved for 30 or more years!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is our investment in the future and an important contribution to our community and the world. It is "strategic" - in the truest sense of the word. In light of the current economic maelstrom, it is tempting reduce costs and scale back our efforts. However, I am not willing to retreat or change my "strategic plan" for green energy. Of course, in parallel, we've also been (tactically) pursuing energy conservation. For example, we've replaced most incandescent lights with fluorescent or LED equivalents, we unplug appliances when not in use, and we've super-insulated the house and updated the heating system for optimal efficiency.

Likewise, in the business world, it's tempting to completely abandon long-term strategy in favor of short-term tactics (e.g., cost reductions). However, I believe that we can't allow ourselves to lose sight of our goals for the future. Do you expect your company to be around in 25 years? If so, what sort of future do you envision? How will you achieve your vision? What sort of scenarios have you developed to help think about the future?

In fact, I believe that the current crisis is the perfect time to revisit strategy, and to update, enhance or totally recreate it. In my book, The Performance Management Revolution, I cite strategy as one of the four tenets of any performance management initiative. The use of scenarios - which consider political, economic, social and technological possibilities - will help direct any strategic thinking exercise.

With a compelling and credible strategy, the current crisis need only present a temporary set back, instead of allowing it to redefine the enterprise, ultimately hampering its future.

Best,

Howard

Check out my website for details on where I'll be speaking, presentation abstracts, articles, my book and more!

Why Performance Management and Business Intelligence are Crucial at this Moment

Now that the US elections are behind us, we can start to refocus on the biggest single issue facing businesses (and individuals) right now – the economy. In January, I started talking about an economic recession:January blog posting

I think it’s now unanimous that a global recession is upon us with more bad news emerging each day. In fact, today the OECD issued a statement saying that its 30-nation member area “appeared to have entered recession”: OECD Press Release

Even Asia is not immune, with China announcing that annual industrial output growth has slowed to 8.2 percent for October. And, I think we’re just getting started! All signs point not only to a meager Q4 but a Q1 that likely won’t be much better.

In the corporate world, we’re seeing many respond with a “kneejerk” reaction to this malaise: budget cuts, RIFs, financial guidance reduced, assets sold, bankruptcies, etc. These organizations have adopted a sort of “bunker mentality” to face the threat. As a result, they overreact, shedding more “ballast” than they need to stay afloat. By exaggerating the challenge and overcompensating, they weaken the enterprise for the future. One doesn’t have to look far to find these sorts of companies – for example: a number of companies in the auto and telecommunications industries. A friend of mine, who works for a large telco, shared with me extreme frustration concerning ongoing and across-the-board RIFs. Seasoned employees have been eliminated in favor of cheaper, less experienced labor, making it hard, if not impossible to get important work done. While this may please Wall Street (in the near term), this sort of tactical approach doesn’t bode well for their future.

In contrast, the wise organization carefully analyzes the current threat, developing multiple scenarios for the future and creates suitable short and long term plans. This forward-thinking approach allows management to proceed strategically, with an eye to the future, but still grounded in the present. Of course, organizations may still have to take measures to reduce costs – perhaps dramatically. However, they will do so with greater precision – ensuring they haven’t seriously hampered their future ability to execute. It’s also reasonable to expect that this sort of sober, yet visionary direction will expose new opportunities to invest in, which will have been obscured to less sophisticated organizations. A good example of this, in my opinion, is Alcoa. Hit with an industry-wide surplus of aluminum (and a dramatic decline in price), it took aggressive action to reduce costs, employing “a four-part model that spreads the curtailments across [the] global system and minimizes the costs associated with plant shutdowns and re-starts and, in turn, minimize the impact on plant communities.” You can read their press release here: Alcoa Press Release

Of course, the title of this posting has already given away my core message – that EPM and BI are critical during this time. This is true. However, I don’t mean just the technology. I mean the philosophy! This begins with transparency and accountability. Without those as core tenets of an organization, the best technology won’t help. However, under the right conditions, BI and EPM can work wonders – allowing an organization to quickly develop perspective, to assess strengths, weaknesses and capabilities. To plan, execute, analyze, re-plan, alter strategy, and plan and execute again in a continuous cycle – matching the changing dynamics of the real world.

So, I encourage organizations to avoid the reactive and tactical approach to a worsening economy and take a more strategic outlook – embracing transparency and accountability - with BI and EPM as enablers – delivering true perspective, precision of execution and agility and a better chance to survive and see the next era of growth.

Best,

Howard

Check out my website for details on where I'll be speaking, presentation abstracts, articles, my book and more!

Summer is over and it's time to get back to work.

Well, it’s the end of the summer here in the Northern Hemisphere and time to get back to business. Summer and vacation are always a nice change, but it’s good to be back working – writing, and talking about Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)!

So, now that we’re back, I’ve been pondering: what will business look like at the end of 2008 and going into 2009?

I don’t want to appear like the harbinger of doom, but businesses continue to be profoundly affected by a declining economy. Overall spending is down and RIFs abound. Although many have not officially cut budgets, they aren’t being allowed to spend them either. One client of mine referred to their spending plans as "fluid". Of course "fluid" implies "flowing", which is certainly not what she meant.

In a recent study that I participated in, almost all organizations are hoping to use EPM solutions to reduce costs. For small enterprises, this means operating more efficiently and better leveraging existing resources. For larger enterprises, it means being able to reduce the workforce and continue to function.

On the brighter side, a slow economy represents an ideal opportunity to focus upon implementing performance management solutions, which will help right now by delivering greater efficiency, but also better position companies when the economy begins to improve.

Still on the brighter side, EPM is enabling new kinds of organizations to emerge and thrive. In a case study that I presented last week at TDWI, I spoke of a young company that outsourced nearly every function – using EPM as the “glue” to hold it together. In Tom Malone’s The Future of Work, he talks about new organizational structures becoming possible as the cost of communications decreases. Well, the cost of communications these days (i.e., The Internet) is practically free. A dividend of this phenomenon is that EPM is now available to any organization – using the Internet.

Accordingly, innumerable Software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors have emerged, offering less expensive EPM solutions that are relatively easy to buy and implement. Now, I don’t want to seem like a cheerleader for SaaS, but that same study indicated huge interest and openness to SaaS solutions across the board: small and large organizations, IT Departments and business users. So, what does this mean, exactly? Well, at least two big things that I can think of:

1) Smaller, innovative organizations can emerge – anywhere – and rapidly become serious competitors in most any market and

2) The very notion of software is going to change for everyone.

On the supply side, I expect to see a growing number of SaaS-based solutions appear on the scene. Back in 2000, you had to be a dotcom to get funding. Today you have to be a SaaS solution. The large enterprise software vendors will also offer SaaS solutions, but only half-heartedly.

You see, SaaS competes with the dominant enterprise software model (e.g., higher margins). So, for a time, it’ll be like the “wild, wild west” with a myriad of offerings from many smaller suppliers. This is a good thing. There will be amazing innovation until consolidation begins. If you're interested in hearing more about the subject, I recently participated in a webcast with DMReview: http://www.dmreview.com/dmradio/10001661-1.html

So, in spite of a difficult economy, there are some hopeful signs – with EPM as a key enabler of whatever the emerging business and software paradigms turn out to be.

Next month I'll be a keynote at Palladium's Business Performance Conference 2008, in Boston, September 9th - 12th:

http://www.thepalladiumgroup.com/events/exec/Performance/Pages/Keynotes.aspx

Hope to see you there!

All the best,

Howard

Check out my website for details on where I'll be speaking, presentation abstracts, articles, my book and more!

Some good sources

Last week, at the Gartner conference, I was asked several times for good books and other sources of information on Business Intelligence and Performance Management.

Here are some books from authors on the subject that I respect:

- "Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App" by Cindi Howson

- "Scorecard Best Practices: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation" by Raef Lawson, Denis Desroches, Toby Hatch

- "Smart Enough Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions" by James Taylor, Neil Raden

- "Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business" by Wayne W. Eckerson

- Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt , Stephen J. Dubner

- Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres

and, of course my own book:

- "The Performance Management Revolution: Business Results Through Insight and Action" by Howard Dresner

And, here are a few of good blogs:

- Frank Buytendijk's Blog

- The Business Foundation Blog

- Neil Raden's Blog

- Smart Enough Systems Blog

And, some good on-line mags:

- B-Eye Network

- BIReview

- Intelligent Enterprise

- SearchDataManagement

Check out my website for details on where I'll be speaking, presentation abstracts, articles, my book and more!

-Howard

Gartner's Business Intelligence Conference

I’m just back from Gartner’s BI conference in Chicago and I feel energized. First of all, let me mention that I founded this very conference in 2003 and chaired it until I left Gartner in 2005. So, I was honored and delighted to be invited back to deliver a keynote on Thursday with “Mr. Balanced Scorecard” himself, Dr. David P. Norton, in addition to presenting at a “power breakfast” and a doing a book signing.

I was impressed with how the conference has grown since 2005. With over 1,200 attendees and more than 50 vendors on the show floor – it is the biggest vendor-neutral BI/EPM show in the world. When we started the conference in 2003, it was at the Sheraton in Chicago. After three years – and growing from 400 attendees to 800, it moved to the Hyatt. Now at 1,200 attendees, Gartner will be moving it to the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, in Maryland, for 2009.

Unlike when I was chairing the conference, I had plenty of time to talk to people and even attend some sessions. Here are some of the things that I observed:

Even though many of the sessions were designated “advanced sessions”, most attendees were first timers and were there to begin learning about business intelligence, data warehousing and performance management. This confirms my belief that, while vendors consolidate and make for a more mature supplier market, user adoption and penetration is still in its infancy. Absent a real BI strategy, these organizations are rife with the misuse of spreadsheets and other personal productivity tools. To cater to them, Gartner offered tutorials and even some workshops this year.

Eighty percent (or more) of the attendees came from IT departments. The rest (presumably) were business users. Gartner has been trying to encourage its traditional following to bring a user “buddy” with them by offering discounts. Having said this, much of the content was oriented towards IT, not business. Among the most popular sessions: data warehousing and master data management – i.e., the “plumbing of BI”.

Some of the attendees that I spoke with felt frustrated by their inability to take what they learned and change the status quo of their organizations. This is nothing new and underscores the fact that success with BI and EPM requires much more than architecture and technology. In fact, while it might be easier to buy yet-another-tool, it is often the wrong approach. Change requires vision and leadership at the highest levels of the organization. Those who have read my book, The Performance Management Revolution (John Wiley & Sons), know that I have focused predominately upon organization, culture, politics and method as the obstacles or enablers of “information democracy”.

Others attendees were sent with a real mandate to supply better information to management. Here I see the potential to change management’s perception of BI and EPM. However, shifting from a tactical request for better information to a performance-driven culture is fraught with risks and challenges. Working with Finance and establishing a competency center outside of IT can help. Gartner had at least two sessions on competency centers. The one I went to was extremely well attended. However, at my “power breakfast” I surveyed the audience and found that only a small minority of them had a competency center in place.

With some of the changing market dynamics, I was pleased to see sessions on “open source” BI and DW and software-as-a-service (SaaS). However, to my great surprise, when polled during the MQ Power Session, none of the attendees indicated that they were using any open source products for DW, DI or BI. A few seemed to be exploring SaaS. Perhaps those were the few business users, as most IT folk view SaaS as a problem. And, while the “mega vendors” (e.g., IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) were often mentioned, I found no in-depth or critical discussion of their offerings, strategies or relative merits.

All-in-all, it was a great conference which was very well received by attendees and vendors alike. And, given the imperative by management to improve decision making and access to information, I suspect that 2009 will see continued strong demand – with the indoctrination of the next crop of “newbies” to DW, DI, BI and EPM.

And, don't forget to check out my website for details on articles, speaking engagements, presentation abstracts, my book and more!