If Operational Intelligence Can Make a Teenager More Efficient- Imagine What it Can do for a business?

Achieving operational efficiency through the use of real time data can help a business become far more profitable and make smarter decisions.   We see the new information come at us about this  every day in the IBM CFO study, the CMO study and the recent study with MIT.

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/c-suite/series-download.html

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ibv-embedding-analytics.html

Data and information makes us smarter.

So being a person who loves data, I got to thinking.  Can data make my teenager more efficient? Can I leverage real time data and tools to achieve the impossible?

The answer is yes.

As with any parent of a teenager, we struggle to teach them important things like time management and responsibility as they grow.  I also get frustrated that she never seems to have time for thing that I ask her to do?  “Please clean your room today.” reply- “Mother, I don’t have time, I have way too much to do”.

I started to think about this.  How can a 14 year old not have a spare 15 minutes?  How do I make my teenager more operationally efficient?

I had a theory and I had a goal.  My theory was that my soon to be 14 year old daughter was spending way too much time texting, which was distracting her from completing tasks like homework quickly.  I say this was a theory because I didn’t have the data to back myself up.  My goal was to to help her be more efficient with her time. Yes, I will win this arguement with a little data.

Off I went in search of data for two reasons, one is to validate my theory (my teen spends ALOT of time texting) and the other was to simply just to let the data speak to me.

So what did I find out?

My daughter sent and received over 18,000 text messages last month (yup I was right that is ALOT of texting)

Those messages ranged from 6AM until 1AM (oooh – discovery!)

Now here is the key part, putting that data in CONTEXT in order to reach my goal of a more efficient teenager…

1) 18,000 text messages take approximately 30 hours of her time per month

2) If my teen sleeps 5 hours a night, that leaves approximately 126 waking hours per week

3) 30 hours averaged out daily into waking time means that she spends 9.5% of her waking hours texting

30 hours a month, 9.5% of her waking time- oh wow guess who will never lose that room cleaning argument again?

Ahh yes, I love data!!!!

My theory is validated and I discovered that my daughter can text in her sleep (ok maybe not).   So I take the right steps towards operational efficiency.  I restrict texting hours on her phone using the tools on my carrier’s website and I now have freed up several hours of my daugther’s life!

Imagine, being able to use data real time and being able to put that data into context that increases efficiency, profit and competitiveness (the one with the data will be the smarter competitor).

This is operational intelligence, having the information you need when you need it.

Key learning- the person using the data needs to be able to put the data in context in order for it to be truly useful, truly powerful

So it’s not just about technology, without putting the data in context, it is far less powerful.   That said, you need a solution you an deploy faster and easy to use so the smart people can easily get the information they need to make smarter decisions.

If you went to IOD this year, you may have seen people walking around with iPads with Mobile Cognos running on a Smart Analytics 5710.   This solution can help you achieve operational intelligence starting at $50k , including Cognos.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/smart-analytics-system/5710/

The Netezza 1000 can be up and running in 24 hours, thats 24 hours closer to answers you never had before!

http://www.netezza.com/data-warehouse-appliance-products/twinfin.aspx

What are you waiting for?

You too can be the “mad parent data scientist” at home, its the parental contribution to building a Smarter Planet.

Then at work, build a smarter business with Smart Data Warehousing Solutions from IBM.

Let’s build a smarter business (and smarter teenagers!)

analytics, data scientist, Data Warehouse, IBM Infosphere Warehouse, IBM Smart Analytics, Netezza, Uncategorized

analytics, data scientist, data warehousing, ibm, ibm smart analytics, netezza

November 8, 2011

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It’s All About the Analytics

One of the greatest things about IBM’s new Smart Consolidation strategy is that it’s helping us get back to focusing on the important things when it comes to data warehousing—hey it’s all about the analytics.

Come on, lets face it. For years we have dug ourselves into the gory details of architecture, workload management, monitoring. I know personally I have spent the last few years discussing how to build out the architecture half the time and the other half how to manage them. What I really miss talking about is the reason we build these things in the fist place- yup it was the analytics.

It’s been so refreshing to have conversations about customer insight, proactive campaigns, deeper insight for fraud, trend analysis,…. this is the fun stuff.

Ten years ago many of us were talking a lot about CRM- remember? Some of you may even remember multi- channel marketing or horizontal marketing. Maybe we were ahead of our time back then but with the data and technology like our smart phones available today, these goals can indeed be realized like never before. Back then our warehouses were taking data in batch, now we can stream in and analyze petabytes of data at a time. If there is a buzz about a hot product, a retailer can capitalize on that by pushing a proactive coupon to their customers and track the success of that campaign so they only get smarter.

CRM topics are making a comeback for sure. As businesses we have to be smarter about who our profitable customers are, what they are buying and how we get them to buy more and stay loyal. This is not just a retail thing, nope. Banks are offering more products and services through more channels than ever before. I don’t know about you but I consider my smart phone yet another channel that my bank uses to communicate with me. Think of the possibilities!

Oh yah- this is why I chose a career in business intelligence.

So it’s time to shift our focus, less on architecture and more on enabling true business value.

The first phase of Smart Consolidation is a direct focus on optimizing your ability to deliver and manage ongoing analytic capability in your architecture. The key goal here is to reduce your time to value on analytic applications significantly. With Netezza solutions, you can be up and running in 24 hours. In addition, you will cut your administration and management of these applications down to almost nothing. This lets your team focus on delivering even more value to your business.

Yup, it’s all about the analytics.

Data Warehouse, Uncategorized

analytics, data warehousing, ibm, netezza, smart consolidation

July 26, 2011

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IBM’s new way forward in Data Warehousing

Sometimes you have to stop and think about where you came from to get a good direction forward.  I think we learned a lot in our journey to consolidate our data marts.     Heads up, the dynamic environment of our business is pushing us towards a new strategy.

Consolidate based on best practices (not just everything)

Let’s be realistic, maybe we don’t consolidate everything into one big structure.  Instead, let’s apply certain principles or methodologies to what we do consolidate.  Allow offloads of the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) where it makes sense- especially for analytical applications that the business wants quickly.

I know this is the opposite of what Oracle and Teradata are telling you but it’s time to call it out— those big monolithic structures did not answer all our prayers in data warehousing. The overall success rates of EDW projects were incredibly low.  Why?  It’s really a combination of creating too much complexity and the failure to deliver new value in a timely manner.

IBM’s vision for the data warehouse architecture going forward is based on the concept of Smart Consolidation and leveraging analytical appliances within an EDW Ecosystem that is fully optimized for delivery of analytics.

What is Smart Consolidation? 

We can consolidate smarter by matching the right compute capabilities within the Data Warehouse ecosystem to the workload where it’s most optimized.

This is different from consolidate everything.  In our rush to consolidate, we lost the hearts and minds of business because we created a demand for the data and then couldn’t respond quickly enough.

Let me give you a real life example.  We had a client who had built a fairly complex EDW system.  Over time, they started to be challenged with query performance and the client was quite anxious to roll out some new applications in sales and marketing.  Surprise surprise, the business did not want to wait.  Rather than frustrate the business with an increased timeline, this client chose to offload to a Netezza appliance.  The result?  Queries ran 24 times faster and they were able to achieve lower TCO.    When it comes to the EDW, we all want to do a few glory marches a year with our business users- come on admit it!

Think about this….

When you go to Google to look for information, would you accept an answer of “we’ll get back to you in 3 months?” 

Ok, I didn’t think so.  As IT professionals we have to focus on being responsive to our business needs. Our business users have the “google mindset” – they just aren’t going to wait for the answers they want.  We need to increase our agility in data warehousing.

So consider this- the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is now part of an intelligent business ecosystem.  This ecosystem offers all the capability you need to deliver business intelligence and maintain governance overall.  It allows you to match the work within the ecosystem with the right computing solution AND it helps maintain performance across workloads.  So whether you need to analyze unstructured data, leverage a queryable archive or increase the efficiency of some targets analytics – we can help.  This is the evolution I am talking about!

You are probably wondering HOW we would do this?  The answer as any good Data Warehouse Architect knows is in the overall design of data architecture.  What we are talking about is a smarter way at accomplishing the data integration and delivery for the enterprise.   Our brilliant counterparts on the IBM Global Services Business Analytics Organization (IBM Global Services) team have come up with a new way to tackle this issue today, with a new generation design.

This design features a “data synergy hub” that allows us to maintain lineage of the data as well as an atomic layer or single source of fact- but also take advantage of appliances where it makes sense.  Of course everyone always wants that black and white answer of where does it make sense and I am going to repeat something very important.  Your business requirements need to drive your design, not the technology.  If you need some help being business requirements driven, call the GBS team, they can help contribute to your EDW success.

This new way of thinking in regards to both design and the infrastructure allows us to  leverage and deliver more sophisticated analytics within the ecosystem around your data warehouse.  Yes, you read that right- we are evolving thinking from a single data warehouse architecture to an ecosystem around the EDW that allows us to have consolidated and governed enterprise data but allow offloading to other systems that can help the goals of delivery and performance, especially for analytics. 

It’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, and it’s the answer we have been waiting for.

Be a part of a “Smarter” Data Warehousing Revolution

Demands in our business today require more agility and more focus on time to value.  The “old way” of creating a large monolithic structure really complicated our ability to deliver.  We started to focus too much on managing performance as opposed to delivering value.  So continue down the path of consolidation for the right reasons.  Aim for that single source of fact but accept that the answer may be to leverage new appliances and technology in your ecosystem to accelerate delivery.

Think about how you articulate this vision to your company.   New tools like the IBM InfoSphere BluePrint Director have been built for that very reason.  Now the Information Architect no longer has to guard his whiteboard masterpiece from the night cleaning crew.   That vision can be better articulated and tracked through the progress of the project. Get those drawings off the whiteboard and into a tool where you can track progress, requirements and design changes.

Wow things have come along way. What are you waiting for?  Join us!!

Learn more about IBM’s Data Warehouse Appliances

Neteeza – http://www.netezza.com/data-warehouse-appliance-products/index.aspx?

PureScale – http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/sw-library/demos/purescale/purescale.html

Smart Analytics – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/smart-analytics-system/

InfoSpherenBlueprint Director – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/foundation-tools/

Data Warehouse

May 16, 2011

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