Next generation of business intelligence - 2.

Don't get me wrong, in the previous post on NG BI, I'm expressing myself a bit condescending about the big guys BI systems in particular SAP's business warehouse. That does not mean I think those systems are bad, some of these are actually quite good. My remarks are just a bantering expression of the fact these guys are still struggling with problems I addressed some 25 years ago. It would be preposterous of me to claim my BI system is better than the big guys systems, but I created a system the second version 2006 which in some aspects still is better than what the big guys have today. You should also note my Data Warehouse is only the back end, which is what a Data Warehouse should be, that is why it is called a 'data warehouse'. This was not so when I started design my Data Warehouse at the end of last century, back- and front-ends where often tightly coupled. At the time the data models from Kimbal et al. dealt successfully with shortcomings of the hardware mainly small and expensive memory. But the spintronic revolution gave us large and inexpensive memory and I broke free of the cube data models, made full use of inexpensive large memory multiprocessor computers as early as 2000. The big guys still seems to be locked into the data cubes though. SAP uses HANA to speed up processing which is good, but it's not only speed, the cubes models is restraining the developers by it's complexity. Actually I once read a paper of one of founders of SAP very close to my original data warehouse vision. He had a zillion € to spend on his vision, I had 2000€. I came up with my Data Warehouse, he came up with HANA. (I have search for his document issued somewhere around 2008, but I have not found it.) HANA is good, very good indeed, but it is not the whole answer, there is more to it than raw hardware speed.

One often overlooked aspect of Business Intelligence is organization. Most companies use an organization model suited for ERP systems, with traditional development, test, QA and production systems, with hierarchical demand, analyst and development teams. This is good or sometimes necessary for ERP systems, but the inertia of such organization is disastrous for BI activity. All and every company tell you they have a close to the user BI organization with agile development methods, but if you look behind the fancy words you often find an old ossified organization where users if not have died waiting for requested reports have forgot about them, when the reports finally arrive.