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DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
September 28, 2003 -- Vol. 4, No. 20
A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
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Check case by Walton "Rebuilding an Emergency
Operations Center for NYC following 9/11"
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Featured:
* Report from Teradata Partners Conference
* DSS News Releases
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Report from Teradata Partners Conference
by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.COM
Teradata Partners is the premier users group conference in the
data-driven decision support field. My journey to the conference in
Seattle included a minor airplane mechanical problem that delayed my
arrival. As a result I missed a dinner engagement with Mike Goul (ASU)
and Jeff Hoffer (U. Dayton). I did get to bed "on time" and got up early
to register for the conference.
Sunday morning I attended Stephen Brobst's workshop with about 200 other
attendees on constructing and deploying an active data warehouse. Brobst
is the Teradata Chief Technology Officer for Teradata technology
evolution. Brobst started promptly at 8am and the workshop ended at
about 1pm with a 20 minute coffee break. He went from the big picture on
"right time", data-driven tactical decision support to the technical
details associated with deploying a Teradata Warehouse for tactical
decision support. Some examples Brobst gave of tactical decision support
using "real-time" data include fraud detection, logistics, customer
offer determination, customer retention scoring, credit risk assessment,
inventory management and yield management.
According to Brobst, using a data warehouse for "real time" decision
support, business activity monitoring, "rapid" queries, and on-the-spot
decision support for supervisors, field agents and even operations
managers required some changes in the Teradata database software. Brobst
discussed the use of the priority scheduling facility and resource
partitions to provide the enhanced response needed from a data warehouse
to provide tactical decision support. Following his explanation of
vAMPs, USIs and NUSIs the acronyms are a bit more understandable. The
difference between macros and procedures in the warehouse environment
also makes some sense now. Brobst claims Teradata users will have
"Extreme Performance", "Extreme Availability", "Extreme Data Freshness"
and "Extreme Application Integration". The bottom line is active data
warehousing and improved data-driven tactical decision support. Thanks
Stephen for an interesting workshop.
Sunday afternoon I attend a presentation on the Loews data warehouse. At
about 5:45pm I met Mike Goul and Paul Gray and we walked to the Teradata
dinner for University faculty guests. We had dinner at Vivanda
Ristorante with a group of professors, consultants and Teradata staff.
It was a great mix and a wonderful event. Ron Swift, Vice President of
Teradata, was our host. Mary Gros of Teradata organized the event and
she brought her enthusiasm to the event.
At dinner, I sat across from Jill Dyche (pronounced Du-shay), VP of
Baseline Consulting, and got acquainted with the CRM guru herself.
Following the dinner Jill and I briefly attended the Partners Welcome
reception. Jill knows everyone it seems. For example, we chatted with
Todd Walter, the Teradata CTO for R&D. Todd is a real "A" player.
I got back to my hotel Sunday evening about 10:45pm (12:45am Iowa time)
and collapsed in bed. An early wake-up call Monday morning and I was off
to the Washington State Convention Center for email, DSSResources.COM
work and the opening session.
Partners puts on a grand Conference Opening General Session. It was a
multimedia extravaganza. Partners Steering Committee President Mark
Lahr, Data Warehousing Manager at 3M, took the stage on a Segway
personal transportation device accompanied by flashing lights, music and
video. Mark briefly discussed the data-driven decision support successes
at 3M and encouraged attendees to share their stories. He reminded the
audience that Partners is about making new friends, sharing lessons
learned and learning new skills.
Lahr moderated the General Session and introduced NCR President and CEO
Mark Hurd. Hurd discussed driving value using decision support. He
seemed strongly committed to growing Teradata and making Teradata the
premier decision support company. Hurd provided some examples of "near
real-time" tactical decision support: a grocery chain buyer making
decisions about which trucks to send to which stores with what produce;
an airline gate agent making decisions about which passengers get
upgraded or bumped on an overbooked flight; a call center operator
making decisions about how to retain a cellular phone customer. Hurd
concluded "CEOs and CFOs can no longer tolerate decision-making based on
partial data. But they also recognize that every part of their
organization requires a unique view based on all of the data. And that
powerful analytics are required to support all of their decisioning
needs."
The new leader of the Teradata division Mike Koehler spoke next. Mike
became Senior Vice President Teradata Division in March 2003. According
to Koehler, Teradata is growing with more than USD$1.2 Billion in 2002.
He sees the Teradata Warehouse solution as the platform to give
companies an enterprise view for decision support and a competitive
advantage.
The last speaker in the General Session was Michael Treacy. Some readers
may remember Treacy from his MIT days. His new book, Double-Digit
Growth, provided the core of his presentation. He noted if companies
want to grow, then IS/IT needs to collect more data about sources of
revenue to support decision making. Companies already spend significant
resources collecting cost data and that should continue, but it won't
help managers focus on growth. Treacy said "Any firm in this room, if it
is correctly led and managed, can grow steadily at double-digit rates --
forever."
During lunch I met with Mike Goul, Vice Chair of SIGDSS, to discuss the
new SIG DSS by-laws. We're making progress in finalizing them for
approval by the Association for Information Systems Council in December.
After lunch I attended a session and met with vendor representatives in
the Expo Hall. Monday evening the Expo Hall was the setting for a
conference reception. I must have spoken with 20 vendor representatives,
MicroStrategy, Brio, Cognos, and watched as many demonstrations. My head
was swimming from information overload but it was great.
I ended Monday evening at Partners with a ride on a Segway Human
Transporter (www.segway.com). It was great ... easy to use ... lean
forward, lean back, turn the knob on the steering handle.
Teradata University Network (TUN pronounced "tune") was my focus for
Tuesday morning. After continental breakfast, I listened to Barb Wixom
and Jeff Hoffer brief Teradata and Microstrategy executives on progress
in creating a web-based resource for teaching data warehousing. Jeff
discussed the data sets and software that are currently accessible. TUN
is a free resource provided by Teradata. Faculty can find out more at
http://www.teradatauniversitynetwork.com/. The site is currently being
upgraded to incorporate Microstrategy BI software.
Following the TUN meeting I spoke with Sanju Bansal, Chief Operating
Officer of MicroStrategy. I had attended Bansal's Monday presentation on
BI trends and welcomed the chance to get his views. I'm hoping we'll
have an article from Bansal at DSSResources.COM in the near future. BI
or data-driven DSS is enterprise-wide and scaling to thousands of users.
Dashboards are back but the data detail is what makes them "work" in
today's environment. Bansal and I also discussed decision support at
Best Buy. One of my goals for the next 6 months is to develop a Best Buy
case study for DSSResources.COM.
Lunch was a press briefing. Alan Chow briefed us on enhancements to
Teradata Warehouse 7.1. Bob Fair, Chief Marketing Officer, discussed the
Teradata Survey of Senior Executives on decision-making issues. The news
release about the survey is at DSSResources.COM. According to Bob, a
crisis in decision-making is developing. He said "Executives are deluged
with data and decision-making is deteriorating as a result."
Enterprise-wide, data-driven decision support systems seem to be the
magic bullet that executives want. The executives in the survey see
decision support as a means to better, faster decisions.
After lunch I hurried to catch Jill Dyche's Super Session on "Segmenting
the Stages of CRM". Jill used greek mythology characters to illustrate
the "good" and "bad" approaches to CRM. The Centaurs charge in, the
Nymphs lack vision and focus on data marts, the Dorians lead an
IT-focused CRM invasion, the Cyclops start small and think big. The
Dryads have an investment in the success of CRM and nuture it. Finally,
the Argonauts are on a journey to improve customer relationships using
technology and they understand the journey is "fraught with peril".
Thanks Jill for an interesting presentation.
Tuesday afternoon I spent some time discussing Teradata certification at
the booth in the registration area. For many attendees, the Partners
conference is a technical "boot camp" and certification at various
levels is the goal. Only about 270 people in the world have the Masters
level of Teradata certification. Readers can get more information about
Teradata certification by contacting Oliva Baronner, Program Manager,
email oliva.baronner@ncr.com.
Tuesday night I attended a reception for North American Teradata
customers at the Space Needle. The monorail provided a quick trip for me
from downtown. Some conversation, jazz, good food and drinks and a
wonderful setting at the top of the Space Needle ended a 17 hour day. A
return trip on the monorail and a short walk got me back to my hotel.
Wednesday morning was check out day for me. I was up early and hurried
to the convention center. After breakfast I checked some sessions,
worked on this report and spoke with Teradata Press staff: Dan, Virve,
Marcela were a great help.
On the way to the airport I chatted with a Partners attendee from Des
Moines, Iowa, Craig Gard of Meredith Corp. Small world. As many of you
know my home base is Cedar Falls, IA and the University of Northern
Iowa. At about midnight I arrived home. Thanks Teradata Partners for a
great conference experience. My plan is to follow-up on some of the
customer success stories for case studies at DSSResources.COM.
Please note: NCR Teradata paid Dan Power's expenses so he could attend
this conference 9/20-9/24/03.
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DSS News Releases - September 15 to September 26, 2003
Read them at DSSResources.COM and search the DSS News Archive
09/26/2003 Super Computer, Inc. announces GameStorm 64-bit technology
for gaming featuring America's Army for the AMD Athlon(TM) 64 processor.
09/25/2003 MicroStrategy wins 2003 Software Business Industry award for
best product development.
09/24/2003 NII Holdings selects Teradata® Profitability Analytics
Solution.
09/23/2003 Survey of senior executives shows developing crisis in
decision-making.
09/23/2003 Owens & Minor ranks first in the 2003 InformationWeek 500.
09/22/2003 Ascential Software highlights web services to meet real-time
integration challenges of the active data warehouse.
09/22/2003 Information Builders cited as "most cost-effective" option
for two categories of business intelligence reporting in new Ventana
Research TCO study.
09/19/2003 Teradata introduces servers to boost data warehouse power.
09/19/2003 'Closer Communications' delivers first customer acquisition
management and lead retrieval system that operates on the Pocket PC and
other hand-held computing devices.
09/19/2003 Business Analysts releases VisualVault, Web-based document
management software.
09/18/2003 Intergraph sponsors GI Days for Geospatial Intelligence
Community.
09/18/2003 InTouch delivers Web based, intuitive and secure patient
information for McKesson HIS database.
09/17/2003 Intergraph collaborates on interoperability with other OGC
members Autodesk, Laser-Scan and MapInfo for more customer choices and
better flexibility.
09/16/2003 New Mindjet Software captures the 'meet' of meetings.
09/16/2003 Toshiba to preinstall Microsoft Office OneNote on all of its
new portable PCs worldwide.
09/16/2003 Balanced Scorecard Collaborative honors Fulton County
(Georgia) Schools, University of California, San Diego, and United
States Army with Prestigious Hall of Fame Award.
09/16/2003 Provia introduces Supply Chain execution optimization
product.
09/16/2003 SaskPower selects 'IMPACT', a Siemens Financial Management
Solution.
09/16/2003 Formation's Advanced Integrated Recorder (AIR) selected for
NATO Air Command & Control System.
09/16/2003 Developing Use cases? Duvessa Software has developed a new
tool that allows anyone to create software development estimates early
in the requirements phase.
09/16/2003 SGI puts supercomputing on wheels with the SGI Mobile
Innovation Center.
09/16/2003 Major U.S. Retailer CSK Auto successfully deploys
MicroStrategy platform for reporting & analysis.
09/15/2003 University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation standardizes on
Crystal Decisions.
09/15/2003 ePeople Teamwork for PeopleSoft CRM Sales 8.8: Enterprise
team selling solution shortens sales cycle and maximizes each sales
opportunity.
09/15/2003 BP Lubricants selects Kalido Data Warehousing for management
information pilot program.
09/15/2003 Naval Research Laboratory first to install 128-processor
single system image SGI Altix 3000 supercomputer.
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DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2003 by D. J. Power. Please send your questions to
daniel.power@dssresources.com.
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