![Open Source BI tools
Open source software is evolving into the BI tools
market. The traditional BI tools which are deployed
on open source environments fall back in front of the
true open source BI software. Pentaho, JasperSoft,
and Actuate are the niche vendors in providing such
tools. Even though the grab in the market has been
very alluring for BI tools, survey tells that it’s going
to last only for the next five years.
What’s in store?
This is an era where decisions are made at many or-
ganizational levels and not just the top management
level. To sort this out, a new class of analytic tools is
coming up that serves a much wider range within the
organization. These new tools are referred to as “BI
for the masses”. Challenges to be faced while im-
plementing BI for the masses are:
Report creation to be made easy
Information delivery to be made secured
User friendly interfaces
Deployment of BI tools to multiple staff members is
a sign of organizations being ready to expand to all
levels. Business Objects deployed its BI tools to
70,000 users at France, Telecom, 50,000 users at US
Military Health System, and to several other firms at
the 20,000 user level range [Schauer, 2003].
Confluent September Issue || Page Number 10](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/confluent-scit-sep-2010-101013050634-phpapp02/75/Confluent-Monthly-magazine-by-Symbiosis-Centre-for-IT-September-2010-10-2048.jpg)
![Barriers to BI [3].h p://www.oracle.com/us/solu ons/ent performance‐bi/
index.htm
[4].h p://www.saycocorpora vo.com/saycoUK/BIJ/
journals.htm
Amazing & Beautiful (By Ritesh Dass)
Sometimes life turns up in such a way,
Where one has nothing around but a mad fray.
Legions of people are around but still you’re single,
The bell of happiness inside you doesn’t jingle.
The current face of BI is struggling with the factors
like isolating business processes which are to be au- When the way ahead of you is full of mist,
tomated but are integrated very poorly in systems.
Finding someone you love is a real tryst.
At first data fragmentation helped in managing the
Pleasure of meeting someone you love,
enormous amount of information but then it ended
up creating a blockage when it comes to extracting Seems as if your hand got touched with a dove.
the required data. There are too many sources for
retrieving the data for the business. Every source has
Time doesn’t pass away without listening to her voice,
its own set of complexities and is unique in every
How to nurture a relationship is always a matter of choice.
single way. All in all, processing and overcoming
the workload fails due to specialized servers. Waiting for the moment when I can hold her hand,
When I can write her name on the dunes of sand.
What will drive the next wave of BI?
My soul finds an unknown solace within her,
Conformity - BI can help drive consistency
in decision making. Every employee needs to Not sensing her presence around gets my sight blur.
follow a similar pattern of decision process- Packed with care, love & surprises, she is a sparkling beauty,
es.
Pressures – BI simply cannot report and pre- Warding her off from any evil is my humble duty.
dict on the past trends. Since this data is val-
uable but of limited use, dashboards need
support predictive analytics. Being unique is her way which no one can don,
Connectivity - Linking the business process- Found a shoulder where I can sob and rest my hands on.
es with suppliers, clients and prospective
Small are the things that make her happy,
partners is crucial to have a more compre-
hensive view of what happens outside the No need of buying her something whacky.
organization.
The way she has impacted my heart is very deep,
References:
Can be awake my entire life to watch her sleep.
[1]. h p://www.business‐intelligence.co.uk
Want to see two different souls submerging in one,
[2].h p://www.01.ibm.com/so ware/data/cognos
The very purpose of my life on this earth will be done.
Confluent September Issue || Page Number 11](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/confluent-scit-sep-2010-101013050634-phpapp02/75/Confluent-Monthly-magazine-by-Symbiosis-Centre-for-IT-September-2010-11-2048.jpg)
![SOLID STATE DRIVES: EXTENDING FEASIBILITY TO DATA STORAGE
- ANIKET RASTOGI
Introduction Advantages of SSD’s[5]
To support better business decision making it is nec-
essary that the parameters that support decision making should
With no moving parts, the SSD is much less likely to
be stored in such a way that they are accessible whenever they
fail in extreme outdoor temperatures and conditions of
are required. The storage mediums should be such that they are
vibration and shock when, for instance, it accidentally
reliable and also they provide ease of access to data without
falls.
much loss of time. These storage mediums have seen evolution
in the past when all the required information was written by
Unlike the HDD, which has high read access time, the
hand on papers to the most efficient storage mediums as flash
SSD has practically no access time since it requires nei-
drives and hard drives what we see today.
ther seek nor latency time. This significantly improves
Evolution of Data Storage Mediums system boot and file access speed as compared with the
HDD.
The computer storage mediums have also seen a lot of
evolution in the past decade or so. They have evolved from
With minimal power requirements, the SSD is more
small capacity and unreliable floppy drives to large capacity
power efficient. This is particularly important for road
and highly reliable flash drives and from magnetic tapes based
warriors, enabling them to remain productive while in
hard drives to NAND no volatile memory based Solid State
transit.
Drives (SSD).[1][5] Although hard disk drives have been a faith-
ful servant to computing for many years. But with head, plat-
Without need for a motor, bearings or a moving head,
ter, magnetic surfaces, spindle and an array of other complex
the SSD generates less heat than the HDD and makes no
moving parts, they are most certainly fallible. They can be
noise.
slow, too: disks have to start spinning if they're not already
doing so, then they have to get the head to the correct position Because of its faster boot-up and read/write speeds, the
on the disk to read or write the data. Add this to the physical SSD enhances the overall user experience[2] on comput-
problems occurring when a piece of dust or other foreign ob- er notebooks equipped with new operating systems,
ject gets into the mechanism, or when an impact jolts the drive, such as Microsoft® Windows Vista™.
and we have a distinctly imperfect system. Solid State Drives
address many of these timing and structural problems inherent
in the hard disk drive.
Quantifying the Benefits of SSDs using CPW-like OLTP
Workload
On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications
are typically thought of as having a large number of users con-
currently executing transactions to a database. The transactions
vary by application, but usually each transaction produces a
substantial amount of I/O to the disk subsystem. Such transac-
tions expect that the response time is not only low, but also
consistent throughout the business day.
Introducing SSDs into a production environment may offer
many benefits including:[3]
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![ An increase in I/O and data throughput 3. Performance Value of Solid State disks; May
A reduction in application and disk response 2009; http://www-03.ibm.com/ systems/
time resources/ssd_ibmi.pdf
A reduction in energy and lab space 4. Solid State Driven in an Enterprise; March
A reduction in number of HDDs needed 2009; http://download.intel. com/it/
In some situations a reduction in purchase 5. Solid State Drives(SSD); 25 January 2007
cost http://compreviews.about.com/ od/storage/a/
SSD.htm
6. Gartner, Inc. “Dataquest Insight: Expect PCs
Overcoming Cost Limitations to Impact the NAND Flash Market After
2008,” Joseph Unsworth, 15 December 2008
Cost, for one, has kept flash on the sidelines for note-
book computer use. But today, advances in flash semiconduc-
tor technologies and lithography (also known as production
process, or geometry) are maximizing silicon usage. Whereas
the cost of a 32 gigabyte SSD just two years ago was well over
$1,000, today in the first half of 2007 it is available to original Once you are done
equipment manufacturers (OEMs) at $350. This price is ex-
pected to continue to decline rapidly over the next few years.[2] reading, try to solve
Catering to Notebook Compu- this
ting Needs
Enterprise users want their notebook computers to be
durable so that their data remains intact and accessible in con-
ditions outside an office environment. They want fast access to
their data so that they don’t have to keep perspective customers
waiting, and they demand an extended battery life so that they
can remain productive while in transit. [3]
A capacity point of 32 gigabytes lets users such as
these store their critical programs, files and even personal data
on their notebooks, while enabling IT departments to secure
the majority of information on corporate servers to maintain
control both over confidential data and the level of security
that they deem appropriate.
References
To mail your ideas and feedback:
1. Solid State Hard Drives; 21 August 2010;
http://
www.pctechguide.com/31HardDisk_SolidSta
teDrives.htm aniket.chauhan@hotmail.com
2. Bringing SSD Benefits to Notebooks; April
2007 www.sandisk.com/ Assets/.../
Bring-
ing_SSD_Benefits_to_Notebook_Users.pdf
Confluent September Issue || Page Number 35](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/confluent-scit-sep-2010-101013050634-phpapp02/75/Confluent-Monthly-magazine-by-Symbiosis-Centre-for-IT-September-2010-35-2048.jpg)
Uploaded byDhiren Gala
Confluent - Monthly magazine by Symbiosis Centre for IT - September 2010
The document discusses the evolution of business intelligence (BI) technology and its growing significance in decision-making processes, especially among the new generation raised in the digital age. It emphasizes the necessity for organizations to adapt to BI tools for improved analysis and forecasting, enabling them to remain competitive in the rapidly changing market landscape. The content also covers various aspects of data visualization and the importance of collaborative commerce in leveraging BI effectively.
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Similar to Confluent - Monthly magazine by Symbiosis Centre for IT - September 2010
Confluent - Monthly magazine by Symbiosis Centre for IT - September 2010
- 1.
- 2.
- 3. T he next generation more likely known as In the previous days, before the advent of infor- the “Net Generation” has been glued to mation age, accessing information without the use technology since their childhood. Deci- of smart technologies was not a piece of cake. sion-makers of the new generation are on Hence, most of the decisions taken were intuition the horizon that will radically change the future. In- based. The picture has completely taken a revolu- ternet is like a second home where instant messag- tion in the modern globalize world where the ap- ing, blogs, gaming, social networking are like bud- plication of Businesses Intelligence technology is dies. The way they work, think, analyze, use the in- becoming popular day by day in almost all kinds formation or solve problems is completely varied of businesses. In a way, every organization tries from the primitive approach. Expectations are soar- to promote their business by predicting the trends ing high and the technology better not let them of the future where information is a vital tool to down. In the world of information, the decision understand the current position in the market makers work in a baffling situation. Is there any compared to its rivals. room for creative thinking? If the workflow has a fixed routine, flexibility of the innovative mind Keeping the growing competition in mind, all stops right there. Decision making has historically those myths like “Business and IT do not go hand been seen as a stand-alone activity. The focus is on in hand” can be erased off. It’s time to know thy- the analysis and hopefully creative thinking that fol- self, know thy competition. What the next genera- lows. We ask ourselves this very question that tion will expect of BI applications? How genera- “What’s next?” When an existing process is still tional shift will drive changes in BI tools and going on or was modified, the change may be visible technology? How the roles of BI professionals but simple and remain in line with the process struc- will be transformed? How the uses of BI systems ture—implementing new leads to the world of busi- will grow and change? ness. An IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn came up with You will find all your answers in the next few the term ‘’Business Intelligence” that was later de- pages. HAPPY READING!! fined as a hub of concepts and processes to im- prove business decision making. The IT age, where availability of information and invent of new tech- nologies do not stop even in the case of business, has an open platform to business approached in any form. Sufficient information and adequate knowledge about market scenario is required for a successful business strategy. BI made it easy to access by managing all kinds of information. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 3
- 4. Technology: Data Visualization with Dashboard and KPI MAIA Intelligence Detailed Analysis of Business Intelligence Adam Husain, Karan Jariwala, Nikhi, Sarup, Pragathi MS & Sharendran Mannar Turning the Right Corner - Making Better De- cisions to Harness Growth Infor Erasable paper by Xerox – can it be an Envi- ronmental Breakthrough? Piyush Wadhwa Why Good Business Intelligence Applications start with a Data Model CA Technologies Solid State Drives Aniket Rastogi Management: Business Intelligence solutions from Collabora- tive commerce perspective Ram Kinkar Jha Business Intelligence (BI) – The ethical genius Anamika Datta Search for fortune: Use of Data Mining Richa Singh Rural BPO’s : Innovatively Cheap Ninad Dhavase Performance problems with data processing in mid-size businesses Saurabh Acharya General: A peek into Transmedia Storytelling Mousumi Ray (SCIT), Kumar Luv (IMI) Confluent September Issue || Page Number 4
- 5. Data Visualization with Dashboard and KPI - MAIA Intelligence Meaning - Hitting the sweet spot The function of a report with data visualization is to communi- cate critical information to your audience in a way they can understand, delivered when and where they need the infor- mation. Need - Information Deficiency • Exploration of large data sets is an important but diffi- cult problem • Location component of data, while critical, often not understood • Many companies still don’t have a clear picture of their overall performance, which may be why they cannot assess it. They prefer to fumble around in the dark. But they may not like what they see when the lights go on Ways - Information Discrimination Purpose-Filled Dashboard Dashboard content must be organized in a way that reflects the • Who is my audience? nature of the information and that supports efficient and mean- ingful monitoring. Information cannot be placed just anywhere • What value will the dashboard add? on the dashboard, nor can sections of the display be sized simp- • What type of dashboard am I creating? ly to fit the available space. Items that relate to one another should usually be positioned close to one another. Important items should often appear larger, thus more visually prominent, Finding the right audience than less important items. Items that ought to be scanned in a particular order ought to be arranged in a manner that supports Role: that sequence of visual attention. o What decisions do they make? o What questions do they need an- swered? BI Technology helps understanding data for actionable infor- Work flow mation. BI makes data visualization easy for quick decisions. o In what context will they be review- ing the dashboard? o What information are they using on a daily basis? o How much time do they have to re- view the numbers? Data comfort and skills o How sophisticated are they using da- ta? o Are they proficient in Excel? Confluent September Issue || Page Number 5
- 6. o Do they enjoy digging into numbers? o Customizable – Functionality to let Business and data expertise users create a view that reflects their o How familiar are they with key per- needs formance metrics? Level of details o Do they understand where the data o High – Presenting only the most criti- comes from? cal top-level numbers o Are they familiar with internal com- o Drill-able – Providing the ability to pany or industry terminology? drill-down to detailed numbers to gain more context Value of the dashboard Point of view o Prescriptive – The dashboard explicit- Define what is important ly tells the user what the data means Educate people and what to do about it Set goals and expectations o Exploratory – User has latitude to in- Know what’s going on terpret the results as they see fit Specific actions in a timely manner Highlight exceptions and provide alerts How to define a metric Communicate progress and success Type of dashboards Scope o Broad – Displaying information about the entire organization o Specific – Focusing on a specific function, process, product, etc. Business role o Strategic – Provides a high level broad, and long-term view of perfor- mance o Operational – Provides a focused, near-term, and tactical view of perfor- Working Capital CFO Dashboard mance Time horizon o Historical – Looking backwards to track trends o Snapshot – Showing performance at a single point in time o Ream-time – Monitoring activity as it happens o Predictive – Using past performance to predict future performance Customization o One-size-fits-all – Presented as a sin- gle view for all users Confluent September Issue || Page Number 6
- 7. Types of DataVisualization Conclusion Summary • Determine your message and identify your data • Chart o Column - Column, Stacked, Clustered, • Determine if a table, graph, or combination of both is Cylinder, Stacked Cylinder, Clustered needed to communicate your message Cylinder • Determine the best means to encode the values o Line - Line, Smooth Line, Stepped Line, Line with Markers, Smooth Line with • Determine where to display each variable Markers • Determine the best design for the remaining objects o Shape - Pie, Exploded Pie, Doughnut, • Determine if particular data should be featured, and if Exploded Doughnut, Funnel, Pyramid so, how o Area - Area, Smooth Area, Stacked o Range - Smooth, Range Column, Range Bar, Stock, Candlestick, Error Bar, Box- Data Visualization Benefits plot o Bar - Bar, Stacked, Clustered, Stacked Horizontal Cylinder, Clustered Horizon- • You should produce effective business summaries for tal Cylinder your company o Scatter • Help them show everything they want to know o Bubble o Polar - Polar, Radar • Give them well defined current reports depict relation- ships, bottlenecks, outliers, trends and value-drivers o Pareto o Histograms • Quickly produce accurate views of important problem • Map • Spark-lines & Data bars YOU…. (By Amit Singh) • Indicators In this world such things and people are few, • Gauge When they are around, you feel like how special are o Meter you, o Horizontal To have them feels like a precious dream come true, o Thermometer I am happy to say that it includes “You”….. Little little moments of happiness they give, Fundamentals of Chart Design Remembered in heart, make all life worth to live, Every time you touch world seems new, • Remove Chart Junk – let every pixel tell a I am happy to say those moments include “You”…. story about your data • Remove Chart Junk – let every pixel tell a No matter how often we meet, story about your data Every day I wish something special to greet, • Readable labels. Whenever possible, avoid Wish your magical glance could just stay, rotated labels Forever your smile be there exactly the same way, • Don’t repeat anything; repetition is bad I am really glad to say that your mere glance always • Avoid Smoothing & 3D makes my day…… J • Careful use of gradients, if any • Sort for comprehension wherever possible May you live happily ever after, • Use less color variants wherever possible And life brings you each moment with lots of laugh- ter. A single promise I can make, with every word being true, To love, to understand, to always care for “You” I’ll be always there for “You”…. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 7
- 8. Business Intelligence solutions from Collaborative commerce perspective - Ram Kinkar Jha BI is an abbreviation of the two words Business Intelligence, efficiently. Collaboration promotes fresh views of suppliers, bringing the right information at the right time to the right peo- competitors, and customers. The goal is for a business to move ple in the right format. It is a 5-step process to run your busi- away from production and sales, shifting towards the integra- ness smarter, starting with registering the right data correctly, tion of various businesses. Technology and services for enter- collecting the data from multiple sources, transforming, com- prise knowledge management will evolve to support the ex- bining and storing it in a data warehouse. tended, collaborative enterprise. This will bring in a flood of information. Surviving the information flood and effectively managing it will be a critical success factor for enterprises to The figure below shows these steps. survive and have a distinct competitive edge. In a c-commerce business world 'knowledge and information' will be the basis for giving an enterprise its competitive edge. And Business Intelligence provides the foundation on which C-Commerce rests. So what is Business intelligence? Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enter- prise users make better business decisions. Business intelli- gence solutions help a company in making business decisions faster, accurate and market-oriented. Concept of business intel- ligence is new in India and according to Gourish Hosangady, it is ’limited to either a traditional database analysis tool or mis- taken for a concept similar to market intelligence. '' Business intelligence market in India was very small at the beginning of this millennium. According to Frost & Sullivan report on the Business Intelligence market in India, wherein Business Intelli- gence has been categorized to include query & reporting tools, data warehousing & mining technologies, and business perfor- mance management- the BI market was estimated at Rs. 26 crore ($ 6 million approx) for Jan-Dec 2001 and increased by This data should be reported, analyzed and distributed to the 40-45 percent in 2002, to approximately Rs. 37.5 crore ($10 right people at the right time in the right format. Business Intel- million approx.)'. The Business Intelligence market in India ligence is about connecting people using a proper infor- could be in the range of $32-35 million by 2005. The Asia- mation infrastructure and performance driven culture, enabling Pacific market for BI solutions is estimated to be $1 billion by them working more closely together towards company and 2007, according to analyst Gartner. There has been a slow but personal goals. steady growth of Business Intelligence market in India. A growing number of vendors are delivering products that are more of a solution and less of a tool. Vendor software has be- The world is rapidly moving towards convergence and a new come more closely intertwined with business processes. To business and connection paradigm is emerging: c-commerce. C conclude, we can say that there is a very promising journey for -commerce stands for Collaborative Commerce that means Business Intelligence lie ahead. optimization of supply and distribution channels in order to capitalize upon the global economy and use new technology Confluent September Issue || Page Number 8
- 9. Business Intelligence (BI) – The ethical genius - Anamika Datta Walls are pretty thin when it comes to eavesdrop- managers need to be aware of the current ping on issues you really want to know. In business, scenarios while taking any decisions. the most relevant details do not come from within Enterprise information from all across the globe – Since, most of the business deal with but the external facts matter the most. What’s your the international market, it’s always safer to rival up to? How much revenue are they targeting to be aware of the trends (both rise and fall). bring you down? Are you aware of the storm ahead? Relevant information- There is a lot of gar- BI seems to be the answer to this major mess. The bage out there. One needs to grab the data information required will not only be spotted on but which will serve some purpose to the organi- also analyzed in such a way that the entire set of da- zational benefits. Collaborative decision making techniques – ta can be retrieved with very little knowledge. Ideas may be wrong but that does not mean Is BI the key to simple future? that one avoids the inputs from others. It may provide better answers if experts and profes- sionals from other fields are included when a decision is being made. Accuracy drives the force in business. Let’s have a look at what BI is doing to make busi- ness easy. The various processes, technologies & tools that help us to change useful data into infor- mation, information into knowledge & knowledge into plans is what guides & drives an organization. Using business intelligence, technologies go hand in hand for gathering, storing, analyzing & providing access to data for helping enterprise users to make better business decisions. Factors to be kept in mind while managing busi- ness Decisions based on daily updates - It is not feasible to manage business if the right up- dates do not emerge at the right time. The Confluent September Issue || Page Number 9
- 10. Open Source BI tools Open source software is evolving into the BI tools market. The traditional BI tools which are deployed on open source environments fall back in front of the true open source BI software. Pentaho, JasperSoft, and Actuate are the niche vendors in providing such tools. Even though the grab in the market has been very alluring for BI tools, survey tells that it’s going to last only for the next five years. What’s in store? This is an era where decisions are made at many or- ganizational levels and not just the top management level. To sort this out, a new class of analytic tools is coming up that serves a much wider range within the organization. These new tools are referred to as “BI for the masses”. Challenges to be faced while im- plementing BI for the masses are: Report creation to be made easy Information delivery to be made secured User friendly interfaces Deployment of BI tools to multiple staff members is a sign of organizations being ready to expand to all levels. Business Objects deployed its BI tools to 70,000 users at France, Telecom, 50,000 users at US Military Health System, and to several other firms at the 20,000 user level range [Schauer, 2003]. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 10
- 11. Barriers to BI [3].h p://www.oracle.com/us/solu ons/ent performance‐bi/ index.htm [4].h p://www.saycocorpora vo.com/saycoUK/BIJ/ journals.htm Amazing & Beautiful (By Ritesh Dass) Sometimes life turns up in such a way, Where one has nothing around but a mad fray. Legions of people are around but still you’re single, The bell of happiness inside you doesn’t jingle. The current face of BI is struggling with the factors like isolating business processes which are to be au- When the way ahead of you is full of mist, tomated but are integrated very poorly in systems. Finding someone you love is a real tryst. At first data fragmentation helped in managing the Pleasure of meeting someone you love, enormous amount of information but then it ended up creating a blockage when it comes to extracting Seems as if your hand got touched with a dove. the required data. There are too many sources for retrieving the data for the business. Every source has Time doesn’t pass away without listening to her voice, its own set of complexities and is unique in every How to nurture a relationship is always a matter of choice. single way. All in all, processing and overcoming the workload fails due to specialized servers. Waiting for the moment when I can hold her hand, When I can write her name on the dunes of sand. What will drive the next wave of BI? My soul finds an unknown solace within her, Conformity - BI can help drive consistency in decision making. Every employee needs to Not sensing her presence around gets my sight blur. follow a similar pattern of decision process- Packed with care, love & surprises, she is a sparkling beauty, es. Pressures – BI simply cannot report and pre- Warding her off from any evil is my humble duty. dict on the past trends. Since this data is val- uable but of limited use, dashboards need support predictive analytics. Being unique is her way which no one can don, Connectivity - Linking the business process- Found a shoulder where I can sob and rest my hands on. es with suppliers, clients and prospective Small are the things that make her happy, partners is crucial to have a more compre- hensive view of what happens outside the No need of buying her something whacky. organization. The way she has impacted my heart is very deep, References: Can be awake my entire life to watch her sleep. [1]. h p://www.business‐intelligence.co.uk Want to see two different souls submerging in one, [2].h p://www.01.ibm.com/so ware/data/cognos The very purpose of my life on this earth will be done. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 11
- 12. Detailed Analysis of Business Intelligence from the pens of Adam Husain, Karan Jariwala, Nikhil Sarup, Pragathi MS and Sharendran Mannar Introduction about progress towards business goals. This is also known as business process manage- Imagine you are the CTO of a company. Obviously it is very ment. challenging for you to quickly, effectively and economically get access to all your reports, analyze it and share the infor- Analytics: This program develops quanti- mation you need to achieve your corporate objectives. Dis- tative processes for a business to arrive at tressed? Well then, there are two words for you – Business optimal decisions. Additionally it helps to Intelligence. perform Business Knowledge Discovery. It frequently involves data mining, statistical analysis, Predictive Analysis, Predictive Businesses Intelligence, also known as BI, refers to computer- Modeling, and Business Process Modeling. based solutions used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data. This includes sales revenue by products and Reporting/Enterprise Reporting: – departments or associated costs and incomes regarding the This is a program that builds infrastructure business. Business Intelligence technologies provide historical, for Strategic Reporting. It helps to serve the current, and analytical examinations of business operations. strategic management of a business. It is not General functions of business intelligence technologies are operational reporting. This type of program reporting, analytics, data mining, online analytical processing, often involves Data Visualization, Executive business performance management, benchmarking, text min- information system, and online analytical ing, and predictive analysis. processing (OLAP). Business Intelligence aims to maintain more effective and effi- Collaboration/Collaboration plat- cient business decision-making. Therefore, a BI system can be form: This program gets different areas termed as a decision support system (DSS). Business intelli- (both outside and inside the business) to gence is often used to describe competitive intelligence, be- work together. This is achieved through Da- cause they both support decision making. However, there ex- ta Sharing and Electronic Data Interchange. ists a difference between the two concepts. BI uses technolo- gies, processes, and applications to analyze mostly internal, Knowledge Management: This is a pro- structured data and business processes. On the other hand gram to make a the company data driven competitive intelligence is done by gathering, analyzing and through strategies and practices that identify, disseminating information with or without support from tech- create, represent, distribute, and enable adop- nology and applications, and focuses on all-source information tion of insights and experience that is true and data (structured or unstructured), mostly external, but also business knowledge. Knowledge manage- internal to a company to support decision-making. ment shows the way to Learning Manage- ment and Regulatory Compliance. Best Practices Business Intelligence can be practically implied to the follow- How does it work? ing business practices in order to make the business more effi- Business intelligence (BI) delivers on a simple promise: im- cient: proved business performance by delivering better decision making throughout your entire organization. When you know Measurement: This is a program that cre- that your insight into corporate data is sound, informed, and ates a hierarchy of Performance Metrics and complete, you can trust every decision you make. With that Benchmarking. It informs business leaders level of confidence securely in hand, you can improve business Confluent September Issue || Page Number 12
- 13. performance, create competitiveadvantage, and achieve corpo- formancePoint Server 2007 makes this possible by providing rate objectives. informational views that consolidate all your corporate data— from sales to HR and operations to finance. Decision making Let’s look into a few key players in the intelligence arena: now has a greater context that captures the workings of your Microsoft BI entire company. Microsoft has a habit of invading every territory in the In- foTech domain, then why would it leave Business Intelligence Result: aside? It probably has one of the best BI products in the market What do we get ultimately? Individuals have access to better which is implemented and licensed to most enterprises. Mi- quality data. They can make better decisions and can trust that crosoft Business Intelligence—a complete, fully integrated set their decisions are aligned with corporate goals. Microsoft BI of BI technologies that can help reduce the complexity of or- supports business environments from small to enterprise. It ganizing and distributing information and lead to competitive grows as the company grows, and it’s a small investment for a advantages, overall better decisions, and an improved bottom large return on trust that can help you build your business. line. Microsoft BI consists of three layers of workload: data ware- IBM Cognos housing, reporting and analysis, and performance management. IBM is not far behind in this arena. It already had taken its step This three tier structure is designed to provide a consolidated, into the world of business intelligence with its product, comprehensive data source and tools to help decision making. Cognos. On September 29, 2009, IBM announced the launch of In our view, the promise of Microsoft BI is to help decision Cognos Express, a new product specially designed to meet the makers at all levels throughout the organization have confi- needs of the midsized market. dence that their decisions support the company’s goals and Cognos Express is a Web-based tool composed of three initiatives. base products: Step 1: Quality data Cognos Express Reporter (a reporting and querying tool) Microsoft BI give users a way of finding data they need in an Cognos Express Advisor (a tool for data analysis and easy-to-understand format that helps them make decisions. visualization) Microsoft SQL server 2005 can aid in improving data process as a whole. It is enterprise-ready and a proven relational engine Cognos Express Xcelerator (data analysis and planning that stores huge amounts of data, supports high query loads, tool based on Microsoft Excel) delivers high performance, clustering and scales to the largest The best part is that all these can be managed by the Cognos enterprise needs. Express Manager. The idea behind this three-part system is to create a complete set of BI tools, giving the user the option of Step 2: Tools to gain deeper insights installing only the needed functionality. Each module can be Did you know that Microsoft Excel is business intelligence installed separately and each can complement each other. software? It provides end users with the resources that help Cognos express can be installed with ease, and there is no spe- them make accurate and confident decisions. With its latest cial rule or trick to it. A free trial version of Cognos Express is release, Microsoft has made a huge investment in the ability to readily available if you wish to test it. Once the installation analyze, visualize and gain insight into data with this tool. The process is finished, you can open the IBM Cognos Express analysis environment provides us with access to more infor- Manager, a Web interface defined to serve as a centralized ad- mation, easier and more robust analysis, and a simple connec- ministration tool for Cognos Express. tion to the data in SQL Server 2005 in a more secure, intuitive, and managed way. IBM Cognos has made a big effort to keep things simple: the manager interface has a user-friendly appearance, and it’s easy Step 3: Decisions aligned with corporate to detect the graphical location of almost every task in the goals Cognos Express Manager Web interface due to its simple de- sign. The first two steps help individual employees make individual Creating users is also very simple. There are already some pre- decisions. This next step helps improve corporate-level deci- configured features, like user groups, that can be used to create sion making all across your organization. Microsoft Office Per- a group of up to 100 Confluent September Issue || Page Number 13
- 14. users—if the productis licensed. It’s possible to create users As the name implies difference is in the way data is queried. immediately, and attach them to specific workgroups, like Ex- Conventional BI tools query on the disk once the data from press Administrators or Express Users. With these functionali- database moved to processor whereas in in-memory analytics ties, it’s possible to create an acceptable and secure user access data is queried on RAM (Random access memory), this leads policy. to results in no time! Magical isn’t it! Let’s see in detail. Prior to in-memory analytics BI tools used to query against a typical The various Cognos Express products which have been includ- data warehouse, the query normally goes to a database that ed are: reads the information from multiple tables stored on a server's Cognos Express Reporter hard disk as against server based in-memory database in which all information is initially loaded into memory i.e. to say re- Creating a report in Cognos Express can be done using the ports which use to take minutes to get generated, takes less than Query Studio. It also has features to format data, fonts, decimal a second to build! places, etc. All of the report creation process can be done very fast. It’s also possible to create a chart from a set of chart types In-memory analysis and reporting delivers rapid access to visu- with the data previously selected. ally rich, interactive dashboards that anyone can build quickly and modify easily. As shown in fig 1, by associating data into Cognos Express Advisor memory from any source, it can combine data with high perfor- mance, regardless of how those sources perform on their own. This is the online analytical processing (OLAP) data engine This provides the fastest way to gain insight into how different that enables all data analysis. This tool enables users to analyze parts of a business relate. It enables users to see and know their data collected from relational data sources in a dimensional businesses in new ways and interactively explore data without way by creating data cubes that enable fast and flexible data limits. Now, users can engage their data with blazing speed, analysis. Again, the tool was designed to keep things simple. resulting in more informed, proactive decisions. For IT depart- Users can improve the decision-making process by basing their ments, it means - far less time spent on query analysis, cube decisions on Advisor-enabled data analysis. building, aggregate table design, and other time-consuming Cognos Express Xcelerator performance-tuning tasks. It enhances Microsoft Excel with a new set of report and busi- ness analysis tools. But the description of this product will have to wait until another time; it brings a hot topic to the BI market that deserves more than a couple of lines. It’s a commendable effort on IBM’s side to launch Cognos Express in the market for midsized organization. Midsized or- ganizations need new technology to help them accomplish their goals. But, as they often have only a limited budget to do it, Cognos Express could be another BI software solution to con- sider for this type of company. Innovative approach to BI Memory Analytics - The Game In changer In-memory analytics or In-memory computing has started cre- ating waves in the market. This is a game changer innovation technology which can empower companies to plan smarter, perform better and run faster! Why the buzz? What is in-memory analytics is all about? Confluent September Issue || Page Number 14
- 15. The main reasonwhy In-Memory Analytics is thing of today in Cloud BI and tomorrow is because of the lower-priced 64 bit computing As we all know Cloud computing offers a lot of promise. By which came along with the adoption of 64-bit architecture that virtualizing hardware and software infrastructure and paying a enables larger addressable memory space. third party to deliver services as you go on a subscription or Gartner, a U.S based leading technical research firm says by usage basis, companies can save a lot of money and time, and 2012 70% of global 1000 organizations will incorporate in- speed the deployment of business solutions. memory technology into their business intelligence (BI) appli- Initially, cloud-based solutions were designed for small- to mid cations to optimize performance and flexibility. Bigwigs like -size companies that didn’t have available IT resources or capi- SAP and Oracle are already chasing real time. Waiting is really tal to spend on creating and managing a software and hardware going to be the thing of past! infrastructure. Today, many large companies are investigating the cloud as a way to add new business solutions quickly and Agile Development for BI augment existing data centre capacity. Agile is a software development methodology which may take This has helped organizations to use BI applications without 1 to 4 weeks to develop a piece of software. It follows iteration purchasing and implementing new IT infrastructure, they can process; each iteration is treated as an entire software project use, no large upfront costs, pay as you go facility.BI infrastruc- which includes planning, designing, coding, testing and docu- ture can be expanded and contracted with the companies re- menting tasks. quirements. Using Agile BI, the system is, from its inception, frequently exposed to stakeholders - no matter how immature it is, you'll learn how these early versions will help your stakeholders shape their visions and provide meaningful feedback about the system, and enable developers to respond by continuously ma- turing the system to align with the stakeholders' vision. Does Business Organisation have One more use is, since successful BI project must be able to the right Information to be pre- adapt to changing requirements along the way, and must be extremely flexible in terms of the data provided to the end-user. pared for Future? BI projects *must* be driven by Agile methodologies if they are going to succeed. The execution of any business model or strategy is The difference between traditional BI which follows Waterfall often hampered due to lack of trusted information. In model of software development and agile BI which uses agile today’s competitive market, it’s more important to software development methodology is as shown in fig 2. have a continuous market insight and have the man- power and technology to react quickly. The future of business is promising, organizations have realised that they need to adapt to the current trends to suc- ceed. As shown in the recent research conducted by KPMG, more than half of the organisations world- wide expect to adopt new business model. Business Intelligence will be an integral part of this evolution, placing information at the heart of all decisions. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 15
- 16. information gives them a competitive advantage at both a strategic and a tactical level while costing less to provide. Impact of Business Intelligence on an Organization Organizations today face dual challenge of managing intra- organizational information and monitoring a vast pool of infor- mation from the external environment. Survival of organiza- tions in today’s competitive market requires effective use of information and decision technologies to gather, manage and utilize knowledge. Information management in itself is insuffi- cient to sustain a strong competitive position i.e. mere acquisi- tion and sharing of information or knowledge does not auto- matically lead to improved firm performance. Instead, infor- Making large investments in IT doesn’t guarantee mation needs to be first internalized and transformed into better information. The methodology to collect in- knowledge, which then has to be applied in new products, ser- formation should be changed so it is processed and vices and processes before improving a firm’s performance. presented in a better way. Technologies ranging from groupware, databases and expert systems allow the storage and codification of knowledge, ac- To find out whether businesses are ready for such a cess to existing organizational knowledge sources and commu- change, KPMG collaborated with Cambridge Uni- nication of ideas across organizational units. In addition, there versity to conduct a review of Business Intelligence are a variety of Business Intelligence (BI) technologies such as and results suggest that, despite an annual global digital dashboards which visually presents summaries of busi- outlay of around US$60 billion, many organisations ness data of an organization. Many common BI tools are are not seeing the expected benefits. Some of the key equipped with Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) capability findings are which supports interactive examination and analysis of large o Less than 10 percent of business organiza- amounts of data by mathematical simulation and modeling and tions have successfully used business intelli- the impact of possible risks. gence to improve their organizational and Business intelligence technologies incorporate a broad range of technological infrastructures. applications and practices for the collection, integration, analy- o More than 50 percent of business intelligence sis and presentation of business information. The primary ob- projects fail to deliver the expected benefit. jective of business intelligence is to support better business o Two thirds of executives feel that the quality decision making. In the past BI tools such as decision support and ease of accessibility to data is poor and systems were only available to senior executives. However, not consistent. Seven out of ten executives do with the advent of internet and proliferation of Web 2.0 appli- not get the right information to make busi- cations, BI has been made accessible to employees at lower ness decisions. levels also. Though senior executives, managers and analysts have access to more specialized BI tools like digital dash- Hence even huge amount is invested there is rela- boards, reporting and querying software, OLAP and data min- tively little to show for outlay and most of the data is ing; junior employees can use spreadsheets and search engines. inaccurate, which make decision making more diffi- The junior employees can also subscribe to RSS feeds to moni- cult and risky. The companies which use business tor competitors’ performance and behavior, and customers’ intelligence effectively outperform the market by feedback on new media such as blogs. Most organizations also more than 5% in terms of return on equity as they prefer to use Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) to inte- are able to deliver the right information, at the right grate internal information with externally acquired information. time, to the right people. They discover how With the advancements Confluent September Issue || Page Number 16
- 17. in groupware technologieslike Microsoft Office SharePoint, organizations can now more effectively share and use its ac- He found the diary (By Anamika Datta) quired knowledge which would thereby help in effective deci- Their friendship was green sion making. Thus, the greater the use of BI technologies in the Their friendship was blue The love in their hearts was genuinely true organization, the higher the degree of organization’s absorptive A secret it was, for a long time indeed capacity which will positively influence sustained competitive The bird was confused of how to proceed advantage. They danced to the tunes, to the proms, to the bands With a smile on his face, and lust on his hands References: Years numbered four, but he wanted more “THE IMPACT OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TECHNOL- The three words of life wasn't said before OGIES ON ORGANIZATIONAL ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY The fear! The fear! That wiped him with a smear AND AMBIDEXTROUS INNOVATION COMPETENCE” - ‘‘No'' is the word which he couldn't afford to hear by Lin-Bin Oh and Hock-Hai Teo The time had come for her to leave A new life, a new degree of tortured-eve http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=33263:sap-delivers- Vincent: Did you see Julia? inmemory-analytics&catid=86&Itemid=64 Julia’s friend: No, but she gave your locker keys back. She wanted some stuff which she kept there. http://www.sap.com/asia/platform/netweaver/pdf/ Vincent: Thanks. If you see her, will you tell her that BI_Applications_Gartner.pdf I was looking for her? http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/nari/2010/08/ Julia’s friend: Don't you know? She’s leav- intelligence_for_an_agile_busi.php ing the country. Vincent: WHAT?! Julia’s friend: Yes, she's leaving in a few hours. She got admission to another university… Collapsed Triumph (By Mousumi Ray) A diary of eyeses and sentiments so deep A gift in his locker, which she had to keep I had been "the love" for many I had been the source of energy He found the diary and turned to the first page Unaware of this I moved ahead Entry # I met this great guy called Vincent. He’s As, this was the battle against my destiny. sweet and has a killer smile… *turns a few more pages * Entry # today, Vincent asked me to be his prom Moving faster than the speed itself date. I couldn't be more excited… Success had been my only concern *keeps turning* Conquering each and every milestone Entry # I think I’m in love with Vincent. Should I tell him? What if he doesn't feel the same way...? Made "victory" my absolute obsession. *crushed, and with tears in his eyes...tries to turn some more pages* The unfortunate diva finally arrived Entry # Vincent danced with me all evening. It’s the best day of my life… The day I reached the zenith *turns to the last page* Turned around with joyous heart Last entry # Vincent, you are my first and last love. Found no one whom i could share it with. :) He crunched the last page, and held the diary close to him. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 17
- 18. SEARCH FOR FORTUNE: USE OF DATA MINING - Richa Singh I read a definition of business intelligence some- To understand data mining let us again go back to where which states that” business intelligence is ana- the stars. Remember your science classes when your lysing the past data to predict the future”. The ques- teacher taught you to see stars not as individuals but tion here is who is interested to know the future. as constellations by considering the arbitrary shape Guess I wouldn’t be wrong if I compare a manger of a spoon or a hunter. The same is true for data. with an astrologer. One sees the pattern of the stars Mangers tend to put on their internal intuition and and the other is interested in the pattern of data. then cluster them to draw inference or conclusion. This is science for the mangers. There are a variety of tools which are handy for the mangers when they tend to do business intelligence through data mining. The most obvious one is statis- tics. Even basic statics tool like graphs and plots may tend to group data and help the decision makers on small amount of data. The problem arises when the size of the data increases from mega to tera to giga bites. Is there an effective tool for that scenario as well? Data mining library is big and comes with big terms like regression classification, clustering and so on. But before I jump further it is essential to understand The thing is easy to talk about but will not be less that data mining is no technology. It is just a tool to than a herculean task to achieve. Just imagine of a be used on data the output of which can yield some situation: A man made to stand with a carton full of striking resembles and future trends could be pre- stuffs. Now ask him for say thing one. Now he peeps dicted. in the bag takes out one two three four and so on Data mining thrives on three basic things which are stuff before reaching to the desired stuff. If things sound too messed up don’t worry because with the Collection of large amount of data amount of data that company’s collect from their Multiprocessor system to handle the large amount of data business the situation would have been more or less Data mining tools the same. Business houses are expanding with And I feel we are at the right point of time with all SBU’s to new enterprises to outsourcing and so on. the above combinations available to us. But thanks to the tools of data mining mangers can mine out the gold out of the ounce of dirt. And the sophisticated tools available have made the sorting even easier. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 18
- 19. Data mining works on modelling of data. You go for building a model of the situation you understand and then try to figure out how the model fits into a new situation. The same is the scenario with data mining. Modelling as an activity is not new. The difference is what human has been doing for long time is to be simulated by the computers. Computers are loaded with large amount of data and are provided with sit- uations where the answer is known. Data mining tools go through all these data build a model of the known situation and finally apply it to the situations where the answer is not known. These tools can be successfully employed in variety of situations. For example a hotel industry can successfully predict the trends its customers have been following and thus retain its most profitable customers. Or a sales team can make intelligent business decisions on its sales territories to make the most profitable numbers. The more is the amount of data the better will be the analysis and the better will be the result. So as the capacity of databases increase companies can make it a point to track each and every record and transac- tion. Bring the data in the data warehouse and apply the techniques of data mining. Why data warehouse for data mining?? It is the best place to find the appropriate data as data to be brought in there has already been selected by the an- alyst. The sole purpose of migrating the data from database to data warehouse is to have the data ready for the reporting purpose. On line analytical pro- cessing (OLAP) can also be used on the data ware- house to have data ready in aggregate cubes. Further refining can be done in the form of Data Marts that are the department wide data. So your data is finally Business is a game of numbers. Managers play with ready. All you need is to give it the final touch up. big numbers daily. The use of sophisticated tools Cleansing the data of the noise, filling of incomplete like data mining makes this play a game of intelli- steps could be the final few things. Finally your data gence and strategy. It’s an era of smart decision bride is ready. So I can freely talk of data mining on making. it. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 19
- 20. Turning the Right Corner - Making Better Decisions to Harness Growth Chris Field at Infor asks: As we make tentative steps the wider context from which decisions should be into economic recovery, how can companies ensure based. they make the right decisions about their future per- The recent financial crisis is a good case in point. In formance? hindsight, few would argue that some monumentally As we move towards economic recovery, the deci- bad decisions were taken: a 125% mortgage based sions organisations make this year will be instru- on 7 x an individual’s salary anyone? mental in their future performance. While short However it could be argued that those kinds of deci- term cost management to ensure survival has re- sions were made on the basis of good information. mained top of the priority list for many organisa- Mortgage companies were lending large amounts of tions in the last 18 months, a renewed focus on in- money based on short term historic information – in vesting in longer term growth initiatives is clearly this case, that house prices had increased consistent- emerging in 2010. But how can companies ensure ly and rapidly up until their peak in 2007, and based they make the best decisions to lead the charge out on that pattern, the risk of lending more than a prop- of recession? erty was actually worth, was deemed acceptable. According to Gartner, organisations are taking deci- However if contextual factors had been applied to sion-making seriously. Global sales of Business In- this historical information, they would have high- telligence (BI) systems are set to grow by an esti- lighted that this level of growth was not sustainable. mated 25% from 2008 to reach $7.7 billion by 2012. The decisions would most likely have been very dif- Gartner also reports that of a survey of 1500 CIOs, ferent, and the extent of financial crisis which en- BI tops their priority lists. So the sentiment is clear sued would have been less severe. – companies recognise the need for better decisions. And while the most common response to mistakes But what factors are necessary for better decisions to on this kind of scale is to demand more bureaucracy be made, and is a BI system enough? and regulation, such an approach would require the Gartner describes BI as “the systems that help deci- collation of even more information which can actu- sion-makers throughout the organisation understand ally be counterproductive. The key to avoiding a the state of their company’s world. A set of meth- recurrence of such mistakes at any level, is not to ods that support sophisticated analytical decision- generate more information but to harness and apply making aimed at improving business performance.” existing information in a more intelligent and mean- ingful way. But as this definition illustrates, while BI can pro- vide the information, BI alone cannot facilitate the Traditionally, people would apply this intelligence decisions themselves. Information provided by BI to information, but the scope and complexity of in- systems is often raw and one-dimensional, and lacks formation in most organisations is too vast for this Confluent September Issue || Page Number 20
- 21. approach to beviable. The human brain simply isn’t flagging market information, future events, risk fac- capable of processing the millions of variables and tors and trends. In practice these systems are like pieces of information required to make good deci- software probes which search through huge volumes sions. In today’s complex business environments, to of data from across all areas of an organisation and guarantee the best, most informed decisions, systems then create alerts to exceptions for nominated per- and processes must be capable of analysing infor- sonnel, from which the events’ importance and rele- mation from a number of different perspectives – not vance can be ascertained. Once these contextual fac- just recent historical information such as sales fig- tors have been identified, they must be followed up ures or spending trends. and their resulting actions fed into the company’s planning, budgeting and decision making systems, thus creating a comprehensive picture from which to This has base decisions. 1 What are the quantifiable long term objec- tives for your company? Box out: 8 Questions to ask yourself to help you use 2 How will those objectives be met? BI strategically 3 What actions will be taken? 4 How will you continually measure those activ- Whether using this contextual approach for strategic ities? or operational decision-making, a 360 degree picture 5 How does the competition perform against the of events can mean the difference between identify- same activities? ing a huge growth opportunity which might catapult 6 How must these activities now change to out- a business into becoming a market leader, or see an organisation miss an opportunity, or increase expo- pace the competition? sure to risk. Of course, some good decisions will 7 How will your company resources need to be occasionally result in an adverse outcome. But allocated to make these changes happen? through ensuring that all business decisions are 8 How are you performing, what adjustments do good, informed, and factor in all relevant variables, risk is mitigated and business performance maxim- you need to keep making? ised. been the traditional problem with BI systems as they’ve been deployed as a standalone, tactical, in- One of the key lessons learned from the recent finan- ternally focused systems to help save costs or identi- cial crisis is that organisations simply can’t afford to fy revenue opportunities, not for gaining strategic gamble on important decisions about business per- value and competitive advantage. BI systems must formance. Availability of good information will be able to present information in the context of the help to establish a benchmark for growth, but in or- total environment, both within an organisation and der for this information to add strategic value and its external market, in order for it to be effective. drive growth, it must be harnessed and used in the right way. The ultimate aim is to use BI to help make insightful decisions about significant changes within a business As business becomes increasingly complex, BI has and its markets. To do this must be complemented become a prerequisite rather than a differentiator. by systems which are capable of identifying and And while BI is an integral first step, it must be aligned with the Confluent September Issue || Page Number 21
- 22. attributes and nuancesof the company and markets but still i am alive which it serves. Only through this level of thoroughness why? will organisations achieve competitive advantage at this cant u just see? delicate stage in the economy’s recovery, and avoid poor decisions which they simply cannot afford to make. cant u just feel? For more information: are u so tough to penetrate http://www.infor.com/solutions/pm/http:// dont u have emotions? www.infor.com/solutions/pm/ where are those warm touches that melted me away? Bangalore +91 80 4040 7105 huh...they are far lost i guess Hyderabad +91 40 2310 0525 lost in the ashes of time Mumbai +91 22 2823 6056 but New Delhi +91 11 2922 9885 i still crawl to them, try to heal my wounds with For email enquiries: those shattering memories [email protected] and now i am tripping off the cliff Lost Self (Abhishek Roy) going forever.. a life is thy wasted are u so blind that you cannot see how could i say goodbye..HOW???? the blood that oozes out of my wounds i can't just wipe u out peels of my empty heart tearing it apart never dear..... blinding my eyes perhaps never.... is there anything more to loose? oh god of death have mercy the cry of despair still haunting me let me be killed by the hands that gave me this buzzing and echoing through my ears lyf...that warm touch of death.. making me so deaf huh...what an irony of life...!!! still you shout at me i am waiting for her those pain that you mercilessly shoot at me still waiting in the darkness is this all you wanted? wounded, crying out in pain, trying to stich my broken pieces of heart deserting me all alone whr r you my love dumping me like a garbage where???? sorry i have no more tears to shed no more bloods to spill the cold kiss of death just brushed my lips Confluent September Issue || Page Number 22
- 23. Rural BPO’s : Innovatively Cheap - Ninad Dhavase A typical morning of a woman in Teekli village, 30 China, and Philippines who capitalized on the low Km from Gurgaon, used to begin by milking cows, cost labor available to muster this business. preparing lunch for their family and doing other Unlike the outsourcing of software services, BPO chores. However, all this changed when a BPO mainly deals with the back office support and data (business process outsourcing) firm was inaugurated entry operations of an organization. Initially BPO’s in the village. Now, a few of them get up early and were located in the Tier-1 cities like Mumbai, Chen- walk to the BPO office and start working on Mi- nai, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc and targeted the crosoft Office. Yes, BPO’s are now cheaper and young unemployed population in these cities. How- companies have a new reason to substantiate their ever, this very boom led to the increase in reality outsourcing expenses. prices, employees demanding higher salaries which In today’s competitive age, organizations focus on became difficult for these outsourcing companies to their core competencies and outsource their support operate at profitable margins. During this period, activities which are not directly related to the busi- rural areas were blessed with better roads, better IT nesses but to firms in India and other low cost labor infrastructure, better telephony services, and a sizea- countries. As per Harvard Business Review, out- ble class of educated unemployed rural population. sourcing is the most important management concept Companies were wise enough to spot this trend and of the present times. Outsourcing are now ready to capitalize brings cost efficiency for the on these strengths and the companies and thereby contrib- concept of Rural BPO’s. utes to their bottom line. Today, It all began in 2006, when companies are evaluating their a few small entrepreneurs operations for the minutest ex- kicked off pilot BPO oper- pense and hence cost efficiency is ations in villages that were the prime factor which gives a near cities and had schools company an edge over others. till standard 12.The bene- BPO usually involves support fits were evident from the activities and back office tasks such as data entry, profit margins, and within a span of 4 years, about customer support etc. Such operations are usually 50 rural BPOs have come up, reports NASSCOM. mundane in nature and do not add value directly to More than 70% of the BPO work is process driven the customer. Therefore, organizations are not very and hence does not require any highly skilled labor. keen on investing in these activities and hence prefer Simple operations like data entry and customer sup- some vendors who can do these activities at cheaper port even for Indian companies can be easily man- rates for them. This very thought lead to the idea of aged from these BPOs. outsourcing and companies in countries like India, DesiCrew, one of the first entrants see a lot of growth potential in this kind of operations and plan Confluent September Issue || Page Number 23
- 24. to have fiftycenters and 5000 employees by 2015. It from these factors, clients were very apprehensive currently has 170 employees and around 12 clients. initially about such operations and have opted to vis- Even the large players in the BPO space like Aegis it the centre before they assigned the business. How- and Genpact are planning to venture into the rural ever, times are never the same and companies have operations, and increase their bottom lines. This op- been successful in convincing customers about the erating model is not only limited to the private sec- quality and the reliability of the operations. tor. eGramIT is an initiative which bagged the busi- Though on paper, rural BPOs look quite attractive, ness for digitization of account opening records for in reality they are a challenge for both the companies State bank of Hyderabad. Companies prefer data en- and the employees. Companies have to customize try work at these rural BPOs and they leave the their processes of training and other support process- voice support for their urban counterparts. es to incorporate this “special” employee base. This innovation will surely contribute to the management knowledge base and will lead to innovation in the The key factor which will impede the progress of way we conduct our businesses. Employees on the rural BPOs is the availability of three things viz. In- other hand have to be agile enough to learn the new ternet, Power and People. The Telecom Evolution processes and tools if they wish to ride this wave of which India has witnessed has solved the first hurdle jobs. Both the companies and the employees togeth- to an extent, however there is much more to achieve er must create a symbiotic relationship for the mutu- in this area. Government has a very important role to al benefit. play in solving the second and India has always been the most favored destination for outsourcing, be it Software or BPO. Given its democratic environment, sizeable chunk of English speaking people and a decent infrastructure it has become the most sought after place for BPO opera- tions. Indian companies need not only compete with- in themselves, but should consider the competition from other countries like China and Philippines. We need innovation in every aspect in order to have a competitive advantage over others. Rural BPOs is surely the most innovative solution in order to sus- tain this competition. So, customers need no more look for cheap outsourcing vendors apart from India. Yehi hai cheap choice baby, Ah Ha!! References: the third hurdle. Enabling education up to higher 1. http://www.nasscom.in/upload/43171/ secondary standard will be the greatest challenge for Rural_BPO.pdf the government. Companies can then harness the potential to create jobs in the rural areas. Apart Confluent September Issue || Page Number 24
- 25. A peek into Transmedia Storytelling - Mousumi Ray (SCIT, Pune) ‐ Kumar Luv (IMI, Delhi) April this year Producers' Guild of America agreed to a new achieved, would be drillable. Now, this will typically attract credit : Transmedia Producer. It is in recognition of the im- far smaller number of people, but the engagement would be portant contribution of transmedia storytelling to the creative longer too, demanding more energy & time. An example medium. Experts like Chuck Tryon believe that movies as we would be Nine Inch Nail's Artificial Reality Game built around know them today are dying, to be replaced by more engaging Year Zero; or online forums that discuss how a case would be formats of communication. We present here the features of this solved in CID; or groups discussing different interpretations of developing phenomenon, as put forth by Henry Jenkins: Joyce / Kafka. Transmedia / Cross-media storytelling is unfolding of a story across multiple media, where each medium contributes some- thing unique to the experience. 2. Continuity / Multiplicity: When multimedia storytelling aims for a unified experience, As a marketing tool, transmedia storytelling can foster strong we would see a continuity in it. Like between season 3 & 4 of audience engagement. It can initiate a powerful, creative dia- Pokemon a movie fits in. There is a continuity here. Helps a lot logue between the producers and fans, build long term engage- when brand is already recognized. Fans of pokemon would ment between consumers and a brand, which ultimately in- like to watch the movie as it enhance their experience. Of crease the lifetime of the brand (as they say in Brand Mathe- course it needn't necessarily be serial, it sure can jump some- matics: 1+1=11). We would look at some examples as we where else, but still be in the same universe. Like James Bond move on with the features. movies, they don't usually carry on one after the other, but are still based in the same universe, the rules don't change. But another purpose can be served by transmedia storytelling, 1. Spreadability / Drillability: that of adapting it story for the target audience in that particu- To begin with we have a core story or the main text, now lar medium. For ex, Spiderman India wears dhoti and lives in transmedia can develop more stories around this core. These Mumbai. Now, this a story set in a universe parallel to the core won't usually enhance our understanding of the core story, but story of the DC comics. This parallel story derives a lot from may add to economic and cultural value of the text. the visibility and popularity of the comics/ films, but does not have any sort of continuity with it. The pleasure of alternative retelling can certainly add to the experience of the reader of For ex, most of us would have seen Terminator, a lot of fan- original text. This can be seen in re-imagining of the classics. fiction came around it over the net, that would be an example For ex, Tulsidas's Ramcharit Manas is an alternative retelling of spreadability. A big volume of such fan-fiction by J. D. Sal- of Valmiki's Ramayana. Same goes for many fan-fiction inger has come to light, once it comes out in print it would around Transformers. But of course the cultural value added is enhance the economic value of the Terminator brand. very different. Another example would be Harry Potter Alliance, which brings together the fans of Harry Potter to work towards the social equality, and against social discrimination based on race/color/ethnic group etc. around the world. This certainly adds to the cultural value of the original text. 3. Immersion / Extractability: On other hand, fan engagement where new aspects are uncov- This about how we experience a transmedia story. ered about the core story, or a better understanding of it is 2. “Rural-BPOs-looking-good-to-become- a-phenomenon-in- Indian-outsourcing-story”, an article in Economic Times dated 4th August 2010. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 25
- 26. Immersion is whenwe enter the world of the story. This is have follow up stories, like the websites for the prawns and what happens when you go to a theme park, when you go to different documentaries exposing the agencies of District-9. Disneyland you enter into the world of Disney. It was immer- sion that led to the popularity of cinema, and theme parks are The order in which transmedia components are aimed at the coming up around the world. audience is getting far tighter control now, as compared to the early days. On the other hand, when you take a mickey mouse toy or an Avatar toyfigure home, you are extracting something from the story's world into the real world. This is what happens with the McD happy meals, yeah, it works even on adults, toy-figure 6. Subjectivity: from their favorite movie makes them buy happy meals. Transmedia extensions focus on the unexplored dimensions of the fictional world. 4. Worldbuilding: For example, as it happens when Star Wars games pick up on particular groups - like bounty hunters or podracers - and ex- This, for me, is the single biggest feature that makes transmedia pands upon what was depicted in the films. Transmedia exten- storytelling so important. Now, a core story, even if it is very sions may also broaden the timeline of the aired material. The good, can live only for so long. A character will live longer, thrid function of transmedia extensions may be to show the spanning multiple stories. But a world is entirely different ball secondary characters and their experiences and perspectives. game. It can have multiple characters, living in multiple story- line. Extensions of these kinds leave longstanding interest in com- paring and contrasting multiple experiences of the same fiction- This isn't something new though. It has a long history in SiFi, al events among the readers. like the Foundation world, and in high-fantasy like the middle- earth. Even Kalidasa took advantage of worldbuilding. But it becomes so much natural with transmedia, as impulsively we want all the interactive fictions to be 'encyclopedic'. The cam- 7. Performance: paign to promote District-9 was aimed at building a world for the movie. More recently the campaign around Tron Legacy is There are two related concepts in Convergence Culture - cul- banking on the world created by Tron & related media. The life tural attractors and cultural activators. Cultural attractors draw size toy-bike that has come out 11 months before the movie is a together a community of people who share common interests step towards enhancing this world. and Cultural activators give that community something to do. Hardcore fans of the second season of Lost, created their own screengrabs, shared them online, constructed their own maps and tried to decipher the cryptic text and figure out how it relat- 5. Seriality: ed to the depicted events. Thus, the producers had the pressure One can think of transmedia storytelling as a story whose plot on them to think about what the fans would be doing with their unveils not as chunks spread in time across a single medium, series and also design spaces for their active participation. but across multiple media systems. So, the features aren't too different from the features of tradi- Initially, the trend was to have the chunks designed such that tional media. But are more into focus now coz the bet is higher. they can be consumed in any order. But increasingly creative heads are creating a sequence in which transmedia components of the story are to be consumed. For example, first there is a built-up for the core story across different media (again as in case of District-9) & after the core story has been launched, we Confluent September Issue || Page Number 26
- 27. PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS WITH DATA PROCESSING IN MID-SIZE BUSINESSES - SAURABH ACHARYA Data is growing by leaps and bounds. You throw a three stages viz. Initial stage (Capturing transac- query on Google about world's largest database and tion), intermediate stage (Process optimization) and the returns would give numbers ranging from a few Advanced stage (Business Intelligence). In the ini- hundred terabytes to yahoo's 2 petabyte DB. They tial stage, the enterprise would try to build an appli- are known as Extremely Large Databases (ELDB). cation which can help in performing their day-to- Yahoo and other giants have enough money to day operations and capturing the events. Events like spend for turning that big data pie into intelligent capturing the materials purchased by the purchase information. The concern of this article is not the department and payment made to the vendor are ex- ELDBs. It is the second and the third tier of data- amples of it. In intermediate stage, they try to find bases, where the DB sizes range from single digit the trends in the processes followed in the organiza- TBs (called Large Databases or LDB) to a few hun- tion and accordingly optimize those processes if re- dred TBs (called Very Large Databases or VLDB), quired. For example, the vendor's payment clear- which the article would discuss. Most of the enter- ance from the accounts department might be taking prises having an IT system have databases of the two days due to some batch processing or due to the scale of LDB or VLDB. clearance from other departments. The third stage or the advanced stage is the one where the realistic and intelligent information is to be squeezed out of the The big player captured data. We know it as Business intelligence. According to IDC’s Database Market Share Analy- The trends in the sales during the monsoon sale or sis (2008), Oracle has the highest market share (44.3 effect of discounts on the buying behavior of the %) followed by IBM (21%), Microsoft (18.5%), customer are the examples of the referred intelli- Sybase (3.5%) and Teradata(3.3%). Though Gart- gence. ner's numbers are different, but even in their report, Oracle is the market leader with 47.1 % market share (as in 2007). The problem here is that these traditional database vendors, to remain in the as- cendency, keep on pumping budgets for research on BI for ELDB (Extremely Large Databases). This article attempts to give an insight for those not so big databases in the midsize businesses. And as Ora- cle database has the highest share, let us concentrate more on oracle database. In this approach, the advanced stage and the inter- The evolution mediate stage, to some extent, require large amount The IT system of any organization evolves over a of data processing and number crunching. At this period of time. A typical IT system would evolve in Confluent September Issue || Page Number 27
- 28. point of time,the organization does not have a BI is to be used for a particular column, the order of the system neither it has a data warehouse to process its tables to be joined, the process to be followed while data intrinsic queries. At most the IT department joining these tables(or which type of join is to be could do is used- nested loop join, hash join, etc.), search for any parallel executions if possible and so on. These a) Replicate the database so that the processing execution plans are selected based on the CBO algo- does not affect production environment and rithm. To get a glimpse of the execution plan, there b) b) merge, scrub, aggregate and organize the are certain methods which Oracle provides, for ex- data to give some kind of OLAP(Online Ana- ample: ‘explain plan’ utility, SQLT or TKPROF. lytical Processing)- like replica of the OLTP databases to the users for running their large queries. On top of this, they may also try to de The question here is- how does this CBO makes the- -normalize the tables. But these activities do se plans? Every database environment is different. have a lot of complexities and hurdles if it So the CBO algorithm needs some inputs from the needs to be done on a daily basis. It would be environment for generating these execution plans. a nightmare for the DBAs to perform the repli- These inputs are nothing but statistics generated by cation and re-arranging the data. One option is oracle for the tables. This statistics include the basic to write a job, but even then, maintaining the information about the table like the number of rec- job and keeping on tuning the job to match the ords and some calculated information like growing volume of data would be tough. Is ‘skewness’ (elaborate later) of data. This algorithm there a sustainable and inexpensive solution to of getting inputs and finding the best execution plan, this problem? Let us see. Let us try to study a works pretty good most of the times. But there are few aspects which can be applied by the or- certain conditions where it fails to deliver. One of ganizations at the second and third stage to the flaws in calculating the statistics is that it needs a improve the database performance without parameter in percentage which says that how much moving to the high-end solutions. Let me re- percentage of data is to be taken as sample for calcu- mind here, we are here referring to the oracle lating those statistics. As we all would agree that database. sampled data is always subject to error. It has been observed that most of the DBAs prefer 10-15 % of data as sample. During an experiment we calculated Some Problems and some solutions it with 30% and there was a drastic difference in the First, let us check out what oracle thinks that would results. Fortunately they were positive, but be pre- be better to do with large tables and the complex pared to expect the other way round. queries it has to run. Oracle uses a tool called opti- mizer. Every time a query is fired in the database, it One more problem while analyzing the DB objects goes to the optimizer and the optimizer chooses the is that it tries calculating the skewness of the data. best plan to fetch the data. There are two types of Skewness here is defined as the difference between optimizers- Rule based optimizer (RBO) and Cost the largest and the smallest value of the column. If based optimizer (CBO). Rule based optimizers are the data is more skewed, then oracle tries building a almost obsolete from oracle DBs. Each oracle query histogram for that column. This histogram helps in has multiple choices for execution plans. The execu- distributing the column values in different buckets tion plan includes a pointer to the index which Confluent September Issue || Page Number 28
- 29. and help whileretrieving the results. The limitation here is that oracle does not consider the values in between. For example, if column values are in range 1-10000 and 100000-200000 then oracle would try building histogram for range 1-200000. It does not understand that the range 10001-99999 is empty. We need to make oracle understand that indeed oracle is an efficient and intelligent system but there are such limitations to its intelligence. One solution to the above discussed problems is to retain the statistics of the database. Other solution is to increase the sample size used to analyze the data- base objects. This may take time but the results would improve. Moreover changing the environment The above figure shows the working of a PL/SQL parameters may also work out. But while doing so, block. It would require ‘PL/SQL Engine’ to disman- one need to take utmost care and should thoroughly tle the block and fetch the data from the database. If understand the impact of that parameter. There are the PL/SQL blocks are bulkier, then engine has to do some more solutions to such problems which are be- more work. Now here is the key. Let such bulky op- yond the scope of this article. erations be performed by a C compiler instead of giving it to PL/SQL engine, the former being faster. Any talk about performance improvement is incom- We can altogether by-pass the engine and directly plete without reference to OCI (Oracle Call Inter- throw the queries to the oracle server. It is apparent face). We all know about PL/SQL. We make proce- that OCI would work faster. But here too, we need to dures and functions in PL/SQL to process and pre- take utter care for building such programs. OCI is sent the data. OCI can be said as the helping hand definitely a very powerful tool. And as with every when PL/SQL objects become a bottleneck in per- powerful thing, even this can devastate the environ- formance. OCI is a wonderful C based API provided ment if not used cautiously. by Oracle for giving an interface to the Oracle data- base in a low level language like C. OCI provides all These were the few aspects which can be helpful the facilities needed to access the database ranging when enterprise does not have a full fledged BI sys- from database administrative tasks to firing queries. tem. But again, these measures would not be long Moreover it also fully supports the data types, call- lasting. Tuning the databases is very tricky and so is ing conventions, syntax, and semantics of C and using programming languages to access the data. C++. Let us see how OCI can make a difference in With the growth of data and complexity of require- overall performance over PL/SQL. ment being increased, the organizations would defi- nitely need one of the two – a BI system or an enor- mously efficient team of administrators and pro- grammer. The choice is yours. Confluent September Issue || Page Number 29
- 30. ERASABLE PAPER BY XEROX – CAN IT BE AN ENVIRONMENTAL BREAKTHROUGH - PIYUSH WADHWA Headquartered in Norwalk, CT, USA, and with caused by the use of trees for wood pulp to make 130,000 employees in over 160 countries, Xerox is paper. world’s leading enterprise for business process and Scientists at Xerox Corporation have invented a way document management. Xerox has been socially re- to make prints whose images last only a day, so that sponsible from day one. Since its inception, Xerox the paper can be used again and again. The technolo- has helped shape the idea of corporate social respon-gy, which is said to be still in a preliminary state, sibility. blurs the line between paper documents and digital Xerox realised that despite of worldwide initiatives displays and could ultimately lead to a significant by various organisations t reduction in paper use. But there is still much to be done if the technology is to be commercialized. "This will remain a research project for some time," said Eric Shrader, PARC area manager, industrial inkjet systems. "Our experi- ments prove that it can be done, and that is the first step, but not the only one, to developing a system o re- that is commercially viable." duce paper use, there is still a strong dependence on In its annual search for breakthrough technologies, the printed page for reading and absorbing content. The Wall Street Journal cited Xerox Corporation's Xerox has estimated that as many as two out of eve- experimental erasable paper as a top innovation in ry five pages printed in the office are for what it the environment category. It was one of the 30 tech- calls "daily" use, like e-mails, Web pages and refer- nologies selected from more than 800 entries in ence materials that have been printed for a single fields ranging from medical/biotech to network se- viewing. And the global environmental implications curity and semiconductors. of this huge paper demand and in many cases, its According to Xerox’s website “The ability to re- subsequent wastage is known to all. image a sheet of paper has enormous environmental Therefore, in November of 2006, Xerox Corporation implications since re-use is much preferred to recy- announced the development of a technology that cling. For example, it takes about 202,000 Joules to they call “erasable paper.” The experimental print- manufacture one sheet of virgin paper. Even to recy- ing technology, which is collaboration between the cle that sheet takes 114,000 Joules. To re-image eve- Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo ry pixel on Xerox erasable paper takes only about Alto Research Center Inc.), could someday possibly 200 Joules, so every re-use can save an enormous replace printed pages that are used for just a brief amount of energy. At 30 to 100 re-uses per sheet this time before being discarded. Erasable paper would amounts to a very large savings in energy. Currently make a great contribution to reducing paper usage there are about 2.5 trillion pages printed world- and waste, and to the environmental problems wide.” Confluent September Issue || Page Number 30
- 31. There is stillno concrete news on when Xerox's erasable Sales Department : Hello, Sir. How can I help paper will make it to stores. But what Xerox is doing you? with the erasable paper is amazing. Also whenever it is Mr. K : Your store delivered a pack of rice filled with bugs. I need a replacement right released into the market, a major problem can be its ini- now because I paid a lot of.. tial high price. However I hope that when it is released Sales Department : Just a minute, Sir. We'll people respond well to it. Maybe consumers will over- connect you to our renewal department. look the price and try to be more environmentally con- Mr. K : Look, I don't need replacement. I just scious. want my money back! Renewal Department : Yes, Sir. How can I Referenes: help you? http://www.xerox.com/about-xerox/citizenship/news/ Mr. K : Give me my money! erasable-paper/enus.html Renewal Department : Sir, our financial de- partment handles that. I'll patch you through.. A call that went crazy Financial Department : How may I help you? Mr. K : I need my money back. * yells * Financial Department : What's the matter, Sir? Mr. K : You gave me bugs in my rice! Financial Department : I'll connect you to the food department. Mr. K : How many departments do you have? Food Department : Yes, Sir? Mr. K : Bugs in Rice! Give me my money. Food Department : Sir, our financial depart- ment handles the money affairs. I'll connect you.. Mr. K : Your financial department connected me to you, hoping you can solve my problem. Food Department : Sir, please calm down. I'll connect you to our Manager. Mr. K : Hello Store : Hello, Sir. How can I help you? Mr. K : I had a small complaint. The rice that you de- Mr. K : * almost nears frustration * livered to me this afternoon were full of bugs. Now, I Manager : Yes, Sir. How can I help you? paid a lot of money for this and.. Mr. K : I've got money in my rice. I need my Store : Please hold on, Sir. We'll connect you to our bugs back! sales department. Manager : Excuse me? Mr. K : How would that help? Mr. K : * hangs up the phone and goes fishing * Confluent September Issue || Page Number 31
- 32. WHY GOOD BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS START WITH A DATA MODEL Data is a strategic differentiator in today’s infor- sales down this year compared to the same period mation-based economy. As more organizations real- last year? The data warehouse model will have a ize this, more and more Business Intelligence (BI) single agreed-upon definition for all of the terms in initiatives are born. The backbone of any BI initia- bold in this question, therefore increasing the chanc- tive is a data warehouse. If a BI report is the flashy es of making a profitable business decision based sports car, the data warehouse is the engine. A data upon the response to this question. warehouse is basically a “warehouse for data”—a central storage point for all of the relevant infor- mation that is needed for the BI reports. And turningImpact analysis. The data model can be an effec- tive tool for determining overlap and touchpoints. data into information is no small feat. A single piece An overlap is when two or more different develop- of information on a report, such as “total sales”, can involve the aggregation of hundreds of database ta- ment teams are impacting the same concept. A bles from multiple geographic and functional areas. touchpoint is when two or more different develop- And each of these data sources can have different ment teams need to connect with each others’ work. business definitions and physical structures. A majorAn example of an overlap is when two different de- velopment teams are both updating customer infor- effort of creating a data warehousing is obtaining the “big picture” of what data exists, how it is defined,mation. An example of a touchpoint is when one and what the end result should look like. This is development team is working on Product and anoth- where a data model can come in handy. er development team is working on Order and there is a dependency of Order upon Product. The link from Order to Product must be successfully man- A data model for a data warehouse provides the fol- aged. The data model can be updated during the lowing benefits: lifecycle of the development effort to indicate suc- cessfully managed touchpoints and overlaps, as well Common language. A data model provides a single as those that are experiencing problems. agreed-upon set of concepts, definitions, and busi- ness rules. Concepts such as Customer and Gross Sales need to be defined consistently. For example, Scoping and prioritization. With the volume of ‘Customer’ as defined by Accounting must have information in the typical data warehouse, it is criti- consistency with the Sales Department definition for cal to provide scope and prioritization when analyz- ‘Customer’. This common language has a direct ing this information. Creating data models broken benefit for the many users of the warehouse, who down by subject area help provide scope, and allow will interpret the concepts the same way. Take for users to more easily visualize the information at example this business question: In what regions are hand. For example, asking a business user to review Confluent September Issue || Page Number 32
- 33. the definitions of1,000 data elements can be over- whelming, but focusing the request on just the 20 ele- RIDDLE ME THIS ments that relate to Sales Orders makes the infor- mation more manageable, and puts it in business con- The more you have of it, the less you see. text. What is it? Employee education. When new people join the data Ans: Darkness warehouse team, there is usually a fairly steep learning curve where the new person needs to learn about the system architecture, data architecture, and the busi- What has a head, a tail, is brown, and has no ness. Starting this person off on the first day with a legs? one hour walk-through of the data model for the ware- Ans: A penny. house can give them a solid high-level understanding of the area in which they will work, raising their confi- dence and reducing the amount of time it takes for What English word has three consecutive them to learn the details. double letters? With the high volume of information and complexity Ans: Bookkeeper. between overlapping systems that are involved in cre- ating business intelligence applications, a data model is a critical roadmap to both the technical data infra- You throw away the outside and cook the structure, as well as the business meaning and context inside. Then you eat the outside and throw of the information contained within these applications. away the inside. What did you eat? CA ERwin® Modeling Ans: An ear of corn. www.erwin.com I am always hungry, This article is based on the book Data Modeling for I must always be fed, the Business, by Steve Hoberman, Donna Burbank, The finger I touch, and Chris Bradley, featuring CA ERwin® Data Mod- Will soon turn red eler. CA ERwin® has been the name associated with data modeling for years. Today, we offer more than Ans: Fire just data modeling and have expanded our offering to include data profiling, model validation, process mod- eling, ERP integration, metadata management, and I give you a group of three. One is sitting model management. CA (NASDAQ: CA), the world's down, and will never get up. The second leading independent information technology (IT) man- eats as much as is given to him, yet is al- agement software company, provides software to unify ways hungry. The third goes away and never and simplify the management of complex computing returns. environments. Ans: Stove, fire, smoke Confluent September Issue || Page Number 33
- 34. SOLID STATE DRIVES: EXTENDING FEASIBILITY TO DATA STORAGE - ANIKET RASTOGI Introduction Advantages of SSD’s[5] To support better business decision making it is nec- essary that the parameters that support decision making should With no moving parts, the SSD is much less likely to be stored in such a way that they are accessible whenever they fail in extreme outdoor temperatures and conditions of are required. The storage mediums should be such that they are vibration and shock when, for instance, it accidentally reliable and also they provide ease of access to data without falls. much loss of time. These storage mediums have seen evolution in the past when all the required information was written by Unlike the HDD, which has high read access time, the hand on papers to the most efficient storage mediums as flash SSD has practically no access time since it requires nei- drives and hard drives what we see today. ther seek nor latency time. This significantly improves Evolution of Data Storage Mediums system boot and file access speed as compared with the HDD. The computer storage mediums have also seen a lot of evolution in the past decade or so. They have evolved from With minimal power requirements, the SSD is more small capacity and unreliable floppy drives to large capacity power efficient. This is particularly important for road and highly reliable flash drives and from magnetic tapes based warriors, enabling them to remain productive while in hard drives to NAND no volatile memory based Solid State transit. Drives (SSD).[1][5] Although hard disk drives have been a faith- ful servant to computing for many years. But with head, plat- Without need for a motor, bearings or a moving head, ter, magnetic surfaces, spindle and an array of other complex the SSD generates less heat than the HDD and makes no moving parts, they are most certainly fallible. They can be noise. slow, too: disks have to start spinning if they're not already doing so, then they have to get the head to the correct position Because of its faster boot-up and read/write speeds, the on the disk to read or write the data. Add this to the physical SSD enhances the overall user experience[2] on comput- problems occurring when a piece of dust or other foreign ob- er notebooks equipped with new operating systems, ject gets into the mechanism, or when an impact jolts the drive, such as Microsoft® Windows Vista™. and we have a distinctly imperfect system. Solid State Drives address many of these timing and structural problems inherent in the hard disk drive. Quantifying the Benefits of SSDs using CPW-like OLTP Workload On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications are typically thought of as having a large number of users con- currently executing transactions to a database. The transactions vary by application, but usually each transaction produces a substantial amount of I/O to the disk subsystem. Such transac- tions expect that the response time is not only low, but also consistent throughout the business day. Introducing SSDs into a production environment may offer many benefits including:[3] Confluent September Issue || Page Number 34
- 35. An increase in I/O and data throughput 3. Performance Value of Solid State disks; May A reduction in application and disk response 2009; http://www-03.ibm.com/ systems/ time resources/ssd_ibmi.pdf A reduction in energy and lab space 4. Solid State Driven in an Enterprise; March A reduction in number of HDDs needed 2009; http://download.intel. com/it/ In some situations a reduction in purchase 5. Solid State Drives(SSD); 25 January 2007 cost http://compreviews.about.com/ od/storage/a/ SSD.htm 6. Gartner, Inc. “Dataquest Insight: Expect PCs Overcoming Cost Limitations to Impact the NAND Flash Market After 2008,” Joseph Unsworth, 15 December 2008 Cost, for one, has kept flash on the sidelines for note- book computer use. But today, advances in flash semiconduc- tor technologies and lithography (also known as production process, or geometry) are maximizing silicon usage. Whereas the cost of a 32 gigabyte SSD just two years ago was well over $1,000, today in the first half of 2007 it is available to original Once you are done equipment manufacturers (OEMs) at $350. This price is ex- pected to continue to decline rapidly over the next few years.[2] reading, try to solve Catering to Notebook Compu- this ting Needs Enterprise users want their notebook computers to be durable so that their data remains intact and accessible in con- ditions outside an office environment. They want fast access to their data so that they don’t have to keep perspective customers waiting, and they demand an extended battery life so that they can remain productive while in transit. [3] A capacity point of 32 gigabytes lets users such as these store their critical programs, files and even personal data on their notebooks, while enabling IT departments to secure the majority of information on corporate servers to maintain control both over confidential data and the level of security that they deem appropriate. References To mail your ideas and feedback: 1. Solid State Hard Drives; 21 August 2010; http:// www.pctechguide.com/31HardDisk_SolidSta teDrives.htm [email protected] 2. Bringing SSD Benefits to Notebooks; April 2007 www.sandisk.com/ Assets/.../ Bring- ing_SSD_Benefits_to_Notebook_Users.pdf Confluent September Issue || Page Number 35
- 36.