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Wayne Eckerson is vice president of technology services for the Data Warehouse Institute (www.dw-institute.com), an educational organization devoted to providing high quality, vendor-neutral education, training, and research to data warehousing professionals. Information Builders News recently spoke with Mr. Eckerson about the key issues facing data warehouse professionals.
IB News – Companies continue to spend millions of dollars each year on data warehouses. Do you envision this growth continuing?
Eckerson – Yes, I do. We've passed through the early-adopter phase, and it's safe to say that data warehousing has become a mainstream business. We see mid-sized to large companies all over the world investing in data warehouses, and most of them are pleased with the functionality they are receiving. But there is a whole new wave of companies that will come into the market in the next year or two. These folks will have slightly different requirements and purchasing behaviors.
IB News – What is different about this next group of users?
Eckerson – The next wave will want to deploy turnkey systems that support packaged analytic applications for specific industries, like retail and telecom and financial services.
IB News – And what will that involve?
Eckerson – Vendors will deliver these capabilities in two primary phases. In the first phase, vendors will pull together data model templates and report templates, package them up with the turnkey system, and sell them as application-ready decision support systems. Information Builders has done this with its InfoCube templates, as well as with its WorldMART offerings for J.D. Edwards applications. In the second phase, vendors will tailor these solutions to a very specific application, redesign the interface, and integrate it with the operational systems to create what some people are calling "closed-loop decision support."
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Many of today's users don't want to buy technology; they want to buy applications. That puts technology vendors in an interesting spot. They can either move up the food chain and try to transform themselves into application software vendors by building the applications on top of their own toolsets...or they can OEM their toolsets to applications vendors.
IB News – Can database modeling tools enforce the rules and rigor necessary to ensure good integration among your data marts and data warehouse systems?
Eckerson – When you model your data marts, you should use conforming dimensions so that users can query across marts, if needed. This helps companies avoid creating data mart "stovepipes" and lets users view data from a corporate perspective rather than a departmental perspective. You do your modeling up front so that these assets are architected in a consistent fashion. Tools such as Information Builders' SmartModeler and Copy Manager can help you manage and monitor these efforts.
IB News – What are some of the other salient trends in the data warehouse and data mart industries?
Eckerson – With many of today's warehouses, it's not patently obvious where users need to go to get the information they need. In fact, many users don't even try because they don't imagine that the data they want even exists. Or they have to go to multiple programs and open those programs up to access those objects. Then they have to know the location of those objects, which may be stored in different databases throughout the company. And each of those programs has a different interface that the user has to learn. It's too complex.
IB News – What's the solution?
Eckerson – Just as browsers and search engines were the killer apps for the Web, we're starting to see a similar approach for data warehouses. It starts with good modeling: customers need a consistent way
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to store their metadata in a central storehouse using a common logical model. All the tools they use to design the warehouse, build the warehouse, use the warehouse, and manage the warehouse should work off the same metadata. That means the metadata captured by one tool is associated with all the metadata captured by another tool.
IB News – Where does that lead?
Eckerson – Once you can do this, you have the beginning of an index, an index similar to what one might find in a search engine for the Web. All you need now is a single-user interface, like a browser. The user can use it to ask questions such as, "What do we have relevant to Northeast sales?" or "Where are the reports that show profit information?" On top of this, you put a search engine that can use that index to allow users to very quickly or hierarchically search for what they are looking for. The user only needs to click on an object, and the interface can figure out which tool has to be launched to either execute that object, modify that object, or whatever else you have asked for.
IB News – The data warehouse market is one of the most competitive segments of the software industry. What do you see as Information Builders' strengths in this market?
Eckerson – Information Builders has a long history of supporting production reporting through the FOCUS language. They have applied this experience to the modern warehouse environment as well as to the Web warehouse environment. Information Builders is well positioned to meet the information analysis of the majority of knowledge workers. Roughly 80 percent of users in any company want to view and analyze simple reports. Information Builders has always excelled in this area.
Information Builders also has a heavy-duty infrastructure upon which to build these reporting solutions. The EDA middleware is pretty much in a league of its own. Not many other vendors can claim to provide heterogeneous access to 65-plus data sources.
Finally, Information Builders has done a nice job with the Web. I see this being a calling card to generate interest among new customers. Information Builders can offer interactive reporting, strong OLAP navigation, and the ability to Web-enable production reports easily. Those are some of the key things today's customers are looking for.
David Baum is a freelance writer based in Santa Barbara, CA.
