iTunes represents an application distributed by Apple, through which users can download music, podcasts and other interesting cool things for their iPod’s or iPhone. Until here nothing extraordinary. This kind of software existed in the cloud from the early Napster days, some being actually much more complex.

What it become

The iTunes shop got a real boost with the addition of apps and games for the iPhone. Targeting the iPhone and iPod touch, the developers started posting applications in a rush and clients started downloading them.

The morale

It’s nice to see that the big players in the Console industry followed this same behavior this year, each of them launching online stores.

In a word get your product accessible. Those times, as a retailer, if you don’t have online access to your merchandise you are 10 steps behind. Everything gets bought online and users are keen to experience this kind of purchase method.

The top players are Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and IBM. The article groups very nicely the BI solutions suppliers by using clear attributes of those.

We also can see in this article a clear set of attributes that a BI provider should have acquired in order to be categorized this way:

Integration
BI infrastructure — All tools in the platform should use the same security, metadata, administration, portal integration, object model and query engine, and should share the same look and feel.
Metadata management — This is arguably the most important of the 12 capabilities. Not only should all tools leverage the same metadata, but the offering should provide a robust way to search, capture, store, reuse and publish metadata objects such as dimensions, hierarchies, measures, performance metrics and report layout objects.
Development — The BI platform should provide a set of programmatic development tools — coupled with a software developer’s kit for creating BI applications — that can be integrated into a business process, and/or embedded in another application. The BI platform should also enable developers to build BI applications without coding by using wizard-like components for a graphical assembly process. The development environment should also support Web services in performing common tasks such as scheduling, delivering, administering and managing.
Workflow and collaboration — This capability enables BI users to share and discuss information via public folders and discussion threads. In addition, the BI application can assign and track events or tasks allotted to specific users, based on pre-defined business rules. Often, this capability is delivered by integrating with a separate portal or workflow tool.

Information Delivery
Reporting — Reporting provides the ability to create formatted and interactive reports with highly scalable distribution and scheduling capabilities. In addition, BI platform vendors should handle a wide array of reporting styles (for example, financial, operational and performance dashboards).
Dashboards — This subset of reporting includes the ability to publish formal, Web-based reports with intuitive displays of information, including dials, gauges and traffic lights. These displays indicate the state of the performance metric, compared with a goal or target value. Increasingly, dashboards are used to disseminate real-time data from operational applications.
Ad hoc query — This capability, also known as self-service reporting, enables users to ask their own questions of the data, without relying on IT to create a report. In particular, the tools must have a robust semantic layer to allow users to navigate available data sources. In addition, these tools should offer query governance and auditing capabilities to ensure that queries perform well.
Microsoft Office integration — In some cases, BI platforms are used as a middle tier to manage, secure and execute BI tasks, but Microsoft Office (particularly Excel) acts as the BI client. In these cases, it is vital that the BI vendor provides integration with Microsoft Office, including support for document formats, formulas, data “refresh” and pivot tables. Advanced integration includes cell locking and write-back.

Analysis
OLAP — This enables end users to analyze data with extremely fast query and calculation performance, enabling a style of analysis known as “slicing and dicing.” This capability could span a variety of storage architectures such as relational, multidimensional and in-memory.
Advanced visualization — This provides the ability to display numerous aspects of the data more efficiently by using interactive pictures and charts, instead of rows and columns. Over time, advanced visualization will go beyond just slicing and dicing data to include more process-driven BI projects, allowing all stakeholders to better understand the workflow through a visual representation.
Predictive modeling and data mining — This capability enables organizations to classify categorical variables and estimate continuous variables using advanced mathematical techniques.
Scorecards — These take the metrics displayed in a dashboard a step further by applying them to a strategy map that aligns key performance indicators to a strategic objective. Scorecard metrics should be linked to related reports and information in order to do further analysis. A scorecard implies the use of a performance management methodology such as Six Sigma or a balanced scorecard framework.

More information can be found here.

All started as Jehane Noujaim’s TED wish She says that she found a way to make peace in the world… Pretty noble and big from her… If you take a look at the whole video you can see that she has a really strong point.

I hope I got your attention with this event. I can’t wait to watch it live on the 10th of May.

When this happens you have to turn your eye on an important factor. The PR of your BI department. You are making the reports, they are all correct but are they catchy? Do the reports you make attract the attention of the extra-busy persons in HQ? If the answer is no you have to turn your attention into some solutions that can help you present the data in a way that can’t escape the eye of your client.

One of the easiest way of adding extra glamor to your reports is by adding flex/flash dashboards. You can find some examples in here:

http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/inproduct/sdk/dashboard/dashboard.html

http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com/2008/04/11/the-uber-art-of-dashboards/

Making a dashboard for your clients helps you present the data easily and adds in the fun factor. Your clients can discover them selfs the true meaning of the data thus giving you extra time to enhance the quality of your products.

One that tries to add extra beauty to his reports must always keep in mind that what really counts is the quality of the data and that after a while the magic will be gone, the clients will get bored by the new looks and ask for more;)

The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The American then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.” The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you will run your ever-expanding enterprise.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15 to 20 years.” “But what then?” asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.” “Millions?…Then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Paul Wolff

Training is always necessary. Even when things might appear to be working smoothly, even when you think you are on the right track, you have to think that you are not. Learning new things never ever made things worse. When your employees ask you to provide training provide it! You don’t know what revolutionary ideas might arrive in your department after a training. Not to say that always after a training, people feel like changing the world. That plus of interest and enthusiasm is worth every penny.

Show your employee that you care! It is an awful experience for your employee to come to you, to show you that he is interested in what he does, to tell you that he wants to be better and to get nothing in return. Don’t treat that guy like extra costs. Treat him like what he is. A person that is interested in what he does. Think that if you give him a straight no without any explanations you lost him for good. His interest in the job will never be the same. Don’t you ever use the simple NO without explanations.

Try to make the training worth it. There are many companies that offer training. Not all of them are what your people need. There is nothing worse than a bad training. Think about what experience get the people that are going to a bad training: They start enthusiastic, with their expectations high, they end up frustrated. The frustration comes from the fact that they didn’t learned what they wanted, and also from the fact that they consider they lost time and resources on that training. If you have a problem and you can’t do the training, explain your employee that he has a good idea and when the opportunity will come you will surely implement it.

One of the major issues for BI is the quality of the data. There are many cases in which the tracking systems, that are implemented at the production level, are implemented in a lousy way. That happens because the main goal of production is to get the product up and running. The tracking becomes a priority when they need to analyze how the product behaves. Once they need that they ask the BI department, the BI department has no clean data and thus the problem comes back to production. A circle gets in place and the two departments start blaming each other.  But who is to blame in reality?

In my opinion departments should work like applications that are connected with web services. Each department should provide stable entry points for the other departments, and should provide also safe output. Each department should make sure that the data he enters into other systems is safe and each department should be sure that the data he presents is safe, taking in account that the input data is correct.

For our case, the production department should consider that launching a product without the correct tracking procedure in place is equal to launching an unfinished product.

The idea behind TED is to share knowledge from different domains in a “Discovery” language. You don’t need to be licensed in biology to understand a TED speech about how wonderful the ants are for example. But after you watch that speech you can draw your conclusions no matter in what domain your work.

Gathering information from different domains it’s the key to improve yourself in the domain you are working in. It’s the key to be innovative and adaptive. If you are always interested only into your domain you will be stuck between the limits of your domain. So go on TED, watch and listen!

That concept of helping humanity seems to have been forgotten by the web community. The GRID system I found (I liked this one the best: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org ) has made a purpose from it. It’s pretty simple. You share your PC’s computing power to a noble cause (curing AIDS, curing Cancer, discovering new technologies etc.)

Enjoy it!