Untitled

INDEX
* ABSTRACT
..…I
1. INTRODUCTION ….
.1
2. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
.….3
2.1 DIFINATION
2.2 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE-WHAT IS IT ? .….3
2.3 HISTORY
2.4 Business Intelligence components
.….6
3. THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE CYCLE
….10
4. Business intelligence and data warehousing …..16
4.1 Data warehousing
.16
4.2Architecture
….18
6. VISIBLE / INFRARED FUSION ARCHITECTURE .….19
7. COLOR NIGHT VISION ….
.22
7.1 COLOR NIGHT VISION …..22
7.2 PROCEDURE ….
.22
7.3 DATA ACQUISITION ….
.24
7.4 DATA PROCESSING ….
.24
7.5 IMAGING AND DISPLAYING ….
.27
8. APPLICATIONS ….
.28
8.1 WILD LIFE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT …..28
8.2 GENERAL THERMAL HEALTH …..30
8.3 FIREFIGHTERS
…..30
8.4 POWER LINE MAINTENANCE …..30
8.5 NIGHT VISION GOGGLES ….
.31
8.6 SENSING, DETECTING, TRACKING SYSTEM IN MISSILES …..31 10.
CONCLUSION ..…33 *
BIBLIOGRAPHY …..34
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 2.1. THE HUMAN EYE
.….3
Fig. 2.2 VISIBLE SPECTRUM OF RADIENT ENERGY SPECTRUM .….4
Fig. 3.1 1st GENERATION IMAGE INTESIFIER
.….7
Fig. 3.2. 2nd GENERATION IMAGE INTESIFIER …..8
Fig. 4.1. INFRARED WAVELENGTH …..11
Fig. 4.2. ATOM STRUCTURE …..11
Fig. 4.3. IMAGE INTENSIFIER TUBE …..13
Fig. 5.1a. BASIC COMPONENTS OF THERMAL IMAGE …..16
Fig. 5.1b. DIFFERENCE IN IMAGES ….
.16
Fig. 6.1a. Dual band visible/long wave infrared imager …..20
Fig. 6.1b. The fusion of low light visible and infrared imagery…..20
Fig. 7.1a. Green & color image ….
.23
Fig. 7.1b. Multi-spectral separation & the resultant
color image ..…23
LIST OF TABLES
Table 7.4. X AND Y MASKING ….
.27
.29
.35
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Decision support system (DSS).

Online analytical processing (OLAP),
Business Intelligence (BI)
Abstract
Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and technologies
for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to datato help enterpris
eusers make better business decisions. BI applications include the data warehousi
ng activities of decision support systems, query and reporting, online analytica
l processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining.
Business intelligence applications can be centrally initiated or driven by user
demand.
Often BI applications use data gathered from a data warehouse or a data mart. Ho
wever, not all data warehouses are used for business intelligence, nor do all bu
siness intelligence applications require a data warehouse.
In order to distinguish between concepts of business intelligence and data wareh
ouses, Forrester Research often defines business intelligence in one of two ways
.
Forrester defines the latter, narrower business intelligence market as "referrin
g to just the top layers of the BI architectural stack such as reporting, analyt
ics and dashboards.
BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business op
erations.
INTRODUCTION
Business Intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting,
digging-out, analyzing and presenting the right business data to right people a
t right time for making business decisions. In single line, BI makes possible to
convert ‘Data’ into ‘Information’.
BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business op
erations. Common functions of Business Intelligence technologies are reporting,
online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance manag
ement, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.
Business Intelligence often aims to support better business decision-making. Thu
s a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS). Though the term bus
iness intelligence is often used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, beca
use they both support decision making, BI uses technologies, processes, and appl
ications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes whil
e competitive intelligence, is done by gathering, analyzing and disseminating in
formation with or without support from technology and applications, and focuses
on all-source information and data (unstructured or structured), mostly external
to, but also internal to a company, to support decision making.
Business intelligence tends to be an esoteric function because it is an
entangled process that calls for employees with specialized knowledge and skill
both in business and technology, a combination in short supply in most organizat
ions. Analysts must understand what viewers are interested in and how business i
s run, but they must also have the technical skills to formulate complex queries
, design intuitive reports, optimize retrieval, and so on. Such a small group of
BI specialists can evolve into isolated elitism, a bottleneck in maximizing the
functionalities of BI.
2.1) Definition of BI
Despite generally defining Business Intelligence as accurate, timely, high-value
and actionable (not in the legal way) insights in the business as well as techn
ologies and processes leading to obtain them, there is no single set of protocol
s, processes and hardware/software options to define it once and for all.
Technological evolution is still on and differences can be seen between companie
s and depend on a current situation. What stays constant is the purpose of BI -
to produce accurate, timely, high-value and actionable data.
Business Intelligence as a concept is not new; enterprises have been trying for
a long time to have their systems pressed into service for the purpose of produc
ing more valuable strategic insights.
From not-so-distant past come acronyms preceding the actual BI, which stand for
the support of information management, such as DSS (Decision Support Systems),
EIS (Executive Information Systems), MDS (Management Decision Systems), MIS (Man
agement Information Systems) and so on. They all helped to establish a new way i
n decision-making processes.
It is also important to give explanation to the term insight. Insights are the u
ltimate goals for all authors, vendors and IT consultants when beginning the BI
project. They are sometimes called moments of clarity that push forward the wh
ole undertaking. When a business insight is delivered by BI, it is possible to l
ook at a previously hidden fact or aspect of the organization.
According to Business Intelligence characteristics, four criteria must be met fo
r the process to succeed:
Right answers - it is required that Business Intelligence represent the closest
possible thing to truth, not only to give best results, but also to protect its
quality and reputation in the company. When there is no accuracy, insights, bein
g the product of Business Intelligence, are simply worthless. It is always harmf
ul to the company and diminishes trust to BI for the future.
Insights of good value - as BI s role is to produce information with material im
pact on the company, insights of high value are not deduced easily, especially w
hen analyses are not readily available. It is worth remembering that although BI
insights are not necessarily obvious, they have a great impact on their environ
ment.
Information on time - since all steps in the BI process take time, timeliness is
an equally important quality to any other. For the output of a Business Intelli
gence process to be relevant, time intervals have to be relatively small.
Actionable conclusions - feasible course is required to take advantage of any gi
ven situation in the company. Moving from conclusion to action means for insight
s to be actionable.
2.2) Business Intelligence - What is it?
Business Intelligence is a process for increasing the competitive advantage of a
business by intelligent use of available data in decision making. This process
is pictured below.
Data sourcing
Business Intelligence is about extracting information from multiple sources of d
ata. The data might be: text documents - e.g. memos or reports or email messages
; photographs and images; sounds; formatted tables; web pages and URL lists. The
key to data sourcing is to obtain the information in electronic form. So typica
l sources of data might include: scanners; digital cameras; database queries; we
b searches; computer file access; etcetera.
Data analysis
Business Intelligence is about synthesizing useful knowledge from collections of
data. It is about estimating current trends, integrating and summarizing dispar
ate information, validating models of understanding, and predicting missing info
rmation or future trends. This process of data analysis is also called data mini
ng or knowledge discovery. Typical analysis tools might use:-
probability theory - e.g. classification, clustering and Bayesian networks;
statistical methods - e.g. regression;
operations research - e.g. queuing and scheduling;
Artificial intelligence - e.g. neural networks and fuzzy logic.
Situation awareness
Business Intelligence is about filtering out irrelevant information, and setting
the remaining information in the context of the business and its environment. T
he user needs the key items of information relevant to his or her needs, and sum
maries that are syntheses of all the relevant data (market forces, government po
licy etc.). Situation awareness is the grasp of the context in which to understand
and make decisions. Algorithms for Situation assessment provide such syntheses a
utomatically.
Risk assessment
Business Intelligence is about discovering what plausible actions might be taken
, or decisions made, at different times. It is about helping you weigh up the cu
rrent and future risk, cost or benefit of taking one action over another, or mak
ing one decision versus another. It is about inferring and summarizing your best
options or choices.
Decision support
Business Intelligence is about using information wisely. It aims to provide warni
ng you of important events, such as takeovers, market changes, and poor staff pe
rformance, so that you can take preventative steps. It seeks to help you analyze
and make better business decisions, to improve sales or customer satisfaction o
r staff morale. It presents the information you need, when you need it.
2.3) History
In a 1958 article, IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn used the term business intelli
gence. He defined intelligence as: "the ability to apprehend the interrelationsh
ips of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal."
Business intelligence as it is understood today is said to have evolved from the
decision support systems which began in the 1960s and developed throughout the
mid-80s. DSS originated in the computer-aided models created to assist with deci
sion making and planning. From DSS, data warehouses, Executive Information Syste
ms, OLAP and business intelligence came into focus beginning in the late 80s.
In 1989 Howard Dresner (later a Gartner Group analyst) proposed "business intel
ligence" as an umbrella term to describe "concepts and methods to improve busine
ss decision making by using fact-based support systems." It was not until the la
te 1990s
that this usage was widespread.
Let s explain what is the business intelligence now and what was it in the past.
I would say that throughout the years that particular system used by people who
worked and still working in companies was improved until now and at the moment
we got quit good support to manage the companies. In the past it was a very simp
le tool which allowed having better circulation of information. Now we have more
complicated tools insight business intelligence what allows to run a company an
d managers rely on that I would
The beginnings and subsequent evolution of what is now called Business Intellige
nce are not as young as the development of networking technologies. In fact, its
origins are almost as old as the history of the human kind.
Data has always had to be collected for various purposes. In ancient civilizatio
ns information concerning taxes, armies, population and many more issues, needed
to be collected and stored. The very first example of written language is in fa
ct data storage - Sumerian tablets made from stone that facilitated tracking the
shipment of wheat. The Romans were also exceptionally fond of bureaucracy of an
y kind and record-keeping, especially after invention of better forms of paper.
The challenge of storing more information in smaller space continues to the pres
ent day and there is even something that ancient stones and modern microchips ha
ve in common - silicon.
With the growth of computing power, came the development of information storage
capability. Magnetic tapes, capable of mass storage, turned to disk drives, the
technology still being used today. Programmers had to develop highly powerful an
d complex Database Management Systems to be able to manage continuously growing
stored data. The revolution in data maintenance was relational database technolo
gy (splitting data into components and store them as separate pieces) which was
the answer to dramatically increasing demands of data storage.
To manage their everyday transactions, businesses had to start taking advantage
of more and more powerful computing systems which resulted in the development of
POS (Point-of-sale) transactional systems. Such systems help companies with the
ir day-to-day operations and every one of them is specifically designed for a pa
rticular business role.
But transactional systems as tools were wrong for the job of doing research as t
heir primary purpose was to speed along the transactions. Those systems were oft
en separated and so were the records and it meant a lot more work for company an
alysts when a given set of data was needed. They were useful but not powerful en
ough.
Business Intelligence history started in the late 1980s as the potential value o
f the data began to be recognized. Business Intelligence comprises a wide array
of technologies, practices and protocols required to produce business insights o
f a good value. The actual meaning of Business Intelligence may be different for
different companies, depending on their current situations, technologies or req
uirements.
There is no universal definition of Business Intelligence but it has to meet fou
r basic requirements - to produce timely, high-value, accurate and actionable in
sights, regardless of the means to produce them.
Business Intelligence is constantly increasing its importance to large companies
, as computing and software are more powerful and useful. BI will certainly grow
and evolve as an answer to direction of the advancing technology and perhaps wi
ll soon expand outside the IT department. Although Business Intelligence histori
cally has been connected with technologies of data warehousing, in the future it
will be capable of finding and extracting data from source systems and then tra
nsform it into whatever will be needed for analysis
2.4) Business Intelligence components
Basically Business Intelligence covers the following areas and is related to:
Data warehousing
ETL and Data Integration
Reporting, Analysis and Interactive Dashboards
Enterprise Performance Management
- it broadens the traditional business intelligence concept by such terms as sco
re carding, planning and budgeting
Master Data Management (MDM)
Metadata management
3) THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE CYCLE:-
The Four Linked Components:-A healthy BI strategy should be viewed as the sum of
four major processes that fit together in a constant cycle. These four processe
s are measure, analyze, plan and improve.
Figure 1: Business Intelligence Improvement Cycle
Measure:-
The measure phase is by far the most widely deployed and far-reaching process of
business intelligence. Think of the process of establishing a BIIC as blowing u
p a long thin balloon. As you blow up the balloon, the part of the balloon close
st to your mouth expands first, then that expansion extends down the length of t
he balloon. If you wrote the words measure, analyze, plan and improve down the l
ength of the balloon starting at the end you blow into, the measure section of t
he balloon would expand before you will see the other sections. Try to blow up a
ny section of the balloon before the measure section and you will find it imposs
ible. The same goes for the BIIC.
In the measure phase, companies "report" the current and historical status of ke
y metrics used to manage their business. These measures tell a company the "what
" (i.e., "What is the status or health of my business?"). Although most companie
s know which fundamental indicators to measure (e.g., sales, profit, etc.), it i
s not necessarily easy for them to obtain and distribute the status of these mea
sures to the individuals throughout their organization. By employing an effectiv
e BI solution, an organization can successfully distribute this information to a
ll the people who affect business inside and outside the enterprise. Through BI,
an organization can uncover new ratios and metrics that provide even deeper ins
ight and that could potentially modify or enhance that which is currently measur
ed. Today, reporting and information delivery software used widely by IT departm
ents provides the bulk of the aforementioned functionality in this initial phase
of the BIIC.
During implementation of the measure stage, a stabilization of the company s ove
rall BI infrastructure occurs. People viewing measures can determine inconsisten
cies with the aggregated measures and what is generally expected. This helps to
uncover "glitches" in the collection processes. Determining problems with data c
ollection and connecting them is a necessary evolution that takes place during t
he measurement stage. Without this weeding out of collection problems, companies
cannot successfully move into the latter stages of the cycle because to base an
alysis and planning on a suspect measurement system makes no sense.
Analyze:-
The second phase in the BIIC is analyzed. During this phase, analysts review and
measure the data in new and different ways to see whether they can uncover hidd
en relationships that will help them answer "why" (i.e., "Why is this occurring?
"). In the evolution of BI, several tools have emerged that simplify the analyti
cal process - ad hoc query, online analytical processing (OLAP) and data visuali
zation. It is not in the scope of this column to discuss the benefits of each; s
imply understand that these tools help people analyze data.
Plan:-
After determining some of the reasons "why" things occur in the analyze phase, c
ompanies then try to determine the effects on outcomes should they implement cha
nges. This is when the third part of the cycle, the plan phase, begins. In this
phase, companies use tools to play "what if" games with their data (i.e., varyin
g scenarios that target the process changes they may need to make to help steer
the company in the right direction). Software for this segment of the BIIC has b
een categorized as planning, budgeting and forecasting. Using these kinds of too
ls, you can perform scenarios such as "expected measures from the budgeting proc
ess" and then combine them with historical measures and forecasting algorithms t
o determine potential future outcomes. You can then vary your inputs to see how
different courses of action might affect these outcomes.
The plan phase logically progresses into the fourth stage of the BIIC called imp
rove, or the "how" phase. In this stage, key players within the company discuss
outcomes and potential solutions to the problems they have uncovered in the prev
ious stages and then make decisions regarding how to improve them, such as what
they can do to positively affect their bottom line. This is where collaboration
as part of BI becomes crucial. During review, individuals can annotate and comme
nt on reports and analysis that have resulted from the other stages or even vote
on a course of action. Collaboration functionality within BI simplifies and doc
uments this whole process so that each comment, vote or opinion can be weighed i
n the final decision. As a result of the improve phase, new areas or dimensions
of measure may be added to the upcoming "measure" phase in order to track the pr
ogress of decisions made during the previous cycle.
In this way, a company s BIIC is a process of perpetual improvement that keeps i
nching the company toward perfection. Once the cycle begins, it is hard to stop
it and, moreover, once you see its effect, you ll wonder how you could have live
d without it. For example, during the plan phase management may determine that b
ased on expected operating expenses profits will be down in the next quarter. Us
ing planning software, they can determine how much more they would need to sell
to realize the same profits as last quarter. Or, they may try to see how an incr
ease in price for certain items would affect their bottom line if the same numbe
r of items were sold. A planning application enables a company to determine what
steps they will need to take to keep the company on a strategic course toward m
eeting its goals.
Improve:-
The plan phase logically progresses into the fourth stage of the BIIC called imp
rove, or the "how" phase. In this stage, key players within the company discuss
outcomes and potential solutions to the problems they have uncovered in the prev
ious stages and then make decisions regarding how to improve them, such as what
they can do to positively affect their bottom line. This is where collaboration
as part of BI becomes crucial. During review, individuals can annotate and comme
nt on reports and analysis that have resulted from the other stages or even vote
on a course of action. Collaboration functionality within BI simplifies and doc
uments this whole process so that each comment, vote or opinion can be weighed i
n the final decision. As a result of the improve phase, new areas or dimensions
of measure may be added to the upcoming "measure" phase in order to track the pr
ogress of decisions made during the previous cycle.
In this way, a company s BIIC is a process of perpetual improvement that keeps i
nching the company toward perfection. Once the cycle begins, it is hard to stop
it and, moreover, once you see its effect, you ll wonder how you could have live
d without it.
3) Business intelligence and data warehousing

Often BI applications use data gathered from a data warehouse or a data mart. Ho
wever, not all data warehouses are used for business intelligence, nor do all bu
siness intelligence applications require a data warehouse.
In order to distinguish between concepts of business intelligence and data wareh
ouses, Forrester Research often defines business intelligence in one of two ways
:
Typically, Forrester uses the following broad definition: "Business Intelligence
is a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that tran
sform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effect
ive strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making."[6] When
using this definition, business intelligence also includes technologies such as
data integration, data quality, data warehousing, master data management, text a
nd content analytics, and many others that the market sometimes lumps into the I
nformation Management segment. Therefore, Forrester refers to data preparation a
nd data usage as two separate, but closely linked segments of the business intel
ligence architectural stack.
Data warehousing
Definitions
:-
The term Data Warehouse defined by Bill Inmon in the following way:
->
"A warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant and non-volatil
e collection of data in support of management s decision making process".
Subject Oriented: Data that gives the information about a particular subject ins
tead of about companies’ ongoing operations.
Integrated: Data that is gathered into the data warehouse from a variety of s
ources and merged into a coherent whole.
Time-variant & Non-volatile: All data in the data warehouse is identified with a
particular time period.
Data is stable in a data warehouse. More data is added but data is never removed
. This enables management to gain a consistent picture of the business.
2) Architecture
2.1 Types of data warehouse architecture
1> Source driven DWA
In source driven Architecture, for gathering data, the data sources transmi
t new information either continuously, as transaction processing takes place or
periodically such as each night.
2> Destination driven DWA
Here data warehouse periodically sends requests for new data to the source.
2.2 Types of information systems in DWH
There are two fundamentally different types of information systems in all organi
zations: operational systems and informational systems.
"Operational systems" are just what their name implies; they are the systems tha
t help us run the enterprise operation day-to-day. These are the backbone system
s of any enterprise, our "order entry , "inventory", "manufacturing", "payroll"
and "accounting" systems. Because of their importance to the organization, opera
tional systems were almost always the first parts of the enterprise to be comput
erized. Over the years, these operational systems have been extended and rewritt
en, enhanced and maintained to the point that they are completely integrated int
o the organization. Indeed, most large organizations around the world today coul
dn t operate without their operational systems and the data that these systems m
aintain.
On the other hand, there are other functions that go on within the enterprise th
at have to do with planning, forecasting and managing the organization. These fu
nctions are also critical to the survival of the organization, especially in our
current fast-paced world. Functions like "marketing planning", "engineering pla
nning" and "financial analysis" also require information systems to support them
. But these functions are different from operational ones, and the types of syst
ems and information required are also different. The knowledge-based functions a
re informational systems.
"Informational systems" have to do with analyzing data and making decisions, oft
en major decisions, about how the enterprise will operate, now and in the future
. And not only do informational systems have a different focus from operational
ones; they often have a different scope. Where operational data needs are normal
ly focused upon a single area, informational data needs often span a number of d
ifferent areas and need large amounts of related operational data.
2.3 Architecture description

A Data Warehouse Architecture:
A Data Warehouse Architecture (DWA) is a way of representing the overall structu
re of data, communication, processing and presentation that exists for end-user
computing within the enterprise. The architecture is made up of a number of inte
rconnected parts:
- Operational Database / External Database Layer

- Information Access Layer
- Data Access Layer
- Data Directory (Metadata) Layer
- Process Management Layer
- Application Messaging Layer
- Data Warehouse Layer
- Data Staging Layer
1) Operational Database / External Database Layer
Operational systems process data to support critical operational needs. In order
to do that, operational databases have been historically created to provide an
efficient processing structure for a relatively small number of well-defined bus
iness transactions. However, because of the limited focus of operational systems
, the databases designed to support operational systems have difficulty accessin
g the data for other management or informational purposes. This difficulty in ac
cessing operational data is amplified by the fact that many operational systems
are often 10 to 15 years old. The age of some of these systems means that the da
ta access technology available to obtain operational data is itself dated.
Clearly, the goal of data warehousing is to free the information that is l
ocked up in the operational databases and to mix it with info
rmation from other, often external, sources of data. Increasingly, large organiz
ations are acquiring additional data from outside databases. This information in
cludes demographic, econometric, competitive and purchasing trends. The so-calle
d "information superhighway" is providing access to more data resources every da
y.
Fig. 1 Architecture of data warehous
e
2) Information Access Layer

The Information Access layer of the Data Warehouse Architecture is the layer tha
t the end-user deals with directly. In particular, it represents the tools that
the end-user normally uses day to day, e.g., Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, Focus, Access,
SAS, etc. This layer also includes the hardware and software involved in display
ing and printing reports, spreadsheets, graphs and charts for analysis and prese
ntation. Over the past two decades, the Information Access layer has expanded en
ormously, especially as end-users have moved to PCs and PC/LANs.
Today, more and more sophisticated tools exist on the desktop for manipulating,
analyzing and presenting data; however, there are significant problems in making
the raw data contained in operational systems available easily and seamlessly t
o end-user tools. One of the keys to this is to find a common data language that
can be used throughout the enterprise.
3) Data Access Layer

The Data Access Layer of the Data Warehouse Architecture is involved with allowi
ng the Information Access Layer to talk to the Operational Layer. In the network
world today, the common data language that has emerged is SQL. Originally, SQL
was developed by IBM as a query language, but over the last twenty years has bec
ome the de facto standard for data interchange.
One of the key breakthroughs of the last few years has been the development of a
series of data access "filters" such as EDA/SQL that make it possible for SQL t
o access nearly all DBMSs and data file systems, relational or nonrelational. Th
ese filters make it possible for state-of-the-art Information Access tools to ac
cess data stored on database management systems that are twenty years old.
The Data Access Layer not only spans different DBMSs and file systems on the sam
e hardware, it spans manufacturers and network protocols as well. One of the key
s to a Data Warehousing strategy is to provide end-users with "universal data ac
cess". Universal data access means that, theoretically at least, end-users, rega
rdless of location or Information Access tool, should be able to access any or a
ll of the data in the enterprise that is necessary for them to do their job.
The Data Access Layer then is responsible for interfacing between Information Ac
cess tools and Operational Databases. In some cases, this is all that certain en
d-users need. However, in general, organizations are developing a much more soph
isticated scheme to support Data Warehousing.
4) Data Directory (Metadata) Layer

In order to provide for universal data access, it is absolutely necessary to mai
ntain some form of data directory or repository of meta-data information. Meta-d
ata is the data about data within the enterprise. Record descriptions in a COBOL
program are meta-data. So are DIMENSION statements in a FORTRAN program, or SQL
Create statements. The information in an ERA diagram is also meta-data.
In order to have a fully functional warehouse, it is necessary to have a variety
of meta-data available, data about the end-user views of data and data about th
e operational databases. Ideally, end-users should be able to access data from t
he data warehouse (or from the operational databases) without having to know whe
re that data resides or the form in which it is stored.
5) Process Management Layer
The Process Management Layer is involved in scheduling the various tasks that mu
st be accomplished to build and maintain the data warehouse and data directory i
nformation. The Process Management Layer can be thought of as the scheduler or t
he high-level job control for the many processes (procedures) that must occur to
keep the Data Warehouse up-to-date.
6) Application Messaging Layer
The Application Message Layer has to do with transporting information around the
enterprise computing network. Application Messaging is also referred to as "mid
dleware", but it can involve more that just networking protocols. Application Me
ssaging for example can be used to isolate applications, operational or informat
ional, from the exact data format on either end. Application Messaging can also
be used to collect transactions or messages and deliver them to a certain locati
on at a certain time. Application Messaging in the transport system underlying t
he Data Warehouse.
7) Data Warehouse (Physical) Layer

The (core) Data Warehouse is where the actual data used primarily for informatio
nal uses occurs. In some cases, one can think of the Data Warehouse simply as a
logical or virtual view of data. In many instances, the data warehouse may not a
ctually involve storing data.
In a Physical Data Warehouse, copies, in some cases many copies, of operational
and or external data are actually stored in a form that is easy to access and is
highly flexible. Increasingly, Data Warehouses are stored on client/server plat
forms, but they are often stored on main frames as well.
8) Data Staging Layer
The final component of the Data Warehouse Architecture is Data Staging. Data Sta
ging is also called copy management or replication management, but in fact, it i
ncludes all of the processes necessary to select, edit, summarize, combine and l
oad data warehouse and information access data from operational and/or external
databases.
Data Staging often involves complex programming, but increasingly data warehousi
ng tools are being created that help in this process. Data Staging may also invo
lve data quality analysis programs and filters that identify patterns and data s
tructures within existing operational data.
The Data Warehouse Architecture in Figure 1 is simply a framework for understand

ing data warehousing and how the components of data warehousing fit together. On
ly the most sophisticated organizations will be able to put together such an arc
hitecture the first time out. What the Data Warehouse Architecture provides then
is a kind of roadmap that can be used to design toward. Coupled with an underst
anding of the options at hand, the Data Warehouse Architecture provides a useful
way of determining if the organization is moving toward a reasonable data wareh
ousing framework.
One of the keys to data warehousing is flexibility. It is critical to keep in mi
nd that the more successful a data warehouse strategy is, the more end-users are
going to want to add to it.
3.4) Application
1) Decision support (Business intelligence)
2) Predictive modeling
3) Planning
DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM
The main uses of decision support tools are:
To check that "everything" is okay
Surprise! Nothing will be done with many, perhaps most, of the queries and repor
ts created with decision support tools. They are run to confirm a person s usual
ly not crisply defined notion but intuitively felt notion of "okayness".
To confirm the "obvious"
Most end users the reports and queries are ultimately being produced for have a
pretty good gut feel for what is going on in their area of concern. Decision sup
port tools do not tell these people anything amazing that the people don t alrea
dy suspect. But the information produced with the tools gives them confidence th
eir gut feel is okay.
To figure out how something "works"
Most people are not looking for some grand Unified Theory of how firm XYZ works.
Rather, they want to understand some small aspect of an operation like Customer
A always pays on time, Customer B usually pays late and still takes the early p
ayment discount, etc.
To convey information in a more digestible manner
These tools are often used to convey what a person or persons already know. Thes
e knowing people use the tools simply to present information to other people in
a way that it is more easily read.
To compare information about customers, products, cost/profit centers, financial
accounts
Sometimes this is side by side comparisons of a series of measures. Sometimes th
is is identification of the most, the least, the earliest, etc.
To compare the same type of information in different time periods
This is simply the usual daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly comparison.
To check performance versus formal and informal goals or constraints
That is, measures of what actually occurred are compared with budgets, forecasts
, quotas, or some other types of goals.
To identify the out of the ordinary
Usually the ultimate consumer of the tool s output has somewhat vague criteria o
f what is out of the ordinary. The decision support tools kind of do double duty
in that they help refine the criteria of what is out of the ordinary and identi
fy what fit the refined criteria of out of ordinariness.
To grab a little piece of information out of a large volume of information
These tools make picking that virtual needle out of that virtual haystack a lot
simpler.
To get around an Information Technology department that does not have the time o
r the resources to write reports
Often end users use these tools out of impatience with the IT department. Or, th
e IT department gives the user these tools to relieve the pressure off of itself
. The end users in these cases often write reports that could hardly be called a
nalyses.
To provide a report "of record"
For all kinds of reasons it is often necessary for people to agree that "these
are the numbers". Note they do not have to agree on all the data - just some da
ta whose credibility must be accepted for actions to be taken. Decision support
tools often are used to produce this "official" information.
To confirm and sometimes to discover trends and relationships
With all respect to the people working hard on data mining, I think that most go
od businesspeople have an intuitive feeling of the most important trends and rel
ationships between factors that are affecting their business. The decision suppo
rt tools perform the function of confirming their intuition. Yes, the tools also
can help discover trends and relationships but it is difficult (though potentia
lly profitable) to sift out the meaningless and spurious trends.
To help advocate a position
These tools are not just for "objective" presentation of the facts. Often they a
re cleverly used to help bolster the case for doing (or not doing) something.
To provide data for a what if analysis or a forecast
That is, the tools are used to feed data into a spreadsheet where the actual wha
t-if analysis or forecast will be done. The tools can do some of the what-if-ing
and forecasting themselves but most business users are more comfortable doing t
his work in spreadsheets.
Business benefits of data warehousing ?
1. Immediate information delivery

Data warehouses shrink the length of time it takes between when bus
iness events occurrence and executive alert. For example, in many corporations,
sales reports are printed once a month - about a week after the end of each mont
h. Thus, the June sales reports are delivered during the first week in July. Usi
ng a warehouse, those same reports are available on a daily basis. Given this da
ta delivery time compression, business decision makers can exploit opportunities
that they would otherwise miss.
2. Data integration from across, and even outside, the organization
To provide a complete picture, warehouses typically combine data from mult
iple sources such as a company s order entry and warranty systems. Thus, with a
warehouse, it may be possible to track all interactions a company has with each
customer - from that customer s first inquiry, through the terms of their purcha
se all the way through any warranty or
Service interactions. This makes it possible for managers to have answers to que
stions like, "Is there a correlation between where a customer buys our product a
nd the amount typically spent in supporting that customer?"
3. Future vision from historical trends

Effective business analysis frequently includes trend and seasonality analysis.
To support this, warehouses typically contain multiple years of data.
4. Tools for looking at data in new ways
Instead of paper reports, warehouses give users tools for looking at data
differently. They also allow those users to manipulate their data. There are tim
es when a color coded map speaks volumes over a simple paper report. An interact
ive table that allows the user to drill down into detail data with the click of
a mouse can answer questions that might take months to answer in a traditional s
ystem.
5. Freedom from IS department resource limitations
One of the problems with computer systems is that they usually require com
puter experts to use them. When a report is needed, the requesting manager calls
the IS department. IS then assigns a programmer to write a program to produce t
he report. The report can be created in a few days or, in extreme cases, in over
a year. With a warehouse, users create most of their reports themselves. Thus,
if a manager needs a report for a meeting in half an hour, they, or their assist
ant, can create that report in a matter of minutes.
Semi-structured or unstructured data

Businesses create a huge amount of valuable information in the form of e-mails,
memos, notes from call-centers, news, user groups, chats, reports, web-pages, pr
esentations, image-files, video-files, and marketing material and news. Accordin
g to Merrill Lynch, more than 85 percent of all business information exists in t
hese forms. These information types are called either semi-structured or unstruc
tured data. However, organizations often only use these documents once.
The management of semi-structured data is recognized as a major unsolved problem
in the information technology industry. According to projections from Gartner (
2003), white collar workers will spend anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of their t
ime searching, finding and assessing unstructured data. BI uses both structured
and unstructured data, but the former is easy to search, and the latter contains
a large quantity of the information needed for analysis and decision making. Be
cause of the difficulty of properly searching, finding and assessing unstructure
d or semi-structured data, organizations may not draw upon these vast reservoirs
of information, which could influence a particular decision, task or project. T
his can ultimately lead to poorly-informed decision making.
Therefore, when designing a Business Intelligence/DW-solution, the specific prob
lems associated with semi-structured and unstructured data must be accommodated
for as well as those for the structured data.
Unstructured data vs. Semi-structured data
Unstructured and semi-structured data have different meanings depending on their
context. In the context of relational database systems, it refers to data that
cannot be stored in columns and rows. It must be stored in a BLOB (binary large
object), a catch-all data type available in most relational database management
systems.
But many of these data types, like e-mails, word processing text files, PPTs, im
age-files, and video-files conform to a standard that offers the possibility of
metadata. Metadata can include information such as author and time of creation,
and this can be stored in a relational database. Therefore it may be more accura
te to talk about this as semi-structured documents or data, but no specific cons
ensus seems to have been reached.
Problems with semi-structured or unstructured data
There are several challenges to developing BI with semi-structured data. Accordi
ng to Inmon & Nesavich, some of those are:
1.Physically accessing unstructured textual data – unstructured data is stored in
a huge variety of formats.
2.Terminology – Among researchers and analysts, there is a need to develop a stand
ardized terminology.
3.Volume of data – As stated earlier, up to 85% of all data exists as semi-structu
red data. Couple that with the need for word-to-word and semantic analysis..
4.Search ability of unstructured textual data – A simple search on some data, e.g.
apple, results in links where there is a reference to that precise search term.
(Inmon & Nesavich, 2008) gives an example: “a search is made on the term felony.
In a simple search, the term felony is used, and everywhere there is a reference
to felony, a hit to an unstructured document is made. But a simple search is cr
ude. It does not find references to crime, arson, murder, embezzlement, vehicula
r homicide, and such, even though these crimes are types of felonies.”
The use of metadata
To solve the problem with the search ability and assessment of the data, it is n
ecessary to know something about the content. This can be done by adding context
through the use of metadata. A lot of system already captures some metadata, e.
g. filename, author, size etc. But much more useful could be metadata about the
actual content – e.g. summaries, topics, people or companies mentioned. Two techno
logies designed for generating metadata about content is automatic categorizatio
n and information extraction.
Prioritization of business intelligence projects

It is often difficult to provide a positive business case for Business Intellige
nce (BI) initiatives and often the projects will need to be prioritized through
strategic initiatives. Here are some hints to increase the benefits for a BI pro
ject.
• As described by Kimball you must determine the tangible benefits such as elimin
ated cost of producing legacy reports.
• Enforce access to data for the entire organization. In this way even a small be
nefit, such as a few minutes saved, will make a difference when it is multiplied
by the number of employees in the entire organization.
Success factors of implementation
Before implementing a BI solution, it is worth taking different factors into con
sideration before proceeding. According to Kimball et al. These are the three cr
itical areas that you need to assess within your organization before getting rea
dy to do a BI project:
1.The level of commitment and sponsorship of the project from senior management
2.The level of business need for creating a BI implementation
3.The amount and quality of business data available.
Business Sponsorship
The commitment and sponsorship of senior management is according to Kimball et a
l, the most important criteria for assessment. This is because having strong man
agement backing will help overcome shortcomings elsewhere in the project. But as
Kimball et al state: “even the most elegantly designed DW/BI system cannot overco
me a lack of business [management] sponsorship”. It is very important that the man
agement personnel who participate in the project have a vision and an idea of th
e benefits and drawbacks of implementing a BI system. The best business sponsor
should have organizational clout and should be well connected within the organiz
ation. It is ideal that the business sponsor is demanding but also able to be re
alistic and supportive if the implementation runs into delays or drawbacks. The
management sponsor also needs to be able to assume accountability and to take re
sponsibility for failures and setbacks on the project. It is imperative that the
re is support from multiple members of the management so the project will not fa
il if one person leaves the steering group. However, having many managers that w
ork together on the project can also mean that the there are several different i
nterests that attempt to pull the project in different directions. For instance
if different departments want to put more emphasis on their usage of the impleme
ntation. This issue can be countered by an early and specific analysis of the di
fferent business areas that will benefit the most from the implementation. All s
takeholders in project should participate in this analysis in order for them to
feel ownership of the project and to find common ground between them. Another ma
nagement problem that should be encountered before start of implementation is if
the Business sponsor is overly aggressive. If the management individual gets ca
rried away by the possibilities of using BI and starts wanting the DW or BI impl
ementation to include several different sets of data that were not included in t
he original planning phase. However, since extra implementations of extra data w
ill most likely add many months to the original plan. It is probably a good idea
to make sure that the person from management is aware of his actions.
Implementation should be driven by clear business needs.
Because of the close relationship with senior management, another critical thing
that needs to be assessed before the project is implemented is whether or not t
here actually is a business need and whether there is a clear business benefit b
y doing the implementation. The needs and benefits of the implementation are som
etimes driven by competition and the need to gain an advantage in the market. An
other reason for a business-driven approach to implementation of BI is the acqui
sition of other organizations that enlarge the original organization it can some
times be beneficial to implement DW or BI in order to create more oversight.
The amount and quality of the available data.
This ought to be the most important factor, since without good data – it does not
really matter how good your management sponsorship or your business-driven motiv
ation is. If you do not have the data, or the data does not have sufficient qual
ity any BI implementation will fail. Before implementation it is a very good ide
a to do data profiling, this analysis will be able to describe the “content, consi
stency and structure of the data. This should be done as early as possible in th
e process and if the analysis shows that your data is lacking; it is a good idea
to put the project on the shelf temporarily while the IT department figures out
how to do proper data collection.
Other scholars have added more factors to the list than these three. In his thes
is “Critical Success Factors of BI Implementation” Naveen Vodapalli does research on
different factors that can impact the final BI product. He lists 7 crucial succ
ess factors for the implementation of a BI project, they are as follows:
1.Business-driven methodology and project management
2.Clear vision and planning
3.Committed management support & sponsorship
4.Data management and quality
5.Mapping solutions to user requirements
6.Performance considerations of the BI system
7.Robust and expandable framework
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF HAVING BI SYSTEM?
Business Intelligence (BI) is a kind of business software solution designed to f
acilitate the use of information within a company. Although BI needs can vary in
different business sectors, and many tools are industry-specific, most BI softw
are provide a similar core suite of capabilities. In BI software the data is gat
hered from CRM, ERP (SAP, PeopleSoft, etc.), Excel sheets, text files, legacy sy
stems and data warehouses throughout the ETL process etc., proceeded according t
o company s needs and can be presented in a way understandable by business peopl
e.
There are many Business Intelligence tools available on the market but sometimes
a company can simply use Excel s Pivot Table tool for basic analysis. However,
professional Business Intelligence tools usually allow cleansing and standardizi
ng data and display the results of the analysis using dashboards and scorecards
in a way that is understandable for business people in an optimized, standardize
d, centralized and scalable way.There are some reasons why Business Intelligence
is a number one investment by a company according to many experts. When properl
y implemented and used, Business Intelligence tools can bring many benefits to a
company and improve its performance.
Main outcome of using BI software
First of all, it allows using the gathered data more effectively and transformin
g it into beneficial information that can be employed to increase company s comp
etitiveness and visibility on a market. With Business Intelligence software you
can obtain a new or more specific view on corporate data and perform data mining
, which helps your company uncover relationships and patterns present in data ga
thered so far.
Secondly, Business Intelligence efficiently supports management processes. Compa
ring to non-BI environment, correctly implemented Business Intelligence assists
data-based management and develops access to information customer activities, cu
rrent trends on the market and supply chain matters more effectively and provide
s more consistent results.
When using Business Intelligence you obtain reliable information and only one v
ersion of the truth which improves recognition of the current market conditions
and allows quicker and more relevant decision making. By combining actual strat
egy and information collected by a company, BI tool can help build management fr
amework and create a coherent set of key performance indicators to monitor the p
rogress. Key performance indicators can then be presented in a simple, user frie
ndly graphic way.
Business Intelligence also makes information collection and dissemination faster
and more efficient, which increases flexibility and accelerates company s adjus
tment to market demands.
Finally, scorecards established using Business Intelligence, can help predict ho
w a company will perform financially in the future. Additionally, BI allows moni
toring the indicators through
Balanced scorecards so if they are decreasing, a company is able to implement pr
eventing actions to try to regain its position on the market.
User aspect
Some considerations must be made in order to successfully integrate the usage of
business intelligence systems in a company. Ultimately the BI system must be ac
cepted and utilized by the users in order for it to add value to the organizatio
n. If the usability of the system is poor, the users may become frustrated and s
pend a considerable amount of time figuring out how to use the system or may not
be able to really use the system. If the system does not add value to the users´
mission, they will simply not use it.
In order to increase the user acceptance of a BI system, it may be advisable to
consult the business users at an early stage of the DW/BI lifecycle such as for
example at the requirements gathering phase.[18] This can provide an insight int
o the business process and what the users need from the BI system. There are sev
eral methods for gathering this information such as e.g. questionnaires and inte
rview sessions.
When gathering the requirements from the business users, the local IT department
should also be consulted in order to determine to which degree it is possible t
o fulfill the business´s needs based on the available data.
Taking on a user-centered approach throughout the design and development stage m
ay further increase the chance of rapid user adoption of the BI system.
Besides focusing on the user experience offered by the BI applications, it may a
lso possible to motivate the users to utilize the system by adding an element of
competition. Kimball suggests implementing a function on the Business Intellige
nce portal website where reports on system usage can be found. By doing so, mana
gers can see how well their departments are doing and compare themselves to othe
rs and this may spur them to encourage their staff to utilize the BI system even
more.
In a 2007 article, H. J. Watson gives an example of how the competitive element
can act as an incentive. Watson describes how a large call centre has implemente
d performance dashboards for all the call agents and that monthly incentive bonu
ses have been tied up to the performance metrics. Furthermore the agents can see
how their own performance compares to the other team members. The implementatio
n of this type of performance measurement and competition significantly improved
the performance of the agents.
Other elements which may increase the success of BI can be by involving senior m
anagement in order to make BI a part of the organizational culture and also by p
roviding the users with the necessary tools, training and support. By offering u
ser training, more people may actually use the BI application.
Providing user support is necessary in order to maintain the BI system and assis
t users who run into problems. User support can be incorporated in many ways, fo
r example by creating a website. The website should contain great content and to
ols for finding the necessary information. Furthermore, helpdesk support can be
used. The helpdesk can be manned by e.g. power users or the DW/BI project team.[
18]
Application
In the end, simplifying and gathering data from multiple sources in an organizat
ion enables users to rely upon the informational memory to help with the decisio
n-making process and problem solving strategies to better understand the custome
rs and market behavior.
It may take patience and cooperation from both ends, meaning the data analysts a
nd the IT specialists, to accomplish the desired outcome and benefit from Busine
ss Intelligence tools. This can be achieved through comprehensive training on ho
w to use and interpret the information provided by the applications.
Business Intelligence is now a day getting spread out in many industries like
1.Banking/Insurance
2.Manufacturing (Refinery/Chemical/petrochemical/Paper & Pulp)
3.Pharmaceutical
4.Automobile
5.Telecommunication
1.Banking on business intelligence:-
Those who want to survive and thrive have to move fast to keep up with customer
demands, changing regulations and the risks of everyday business.
Business units and IT departments in the financial services sector are striving
to meet these demands and balance them with increasing costs, tighter budgets an
d controlled risk, but success is possible for companies that can make sense of
the vast quantities of data at their disposal.
As an increasing number of financial institutions are finding out, business inte
lligence and data warehousing solutions are providing valuable insight into a ho
st of hidden information treasures. But how can organizations ensure they’re getti
ng bang for their BI buck? FST spoke to three industry insiders to find out.
How can business intelligence (BI) technologies help financial institutions mana
ge risk, detect fraud, leverage customer insights and gain visibility into their
profitability?
In general, BI technologies are already widely employed in these areas.
However, the quality of the resultant reports is often limited by a lack of acc
ess to detailed, high volume data. The new trend towards high-performance data w
arehouse appliances that can handle huge quantities of raw transaction data is s
tarting to alleviate these problems.
For those who understand how to leverage BI – welcome to a whole new worl
d, where the traditional constraints of costs and architectural limitations in B
I have been eliminated. Thanks to open source, BI is becoming standards-based an
d far more cost-effective, and now the only barrier to successful application of
these technologies is the organization’s ability to execute on BI projects. Now a
large portion of the dollars they used to spend on software licenses can be use
d to bring in external consultants with deep, vertical BI expertise to teach com
panies where and why to apply BI technologies.
Companies that are successful in maximizing opportunities and mitigatin
g risk have changed their management approach. They have adopted business intell
igence and performance management solutions and tools that enable them to be pro
active – in identifying issues, in making decisions, in executing on them and in e
valuating their impact.
Even though there has been success with BI in the financial services industry, i
t has been primarily at the departmental or line-of-business level. What potenti
al is there for enterprise-wide BI deployments within the financial services ind
ustry? And what benefits could this bring?
BI has traditionally been a departmental initiative. However like in ma
ny other industries, financial services companies are faced with the challenge o
f keeping up with the growing number of decisions that have to be made on a dail
y basis. The complexity of corporate decision-making stems from the paradox betw
een data volume and the human ability to act on it. Data keeps growing at an ala
rming rate, but the capabilities of the average worker to process the informatio
n inherent in the data haven’t changed.
Today’s BI solutions enable decision-makers to target specific issues they
know about or ones they discover along the way. However the key here is to garn
er that knowledge without spending precious time sifting through mounds of data.
We believe that this is best accomplished if the critical information a decisio
n-maker needs is proactively delivered to him, allowing that person to spend tim
e translating it into knowledge. By using that knowledge, people will know what
worked and what didn’t, so they’ll be better prepared to decide and act in the futur
e.
Organizations need BI on an enterprise-wide scale so that every employe
e has the information they need about operations, customers, financial targets,
and more to be fully effective in their job. But even as many organizations have
had success at the departmental level with BI, recent research shows that cost
remains the number one barrier for many organizations considering enterprise-wid
e BI deployments. The old BI vendors created departmental technologies with depa
rtmental pricing models, and they just don’t fit any more – not for enterprise-wide
deployment. Have you ever talked to one of the big BI vendors about an extranet
deployment? And they explain their ‘per user’ pricing model, and the extranet up cha
rge and the add-on administration licenses? Clearly, there’s a big gap between cus
tomer needs and traditional BI vendor solutions. Pentaho is here to fill that ga
p, and finally make superior BI technology available at a fraction of the cost c
ompared to legacy offerings.
What are the practical issues involved in integrating BI into the existi
ng application infrastructures of financial institutions? How are these being ad
dressed?
Generally, BI technologies have done a good job at integrating with sou
rce systems, as well as portals, to the point that both are expected in any BI o
ffering. What hasn’t gotten enough attention is business process integration, whic
h is more complex, but also more valuable than data or portal integration. BI wa
s historically an ‘after the fact’ application, used at the end of the month or the
quarter to review historical data to understand operational efficiency, customer
trends and sales productivity. But today, organizations are increasingly lookin
g to make BI a part of the day-to-day, operational business processes, and this
requires a different technology approach. Complex, inflexible metadata layers an
d persistent OLAP cubes create fundamental barriers to effective process integra
tion. Pentaho provides the only BI platform that was built from the ground up ar
ound business processes, with an embedded process engine, to make it easy and co
st-effective to deliver BI within an organization’s operational business processes
. That means BI delivers value at the point of work for front-line employees, no
t down the road for a small group of analysts.
Some of the practical issues of integrating BI into a company’s existing
information infrastructure include data security and the ability to set permissi
ons on data usage. Security of data is first and foremost with financial service
s institutions. Today’s solutions – such as those from Panorama – not only secure deli
very of data, but can lock that data down to the cell level. We also provide sop
histicated permission settings on data access to ensure that users can only view
and analyze information that is relevant to their needs, even though this data
could come from a much larger report or source used by many decision-makers at v
arying levels.
Many large financial services companies have tried to implement new BI
applications on top of an existing data warehouse infrastructure that is typical
ly already over-loaded. Adding large volumes of raw transaction data to an exist
ing data warehouse can bring the system to its knees and jeopardize the performa
nce of existing applications.
Data warehouse appliance technology can help alleviate this problem by a
llowing companies to ‘divide and conquer’ the problem. In a typical scenario, an exi
sting large-scale data warehouse can be front-ended by an appliance that stores
tens of terabytes of detailed data. Fraud detection and risk management applicat
ions can be run directly against this data. In addition, rolled up summaries can
be generated on the appliance and fed into the existing enterprise data warehou
se. This approach has two benefits: it provides a high-performance ‘sandbox’ for the
new applications, and also reduces the load on the existing environment.
What best practices should companies in the financial services sector employ whe
n choosing and deploying a BI solution? How can this help with measuring the suc
cess of a BI implementation?
It sounds simple, but it all comes back to the business requirements. O
rganizations should select and deploy no less and no more than they need to addr
ess their requirements. Instead of letting a vendor tell you that BI success fun
damentally depends on the deployment of a dozen different modules and capabiliti
es that happen to exactly match what’s on their price list, decide what your busin
ess users need and focus on that. Deliver successes early and often. This usuall
y means in smaller increments, or at the very least, ‘starting small’ from a deploym
ent perspective.
Beyond that, the nature of software evaluations has changed in light of the wide
spread acceptance of open source technology. For the first time, financial servi
ces organizations can go beyond RFP responses and demos and actually test and us
e software before they spend any money on licenses. They don’t have to wait until
after the sale when the consultant shows up to understand what the software real
ly does and doesn’t do. It’s so much less risky than the traditional demo, proof-of-
concept, and seven-figure-contract model.
The BI and data warehouse markets are in the midst of a major period of
innovation and disruption. In BI, the traditional standalone vendors are being
attacked by database vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle. In data warehousing,
incumbents such as Teradata and IBM are being disrupted by new, appliance-based
technologies. As a result, yesterday’s best practices may no longer be the most ap
propriate. Financial services companies should approach this rapidly changing si
tuation with an open mind to ensure that they take advantage of the new products
that are now available – before their competitors beat them to it.
The one issue we hear the most from companies we work with is around pe
rformance. As more companies look to provide BI applications to their employees,
and even inside customer-facing applications, high performance and availability
are crucial. BI calculations, especially those within the financial services in
dustry can be complex. Doing analysis, generating different views of information
and sharing information with others requires systems that can scale and provide
rapid response times. We recommend that companies run performance benchmarks wh
en evaluating a BI system to determine which system is best for the company’s need
s and infrastructure.
2. Manufacturing Industry on Business Intelligence:-

With increasing competition and ever more demanding customers, manufactu
ring is never easy.
Agile enterprise is always one step ahead of the competition, which cult
ivates a responsive environment and delivers major improvements in lead time, pr
oduct quality, and lower production costs. They adopt Business Intelligence (BI)
Reporting & Analytics software as part of their strategic approach to attaining
their goals. They are streamlining the information flow both across the organiz
ation and through the tiers of the supply chain to reduce cycle and manufacturin
g times and adapt quickly to market changes.
Business Intelligence (BI) helps companies in the manufacturing industry:
Increase the value of customer relationships
Respond quickly to changing markets and company sensitivities
Accelerate new product time-to-market
Reduce inventory investment
Improve planning, scheduling, and the procurement schedule
Maintain and develop quality assurance
Select and apply world-class technologies
Optimizing financial performance requires managers to have an in depth u
nderstanding of how products and customers consume resources and this is why man
ufacturers are adopting more sophisticated cost and profitability analytics - so
lutions that go beyond production and include the supply chain, support function
s and infrastructure.
With a robust and reliable understanding of costs and profitability and
their sensitivity to changes in demand, managers are able to make informed and i
ncisive decisions about strategy and tactics.
For certain manufacturers, where the product or the delivery method is t
ailored for the individual customer, it may be appropriate to use profitability
analytics at the micro-level by individual customer or individual transaction.
1KEY Business Intelligence (BI) helps manufacturers give them better vi
sibility of their financial performance and the insight and understanding to imp
rove it. These include solutions for cost and profitability analytics and for op
erational planning and budgeting.
Being able to quickly assess the impact of internal and external changes
, 1KEY BI helps such companies become more agile and better able to keep the bot
tom line on track.
With increasing competition and ever more demanding customers, manufactu
ring is never easy. Use of BI can significantly improve both the performance and
power of manufacturing reporting.
Reports generated in high data volume environments normally take a long
time to run. To speed up report generation, many systems use tools that employ a
summarization technique to reduce the amount of records by aggregating records
together with common characteristics. Problem with this technique includes inher
ent inflexibility and inability to cope with the constantly changing information
needs of manufacturing.
BI helps companies in the manufacturing industry:-
Increase the value of customer relationships
Respond quickly to changing markets and company sensitivities
Accelerate new product time-to-market
Reduce inventory investment
Improve planning, scheduling, and the procurement schedule
Maintain and develop quality assurance
Select and apply world-class technologies
Business Intelligence in practice (hotel and casino example)
In this case, let s have a look at a hotel with casino, which are generating rat
her a large income, but what should we do when we want to increase that income e
ven more?
For the beginning, a customer-loyalty program will be good. Guests and customers
who often stays in the hotel and use casino, can gain more advantage than those
who make a once-in-a-while visit, and those customers are most valuable, becaus
e most of income is generated by them, not by those wealthy prominent, but exact
ly those who
This customer-loyalty program gives the company a number of important informatio
n about their customers. Apart from clear advantages for customers – company owner
can now draw more acute image of his target clientele. Information brought to c
ompany s owner s attention was that for instance only 33% of won cash was spent
in the casino or hotel. Naturally, that percentage should be higher for the comp
any s well-being. Another fact is that only 25% of all customers generated most
of casino s revenue and they were not those expected to be „high value” customers, t
hose richest, but those middle-class ordinary men, looking for some time to rela
x, have some meal and rest during weekends.
In addition of Business Analysis to this valuable information, there is a certai
n outcome – business owner can identify his most valuable clientele and adjust any
loyalty program especially for that group of customers. It can be the same loya
lty plan but more personalized, dividing the old one into sub-groups – each for ce
rtain target group. Loyalty goal for those who provide smallest income may be „gol
d” program, those in the middle can achieve „platinum”, and those high value customers
can reach for „diamond”. Sounds very easy – and so it is. Easy, very encouraging and
most of all – profitable for both sides. To make each group eager to obtain those
loyalty levels owners has to show what advantages will customer gain. Higher – dia
mond – will have best suites available, shortest servicing time, valet parking, al
ways available seat at the restaurant and many more.
Similar advantages may be proposed to platinum card owners, but of course not al
l of them. Lastly, gold card owners will be treated with more minor advantages,
just to encourage them to become higher-level customers some day.
Business Intelligence with the help from data warehouse can even establish how
to arrange casino s interior to become more attractive. Analyses show that frequ
ent customers should be able to use instant grant when hit a losing streak – anyth
ing to entice new and regular customers to stay, have fun and spend more money.
This and even more could not been possible without gathered information through
Business Intelligence resources – setting goals, analyzing, right decisions and ac
tions. Combination of business information and analysis are „founding fathers” of ac
curate Business Intelligence investment. They are also the reason for success in
generating repeatable formula for any kind of similar projects. In this example
relationship management process was turned into a core business process – key to
retain high income and company s success. From information to decisions and acti
ons – measured, analytically rigorous and most of all – repeatable – these Business In
telligence means serve owner to achieve better performance and increase profit.
BI can be used to increase the flexibility and speed of operational reporting:-
Quickly generate established reports
Easily create ad-hoc reports
Isolate specific problems
Analyze data across multiple systems
Integrate new data sources
BI helps manufacturers give them better visibility of their financial pe
rformance and the insight and understanding to improve it. These include solutio
ns for cost and profitability analytics and solutions for operational planning a
nd budgeting. Being able to quickly assess the impact of internal and external c
hanges, BI helps such companies become more agile and better able to keep the bo
ttom line on track.
Marketplace
There are a number of business intelligence vendors, often categorized into the
remaining independent "pure-play" vendors and the consolidated "megavendors" whi
ch have entered the market through a recent trend of acquisitions in the BI indu
stry
The Top 5 Business Intelligence Tool Vendors According to IDC:-
1) Business Objects:-
Business Objects continues its reign as the leading BI tools vendor. In
2006, the
company’s software revenue in this market reached $894 million. In 2006, Business
Objects experienced a slight slowdown in its BI tools license revenue growth. Af
ter
gaining half a percentage point in share in 2005, the company gave it up in 2006
.
However, the latest information on the uptake of its Business Objects XI platfor
m
suggests a pickup in growth in the latter part of 2006 and early 2007. Business
Objects is also making an aggressive push into the midmarket, where it targets
organizations with less than $1 billion in revenue. The company’s partner network
is
one of its strongest assets, and this effort, which depends in large part on ind
irect
sales, is expected to contribute to the growth of Business Objects’ BI tools.
2) SAS:-
SAS was again the second-largest BI tools vendor, with $679 million in s
oftware
revenue and a continued steady increase in market share to 11%. SAS had the
highest growth rate among the top 3 BI tools vendors and the third-highest growt
h
rate among the top 10 vendors. SAS still derives more revenue from its advanced
analytics tools, but its effort to revamp and more aggressively market its QRA t
ools
since 2004 has paid off, with QRA’s share of SAS’ total BI tools revenue increasing
from 37% in 2004 to 44% in 2006. As the leader in the advanced analytics market,
SAS holds 31% of that market segment.
3) Cognos:-
Cognos maintained the third position in the BI tools market, with $622 m
illion in
software revenue and a 10% growth rate in 2006. It is also one of only three ven
dors
with at least a 10% share in the BI tools market. Cognos has pursued a two-prong
ed
strategy of developing and marketing BI tools and financial performance manageme
nt
applications, with recent expansion into other related performance management
markets such as workforce analytics. Nevertheless, BI tools remain Cognos’ largest
product line. In 2006, Cognos released several enhancements to its core BI platf
orm.
4) Microsoft:-
Microsoft had another strong year in the BI tools market, with the highe
st growth rate
(28%) among the top 10 vendors. IDC’s revenue allocation for Microsoft in this mar
ket
differs somewhat from other vendors in that its BI tools revenue is not only mad
e up
of standalone software that the company acquired with its 2006 purchase of
ProClarity Software but also includes what IDC calls embedded BI tools that are
bundled with Microsoft SQL Server. These database-embedded tools include SQL
Server Analysis Services and Reporting Services. As part of its broader business
analytics offerings, Microsoft also includes SQL Server Integration Services wit
hin
SQL Server. Its other related tools that the company positions within the busine
ss
analytics stack include Microsoft Excel, with specific Excel 2007 features for B
I, and
Performance Point Server, a set of performance management applications to be
released in the second half of 2007.
Microsoft’s growth in the BI tools market can be attributed to focused sal
es and
marketing efforts in recent years, accompanied by both internal R&D and
acquisitions. While, in the past, Microsoft considered BI to be functionality th
at helps
to sell databases and enhance its partners’ more extensive BI capabilities, the
company has since identified BI as a market worth pursuing directly.
5) Hyperion:-
Hyperion maintained its fifth position in the market, with a 5.2% market
share and a
12.3% growth rate. Since releasing its latest BI platform, which incorporates th
e best
of the Hyperion and former Brio components (in addition to certain new performan
ce
enhancements), the company has improved its standing in the BI tools market.
Hyperion’s other major product line includes financial performance and strategy
management applications, where company has been the market leader for years.
TEN MISTAKE TO AVOID IN A BI DELIVERY:-

Behind every success or failure are people. People are the only differentiators.
Every data warehousing (DW) and business intelligence (BI) project, whether suc
cessful or not, teaches us something. It is generally on failures that we base o
ur new success. Having said that, it’s not always necessary that you fail to learn
; you can also learn from other’s failures, 10 of which are discussed here.
Mistake 1: A non-BI background project manager managing the end-to-end delivery
of a BI initiative.
BI project management requires different techniques and methods to succe
ed. The breakthrough in work process and methodology that form the foundation of
data warehouse delivery include such concepts as iterations and phased delivery
, and from a non-data warehouse perspective it s hard to appreciate how truly re
volutionary and critical these concepts are for successful BI delivery.
A project manager who drives the complete BI initiative from end-to-end
has to at least be educated on the basics of DW and BI to be able to deliver the
BI project successfully. No matter how successful an individual maybe or how mu
ch expertise he/she has in managing non-data warehousing projects, he/she will n
ever be able to deliver the DW projects successfully if he/she does not understa
nd the phased delivery approach of data warehouse. Most often it becomes very ch
allenging to convince a non-DW project manager that the analysis and design phas
es in DW projects go side by side and not one after the other like in traditiona
l project delivery. If this important aspect is ignored, then the schedule and b
udget are going to get hit, as one always encounters changing requirements in DW
projects, whether he/she likes it or not. Additionally, the fallout would be ar
guments and politics rather than focusing on technical solutions.
Every project delivery requires a methodology, which a project manager u
ses to deliver the project successfully. A project manager who by definition pla
ns, controls and reviews all project activities must understand that a data ware
housing project delivery cannot use the traditional “waterfall” methodology. The dat
a warehouse methodology must take into account the fact that the delivery of BI
projects happens in iterations. The success of data warehousing projects is in i
ts phased approach.
A project manager who is not knowledgeable about BI is not able to make
appropriate staffing selections for his team. The team also suffers due to lack
of guidance from the leadership role as much as the goal of the BI initiative wo
uld suffer because of the management.
Mistake 2: Being in a “pleasing” mode with the clients rather than concentrating on
feasibility and value-add from the BI project.
The client sponsoring the DW project and end users have to accept the solution w
hich is being built by the implementation team; there is no doubt about this fac
t. At the end of the day, the solution being built has to be liked and should de
monstrate value-add to the clients. The time and effort spent on a particular in
itiative should demonstrate value for money. But a word of caution. In this proc
ess, the implementation team, which is most often a service provider company off
ering offshore support as well, should not get into the “pleasing” mode with the cli
ents and users. It might not be practically possible to implement the client’s ent
ire wish list. This should be communicated in a strong but polite way. The requi
rements driving the DW initiative should be validated very critically so that th
e best solution can be built. What cannot be done should be communicated as clea
rly as you communicate what can be done. Clients will definitely appreciate and
welcome this kind of assessment in the initial stages of a project rather than g
iving explanations on architecture and infrastructure just before production or
in use or acceptance testing when it’s too late.
Mistake 3: Assuming service provider companies own everything about the successf
ul delivery of the project.
This is yet another critical factor for a successful BI delivery. A serv
ice provider who has signed a contract to put the BI project into production def
initely has ownership on the delivery. That being said, the delivery cannot be a
success without active participation from the client and end users having in ea
ch stage and phase of the entire lifecycle. Service providers are specialized co
nsultants who can give you options and best practices, much like a professional
home decorator consultant. Because it’s your home, you will have to give the consu
ltant your input and exact specifications. If this does not happen, then the dec
orator will decorate the home according to his assumptions of your likes and dis
likes, which you may or may not approve of. And if this happens at the last minu
te, then not only will you end up paying for the work that has already been done
, but you will also invest more time and money on rework. Without active and ade
quate client involvement at every phase, no BI delivery can ever have an assured
success.
Mistake 4: Bringing in a solution architect halfway into the project and assumin
g that he/she is going to magically fulfill all the deficiencies.
This is the most common scenario one sees in most of the BI projects. Wh
en things are not happening the way they should, the management thinks the immed
iate remedy is to get a solution architect. What one has to understand is that a
solution architect cannot just walk in and wield a magic wand to set things rig
ht. The solution architect’s experience will determine how soon he/she can start d
elivering the value-adds. Also, the time at which you bring in the solution arch
itect is a driving factor for success. Often when it comes to BI architecture, b
usiness users are from Mars and IT people are from Venus. To get them to a commo
n platform is in itself a premium skill for a solution architect.
Every BI delivery must have a solution architect with expertise and wide
skills in DW and BI. This is vital, as they bring a wealth of knowledge from re
ference architectures and similar implementations with them. This “ready-recon” even
tually reduces the cost and time to implement technology solutions.
The best time to start their involvement is from the analysis stage itse
lf. If not then, do it at least before you spend a large amount of time explorin
g technology options and assessing the appropriate solutions. Carefully set expe
ctations of the value a solution architect would deliver. If you decide to engag
e a solution architect when your data model is near completion and expect the ar
chitect to do magic to make a performance-tuned and efficient design, it might b
e over expecting, as things would have already crossed certain stages involving
a good amount of time and cost. At that stage, again the issue resolution become
s more political than technical.
Mistake 5: Lack of the right people with the right skills evaluating BI tools f
or the implementation.
When a new BI tool is being evaluated, a big crowd of stakeholders is often invo
lved in the evaluation. This might include people who are directly or indirectly
associated with the BI initiative for which the tool is being evaluated. If a f
ormal process is not followed, it might lead to various arguments and different
loops without ever closing the evaluation. Each individual will come up with the
ir own comments and wishes, and this will lead to a laundry list of features exp
ected from the tool. Any BI tool is just a medium helping to deliver a definitiv
e functionality. But what makes the initiative a success is the right people sel
ecting right kind of tool to deliver the right functionality.
Key people evaluating the BI tool should clearly understand that each BI
tool is pretty much designed for some kind of defined and specific purpose. No
tool as such is good or bad. It’s the decision-makers, not the tools themselves th
at make an implementation a success. Imagine if a director whose area of experti
se his whole career has been in infrastructure domain is given the authority to
make the decision on an analytic tool. You guessed right… It would be a disaster.
The BI tool evaluation team must include a combination of the BI team, B
I solution architect, users and the procurement team. Input from the team should
be considered and analyzed to a specified extent to avoid analysis paralysis on
the evaluation. If the right people keep their expectations straight, the evalu
ation process should be relatively smooth. The important factor to consider whil
e evaluating is what exactly the problem statement is. Answer questions like: Is
the tool expected to cater to a multiterabyte data warehouse, or it’s less than a
terabyte? This will be a big driving factor as your choice of tools will be dep
endent on this. You don’t need that comes at a premium price to be catering a <1TB
data warehouse. In a similar way, it might be totally inappropriate to evaluate
a master data management (MDM) tool when your first data warehouse is still bei
ng built.
Mistake 6: Business users driving the data modeling.
This could be one of the biggest mistakes which can cause the complete B
I initiative to fail. The data model is the heart of the data warehouse, which w
ill determine all other aspects such as performance, easy reporting, scalability
etc. There is no doubt that active participation of business users in doing da
ta modeling is required, but the modeling should be done by data modelers who sp
ecialize in data modeling and dimensional modeling. Business users have to defin
e and explore the links and dependencies between various business areas or subje
ct areas. Business users have complete ownership of understanding the data. With
this knowledge and taking input data, modelers have to define the most appropri
ate way of placing each measure and dimension of the subject areas in a star sch
ema or a customized schema, whichever is appropriate for that environment. In th
is exercise, data modelers have to take the ownership of designing the schema an
d be very careful in defining things even if that means being hard sometimes. Th
ey have to be careful of a situation which I once faced. A business user was pes
tering me to define a data field called “premium” in investment banking as a dimensi
on. This field was holding currency data. It took two full days for me to explai
n and convince the user why that field would not qualify as dimension and should
be actually a measure.
By getting influenced by business users, data modelers easily fall into
a pleasing mode. Then they are most likely to deviate from the modeling rules, w
hich down the line, will lead to lot of rework and remodeling.
Mistake 7: Counting on your vendor to deliver all that they represented in the p
resentation.
Avoid overdependence on vendor’s claims about their product and its perfor
mance. Everyone wants to be the best when they are making a presentation about t
heir products. The value and performance of the products always look promising;
they just might be. But one must be careful to do one’s own homework about the pro
duct rather than just blindly accepting vendor presentations and claims. The key
here is that tools are not the only critical success factors for a successful d
ata warehouse. There may be instances where the capabilities being evaluated fro
m the tool are not available in the current release; however, the vendor might s
howcase that they’re been planned in the next release. Making decisions based on t
hese kinds of assumptions is very risky for the simple reason that you are build
ing a thorough dependency on the delivery of a separate entity over which you ha
ve no control. In making a decision about a tool on which you are spending a for
tune, collect references from the vendor and network with them to see how the pr
oduct has been doing in a similar environment. You should leverage references wh
ere work has already been completed. Apart from the references, it might also be
worthwhile to consider the analysis of those products done by research firms li
ke Gartner and Forrester.
Mistake 8: Assuming data quality can be managed “somehow.”
As we speak about the maturity of the data warehouse today, there is sti
ll a lot to be explored and learned about the severity of the data quality probl
em. Assuming data quality can somehow be taken care of might lead to lot of inco
nsistencies in the downstream systems. The quality of the data has to be checked
and cleansed at the source or at least before it enters the data warehouse. It
is inappropriate to do any quality checks in the data warehouse itself.
Companies depend heavily on information to make decisions regarding profits, eff
ective operation and customer satisfaction. Inaccuracy and inconsistency in the
data will hinder the company’s ability to perform competitively. An effective data
quality program is almost a must in these maturing systems. It would allow comp
anies to analyze better and make more meaningful decisions.
Mistake 9: Over dependency on contractors and ignoring the need to build BI capa
bilities in house.
Hiring contractors for specialty skills has benefited data warehouse del
ivery within organizations. However, contractors may benefit specific projects,
but not on an ongoing basis. If there is over dependency on the contractors who
come in, do good work and leave upon delivery, they not only take their deep kno
wledge with them but also are not available for any clarifications and fixes if
a need arises. Don’t treat contractors as employees. You should draw a very clear
line for what contractors can help with and what stays internal.
Contractors can very easily be caught up in office politics. This is even truer
if your contractors are coming from a specific software vendor. It is practicall
y not possible for them to be unbiased about their products. This is where a kno
wledgeable in-house person with BI skills is able to evaluate and advise the cli
ents if anything is derailing or if the technology is just not fit for their env
ironment.
Mistake 10: Assuming you are done once the data warehouse project is in producti
on.
As the nature of data warehouse is change and becoming more and more pro
ductive with iterations, so is the delivery. Once the project is in production,
you have just completed a phase - you are still not done. You have a new world t
o explore and make continuously improve that application. The investments in dat
a warehousing projects are always shared between the actual delivery and researc
h.
With the successful completion of the implementation phase, you should research
what other systems can benefit from it and which other systems can be integrated
so that you get the best value and results. This keeps on going, both from the
point of view of improvement of the existing phase and of initiating new phases.
THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE:-

A 2009 Gartner paper predicted these developments in the business intelligence m
arket.
Because of lack of information, processes, and tools, through 2012, more than 35
percent of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightfu
l decisions about significant changes in their business and markets.
By 2012, business units will control at least 40 percent of the total budget for
business intelligence.
By 2010, 20 per cent of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic ap
plication delivered via software as a service as a standard component of their b
usiness intelligence portfolio.
In 2009, collaborative decision making will emerge as a new product category tha
t combines social software with business intelligence platform capabilities.
By 2012, one-third of analytic applications applied to business processes will b
e delivered through coarse-grained application mashups.
Conclusion
Business intelligence play an increasingly critical role in tomorrow’s ever faster
, ever more global, every more competitive business environment. To meet those n
eeds, future BI systems must be real-time/near-real-time, proactive and pervasiv
e. Users are increasingly demanding those capabilities and software vendors have
begun to respond. We see a bright future emerging for business intelligence.

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INDEX

Decision support system (DSS).

3) Business intelligence and data warehousing

2.3 Architecture description

- Operational Database / External Database Layer

2) Information Access Layer

3) Data Access Layer

4) Data Directory (Metadata) Layer

7) Data Warehouse (Physical) Layer

The Data Warehouse Architecture in Figure 1 is simply a framework for understand

Business benefits of data warehousing ?

1. Immediate information delivery

3. Future vision from historical trends

Semi-structured or unstructured data

Prioritization of business intelligence projects

2. Manufacturing Industry on Business Intelligence:-

TEN MISTAKE TO AVOID IN A BI DELIVERY:-

THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE:-

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