Featured White Papers

Addressing the Destructive Business Impact of Data Performance Problems

Accelerate your current data integration environment and eliminate the processing bottlenecks and data latencies caused by exponentially growing data and shortened operational timeframes. This white paper offers up a cost-effective, scalable and efficient alternative to traditional and costly Band-aids like adding expensive hardware, custom-coding, and the “rip-and-replace” approach. Learn how to optimize your DI environment and: · Increase revenue opportunities · Decrease costs · Improve decision-making · Secure customer retention

Business Drivers and Enabling Technologies for Clickstream Data Warehouse Initiatives

Dramatically reducing the time, cost and effort required for integrating large amounts of web data can radically simplify an organization’s ability to analyze online visitor behavior via a clickstream data warehouse (CDW). Learn how to optimize your CDW and: · Gain greater insight into online customer behavior · Make more strategic decisions based on actionable data · Increase margins, lower costs and improve bottom line · Increase staff productivity

Agile Corporate Management

Find out how companies have leveraged Business Intelligence to become more agile. Experience has shown that while information is often available, it has not been placed in the context of the businesses processes and has therefore been of only limited use to corporate management. Performance Management is a business model that allows a company to continuously align corporate goals with business processes and keep them consistent. When used as a comprehensive solution with BI, it can facilitate agile corporate management.

AsterData nCluster: A New Architecture of Data Analytics

Aster Data (www.asterdata.com) has developed and brought to market Aster Data nCluster, a new platform for data analytics. Based on the groundbreaking research of three Stanford doctoral students in computer science, nCluster features an innovative shared nothing, massively parallel architecture while running on low priced, commodity hardware. Read this Richard Winter whitepaper that details what you need to consider when evaluating a data warehouse architecture to enable advanced analytics on massive data sets.

Common Models in SOA: Tackling the Data Integration Problem

Creating an SOA without a data integration strategy to address semantic challenges will limit an SOA project at best, and doom it to failure at worst. Creating a common model ensures that all the data exchanged between the various systems and services within the SOA is consistent. This approach can significantly reduce SOA project timescales, lower development costs and avoid problems associated with poor data quality. This paper, written by Dave Hollander, Mile High XML, presents ideas on how you can improve operational responsiveness by tackling data integration problems head on.

High Value Business Intelligence on a Budget

Whether you’re an IT leader or finance executive seeking high ROI business process improvement, you can deploy a cost-efficient Business Intelligence solution that will improve the way your organization uses information, collaborates and make decisions. Learn how Blastrac built a collaborative dashboard and reporting environment for less than 20% the cost and time of traditional BI. In this whitepaper you'll learn: * The 7 proven principles of implementing and deploying low-cost, high-ROI BI * How Blastrac delivered results within days and a full-scale solution within weeks * Why your data infrastructure and software toolset drive user satisfaction Author: Elissa Fink, VP Marketing, Tableau Software

Guided and Open-ended Analytics: Serving the Real Users of BI

Measuring performance, investigating variances, looking over the horizon and making plans accordingly are fundamental activities in a knowledge-based economy. The starting point is acquiring a deeper understanding of the causes and effects of things, both internal and external, and having it spread throughout the organization. To do this requires, among other things, tools that provide the promise of self service to evaluate, investigate and share. However, not everyone is capable or is interested in building models or maintaining analytical applications they’ve developed. Getting the job done, then, requires a mix of tools and approaches. For those who have an analytical perspective but not a technical one, some sort of guided analytics through data and models is called for. What are currently referred to as dashboards represent a good compromise of function and aesthetics. A smaller constituency desires to not only create analyses, but to share them with those who are not so inclined. This sort of open-ended analytics allows an analyst (or really anyone with the understanding of the data and relationships in the organization) to author their own analytical scenarios for themselves or for sharing with others. The focus of this paper is to: * describe the use of these tools from a cognitive point of view, * examine the differences between guided analytics and open-ended analytics, * and propose some best practices for deployment and use. Author: Neil Raden, Founder, Hired Brains

Data Quality for Project Leaders

The project leader can play a critical role in ensuring a successful data migration. This guidebook by Dylan Jones of Data Quality Pro examines exactly what responsibilities and activities project leaders should fulfill and supplies details for these responsibilities, including sections on essential activities such as planning, forecasting, risk management, team selection, communication and collaboration.

Data Quality and Cost Reduction

This paper by David Loshin of Knowledge Integrity reviews aspects of cost reduction and examines some typical financial accounting expense categories. Selecting some specific examples and assessing their reliance on high-quality data, Loshin looks at how data quality services can be applied in those examples to reduce expenses, and examines the potential for applying data quality management as a way to manage and reduce organizational expenses.

De-Risking Data Migration: The Case for Data Quality Technology

This white paper by Dylan Jones provides practical advice that will help the reader understand the pivotal role data quality technology must play in a data migration. Jones describes five distinct implementations of data quality technology in detail, each one providing clear evidence for the need to - and the benefits of - adopting the right data quality approach in data migration projects.

When Data Governance Turns Bureaucratic: How Data Governance Police Can Constrain the Value of Your Master Data Management

Over the past several years, we’ve seen rapid adoption of Master Data Management in a variety of industries offering a “single source of truth” across the enterprise. Most of these implementations use a “reactive” style of data governance… Learn how “reactive” data governance falls short and why leading organizations are using a “proactive” approach -- includes case study and migration questionnaire.

The Flawed Vision of Customer Data Integration – How to Get it Right the First Time

The initial goal of Customer Data Integration (CDI) was to create the most reliable customer data for the entire company. We now know that the golden opportunity for CDI lies within Master Data Management and the ability to uncover interactions and understand the relationships that companies have with their customers.

Analyst Paper: Claudia Imhoff Operational BI: Innovative Analytics

This white paper explores Operational Business Intelligence beyond traditional data warehousing by exploring new innovative analytics capabilities and opportunities. Operational BI has a specific purpose in enterprises. First it enables more informed business decisions by directly supporting specific business processes and activities. Second it supports faster business decisions by seamlessly integrating BI with business processes to create a closed-loop decision-making environment. Finally operational BI provides a more dynamic business environment where the business can learn, adapt, and evolve based on analysis of its operational business performance.

Delivering Trusted Information with IBM InfoSphere Foundation Tools

Every organization—regardless of size—is trying to be more adaptive by focusing on using information to understand customers, enter new markets and operate with more flexibility and efficiency. But nurturing information as a strategic asset is easier said than done. Point solutions, deployed to handle specific tasks, do not account for the need to connect across enterprise departments, leaving critical information stranded in department silos. IT organizations are recognizing that the ability to access and integrate data from existing systems to gain competitive advantage must be one of their core competencies in order to be successful in meeting business objectives. This white paper provides an overview of how the IBM® InfoSphere™ Foundation Tools, the broader IBM InfoSphere software portfolio and the IBM Industry Models provide organizations with the open tools and consistent processes to design and build optimized information architectures to deliver trusted information.

IBM Master Data Management Strategy- Leveraging critical data to accomplish strategic business objectives

This white paper provides an overview of IBM's Master Data Management strategy. It describes IBM’s Multiform MDM strategy as well as the value propositions of its two MDM offerings, InfoSphere MDM Server and InfoSphere MDM Server for PIM. Use cases are included that describe when each of these products might be used as stand-alone MDM solutions as well as when they work together to provide a more comprehensive MDM strategy for IBM customers.

Best Practices for a Data Warehouse on Oracle Database 11g

Increasingly companies are recognizing the value of an enterprise data warehouse (EDW). A true EDW provides a single 360-degree view of the business and a powerful platform for a wide spectrum of business intelligence tasks ranging from predictive analysis to near real-time strategic and tactical decision support throughout the organization. In order to ensure the EDW will get the optimal performance and will scale as your data set grows you need to get three fundamental things correct: the hardware configuration, the data model and the data loading process. By designing these three cornerstones correctly, you can seamlessly scale out your EDW without having to constantly tune or tweak the system. The paper is divided into four sections: • The first section deals with the key aspects of configuring your hardware platform of choice to ensure optimal performance. • The second briefly describes the two fundamental logical models used for database warehouses. • The third outlines how to implement the physical model for these logical models in the most optimal manner in an Oracle database. • Finally the fourth section covers system management techniques including workload management and database configuration.

Journal of Management Excellence - Introducing Management Excellence

Being smart, agile and aligned are not characteristics of operational excellence, but define what we call management excellence. Management makes the difference, and enterprise performance management (EPM) should be the enabler. Unfortunately, a recent global study from Cranfield School of Management found that organizations are too internally focused and did not use sufficient external information or benchmarking. A better understanding of management processes is needed. That is why we introduced our view on the management process: strategy-to-success. Read this whitepaper to learn more.

Management Excellence Leveraging Tech & Techniques

Extending operational excellence to management excellence is the next strategic imperative for organizations of all sizes, in every market around the world. Oracle's strategy-to-success framework provides a path for companies to become smart, agile, and aligned while Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) technologies provide the tools. One in a series of white papers about management excellence, this white paper describes the techniques and technologies that organizations should master on their way to management excellence.

Sustainability Matters: Why—and how—business is widening its focus to consider the needs of all stakeholders

This white paper highlights how organizations can derive strategic advantage by embracing sustainability as part of their business. There are three ways in which companies can embrace sustainability: - Through philanthropy - As part of a risk management strategy - By integrating sustainable practices into the business model Benefits of becoming a sustainable company include: - Cost savings by limiting waste and consumption of natural resources - New business opportunities through environmentally-friendly product innovations - Enhanced brand value and reputation with customers and partners, etc.

Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server and Database Machine

Businesses today need a unified database platform for consolidating all applications onto one common infrastructure. Whether supporting an OLTP, data warehousing or mixed workload, a common infrastructure delivers efficiencies critical in today’s cost-conscious data centers. This whitepaper outlines how Oracle Exadata and the Sun Oracle Database Machine provide a unified database platform that accelerates database performance allowing you to be more productive; easily scales to handle incremental growth; and delivers mission-critical data availability and protection.

Oracle Database 11g for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence

Businesses now demand more information, they want it sooner, and they are delivering more analytics to an ever-widening set of users and applications. The sizes of data warehouses are growing exponentially and more business processes are becoming automated, while more data is collected on more granular levels. This white paper provides an overview of Oracle's capabilities for data warehousing, and discusses the key features and technologies by which Oracle-based business intelligence and data warehouse systems easily integrate information, perform fast queries, scale to very large data volumes and analyze any data.

Partitioning with Oracle Database 11g Release 2

Database partitioning can greatly enhance the manageability, performance, and availability of almost any database application. Since partitioning is transparent to the application, it can be easily implemented for any kind of application because no costly and time-consuming application changes are required. Read this white paper to learn about the latest partitioning techniques, enhanced scalability, and extended manageability capabilities available in Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

Advanced Compression with Oracle Database 11g Release 2

Advanced Compression with Database 11g Release 2 helps you manage more data in a cost-effective manner. With data volumes, on average, tripling every two years, Oracle Advanced Compression delivers compression rates of 2-4x across all types of data and applications. Read this white paper to learn more about how Oracle Advanced Compression can help you reduce the disk space and costs of managing large data volumes.

Lower IT Costs with Oracle Database 11g Release 2

Organizations across the world are using grid computing with Oracle to make the most of their IT resources. And now, Oracle is making grid computing even more accessible. Learn how you can transform your business, budgets, and service levels with Oracle Database 11g Release 2. You’ll discover how its new options and features can help you reduce server and storage costs, improve query performance, and ensure availability during database application upgrades.

Automating the Generation and Secure Distribution of Excel Reports

Microsoft Excel is one of the most commonly used tools for reporting, analysis and 'what if' scenarios, with over 250 million users worldwide. This paper will discuss the steps involved in understanding the requirements for an automated solution. It will also introduce a solution for automating the generation and secure distribution of spreadsheet reports.

Enhance Your Business Banking Client Relationships with Rich Information Application Technologies

Web 2.0 applications have forever changed the way that consumers interact with financial firms and those experiences have raised their expectations for online banking. Banks can now deliver Rich Internet Applications that automate business processes while providing a user experience that elicits real enthusiasm in the marketplace.

Performance Management Applications Overview

Hyperion performance management applications deliver a wide range of Business benefits as well as IT benefits. This overview outline key benefits which include: - Improved performance across the enterprise - Delivery of predictable results - Improved confidence and compliance - Increased business velocity - Improved user productivity and lover training costs - Reduced cost of ownership

Maximizing Operational Efficiency Oracle BI Apps

Global competition and pricing pressures place an extraordinary demand on organizations to strive for new levels of efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness. Business intelligence applications can enable companies to respond effectively within a volatile market while maintaining operational efficiency, and can mean the difference between market leadership and struggle for survival. This technology brief highlights how BI applications can integrate information across data sources and departments, provide a single, integrated view of customer and enterprise information, and enable greater alignment of decisions and execution to drive higher customer profitability and share of wallet.

Maximizing Customer Value with Oracle Business Intelligence Applications

The process of finding, acquiring, and supporting customers is arguably the most important and strategic business activity within an organization. Business intelligence applications can enable organizations to maximize the value of each customer relationship and interaction, growing revenues and profits while optimizing the efficiency of customer-facing processes. This technology brief highlights how BI applications can integrate information across data sources and departments, provide a single, integrated view of customer and enterprise information, and enable greater alignment of decisions and execution to drive higher customer profitability and share of wallet.

Increasing Customer Experience via Rich Information Applications

This white paper shares key points and recommendations from leading analysts such as Forrester to assist organizations in leveraging RIAs to enhance online user experience.

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