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DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
May 20, 2007 -- Vol. 8, No. 10
A Free Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
approximately 2000 Subscribers
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Check the case by F. Adam and E. Doyle "Enterprise
Resource Planning at Topps Ireland Ltd." at DSSResources.COM
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Featured:
* Ask Dan: Who are the pioneers in the field of computerized
decision support?
* Report from Midwest AIS in Springfield
* DSS Conferences
* What's New at DSSResources.COM
* DSS News Releases
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Ask Dan!
Who are the pioneers in the field of computerized decision support?
by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com
On April 7, 2007, we started a new feature at DSSResources.com
called "Reflections of Decision Support Pioneers" and posted the
initial reflections interview with Paul Gray. DSS pioneers are
individuals who have made major intellectual contributions to our
understanding of how, what, why, and when computing and information
technologies and software are and should be used to aid, assist,
support and even replace people in decision making activities,
processes, and tasks. The structured interviews help capture the
varied history of computerized decision support.
Who are these pioneers? Our initial Decision Support Pioneers page
with photos and short biographical sketches was posted at
DSSResources.com on September 29, 2006. The URL is
http://dssresources.com/history/pioneers/pioneerslist.html
The goal of the Decision Support Pioneers page is to recognize those
individuals who made major contributions to the study and practice of
using computers to support decision making. These influential people
developed this applied research area and demonstrated how information
technology could be used to support decision making. Identifying these
individuals helps place the study of and practice of building decision
support systems in an historical context. The reflections capture the
past and help guide the future of computerized decision support.
The initial Decision Support Pioneers list includes 27 individuals:
Steven L. Alter, Eric D. Carlson, James F. Courtney, George B.
Dantzig, Gerardine DeSanctis, Douglas C. Engelbart, Jay W. Forrester,
Paul Gray, Richard Hackathorn, Clyde W. Holsapple, Dustin Huntington,
William H. Inmon, Peter G. W. Keen, Ralph Kimball, Michel R. Klein,
Oleg I. Larichev, John D. C. Little, Andrew M. McCosh, Jay F.
Nunamaker, Michael S. Scott Morton, Herbert A. Simon, Ralph H.
Sprague, Jr., Efraim Turban, Murray Turoff, Gerald R. Wagner, Hugh J.
Watson, and Andrew B. Whinston. We are soliciting nominations of
others who should be added to the Decision Support Pioneers page. Send
nominations to me, Daniel.Power@dssresources.com
.
I know many of the pioneers in the Decision Support field and I hope
to receive "Reflections" interviews from all of the pioneers who can
contribute. The interviews will be posted at DSSResources.com and the
plan is that eventually these reflections will be included in a book
(possibly in the Springer Integrated Series in Information Systems).
The idea is to have everyone associated with innovation in decision
support research and technologies respond to the "same" 5 structured
questions and then answer a more open-ended final question.
The initial response to my email requests for "reflections" has been
very positive. Both Jim Courtney and Bill Inmon have sent responses.
After an interview is formatted and finalized, it will be posted at
DSSResources.com -- so periodically check the "What's New" list.
Also, I've had positive email responses from Steven Alter, Richard
Hackathorn, Michel Klein, Michael S. Scott Morton, Ralph Sprague, and
Hugh Watson. Michael Scott Morton commented "Sounds like a great idea
and a useful piece of history." Richard Hackathorn replied "This is
awesome!" So far I have not received any negative responses to my
email requests.
In today's Ask Dan column, I want to recognize four colleagues who
made pioneering contributions related to computerized decision support
and who have died in recent years.
George Bernard Dantzig (November 8, 1914 – May 13, 2005)
devised the simplex algorithm and is considered the "father of linear
programming". He earned bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics
from the University of Maryland in 1936, his master's degree in
mathematics from the University of Michigan, and his Ph.D. from UC
Berkeley in 1946. In 1952, he became a research mathematician at the
RAND Corporation, where he began implementing linear programming on
its computers. He taught at Stanford until his retirement in the
1990s.
Gerardine DeSanctis (January 5, 1954 - August 16, 2005) was the
Thomas F. Keller Professor of Business Administration at Duke
University. Previously she taught at the University of Minnesota. Her
research focused on group decision support systems, learning in
distributed teams and online communities. She received a Ph.D. from
Texas Tech University. Her article with Brent Gallupe titled "A
foundation for the study of group decision support systems"
(Management Science, May 1987) is a classic.
Oleg Ivanovich Larichev (September 20, 1934 — January 19,
2003) worked in the Institute for Systems Studies, USSR Academy of
Sciences (Moscow) beginning in 1976. He graduated in 1958 from Moscow
State Technical University with the specialty of technical
cybernetics. In 1994, Oleg was awarded the Gold Medal of the
International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making. In 1997,
he was elected as Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He
published more than 200 papers (80 papers in English) and 8 Books.
Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was
an innovative thinker whose research helped found several research
domains including Artificial Intelligence, information processing,
decision-making, decision support, problem-solving, attention
economics, organization theory, complex systems, and computer
simulation. He coined the terms bounded rationality and satisficing.
Simon received both his B.A. (1936) and his Ph.D. (1943) in political
science, from the University of Chicago. His book Administrative
Behavior was based on his doctoral dissertation and has had a major
influence on both researchers and practitioners.
Thanks to all of the Decision Support pioneers. As always I
appreciate your comments, questions and suggestions.
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Alan See, Senior Vice President, Business Intelligence Research
at AberdeenGroup, is seeking participants for a study on the
convergence of unstructured and structured information. He has
a short deadline and wants input. This is a 5 – 10 minute
survey. People who complete the survey will receive a complimentary
copy of the final report ($399 value). Aberdeen keeps all survey
respondents strictly confidential. To begin taking the short survey
use the following link: ( http://www.aberdeen.com/survey/bi-unstr/ )
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Trip Report
Midwest AIS in Springfield
by Dan Power
MWAIS was held at University of Illinois - Springfield May 18-19,
2007. On Thursday the 17th, I drove south east from Cedar Falls, Iowa
five hours to Springfield, Illinois. Ron Swift, Teradata presented a
workshop Friday morning on “Data Warehousing Applications in
Private and Public Sector Organizations”. A mix of academics and
industry participants attended his fast paced, high content session.
Ron then gave the conference industry keynote "The Future of
Information Technology for Transforming Organizations using 'Active
(Real-time) Decision-Making'". Ron has become a friend over the years
and as President of MWAIS I helped arrange his participation. The
feedback I received was all positive. Great job Ron and thanks.
Starting at 2:15, the conference was divided into various panel and
paper presentation sessions. The schedule is online at
http://mis.uis.edu/MWAIS2007/schedule.htm . I attended sessions in
every time slot and found them useful. We discussed podcasting, video
conferencing, systems analysis, distance learning in MIS, ecommerce
and wireless networking. The social event at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Museum was relaxed, the food was good and the museum has
outstanding high technology and low technology exhibits. The
“Ghosts of the Library” in The Holavision® Theater was
both informative and a good example of mixing live and digitized
material in a complex presentation. Saturday's key note by Blake Ives
showcased the potential of Second Life (http://secondlife.com). Blake
is often on the bleeding/leading edge and he argued persuasively that
we all need to learn more about on-line digital worlds. I'll be
creating my avatar and joining a conference on Blake's island in the
near future. Thanks Blake.
Deepak Khazanchi, University of Nebraska at Omaha, became President
of MWAIS at the Saturday business meeting and I moved into the role of
Past President. We elected Simha Magal, Grand Valley State University,
as "President-elect" and Amit Deokar, Dakota State, as secretary.
I chaired the closing panel about how IT is transforming the U.S.
Heartland (aka Midwest USA). I reviewed the 25 impacts from my column
of February 11, 2007 (DSS News Vol. 8, No. 3). The consensus was that
IT is definitely causing changes, but there was concern about the
digital divide between those who have resources and access and those
who don't. Rassule Haddidi, conference co-chair was especially
concerned about this problem. "Ram" Ramaprasad, program co-chair, was
concerned that Information Systems faculty aren't involved enough in
creating and facilitating the transformation that is occurring. At the
end of the panel session I drove home. Physical meetings have many
plusses, but by the time I got home I was wishing MWAIS had been held
in Second Life.
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Link to Dan Power: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danpower
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DSS Conferences
1. AMCIS 2007, Americas Conference on Information Systems,
Keystone, CO USA, August 9-12, 2007. SIG DSS mini-tracks.
Check http://www.biz.colostate.edu/amcis07/ .
2. DaWaK 2007, 9th International Conference on Data
Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, Regensburg, Germany,
September 3-7, 2007. Check http://www.dexa.org/ .
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Purchase Dan Power's DSS FAQ book
83 frequently asked questions about computerized DSS
http://dssresources.com/dssbookstore/power2005.html
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What's New at DSSResources.COM
05/16/2007 Posted case by F. Adam and E. Doyle, "Enterprise Resource
Planning at Topps Ireland Ltd.," Check the cases page.
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DSS News Releases - May 7 to May 17, 2007
Read them at DSSResources.COM and search the DSS News Archive
05/17/2007 ‘Powered by Cognos’ solutions drive adoption
of performance management across global markets.
05/16/2007 Fair Isaac focuses on advancing clients’ success
with Enterprise Decision Management at InterACT 07.
05/15/2007 Kalido powers business intelligence with Kalido Universal
Information Director™.
05/14/2007 Teksouth adds query analysis to Entellicache, giving
companies ability to 'deep dive' into historical data.
05/10/2007 Blaser Swisslube AG utilizes process visualization to
save money and protect the environment.
05/10/2007 Primavera® launches new solution for integration of
project management and SAP®.
05/09/2007 Oracle previews enhanced Java tools for developing rich
Internet applications; updates Java Application Server.
05/09/2007 Microsoft President Jeff Raikes declares, 'It's a New Day
for Business Intelligence'.
05/09/2007 TIBCO named one of the hottest companies of 2007 by
Start-IT Magazine.
05/09/2007 The Hillman Group’s “killer” business
intelligence application from Information Builders yields $131,000
savings in two months.
05/08/2007 Sun radically simplifies content authoring - previews
JavaFX Script.
05/08/2007 Business mobility: the new competitive mandate, according
to global survey.
05/08/2007 Teradata and DFA Capital Management Inc. announce
partnership to provide insurance companies with enterprise risk and
capital management solution.
05/08/2007 MapInfo Professional 9.0 delivers powerful data access
and analysis capability.
05/07/2007 TVG Marketing Research & Consulting unveils three
decision support products.
05/07/2007 Park City Group enables collaborative, online category
management for retailers and suppliers with WebScoreTracker.
05/07/2007 Colleges, Universities nationwide enrolling in the power
of predictive analytics.
05/07/2007 iDashboards manufactures success at AET Films.
05/07/2007 Fleet Management Solutions deploys Iridium(R)-based asset
tracking, monitoring and management system.
05/07/2007 Dell joins Microsoft and Novell interoperability
collaboration.
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Please tell your DSS friends about DSSResources.COM
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DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2007 by D. J. Power. Please send your
questions to daniel.power@dssresources.com
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