************************************************************ DSS News by D. J. Power July 15, 2001 -- Vol. 2, No. 15 A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM ************************************************************ Check the "For Developers" page at http://dssresources.com ************************************************************ Featured: * DSS Wisdom * Ask Dan! -- Are Decision Support Systems really analytic applications or are analytic applications really Decision Support Systems? * What's New at DSSResources.COM * DSS News Stories ************************************************************ Each week in the summer, we have about 2700 unique visitors at DSSResources.COM. Also, this newsletter has almost 600 subscribers from 50 countries. Please forward this newsletter to people interested in Decision Support Systems or suggest they visit DSSResources.COM and subscribe. ************************************************************ DSS Wisdom According to Bertrand Russell (1941), "There are very definite limits, to my mind, within which rationality should be confined; some of the most important departments of life are ruined by the invasion of reason ... I believe there is in each of us a certain energy which must find vent in actions not inspired by reason, but may find vent in art, in passionate love, or in passionate hate, according to circumstances. (pps. 11-12)" Russell, B. Let the People Think: A Selection of Essays. London: Watts & Co., 1941. ************************************************************ IFIP WG 8.3 Conference on Decision Support Systems (DSS), Decision Support in the Internet Age, Cork, Ireland, July 4-7, 2002. Paper submissions due November 30, 2001. Check http://afis.ucc.ie/dsiage2002/. ************************************************************ Ask Dan! Are Decision Support Systems really analytic applications or are analytic applications really Decision Support Systems? Henry Morris, VP for Applications and Information Access at IDC, claims he coined the term "analytic applications" in 1997. In an article titled "Trends in Analytic Applications", published in DM Review in April 2001, Morris argues an analytic application must meet each of the following three conditions: 1) provide process support, it structures and automates a group of tasks pertaining to the review and optimization of business operations or the discovery and development of new business; 2) have separation of function, "the application can function independently of an organization's core transactional applications, yet it can be dependent on such applications for data and might send results back to these applications"; and 3) use time-oriented, integrated data from multiple sources. Supposedly, three major types of analytic applications meet these criteria: Financial/Business Performance Management, Operations/Production, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Morris notes that for an analytical application "technical specialists build the simulation model using sophisticated tools. Decision-makers then apply the model, gauging the probable impact of a planned course of action." Morris notes "Analytic applications will co-exist with business intelligence tools." He also claims "Analytic applications are specialized, supporting a structured business process, while business intelligence tools are generic, supporting ad hoc user inquiries." It seems we've been building analytic applications for a long time. The term analytic applications seems to refer to a broad generic set of information systems that are generally model-driven decision support applications. There certainly are some decision support applications that focus on decision tasks other than those associated with supporting a structured business process. For example, DSS can support collaboration, communication and information retrieval. Morris also tells us the DSS that emphasize unplanned or ad hoc user inquiries are not analytic applications. Despite the above clarification you may still wonder if analytic applications is a useful or meaningful term. Maybe!! The way Morris defines it however seems overly broad and ambiguous. A quick mental review of Financial/Business Performance Management applications, Operations/Production applications, and Customer Relationship Management applications indicates to me that the conceptualization has some problems. What do you think? Do you use the phrase "analytic application"? Is it the "in" buzzword or another term to add confusion to the decision support lexicon? ************************************************************ What's New at DSSResources.COM 07/09/2001 Posted links to 6 articles from the 2001 Informing Science Conference e-Proceedings Informing Decision-Makers and Decision Support Systems track on the Articles On-line page, URL http://DSSResources.COM/papers/dssarticles.html. ************************************************************ DSS News Stories - June 30 to July 13, 2001 07/13/2001 Microsoft Outlook bug let's attackers run malicious programs on a victim's computer. 07/12/2001 Meridian Health Care Management uses Business Objects WebIntelligence® for a Financial Management Extranet. 07/11/2001 Tomoye introduced a knowledge sharing platform called Simplify for Communities of Practice. 07/10/2001 Corporate and e-Business Portals conference, Boston, MA, July 30 - August 1, 2001. Check www.dci.com. 07/10/2001 Business Objects announced BusinessObjects Application Foundation. It includes an Application Builder, 3 Advanced Analytic Engines, and an Analytics Catalog. 07/10/2001 Microsoft announced Data Analyzer solution for Office XP. It provides Graphical Capabilities to enable people to easily visualize and analyze information. 07/09/2001/1:00 pm PDT After 5 days, Microsoft restored instant messaging service to almost 10 million customers. However, some MSN Messenger users were still experiencing log in problems. 07/09/2001 Vancouver Hospital & Health Sciences Centre implemented Cognos' business intelligence (BI) solution. 07/03/2001 Ascential Software Corporation announced new ticker symbol, ASCL. 07/02/2001 AMCIS 2001 Data Management and Decision Support session schedule released. Visit AMCIS 2001 web site at http://ecampus.bentley.edu/org/amcis2001/index.html 07/02/2001 Decisioneering's risk analysis tool is first choice of top universities and academic publishers. ************************************************************ This newsletter is available online at http://dssresources.com/newsletters/ . ************************************************************ DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2001 by D. J. Power. Please send your email to power@dssresources.com. You have previously subscribed to the DSS News Mailing List. To unsubcribe, send an email to dssresources-unsubscribe@topica.com . |