*********************************************************** DSS News D. J. Power, Editor September 28, 2003 -- Vol. 4, No. 20 A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM ************************************************************ Check case by Walton "Rebuilding an Emergency Operations Center for NYC following 9/11" ************************************************************ Featured: * Report from Teradata Partners Conference * DSS News Releases ************************************************************ Put your ad here! Help support DSS News ************************************************************ Report from Teradata Partners Conference by Dan Power Editor, DSSResources.COM Teradata Partners is the premier users group conference in the data-driven decision support field. My journey to the conference in Seattle included a minor airplane mechanical problem that delayed my arrival. As a result I missed a dinner engagement with Mike Goul (ASU) and Jeff Hoffer (U. Dayton). I did get to bed "on time" and got up early to register for the conference. Sunday morning I attended Stephen Brobst's workshop with about 200 other attendees on constructing and deploying an active data warehouse. Brobst is the Teradata Chief Technology Officer for Teradata technology evolution. Brobst started promptly at 8am and the workshop ended at about 1pm with a 20 minute coffee break. He went from the big picture on "right time", data-driven tactical decision support to the technical details associated with deploying a Teradata Warehouse for tactical decision support. Some examples Brobst gave of tactical decision support using "real-time" data include fraud detection, logistics, customer offer determination, customer retention scoring, credit risk assessment, inventory management and yield management. According to Brobst, using a data warehouse for "real time" decision support, business activity monitoring, "rapid" queries, and on-the-spot decision support for supervisors, field agents and even operations managers required some changes in the Teradata database software. Brobst discussed the use of the priority scheduling facility and resource partitions to provide the enhanced response needed from a data warehouse to provide tactical decision support. Following his explanation of vAMPs, USIs and NUSIs the acronyms are a bit more understandable. The difference between macros and procedures in the warehouse environment also makes some sense now. Brobst claims Teradata users will have "Extreme Performance", "Extreme Availability", "Extreme Data Freshness" and "Extreme Application Integration". The bottom line is active data warehousing and improved data-driven tactical decision support. Thanks Stephen for an interesting workshop. Sunday afternoon I attend a presentation on the Loews data warehouse. At about 5:45pm I met Mike Goul and Paul Gray and we walked to the Teradata dinner for University faculty guests. We had dinner at Vivanda Ristorante with a group of professors, consultants and Teradata staff. It was a great mix and a wonderful event. Ron Swift, Vice President of Teradata, was our host. Mary Gros of Teradata organized the event and she brought her enthusiasm to the event. At dinner, I sat across from Jill Dyche (pronounced Du-shay), VP of Baseline Consulting, and got acquainted with the CRM guru herself. Following the dinner Jill and I briefly attended the Partners Welcome reception. Jill knows everyone it seems. For example, we chatted with Todd Walter, the Teradata CTO for R&D. Todd is a real "A" player. I got back to my hotel Sunday evening about 10:45pm (12:45am Iowa time) and collapsed in bed. An early wake-up call Monday morning and I was off to the Washington State Convention Center for email, DSSResources.COM work and the opening session. Partners puts on a grand Conference Opening General Session. It was a multimedia extravaganza. Partners Steering Committee President Mark Lahr, Data Warehousing Manager at 3M, took the stage on a Segway personal transportation device accompanied by flashing lights, music and video. Mark briefly discussed the data-driven decision support successes at 3M and encouraged attendees to share their stories. He reminded the audience that Partners is about making new friends, sharing lessons learned and learning new skills. Lahr moderated the General Session and introduced NCR President and CEO Mark Hurd. Hurd discussed driving value using decision support. He seemed strongly committed to growing Teradata and making Teradata the premier decision support company. Hurd provided some examples of "near real-time" tactical decision support: a grocery chain buyer making decisions about which trucks to send to which stores with what produce; an airline gate agent making decisions about which passengers get upgraded or bumped on an overbooked flight; a call center operator making decisions about how to retain a cellular phone customer. Hurd concluded "CEOs and CFOs can no longer tolerate decision-making based on partial data. But they also recognize that every part of their organization requires a unique view based on all of the data. And that powerful analytics are required to support all of their decisioning needs." The new leader of the Teradata division Mike Koehler spoke next. Mike became Senior Vice President Teradata Division in March 2003. According to Koehler, Teradata is growing with more than USD$1.2 Billion in 2002. He sees the Teradata Warehouse solution as the platform to give companies an enterprise view for decision support and a competitive advantage. The last speaker in the General Session was Michael Treacy. Some readers may remember Treacy from his MIT days. His new book, Double-Digit Growth, provided the core of his presentation. He noted if companies want to grow, then IS/IT needs to collect more data about sources of revenue to support decision making. Companies already spend significant resources collecting cost data and that should continue, but it won't help managers focus on growth. Treacy said "Any firm in this room, if it is correctly led and managed, can grow steadily at double-digit rates -- forever." During lunch I met with Mike Goul, Vice Chair of SIGDSS, to discuss the new SIG DSS by-laws. We're making progress in finalizing them for approval by the Association for Information Systems Council in December. After lunch I attended a session and met with vendor representatives in the Expo Hall. Monday evening the Expo Hall was the setting for a conference reception. I must have spoken with 20 vendor representatives, MicroStrategy, Brio, Cognos, and watched as many demonstrations. My head was swimming from information overload but it was great. I ended Monday evening at Partners with a ride on a Segway Human Transporter (www.segway.com). It was great ... easy to use ... lean forward, lean back, turn the knob on the steering handle. Teradata University Network (TUN pronounced "tune") was my focus for Tuesday morning. After continental breakfast, I listened to Barb Wixom and Jeff Hoffer brief Teradata and Microstrategy executives on progress in creating a web-based resource for teaching data warehousing. Jeff discussed the data sets and software that are currently accessible. TUN is a free resource provided by Teradata. Faculty can find out more at http://www.teradatauniversitynetwork.com/. The site is currently being upgraded to incorporate Microstrategy BI software. Following the TUN meeting I spoke with Sanju Bansal, Chief Operating Officer of MicroStrategy. I had attended Bansal's Monday presentation on BI trends and welcomed the chance to get his views. I'm hoping we'll have an article from Bansal at DSSResources.COM in the near future. BI or data-driven DSS is enterprise-wide and scaling to thousands of users. Dashboards are back but the data detail is what makes them "work" in today's environment. Bansal and I also discussed decision support at Best Buy. One of my goals for the next 6 months is to develop a Best Buy case study for DSSResources.COM. Lunch was a press briefing. Alan Chow briefed us on enhancements to Teradata Warehouse 7.1. Bob Fair, Chief Marketing Officer, discussed the Teradata Survey of Senior Executives on decision-making issues. The news release about the survey is at DSSResources.COM. According to Bob, a crisis in decision-making is developing. He said "Executives are deluged with data and decision-making is deteriorating as a result." Enterprise-wide, data-driven decision support systems seem to be the magic bullet that executives want. The executives in the survey see decision support as a means to better, faster decisions. After lunch I hurried to catch Jill Dyche's Super Session on "Segmenting the Stages of CRM". Jill used greek mythology characters to illustrate the "good" and "bad" approaches to CRM. The Centaurs charge in, the Nymphs lack vision and focus on data marts, the Dorians lead an IT-focused CRM invasion, the Cyclops start small and think big. The Dryads have an investment in the success of CRM and nuture it. Finally, the Argonauts are on a journey to improve customer relationships using technology and they understand the journey is "fraught with peril". Thanks Jill for an interesting presentation. Tuesday afternoon I spent some time discussing Teradata certification at the booth in the registration area. For many attendees, the Partners conference is a technical "boot camp" and certification at various levels is the goal. Only about 270 people in the world have the Masters level of Teradata certification. Readers can get more information about Teradata certification by contacting Oliva Baronner, Program Manager, email oliva.baronner@ncr.com. Tuesday night I attended a reception for North American Teradata customers at the Space Needle. The monorail provided a quick trip for me from downtown. Some conversation, jazz, good food and drinks and a wonderful setting at the top of the Space Needle ended a 17 hour day. A return trip on the monorail and a short walk got me back to my hotel. Wednesday morning was check out day for me. I was up early and hurried to the convention center. After breakfast I checked some sessions, worked on this report and spoke with Teradata Press staff: Dan, Virve, Marcela were a great help. On the way to the airport I chatted with a Partners attendee from Des Moines, Iowa, Craig Gard of Meredith Corp. Small world. As many of you know my home base is Cedar Falls, IA and the University of Northern Iowa. At about midnight I arrived home. Thanks Teradata Partners for a great conference experience. My plan is to follow-up on some of the customer success stories for case studies at DSSResources.COM. Please note: NCR Teradata paid Dan Power's expenses so he could attend this conference 9/20-9/24/03. ************************************************************ Tell your friends! Get DSS NEWS free -- send a blank email to dssresources-subscribe@topica.com. ************************************************************ DSS News Releases - September 15 to September 26, 2003 Read them at DSSResources.COM and search the DSS News Archive 09/26/2003 Super Computer, Inc. announces GameStorm 64-bit technology for gaming featuring America's Army for the AMD Athlon(TM) 64 processor. 09/25/2003 MicroStrategy wins 2003 Software Business Industry award for best product development. 09/24/2003 NII Holdings selects Teradata® Profitability Analytics Solution. 09/23/2003 Survey of senior executives shows developing crisis in decision-making. 09/23/2003 Owens & Minor ranks first in the 2003 InformationWeek 500. 09/22/2003 Ascential Software highlights web services to meet real-time integration challenges of the active data warehouse. 09/22/2003 Information Builders cited as "most cost-effective" option for two categories of business intelligence reporting in new Ventana Research TCO study. 09/19/2003 Teradata introduces servers to boost data warehouse power. 09/19/2003 'Closer Communications' delivers first customer acquisition management and lead retrieval system that operates on the Pocket PC and other hand-held computing devices. 09/19/2003 Business Analysts releases VisualVault, Web-based document management software. 09/18/2003 Intergraph sponsors GI Days for Geospatial Intelligence Community. 09/18/2003 InTouch delivers Web based, intuitive and secure patient information for McKesson HIS database. 09/17/2003 Intergraph collaborates on interoperability with other OGC members Autodesk, Laser-Scan and MapInfo for more customer choices and better flexibility. 09/16/2003 New Mindjet Software captures the 'meet' of meetings. 09/16/2003 Toshiba to preinstall Microsoft Office OneNote on all of its new portable PCs worldwide. 09/16/2003 Balanced Scorecard Collaborative honors Fulton County (Georgia) Schools, University of California, San Diego, and United States Army with Prestigious Hall of Fame Award. 09/16/2003 Provia introduces Supply Chain execution optimization product. 09/16/2003 SaskPower selects 'IMPACT', a Siemens Financial Management Solution. 09/16/2003 Formation's Advanced Integrated Recorder (AIR) selected for NATO Air Command & Control System. 09/16/2003 Developing Use cases? Duvessa Software has developed a new tool that allows anyone to create software development estimates early in the requirements phase. 09/16/2003 SGI puts supercomputing on wheels with the SGI Mobile Innovation Center. 09/16/2003 Major U.S. Retailer CSK Auto successfully deploys MicroStrategy platform for reporting & analysis. 09/15/2003 University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation standardizes on Crystal Decisions. 09/15/2003 ePeople Teamwork for PeopleSoft CRM Sales 8.8: Enterprise team selling solution shortens sales cycle and maximizes each sales opportunity. 09/15/2003 BP Lubricants selects Kalido Data Warehousing for management information pilot program. 09/15/2003 Naval Research Laboratory first to install 128-processor single system image SGI Altix 3000 supercomputer. ************************************************************ DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2003 by D. J. Power. Please send your questions to daniel.power@dssresources.com. |