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                        DSS News 
              August 28, 2000--Vol. 1, No. 9
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  Please sign the guestbook at http://www.dssresources.com
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Featured:
* Ask Dan! -- What do managers need to know about DSS?
* A request for DSS examples
* DSS News Stories
* What's New at DSSResources.COM
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DSSResources.COM is the most comprehensive resource on Decision Support 
Systems on the Internet. More than 1500 visitors use its resources each 
week. If you know a colleague interested in DSS, please forward DSS News 
to them.  If you haven't visited 
recently, stop bye.
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Ask Dan!
What do managers need to know about DSS?
There is a short answer -- alot! and a long answer. To begin managers
need to understand what the concept of a Decision Support System
means today. Luckily, DSS research and development has a long history 
and the term DSS is more meaningful and descriptive than competing terms 
like Business Intelligence and analytical processing.
Once the DSS concept is clarified I think some examples of Decision 
Support Systems can make the various DSS categories more concrete. 
Managers need to be able to provide peers with examples of DSS.
DSS are built using reasonably sophisticated information hardware 
technologies so managers need some level of DSS hardware technology 
knowledge. Some managers will need to provide input to hardware choices. 
At a minimum, managers need to be able to operate and maintain a 
personal workstation. 
Managers need to master DSS software products relevant to their jobs 
and in some situations managers need to be able to develop small-scale 
DSS applications. I am a believer in "end user" development of 
small-scale DSS.
Decision Support Systems are built primarily for managers and knowledge 
workers! Therefore, managers MUST be involved in building and managing 
DSS!!
For many reasons, managers need to understand the upside benefits and 
the downside risks of building specific DSS. Decision Support Systems 
can solve problems and create new problems. Managers need to know enough 
to make intelligent and informed DSS design, development and 
implementation choices!
Managers need to know how to learn about Decision Support applications 
and they need know when and how to ask for help about DSS issues.
So what else do managers need to know about DSS? Please post your 
comments to the DSSResources.COM Bulletin Board.
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A request for DSS examples
>Date: 26 Aug 00 00:10:39 MDT
>From: mmmansouri@usa.net
>To: dssresources@topica.com
>Subject: DSS Examples
>I'm looking for an educational example to show top executives how >DSS 
>can support and help them out in their managerial decision >making.
Please email mmmansouri@usa.net or post to the DSSResources.COM Bulletin 
Board.
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DSS News Stories
08/28/2000 Red Hat announced new e-Learning programming courses at its 
updated training site. Red Hat is partnering with DigitalThink.
08/26/2000 Call for Chapters for a book on IS Reengineering and 
Strategic Planning. Contact Ghazi Alkhatib (alkhatib@kfupm.edu.sa). 
08/25/2000 Bank of Montreal received the RealWare Award for "Best Data 
Warehousing Application" for a Customer Knowledge Database (CKDB) and 
management information system.
08/25/2000 Doxamed.com launched eMeeting service for Medical Device 
Industry Professionals. Visit www.doxamed.com.
08/24/2000 Launch of BondResources.com. It is a portal devoted to 
providing information on buying and selling fixed-income investments. 
Goal is to help average investors make decisions.
08/24/2000 Loyola University's Graduate School of Business in Chicago 
has a 5 course Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Certificate 
program. Program now offers instruction in SPSS Clementine data mining 
solution.
08/24/2000 Beazer Homes USA, a national homebuilder headquartered in 
Atlanta, Georgia, has chosen Gentia’s new Millenium Application Platform 
(MAP) to manage its enterprise-wide executive information system.
08/23/2000 Compaq adopted Brio.Enterprise for its internal information 
systems data warehouse program. Compaq is also using Brio.Enterprise's 
EIS function, which allows users to view trends and key business 
indicators.
08/23/2000 CCH-Harris Interactive survey shows 84 percent of all 
accountants use the Internet for business purposes. Net is prime 
information source for many.
08/22/2000 Informix Software announced Extended Parallel Server(TM) 
(XPS) version 8.31; New enhancements to Database Server deliver "No 
Limits" Data Warehouse platform.
08/22/2000 Business Resource Software announced Quick Insight, an expert 
software program to evaluate new products or services.
08/22/2000 Hummingbird Ltd. announced latest version of Genio Suite, its 
enterprise solution for integrating data across decision support systems 
and enterprise applications.
08/22/2000 Cognos released Visualizer business-intelligence tool and a 
new version of its DecisionStream ETL toolset for building data marts.
08/21/2000 Autodesk and Kanotech develop strategic partnership to 
deliver local government solutions. Kanotech's CivicCenter integrates 
with Autodesk's Municipal Solutions.
08/21/2000 MicroStrategy and IBM have formed an alliance to provide 
information broadcasting and narrowcasting solutions for Business 
Intelligence (BI) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
08/21/2000 SPSS Inc. and International Consortium publish CRoss-Industry 
Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM). CRISP-DM 1.0 is a 
comprehensive data mining methodology and process model. Visit 
www.crisp-dm.org to download a PDF file of the CRISP-DM document.
08/21/2000 Hyperion, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems announced plans 
for a new platform-independent standard for metadata in OLAP servers. 
The Java(TM) technology-based interface will be developed through the 
Java Community Process(TM) program.
08/18/2000 realityBUY.com announced the development of an interactive 3D 
kitchen configurator to let customers design a kitchen in real-time on 
the Web.
08/17/2000 Survey.com results show worldwide business intelligence and 
data warehousing (BI/DW) market grew at a year-over-year revenue growth 
rate of 62% to $28 billion in 1999.
08/16/2000 Three leading Market Research firms adopt SPSS Verbastat 
coding software; Verbastat provides a new way to code open-ended survey 
questions.
08/16/2000 Informix announced a strategic alliance with the Numerical 
Algorithms Group (NAG), a vendor of mathematical and statistical 
software, by releasing the Informix NAG Financial Datablade(R) module.
08/16/2000 JDA Software announces availability of new version of Retail 
IDEAS Data Warehouse and Decision Support System.
08/15/2000 Object Management Group exchanges memberships with GNOME 
Foundation. Foundation's goal is to advance the availability of GNOME 
desktop environment.
08/15/2000 IBM-led Team demonstrates most-advanced quantum computer; 
confirms potential for exponentially faster calculation.
08/15/2000 Lancaster plc, one of the UK's leading retail motor groups, 
operating over 100 dealerships and 35 body centers, is
putting its financial management process on the Web with Comshare's 
e-business management planning and control (MPC) solution. Users at head 
office and over 70 reporting locations will have intranet access to a 
central database for planning, budgeting, financial data consolidation, 
management reporting and analysis.
08/14/2000 National Oilwell, Houston, Texas, launched "Customer 
Connect", an online purchasing analysis service powered by Web-based 
business intelligence software from Cognos.
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What's New? at DSSResources.COM
08/26/2000 Updated and posted Chapter 4 "Designing and Developing 
Decision Support Systems" of the DSS Hyperbook. Comments are welcomed.
08/26/2000 Posted Dan's Book Picks Fall 2000.
08/24/2000 Created Link Exchanges page.
08/24/2000 Created DSS Hyperbook Slides page, posted Chapter 1 
Slideshow.
08/21/2000 Updated and posted Chapter 3 "Analyzing Business Decision 
Processes" of the DSS Hyperbook.
08/19/2000 Updated DSS Roulette Page.
08/18/2000 Updated and posted Chapter 1 "Supporting Business 
Decision-Making" and Chapter 2 "Gaining Competitive Advantage with 
Decision Support Systems" of the DSS Hyperbook.
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