Operational BI is becoming quite the buzz today. There are countless articles, tips, vendors with operational BI offerings, case studies, etc., available today. Yet, I still get asked the very basic question of how do you get started. What are the first steps? Well, here are my thoughts on how to get started...

If you are struggling to define your company's key performance indicators (KPIs), here is a useful bit of information. I recently discovered an interesting website dedicated to identifying KPIs for just about every category you can think of. And it is FREE!

Every now and then, I use my blog for something that has nothing to do with BI. Sometimes I use it for humor, sometimes a rant against a pet peeve, and sometimes -- like this time -- for something that I found astonishing.

Given the harrowing day in the world's stock markets yesterday and today's roller coaster ride in US markets, you would think that venture funding for start-ups and small companies would dry up like sub-prime lending. Well, maybe in other sectors but funding for BI and MDM companies is doing just fine!

Last week, Bill Gates gave what was billed as his last keynote as a full-time Microsoft employee at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He chose not to do a maudlin look backwards at all that he has done since 1975 but rather to look forward to his last day at Microsoft and his predictions of where the tech industry will be in the next decade. It was both a very funny and very poignant keynote...

For my last blog of the year, I want to wish each of you Happy New Year! The year, 2008, promises to be as good a year for Business Intelligence as 20007 was...

A few minutes ago I got the news that IBM had just bought Cognos. There has been so much speculation about this purchase after Hyperion and Business Objects were bought that it almost was anti-climatic. What does this mean for BI? Well, I have a few thoughts...

The oldest "new" company goes public today. Yes, Teradata, a Division of NCR, is no longer. It is now Teradata Corporation, a fully independent company with the NYSE symbol of TDC. Let's look at the stats of this born-again Business Intelligence / Data Warehousing company.

Heavens! It is not often that I read about a company (especially a small company) doing something for altruistic reasons. And so it was that I read with great interest an article in yesterday's Denver newspaper about AWhere and its commitment to help African countries adapt to climate change.

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Sun Microsystems has decided that its stock ticker for 21 years just doesn't reflect its new face. The company, formerly known as SUNW, now wants to be known as JAVA. Good move or bad?

And here's a quiz for you -- what does SUNW stand for? Think you know? Read on...

Over the past year, I have enjoyed reading The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs from an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steve Jobs -- Apple's CEO. It was incredible funny, acerbic, and just what you would expect to read from one of the world's most famous and eccentric chief executives. Want to know who Fake Steve really is? Read on.

We communicate mainly by words -- whether spoken or written. Everyone slips up occasionally when speaking but to do so in written form is a major negative. I admit it -- reading poorly written or misworded documents just makes me crazy... (It comes from my childhood -- my Mom always corrected my grammar)

So to save my sanity and to perhaps improve overall communications between people, I offer up this blog based on Jody Gilbert's two articles on the topics of grammatical and wording mistakes "that make you look stupid."

It's official -- the Dog Days of summer are here. It is hotter than blazes here in Colorado (and I imagine just about everywhere else). So I thought a bit of cool trivia was needed. Who knows the origin of Dog Days? If you do, post a comment with the information. If no one posts a definition, I'll post an "official" one in a few days -- after I recover from heat stroke.

Here are some things to know about Dog Days though...

I just finished reading an interesting article in the latest TDWI newsletter (dated today)titled "Data Cleansing versus Auditability: Achieving Competitive Advantage in a Cautious Era" It was written by Michael Mansur, Simon Terr, and David Stanvick from HP Services' Information Management Practice. It got me to thinking about the notion that there may be times when we destroy the usability of data by fixing it up too much...

If you are interested in reading their article, click here and sign up for the newsletter. It is worth reading.

It's June -- My birth month. I always require humor at these times. And have I got one for you...

I got the following gem from my good friend, Shelley S - a long-time Oregon resident. Turns out Oregon is one strange state... or at least has some very strange ideas about "waste disposal". The "powers that be" most definitely needed an injection of BI analytics before they decided on how to dispose of a dead whale...