11Ants Model Builder Makes Predictive Analytics Accessible to Business Users Excel add-in helps users find patterns, predictive relationships in data. December 22, 2010 Note: TDWI’s editors carefully choose vendor-issued press releases about new or upgraded products and services. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key features but make no claims as to [...]

QA: Basic Business Intelligence Takes Step-by-Step Approach A consultant offers BI basics for executives, project managers, and developers. By Linda L. Briggs June 23, 2010 Basic knowledge about business intelligence is often lacking in enterprises, even as they undertake a BI project. In this interview, long-time BI consultant Christina Rouse of Incisive Analytics breaks business [...]

The Growing Case for Third-Party Data Far from being a complementary or nonessential data management option, third-party data can become a competitive differentiator. By Stephen Swoyer June 23, 2010 In his most recent Checklist Report for TDWI Research, industry veteran Philip Russom makes a case for augmenting in-house data (in this case, product data) with [...]

TDWI Announces 2010 Best Practices Awards Winners The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) announced the 2010 winners of the annual Best Practices Awards. The program is designed to identify and honor companies that have demonstrated excellence in developing, deploying and maintaining BI and DW applications. The Best Practices Awards winners will be honored at the TDWI [...]

Informatica Unveils Data Integration Storefront Informatica Marketplace is similar to Salesforce.com’s AppExchange (or Apple’s App Store) — but many unique aspects set it clearly apart. By Stephen Swoyer June 30, 2010 Informatica Corp. is known as a gutsy competitor. Its decision (more than half a decade ago) to effectively write off all of its non-data [...]

Q and A: Creating a More Agile Organization Why is agile so important to organizations, and how does an organization get to an agile state? By James E. Powell, Maureen Clarry June 30, 2010 What’s driving the push to agile, and once the benefits are recognized, how does an organization adopt the agile model? For [...]

Harnessing the Power of PowerPivot in the Enterprise How to build a PowerPivot Competency Center By Patrick Bolin July 7, 2010 by Patrick Bolin For many years, corporations have wrestled with the challenge of data management. Some of the brightest minds in business and technology have dedicated their careers to creating “a single version of [...]

Aster Data Doubles Down on MapReduce With the recent announcement of three dozen new SQL-MapReduce functions, Aster Data’s message is clear: MapReduce is a boon to analytics. By Stephen Swoyer July 7, 2010 Criticism of MapReduce has always concerned its analytic applicability. The argument reprises one against grid computing: yes, the technology’s neat, and it’s [...]

Q and A: Data Modeling Gives Structure for Move to the Cloud Why data modeling is important in cloud-based BI. By Linda L. Briggs, Steve Hoberman July 7, 2010 As cloud computing gains steam in the context of data warehousing and BI, so too should the importance of data modeling. In this interview, well-known data [...]

Q and A: Data Modeling’s Role in Agile Development Why isn’t data modeling part of agile development? By James E. Powell, Len Silverston July 7, 2010 Agile development methodologies ignore the value of data modeling. Len Silverston, a well-known expert in data modeling and best-selling author of The Data Model Resource Book series, argues that [...]