Blog Entries for ward

Attention: IVR and Call Center Solution Software Providers and Users

ward@nextanalytics.com — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:03:44 +0100

The Risk: Are your customers satisfied with what they’re getting out of your system? The vocal ones are telling you what they need, but the quiet majority are not. A portion of your customer base are at risk for churn and seeking alternatives. As a vendor of a software product, this should concern you.

The Need: To get the most out of your application, your customers need to analyze their data to modify how they use your system. This is an ongoing process, review and enhance [...]

Where we fit

ward@nextanalytics.com — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:36:40 +0100

Nextanalytics specializes in embedded analytics. What I mean by that it is that we target our product and services to work closely with providers of packaged software and solutions.

Nextanalytics is an industrial strength data processing engine that converts raw data into valuable business information. It does this with a simple approach, a light footprint, and is highly focused to the task of converting raw data into information.

We use a combination of prod [...]

My Ramblings on Open Source BI

ward@nextanalytics.com — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:47:58 +0100

Seth Grimes published an article about the potential growth of four BI companies.

“That core software components are free makes open source attractive to users as well as systems integrators and independent software vendors that sell products and services built on open source BI components.”

Take note: People at least start out expecting products which advertise as Open Source to be free.

The companies he wrote about leverage the word [...]

Cindy Howson on cool things happening in BI

ward@nextanalytics.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:44:38 +0100

Cindi Howson wrote an article on November 10, 2008 for Intelligent Enterprise

I found the article very informative. She wrote about a number of things. I took an interest in "In-memory analytics" and "Advanced Visualization". Following are my comments on the topics she wrote about.

In-memory analytics

: One of the potential benefits of in-memory is that it replaces the expensive & tim [...]

First steps in developing KPIs & Metrics

ward@nextanalytics.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:00:57 +0100

Craig Schiff wrote an article at http://www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51201364 some time ago. Following are some salient points he made:

"Without steady involvement by the business side, IT's dashboard projects are doomed to failure."

"IT thinks in terms of improving access to data, whereas finance focuses on improving its processes (particularly the painful ones)."

"What's most important is the con [...]

How to Improve Your Scorecards and Dashboards

ward@nextanalytics.com — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:27:29 +0100

Most people don't realize just how much work there is in populating the data for a dashboard or scorecard. Let’s make a list of some of the things that contribute to the problem.

The Query. Getting the data

To get useful data, SQL is too difficult and expertise is scarce and expensive. Moreover, SQL can’t do all the things you need. Often, the solution requires extra tables which are usually undesirable. MDX & Cubes are an alternative, b [...]

Questions to ask before deciding to use a cube for analytics

ward@nextanalytics.com — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Is a cube what you need?

Bill Inmon (aka: the father of the data warehouse) is a world famous expert in data warehousing and a big advocate of cubes, which he calls “Dimensional Modeling”. Inmon wrote an article published under the title "Issues with Dimensional Modeling" (http://www.dmreview.com/issues/20000501/2184-1.html).

Despite being an advocate of cubes, he explains at least ten root cause for problems that occur when c [...]

Rapidly Changing Query Environments

ward@nextanalytics.com — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

For small and medium size businesses, SMB, cubes are too burdensome.

Mainly, there are too many skill sets required and the risk of being dependent on highly specialized people is too high a business risk and cost. Even with the expertise, cubes are slow to design and build and the manufacturing overhead is large.

For example, it can easily take a day just to install the OLAP software, then it can take days to design the dimensional mod [...]

Great Alternatives to Cubes

ward@nextanalytics.com — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:13:10 +0100

OLAP isn't going away, but it is time to stop equating the word OLAP with cubes. OLAP means high performance, optimized for fast retrieval. There's an increasing number of alternatives to delivering OLAP. Search for keywords such as BI appliances, cloud hosted BI, column oriented databases, in-memory analytics. You'll find plenty of good quality products including in our partner list.

Most of them are less complex and less expensive than cubes yet t [...]

Can SMB afford Open Source BI or Traditional BI?

ward@nextanalytics.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:14:19 +0100

I was looking for statistics on BI in the Small and Medium Sized (SMB) market today. It’s surprisingly hard to find material. This blog documents some of my findings and makes a few comments.

First, a Definition of SMB. Techtarget suggests (http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci1005201,00.html) anyone with less than 1,000 employees is medium sized or smaller.

Based on my an [...]

Can a business intelligence product be used to answer analytic questions?

ward@nextanalytics.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:30:53 +0100

To deliver something in BI, one has to write a SQL query or create a cube. But doing this is actually a two step process.

1. you must find the data and the relationships between tables, if they exist.

2. the data usually needs filtering, grouping, and calculations and other things that change it from a list of data, to something that you make decisions with.

Improve your data access

ward@nextanalytics.com — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:53:51 +0100

It Starts By Improving On the Data Access Layer

Many reporting and analysis products rely on SQL and MDX to obtain their data. In the context of delivering analytics, these query languages can get extremely complicated and, even if the syntax does exist to deliver the result, it might require changes to the database or datawarehouse or for a new cube to be designed and maintained. Any of these mitigations raise the cost and risk of the solution.

The root cause is that many ana [...]

My nearly twenty year perspective on BI

ward@nextanalytics.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:01:43 +0100

Are you selling or implementing products from major vendors but still not getting the information you need ?

Did you know that’s been a common complaint for nearly twenty years, back when BI was just taking shape.

If you've been holding your breath waiting for something to come, I suggest you stop. Nothing's coming from that direction. They’ve even forgotten that’s what the problem is. Their big claim (now) is: if you can share s [...]

Ward's appeal to developers

ward@nextanalytics.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:46:44 +0100

I think I know what you want, but I'd like to hear it from you (if you can spare the time).

Do you need:

low cost and easy entry. I know you can’t or won’t spend a lot of money to get started.

simple, clear examples. But there are different learning styles, so you need a wide variety.

somewhere to go to get advice and answers to my questions, preferab [...]

Our philosophy on open source

ward@nextanalytics.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:05:24 +0100

We’ve adopted an un-conventional approach to open source, not that it seems there is any convention to open source. I'd call it disruptive, but how can you disrupt a disruptive technology?

In the beginning, we designed our software in two tiers. (more than that really, but for the purpose of open-source, two is a good number ...)

Tier 1 Open Source

By shipping it in tiers, we are intentionally avoiding overwhelming you with details. If [...]

The Secret Sauce of nextanalytics

ward@nextanalytics.com — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:26:34 +0100

by Ward Yaternick

Where does nextanalytics fit in the BI foodchain?

Our product has been called "Analytic Middleware." Implementors of nextanalytics integrate it into their database access, their user interfaces, their solutions and applications. Business analysts design scripts specific to the customer's needs in ways that were previously impossible. From a technical view, five things comprise the core valu [...]