EMA Blog: Business Intelligence and IT Management

A friend of mine recently asked why I am even still interested in enterprise computing when all the innovation is happening within the consumer electronics sector. Smartphones, tablet computers, e-book readers, and audio streaming devices have changed the way we live our daily lives. Now that I read the NYTimes on my iPad, I get through a substantially larger part of the newspaper, compared to when I was reading the paper edition. Now that I use "Read it Later," I finally get to actually read all the interesting website articles that I bookmark during my workday, while relaxing in the evening on the couch with my iPad. Since I have Rhapsody on my iPhone, I get to actually listen to my favorite rare albums while driving to work. My Squeezebox streaming music players on my nightstand and in my living room allow me to listen to my favorite global radio stations, or I can create my own custom channels, by entering a number of my favorite bands. My home alarm system is controlled through an online dashboard or an iPad/iPhone app, so that I can turn off specific motion sensors or the entire system remotely.

Codeless BI from Altosoft

Recently I received a briefing from Altosoft to take a look at their 4th generation product – Altosoft’s Insight Release 4.  Altosoft Insight is a single unified business intelligence environment that contains the entire stack from ETL to data visualization.  This integrated environment allows for Altosoft users to have a completely (if desired) code/scripting-free implementation.  The integrated environment also allows for the automatic management of metadata and data mart storage optimization.
This “removal” of coding and scripting from an implementation removes many of the barriers, that business users and less robust IT departments may have, in implementing a BI environment.  The development interface is clean.  The point-and-click choices make the creation and implementation of a BI analytic dashboard less costly than it might be with a different environment.  This brings down time to implementation and ongoing maintenance issues.  With this approach, Altosoft promises to increase speed to implementation and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

Birst Announces Optimized In-Memory Database

TIBCO Updates Cloud-based Analytics

In September, TIBCO Software announced the latest update of its on-demand business analytics platform -  TIBCO Silver Spotfire® 2.0.  The prepackaged graph, chart and dashboard functionality in TIBCO Silver Spotfire 2.0 provides the type of data visualization functionality non-IT staff members can deploy easily.  This functionality has a level of maturity that business users will adopt quickly.  TIBCO Silver Spotfire provides an overall speed to implementation that allows organizations developing their business intelligence and data visualization requirements to make quick adjustments to existing business intelligence projects within Silver Spotfire 2.0 and fast implementations to either develop prototype visualizations or implements new business intelligence requirements.

See Dennis’ recent article on APM and BSM, posted at APM Digest, here: http://www.apmdigest.com/apm-and-bsm-evolution-confusion-and-business-ownership

Microstrategy Alert and Wisdom

When you take a look at the “stickiness” of the experience and amount of consumer information on Facebook, you see many intriguing concepts that make marketeers salivate:

Almost all of today’s business processes are supported and complemented by enterprise IT applications. These applications are often business-critical and therefore tied to strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Most enterprises utilize sophisticated monitoring tools to track system health on the application, operating system, hypervisor, hardware, network resources, and storage levels. These health monitoring tools send out alerts to the administrator if any of the warning lights turn yellow or red. When all lights are green, there should be no problem.

Almost all of today's business processes are supported and complemented by enterprise IT applications. These applications are often business-critical and therefore tied to strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Most enterprises utilize sophisticated monitoring tools to track system health on the application, operating system, hypervisor, hardware, network resources, and storage levels. These health monitoring tools send out alerts to the administrator if any of the warning lights turn yellow or red. When all lights are green, there should be no problem.

Welcome to my Blog on the latest trends in systems management. In this Blog, I will look at systems management from a business process perspective. The initial focus will lie on server virtualization management, cloud systems management and workload automation. Within this context, I will analyze and try to quantify the efficiency gains that the organization can realize by implementing systems management tools and processes. However, as systems management does not exist in a vacuum, it is essential to tie these findings together with the latest developments in neighboring disciplines such as configuration management systems, IT service management, process automation, security, networking, applications management etc.

Put this picture in your mind’s eye – It’s a beautiful sunny weekday and you’re sitting by a pool catching the sun’s rays and a cool breeze.  Strategically placed within arm’s reach beside you is some kind of fruity drink with a tiny bamboo umbrella in it.  You are working (yep, I said working!).  You punch in the last financial figures into your iPad and check your calendar to see it’s time for the board meeting, which you dial into using your smartphone.  Alright, truth-to-tell, you’re more apt to be using your mobile device while waiting on a line at the bank than sitting by a tropical pool, but the basic point is the same – mobile devices mean freedom for employees.