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[admin]

Flexible EPSI takes the Lotus position

Jennifer Foreshew | May 12, 2009

IT took just two years for Enterprise Performance Systems International to outgrow its technology infrastructure, and for concern to mount over the cost of the bandwidth it was using.

Sydney-based EPSI offers electronic performance support technology and consulting services to large corporate and government departments in the Asia-Pacific region.

Its clients include the Department of Defence, ANZ Bank, Australia Post and NSW Police.

Founded by Nigel Wilson and Mark Tomkins, EPSI has about 12 staff in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Manila. Most work remotely from laptops and BlackBerry handhelds.

The company's IT infrastructure needed to have a support team and client collaboration as well as run a customer relationship management system to track customers and prospects.

EPSI's mail, calendar and business applications were hosted by a third party, which had the resources to manage it on their behalf.

But the company outgrew the hosted environment and found it increasingly difficult to meet the requirements for CRM, human resources management and team rooms for projects.

Email was not completely reliable, shared calendaring was not available and the owners were frustrated by their lack of control over the IT environment and the limitations that imposed on the business.

"We went to the shared environment, but we grew reasonably quickly and it just became more expensive as every licence was a lot more money and the bandwidth we were consuming was costing us money," EPSI co-founder Nigel Wilson says.

"We wanted more flexibility to do more things, and this hosting organisation was just not set up for that.

"For example, we wanted to whip up a system overnight that would allow us to share resumes from people who applied for a job between my business partner and I, and our project manager, who was working on the project, and we weren't able to do that," Wilson says.

About a year ago, EPSI contacted IBM business partner Binary Concepts in search of an answer.

Wilson recognised Lotus Notes could deliver a system that would handle email and team calendaring, and the environment for fast creation of team room, recruitment and asset management databases.

"I told them I don't want to be changing infrastructure every few years, but I can't afford to go and buy $20,000 worth of Lotus Notes software right now," he says.

The solution was Lotus Foundations.

"I did look at other options, but I never really let go of wanting to stay with Notes because we were using it and it has some inherent benefits such as the ability to replicate the databases really easily," Wilson says.

"I did look at the Microsoft offering and it is good, but it didn't have the flexibility that I wanted because I need to develop new applications to get the jobs done inside our business."

The Foundations technology allows EPSI employees to use any email client (Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook, BlackBerry and/or browser-based). It also enables running and customising third-party applications such as the shareware CRM package EPSI used.

Lotus Foundations was installed about nine months ago. EPSI bought an IBM X Series server for about $3000 (hardware only -- no operating system, as it comes with Foundations). It also purchased 18 Foundations user licences for about $200 each.

The system was deployed quickly and needed no ongoing maintenance. It has all the benefits of an on-site server without requiring the in-house IT skills.

EPSI now has a lot more space and bandwidth as a result of running Foundations on a server in-house.

The technology also cost up to 75 per cent less than the previous third-party system and provides EPSI with unprecedented flexibility.

"It certainly has been cheaper to run and everyone is looking at the current information when they go into the databases," Wilson says.

Lotus Foundations also offers reliable email, calendaring, document management and collaborating over shared databases.

Automated security and self-healing capabilities provide the company with a true plug-and-play IT infrastructure at a fraction of the cost.

EPSI plans to develop an order distribution system with the technology this month.

"We are not the average customer. We do push the technology and make it do things that other people don't do," Wilson says.

The problem: EPSI had outgrown its IT infrastructure within two years. Email was not completely reliable, shared calendaring was not available and costs were rising.

The process: IBM business partner Binary Concepts recommended the recently launched Lotus Foundations.

The result: The company has greater flexibility, reliable email, calendaring and document management, and it can collaborate on shared databases.

More...

[admin]

Claims to have signed up one of the big 4 banks here.

[admin]

A fascinating case study in how not to from Australian IT:

Lamming, the last of Sol's amigos leaves Telstra

Mitchell Bingemann | May 12, 2009

A MULTI-billion-dollar question mark hangs over the future of Telstra's IT transformation program, after the last of former CEO Sol Trujillo's foreign band of executives announced his departure yesterday.

Senior vice-president of transformation Tom Lamming will follow Mr Trujillo and together depart for their US homeland at the end of next month. But they will leave behind an IT project that is much reduced from its original scope, over budget and potentially years behind time.

Mr Lamming is the latest US-bred executive to leave the company after the telco's group managing director of marketing Bill Stewart left on March 30, and chief operating officer Greg Winn quit in January.

Public affairs chief Phil Burgess left the company last September, becoming the first of the three so-called "amigos" -- Mr Trujillo's closest confidants -- to depart the company.

Telstra gave no reason for Mr Lamming's exit, but a Telstra spokesman said his role would be absorbed by the wider leadership team, as the telco's IT transformation moves to its next stage.

Mr Lamming played a major role in Mr Trujillo's $12 billion, five-year transformation program that sought to develop common business processes for Telstra's operating support, customer care and billing systems.

A Denver-based partner of IT services group Accenture, Mr Lamming was brought into Telstra in 2005 as a consultant where he was paid up to $15,000 a day before being appointed by Mr Trujillo to oversee the telco's five-year transformation project.

Both men yesterday described the transformation as an unmitigated success.

"Telstra's transformation is the largest, most comprehensive and successful I have ever seen, and we have implemented it at speed," Mr Lamming said.

"The wider transformation has touched all parts of Telstra and the IT program has played a significant role."

But the picture painted by Mr Lamming and Mr Trujillo is in stark contrast to the muddy reality that has played out within Telstra's software systems and in the telco's retail stores.

Word from Telstra's coalface has repeatedly described a very different picture of the program and Mr Lamming's departure will leave a multi-billion-dollar question mark over an IT transformation project that has missed self-imposed deadlines and failed to remain within budget.

The customer and billing software platform at the heart of Telstra's IT transformation has reportedly blown its budget by more than $1 billion, while sales staff have repeatedly complained that their jobs have been severely hampered by the software's frequent crashes.

It now also only covers Telstra's retail business and not its biggest customers in enterprise, government and wholesale.

Mr Lamming's chief responsibility was to oversee the migration of Telstra's retail and business customers from its legacy billing systems to a Siebel-based platform.

Mr Trujillo and his band of executives had hoped this would save the telco hundreds of millions of dollars as hundreds of legacy systems were switched off. But, instead, it has resulted in a herculean headache for the telco.

A large proportion of those savings were to come through the decommissioning of Telstra's 1500 legacy business and operations support systems.

By 2010 Telstra hopes to reduce that figure by 80 per cent. But with a year left, only 400 have been switched off and the company once more has been forced to contract out the running of old systems.

The telco's customer and billing platform also has been plagued by missed deadlines.

Although some seven million Telstra private customers have migrated to the new platform, only 250,000 business customers had been moved across. So far no Telstra enterprise or government customers have been transferred to the platform.

The enterprise customer migration had been suspended indefinitely and users would remain on Telstra's legacy Flexcab billing system for at least another 10 years, sources said.

The bulk of the work on Telstra's troubled billing and customer relationship platform has been completed by Mr Lamming's old firm Accenture.

Accenture was originally issued with a fixed price of between $350 million and $400 million for its transformation work.

This excluded change requests and legacy system integration.

But more than 3300 change requests have been issued to redress some of the troubled system's problems, which in turn have netted Accenture more than $200 million in additional fees.

The problems Telstra and Accenture have encountered with the new system coincided with a surge in complaints about the telco's customer service.

Telstra's 2008 half-year financial results were hit by the call-time blowouts, which accounted for a 7.9 per cent increase to $833million in service contracts for the telco, chief finance officer John Stanhope said in February.

On Friday the telco giant's incoming chief executive David Thodey and newly appointed chairwoman Catherine Livingstone said they were committed to completing the transformation.

It will now be up to Mr Thodey and CIO John McInerney to pick up the pieces of the fractured IT transformation project.

Despite the hurdles ahead, industry observers think Mr Thodey has the potential to see the telco through the last stretch of its troubled transformation program.

Russell Hewitt, long time friend of Mr Thodey and rival chief executive at Vodafone Australia, believes Mr Thodey is the right man for the job.

"We've had our own IT transformation and they are big jobs. In a company the size of Telstra, its a huge job," Mr Hewitt said.

"But Dave has a long history of successful implementation in the IT world and that will help smooth the way for Telstra's transformation."

But Telstra's main union, the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, said continued job cuts would add more complexity to the transformation mire left behind by Mr Lamming.

"Our biggest problem with Telstra's transformation is the assumption about how many jobs are required," CEPU national president Ed Husic said.

"We don't think that Telstra has taken into account how radically the landscape has changed since 2005."

Mr Husic said problems in the IT transformation had contributed to a 240 per cent rise in customer complaints under Mr Trujillo's reign.

He has requested Mr Thodey to conduct a thorough review of Telstra's transformation program.

[admin]

Increased BI take-up forecast in tough business environment

ITWire by Peter Dinham Sunday, 31 May 2009

Despite a contraction in the business intelligence software market in the economic downturn, analysts’ IDC are predicting BI demand to expand from within organisations as users seek better access information.

According to IDC, despite the global economic crisis, the BI tools market in the Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, last year grew positively at 7.7% and was estimated to be worth US$445.30 million for 2008.

However, as IDC says, this still represents a significant fall from previous years’ double-digit growth recorded for the region in 2005 to 2007.

According to Sharon Tan of IDC’s Asia/Pacific software research, with many businesses “knee-jerking” into freezing or slashing IT budgets as the global economic crisis unfolded, the BI software market generally contracted in 2H 2008 over 1H 2008 in most APEJ countries.

“Cost cutting measures and lower IT budgets are expected to contribute to longer sales cycle and more pricing pressure in 1H 2009,” says Tan, adding that IDC end-user studies conducted in 1Q 2009 also confirmed that “cost is the main consideration when IT decision makers in APEJ buy software.”

Tan says organisations are now likely to be more motivated to try alternative, lower cost BI solutions and delivery models which tend to tamper down revenue based market forecasts, and, at the same time, BI demand is expected to expand from within organisations.

"More users are seeking better access information, which is still one of the fundamental reasons behind BI adoption.

“The recent turbulent times and uncertainties have intensified the need for timely, accurate and relevant information to make sound business decisions.”


According to Tan, following the economic crisis, many decision makers and information workers felt the pain of insufficient, inaccurate or contradictory information as they tried hard to grow their business, and she says IDC expects this need to fuel interest in BI solutions and “pave the way for future BI growth once business sentiments improve."

"Preliminary analysis of the recent IDC-sponsored end-user research conducted in March-April 2009 also shows encouraging signs. Despite tough times, a significant percentage of organisations surveyed are already planning to equip users, such as managers and customer-facing employees, with timely information over the next 18 months by having BI more pervasively available in their organisation."

Overall, says Tan, the short-term outlook of BI solutions has slowed-down for all countries due to the economic uncertainties.

In addition, according to Tan the five-year CAGRs for a number of APEJ countries have been unfavourably impacted by weaker currencies in 2008, particularly for Australia, Korea, and New Zealand.

“Nonetheless, countries such as the PRC, India, and Thailand are expected to remain as the BI growth generators due to regulatory/compliance related issues, increasing maturity in application deployments and heightened competitive pressures.”

Tan says that, in most APEJ countries, increased competitiveness, coupled with highly cost-conscious businesses, have raised interest in BI and other business analytics solutions that can "help address customer retention and customer wallet expansion goals."

[admin]

Business Intelligence Users Want Software That Tells (and Sells) a Thousand Stories

QlikView user conference survey outlines priorities for BI software. Business intelligence experts and users will prioritise business intelligence software in 2009/2010 to deliver greater operational visibility and uncover business opportunities (74%), suggesting BI within medium-large enterprises is perceived as a revenue-generator ahead of saving time and money.

Sydney, NSW (PRWEB) August 6, 2009 -- Business intelligence experts and users will prioritise business intelligence software in 2009/2010 to deliver greater operational visibility and uncover business opportunities (74%), suggesting BI within medium-large enterprises is perceived as a revenue-generator ahead of saving time and money.


Stuart Barnard, Inside Info MD at Qonnections with Alastair Pearson, Partner & Kieran Earnshaw, Director at PwC.
We're tremendously grateful to everyone who attended and made the conference such a success. QlikTech and Inside Info, the Australian provider of QlikView business intelligence software, conducted the survey at the first annual QlikView Australian user conference, Qonnections, in Sydney this month. More than 100 specialist business intelligence users attended including customers, partners and other BI specialists.
Overwhelmingly, business intelligence software is used right across the enterprise, with senior management the primary users of BI and reporting (93 per cent) and sales and finance teams joint second.

The day-long Qonnections event featured speakers from Inside Info's rapidly growing customer base (250+ in Australia) including Talent 2, Amcor and Manassen Foods, and partner, PwC. The majority of those attended to keep abreast of business intelligence product developments, share ideas and learn from others (65 per cent). Specifically, 29 per cent wanted to learn about QlikView 9's advanced visualisations with 17 per cent interested in global search capabilities of data.

"We purposely chose to not run the typical IT industry, vendor-dominated user group forum for the QlikView community. The calibre of speakers from well-known domestic and global brands at our first Qonnections user conference demonstrates the value that attendees see in QlikView, business intelligence itself and in learning from peers," said Stuart Barnard, Managing Director at Inside Info. "We're tremendously grateful to everyone who attended and made the conference such a success."

Inside Info launched QlikView's new release, version 9, to its community at the event, showcasing new enhancements in the areas of enterprise manageability, live real-time push data into memory for faster querying, mobile user (iPhone, Blackberry and Java mobile) and cloud deployments, integrated reporting, advanced visualisations and usability improvements including global search to bring operational data to life.

Also a first for the business intelligence industry, QlikView's Personal Edition is available as a fully-functional, free downloadable QlikView developer tool for personal use from Inside Info | Home Page - Inside Info, QlikView, QlikTech, Sales Reporting, Data Analysis, Information Management, Performance Management, Business Intelligence .

About Inside Info
Inside Info is the exclusive distributor and local representative of QlikView in Australia - the world's fastest growing business intelligence software according to IDC. QlikView works the way your mind works - making associations by connecting data from many sources in a few clicks. This patented in-memory association technology brings fast results and better decision making. QlikView is intuitive to learn, simple to modify and can be deployed in a few weeks. Inside Info has over 250 QlikView customers including Amcor, Bianco Group, Border Express, Fujitsu General and Manassen Foods. Globally QlikView is the flagship product of QlikTech which has over 11,100 customers in 95 countries.

For more information, please visit Inside Info | Home Page - Inside Info, QlikView, QlikTech, Sales Reporting, Data Analysis, Information Management, Performance Management, Business Intelligence

For media enquiries, please contact
Jo Balfour
Progressiva
+61 2 9365 6258
+61 405 542 018

[admin]

News: QlikView plus Markinson equals one-click retail and wholesale intelligence

Sydney, 22 September, 2009 – Australian retailers and wholesalers are set for state-of-the art inventory, customer and sales intelligence following a new partner appointment by Inside Info, the business analytics specialist.

Inside Info, Australia’s master reseller of the world’s fastest growing business intelligence software (IDC), QlikView, has appointed specialist partner, Markinson, an Australian provider of enterprise management and point-of-sale software solutions, to extend existing reach into retail and wholesale companies.

Markinson which counts JB Hi-Fi, T2, Haigh Australia and Rexel among its customers, will resell QlikView to provide its customer base with access to powerful and instant visual analysis, dashboards and reporting of stock, sales, financial and marketing data with measurable ROI in just weeks.

QlikView analyses hundreds of millions of cells of data at a transactional level in seconds, irrespective of the number of users, offering Markinson customers a highly scalable business intelligence solution that is simple to use for any employee of wholesale distribution and retail businesses across Australasia.

“We’ve used QlikView to power reporting for our retail management solution, Shopkeeper, for some time and have now taken this to a new level. QlikView will also be used to complement our MomentumPro enterprise management solution which is why we sought to extend our relationship with QlikView and Inside Info. Customers can now reap the benefits of one-click analytics without the cost and complexity of traditional BI software,” said Ian Whiting, CEO at Markinson.

“We’re excited to have Markinson as part of our local QlikView partner program,” said Stuart Barnard, Managing Director at Inside Info. “More than 500 retailers and distributors use QlikView globally because it provides simple access to a rich, interactive and holistic view of demand and supply metrics and performance. Sales, inventory and management dashboards can be custom- built and modified in weeks designed to help retailers and wholesalers make faster, more informed decisions.”

About Markinson

Markinson is a privately owned Australian company that provides business software solutions to wholesale distribution and retail businesses across Australasia. For more than 20 years, Markinson has pioneered a wide range of focused solutions which help customers achieve their business goals. The Company services over 250 customers throughout Australasia.

For more information contact Zoe Staples, Marketing Manager on +61 7 3368 0888 or go to Point of Sale POS ERP Australia | Markinson Business Software Solutions

About Inside Info

Inside Info is the exclusive distributor and local representative of QlikView in Australia - the world’s fastest growing business intelligence software according to IDC. QlikView works the way your mind works – making associations by connecting data from many sources in a few clicks. This patented in-memory association technology brings fast results and better decision making. QlikView is intuitive to learn, simple to modify and can be deployed in a few weeks. Inside Info has over 280 QlikView customers including Amcor, Toro Australia, Bianco Group, Border Express, Fujitsu General and Manassen Foods. Globally QlikView is the flagship product of QlikTech which has over 12,000 customers in 95 countries.

For more information, please visit Inside Info | Home Page - Inside Info, QlikView, QlikTech, Sales Reporting, Data Analysis, Information Management, Performance Management, Business Intelligence

[admin]

NZ’s largest technology summit launches today

Monday, 14 September 2009, 10:31 am
Press Release: Microsoft New Zealand
Media Release

Microsoft Tech Ed – New Zealand’s largest technology summit – launches today

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Monday, 14 September, 2009 – More than 2,000 information technology professionals and developers will descend on Auckland today for Microsoft Tech Ed 2009, New Zealand’s largest IT summit.

The three-day event, which will be officially opened by the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, the Honourable Steven Joyce, brings together a powerful pool of IT talent, as well as some of New Zealand’s most innovative IT companies.

Scott Wylie, Director of Developer & Platform Strategy for Microsoft New Zealand, says Microsoft Tech Ed 2009 will offer attendees the opportunity to learn strategies for maximising the business and technical value of IT, from some of the world’s foremost experts.

“Although there are signs of economic recovery in New Zealand, companies are still operating in a tough environment. It’s important that any investment – whether it be in IT or other business areas – achieves a strong return. This year, Microsoft Tech Ed will focus on teaching IT professionals and developers the skills to get more out of their IT investments – so they can deliver even greater business value,”says Mr Wylie.

“We live in an increasingly knowledge-based and connected global economy, and New Zealand businesses need to improve productivity and economic performance. A key to achieving these outcomes will be the use of technology to overcome the barriers of size and distance. Microsoft Tech Ed is about giving those in the IT sector the tools to innovate more effectively and help New Zealand businesses compete on the global stage,” says Wylie.

In 2009, Microsoft Tech Ed will feature 14 core programmes, 128 breakout sessions and 100 hands-on labs covering key themes including Windows 7, Security, Virtualisation, Business Intelligence and Cloud Computing.

“Microsoft Tech Ed 09 brings together keynote speakers from all over the world, as well as the largest ever number of New Zealand presenters, demonstrating the maturity and depth of the technology industry in this country. Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, is a New Zealander and in 2009, we’re lucky enough to have him delivering the feature presentation at Tech Ed,” says Wylie.

In addition to Chris Liddell, major organisations such as Powerco, New Zealand Post and Kiwibank will also be presenting at Tech Ed, where they’ll discuss the value that innovative IT solutions have delivered to their business.

Microsoft Tech Ed 2009 will again feature the popular Tech Girls dinner, which celebrates the significant contribution of women involved in New Zealand’s IT sector. Microsoft Tech Ed attendees will also have the chance to attend the TechFest party, featuring performances by Elemeno P, Katchafire and The Septembers as well as the comedic styling’s of Ben Hurley. The party will be held at the Auckland Town hall and hosted by Oscar Kightley.

For more details visit http://www.microsoft.co.nz/teched

[admin]

Sep 08, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- Talend, a developer of open source data integration software, announced several partnerships with U.S. and international OEM partners, including Appko, Knowledge Relay, MCF Technology Solutions, LynasLogic and WDCi Group.

BT Global Services achieves 100 percent availability with business service management solution. Learn more, download free white paper.


In the past six months, Talend reported it has seen a 100 percent increase in the adoption of its technology by software vendors under the OEM model.

Talend noted that recently signed partnerships include: - Appko-California-based Appko creates enterprise applications. Through its partnership with Talend, Appko integrated Talend's data integration solutions into its new product, AppEvolve. AppEvolve said it will enable organizations to extend their existing investments in the enterprise by enabling service based integrations (SOA), extended enterprise application functionality (RIA) and further insight with reporting and BI. AppEvolve will be launched sometime in 2010.

- Knowledge Relay-California-based Knowledge Relay provides implemented operational business intelligence (BI) solutions. Through its partnership with Talend, Knowledge Relay has employed Talend's Integration Suite (TIS) into its business intelligence solutions, allowing for multi-billion dollar projects to integrate project management data with all other desired types of data saving. The end product saves Knowledge Relay customers millions of dollars annually by providing real-time reports and dashboards not obtainable anywhere else.

- MCF Technology Solutions (MCF Tech)-Ohio-based MCF Tech is a Web 2.0 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, that helps organizations maximize cloud computing PaaS tools to create business process applications. MCF Tech utilizes Talend's Integration Suite for its open source data integration capabilities to provide service-based business process automation solutions. This allows MCF Tech customers to integrate current PaaS applications with other platforms such as QuickBase, QuickBooks, WorkXpress and Wolf Frameworks.

- LynasLogic-Brazil-based LynasLogic is a provider of tax, auditing and financial consolidation software solutions. Through its OEM partnership with Talend, LynasLogic has utilized the Talend Integration Suite to create LynasETL powered by Talend. LynasETL is part of the Lynas Application Suite and allows customers to integrate their disparate systems to and from Lynas software products.

- WDCi Group-Australia and Malaysia-based WDCi Group specializes in connecting systems by providing solutions for identity, integration, data transformation and SOA requirements, both on-premise and on-demand. Through its partnership with Talend, WDCi said it has developed pre-built integration solutions. The ReadyMadeETL integration solutions use Talend to deliver integration solutions to organizations of all sizes.

"Talend's commitment to the success of our channel partners has never been stronger," said Vincent Pineau, Talend's VP and general manager Americas. "Our collective achievements are a testament to the global strength and quality of our partners' applications and Talend's technology. By making our partners' success a top corporate priority, Talend will become the global standard in data integration solutions." ((Comments on this story may be sent to health@closeupmedia.com))

[admin]

Coming to Sydney. Cross post on the industry calendar.

[JohnG]

12/9/2009

TDWI, By Stephen Swoyer


The influx of new players in the business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DW) segments has certainly made things interesting. Unfortunately, some analysts say, that's all these vendors been good for. Once they're asked to show their cards, skeptics allege, they go bust -- the vendors talk a good game, and they have promising technologies, but customer adoption (the yardstick of success) never takes off. Doubters like to point to would-be power-players-gone-bust such as LucidEra, Dataupia Inc., and (on the basis of fewer than half a dozen customers) DATAllegro Corp.

BI and DW upstarts are undeterred. For one thing, every BI or DW company worth its salt can point to a few customer success stories, and that hasn't always been the case. Half a decade ago, for example, DW pioneer Netezza Inc. was hard pressed to identify more than one or two named customers, while nascent rival DATAllegro couldn't produce so much as a single reference.

Furthemore, today's BI and DW entrepreneurs can point to customer success stories that purport to underscore the value -- or the differentiation -- they bring to the table. Their claim isn't just that their technologies add value but that their technologies add value by virtue of being differentiated from established offerings. Their offerings address needs, gaps, pain points, or cracks that established solutions ignore, address imperfectly (e.g., big square peg, not-so-big round hole), or simply omit, chiefly as a result of bloat or scope.

Take Lyza Soft, a BI newcomer that markets Lyza, an end-user-oriented analytic workbench. It's one of a handful of vendors that field "Workgroup BI" solutions (see Workgroup BI Poised for a Comeback -- Enterprise Systems). According to CEO and founder Scott Davis, Lyza -- like other end-user-oriented BI offerings -- targets the otherwise unaddressed requirements of real-world users. Davis has little patience for the hemming, hawing, or grousing of the data management (DM) establishment -- the folks who tend to advocate a highly-centralized, single-version-of-the-truth-or-bust approach to BI and DW. In fact, such behavior has kept some kinds of users -- particularly power users, analytic experts, and motivated self-starters -- penned up and effectively constrained for far too long, Davis insists.

Similarly, he argues, the BI suites sold by IBM Corp., Oracle Corp., and SAP AG -- among other big players -- are unsuitable for these classes of users, too. Not only are they far too square-peggish, Davis insists, but -- by virtue of their out-of-the-box deployment and management models -- they defer by default to IT. One upshot of this, he contends, is that highly motivated users -- the constituency Lyza itself targets -- tend to feel constrained by even the most self-serviceable of Big BI tools.

"Pretty much all [the users we're targeting are] doing is opportunistic, long-tailed stuff. For example, they're using it as a prototyping device for how do you collapse the implementation time on a longer project," explained Davis, in an interview at TDWI's World Conference in San Diego. "We have no intention of picking a fight with Google or Microsoft or any such entity. There is a vacuum space, a void, created by the big ship as it cruises through the water. There is a space for a non-[establishment] product, and we think that we can be that product."

It's a message that seems to resonate with users. Lyza touts at least one reference user (Baldwin Mutual Insurance), but other new BI vendors tally half a dozen or more. Consider ParAccel Inc., one of several players that markets a massively parallel processing (MPP) database. One of its customers -- Autometrics, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm that markets offerings for the automotive, travel, and telecommunications industries -- tapped the ParAccel Analytic Database (PAD) to address problems of scale that, from its perspective, were simply unprecedented.

Last year, Autometrics decided to develop a new market demand service for its automotive customers, but when the company conducted its requirements analysis, it determined that the proposed application -- Autometrics Pulse -- would both consume and generate data at a pace that threatened to overwhelm Autometrics' SQL Server-based DW infrastructure.

"For our Autometrics Pulse [applications], we currently have about 235 million records, and we're growing at about one million records a day. We needed something a lot more powerful than what we had, but at that point, we didn't know if any [solution] could handle what we planned to throw at it," says Randy Rubin, vice-president of business development and delivery with Autometrics.

"With everybody using Google, we wanted to have the speed of Google when it came to analytics, but we didn't see any way to do that using existing technology, so that's when we decided to look at these new [analytic] database systems."

Autometrics seems typical of the whiz-bang performance stories revealed at post-implementation reviews -- that companies like to tout: it achieved a "900 to 1000 percent performance gain in some of [its] reports," according to Rubin. It's also a textbook case of an upstart vendor adding value -- and achieving success -- by exploiting shortcomings, gaps, or differences in an existing power hierarchy.

"[PAD] allows us to speak confidently [to customers] that we can deliver on bringing a lot of data together and being able to deliver it with rapid [service levels]. We're typically not going to be doing sub-second, but if you can deliver results in 1,2, or 3 seconds, that's Google-like speeds. That's something we just couldn't do with SQL Server. It's something our team [i.e., data warehouse staff] felt we couldn't do with any off-the-shelf database.

"It isn't that we're moving off [SQL Server]. That isn't what we wanted ParAccel to do. What we wanted it to do was to allow us to keep our existing data [infrastructure, on SQL Server] and to really step beyond that, too. Our perspective has sort of expanded with ParAccel. Basically, we're not afraid to handle anything."

WhereScape is another new and agile vendor that -- by virtue of its ability to target areas of asymmetry (i.e., gaps) -- is achieving some degree of success. WhereScape markets Red, a kind of self-service, drag-and-drop, ETL application. It's one of a crop of new ELT-focused vendors (such as Compact Solutions LLC and DVO Software Inc.) that compete in an ostensibly mature (and often commoditized) data integration market.

Where established players tout either good-enough ETL (e.g., Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server Integration Services) or full-blown data integration platforms (e.g., DI offerings from IBM, Informatica, Oracle, SAP, and SAS Institute Inc.), WhereScape and its asymmetrical kith trumpet tactical offerings. In WhereScape's case, it positions Red as an ideal solution for resource-strapped shops (which can't afford big DI packages and lack extensive DM or DW expertise) or for organizations that need to address tactical, one-off, or similar needs.

One of its customers is United Rentals, a combined Teradata, Oracle, and IBM Corp. shop. With more than 600 U.S. locations, United Rentals runs a good part of its business on top of System i midrange servers from IBM. System i ships with its own built-in DW -- by virtue of a bundled version of Big Blue's DB2, which has been optimized expressly for System i -- but United Rentals runs its EDW on top of Teradata. It also maintains HP-based servers running Oracle, which support its financial systems.

United Rentals had been using a changed-data-capture (CDC) tool from the former DataMirror -- which IBM acquired last year -- to support its Teradata-based ELT process. Dan Mosher, who directs United Rentals' enterprise data warehousing practice, says this approach worked well -- for the most part.

"As we've been going through development, we're using DataMirror for CDC and loading it into a landing area … and [then we] had Teradata consultants writing stored procedures to take that CDC data and load it into the warehouse," he explains. Teradata consulting expertise isn't inexpensive, so nstead of having his Teradata gurus creating stored procedures, Mosher would've preferred to assign them to more high-value tasks.

That's why he decided to look for something to automate this process.

"I got to looking around and I stumbled across this product quite by accident. I saw it and said, 'I've got to give it a try.' I downloaded it and I didn't believe that it could really do what they claimed. But it did. It did exactly what they claimed," he comments.

"WhereScape is a really nice fit for us. We haven't really changed our approach. We're still doing the ELT. What [WhereScape] gives me is the ability to take some of my other people who aren't necessarily programmers, but they understand data and they understand [WhereScape] as well. They can step through this and create a stored procedure for loading the data. It's very powerful in that it allows them to do it, and I don't have to add additional staff."

IBM, of course, markets best-of-breed DI, CDC, and BI technology, but Mosher says he's quite happy with his Teradata-based DW solution. He says he didn't need or want a best-of-breed DI tool. "[WhereScape] is just such a neat fit. When I found it, I thought, if this works, it'll be perfect. I'd done some research on a bunch of different solutions, just basically reading, and from talking with people I know, I determined that in addition to IBM, Informatica has a big presence, too, but they were just overkill for what I wanted to do."