Talking to Non-IT People

I had a conversation the other day about the IT Department.  He is the head  of a division manufacturing rubber products for other products.  He was saying how frustrating it is to communicate with IT people.  They really do not speak in a language you can understa

Who Is The Customer

I was reminded this week about the value of what we do in Information Technology. The Value to the Customer. In the world of data warehousing this is often confusing.  Is it the IT project that our data supports, the marketing or operational group that leverages our IT system or

ROI on SOA

Return on Investment is a driving force behind Service Oriented Architecture. By creating a platform for interoperability you create the opportunity for re-use. Re-use is the key to your ROI.  So SOA should embrace the heterogeneous nature of IT and must wrap and re-use existing

Is Information Technology an Ecosystem or Part of One

I have been pondering over the past couple of months the use of the word Ecosystem as it relates to Data.  I have been trying as part of the reference architecture development to come up with non-technical words that describe source to business intelligence and at one time was th

Project X Business Intelligence Study

Project X Ltd’s First Study – How is Your Business Leveraging Business Intelligence – a Technical and Business View. We have started a study to see the views that both the Business and Technical users have of Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW). 

Xtreme Data Warehousing – Healthcare Use Case

OK so here we start treading into some testy waters due to confidentiality and control, but this is about awareness of the possibilities to open us up for the options.  This reminds me of the movie Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze.  In the movie he goes into the emerge room aft

Xtreme Data Warehousing – Insurance Use Case

This was the most interesting of all of these in that it is so simple, yet so controversial.  Today for example automotive insurance policies are calculated based on a variety of information that puts the particular driver into a large group of people.  If you want to break

CoffeeCAST – #18 – A Talk with Ted

Welcome to the 18th Episode of the CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X. As of late I have been interested to see how Process and Organizational change are supported in Enterprise Data Warehousing as the business intelligence gets plugged back into the business continuum.  Tod

Xtreme Data Warehousing – Retailing Use Cases – 2

Ikea is a store that has done wonders in how they have you move through their stores, basically from one end to the other.  But a classic retailer doesn’t work that way.  Some stores have loyalty programs to try and do analysis on shopping patterns behaviours and some

Xtreme Data Warehousing – Retailing Use Cases – 1

In store experience is crucial in our shopping process.  There are some great organizations that study patterns and behaviours about how we shop, buy and generally behave. In an article from the newspaper last year (August 30, 2005, Washington Post, by Ariana Eunjung) I read abou