Business Intelligence Journal | Vol. 19, No. 2
TDWI Member Exclusive

June 16, 2014

Put the customer first. The customer is king. Keep the customer satisfied. Those familiar adages ring especially true in this issue of the Business Intelligence Journal.

David Loshin discusses what a customer-centric approach to data entails, the benefits it can provide your business, and how this is reflected in a new approach to master data management.

Customers are increasingly concerned about not only what data organizations keep but also how safe that data remains. Senior editor Hugh J. Watson examines how the data breach Target suffered recently can serve as a wake-up call for enterprises to keep data private and secure. He also describes a new study on privacy focusing on three different ways to characterize privacy and online invasions of privacy. For enterprises looking to get a handle on their big data security risks, Oren Hamami continues the data protection theme by examining five key steps to take now.

Keeping data safe is just one challenge. Nenshad Bardoliwalla examines the impact of the big data revolution on business analysts and why we need a new approach beyond what current data preparation tools offer. Of course, what good is having all that data if your database technology can’t keep up? Saibal Samaddar describes two column-oriented DBMS designs to help you manage your growing data volumes without hampering performance.

Finding the resources to satisfy an organization’s ever-growing need for BI skills is the focus of two articles in this issue. Ryan Hart and Troy Hiltbrand explore how creative crowdsourcing can help enterprises find analytic talent. The authors show how friendly competition at three organizations brought out the best in their employees. In our BI Experts’ Perspective column, Dave Schrader, Ron Swift, and Coy Yonce discuss what advice they would offer college students about BI career opportunities, how students should prepare for (and start) a BI career, and what technical and “soft” skills a graduate needs to be successful.

Looking for advice yourself? Jean-Pierre Dijcks and Martin Gubar examine the best way to implement a big data strategy and what tools you should consider. Coy Yonce discusses how an enterprise can use analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of its own analytics and create a more useful analytics solution. He calls it BI on BI.

As always, we welcome your comments. Please send them to [email protected].

James E. Powell

Editorial Director
Business Intelligence Journal


IN THIS ISSUE

  • Addressing the Privacy Issues of Big Data
    Hugh J. Watson
  • Bridging the Analytics Skill Gap with Crowdsourcing
    Ryan Hart and Troy Hiltbrand
  • Choosing a Database Architecture: An Essential Guide for Data Warehousing Professionals
    Saibal Samaddar
  • Big Data Security: Understanding the Risks
    Oren Hamami
  • BI Q&A: Customer-Centric Focus Demands New Approach to MDM
    Linda Briggs
  • BI Experts’ Perspective: Business Intelligence as a Career Choice
    Dave Schrader, Ron Swift, and Coy Yonce
  • Accelerating Business-Centric Data Preparation in a Big Data World
    Nenshad Bardoliwalla
  • Leveraging Analytics to Gauge the Effectiveness of Your Analytics Platform
    Coy Yonce
  • Integrating SQL and Hadoop
    Jean-Pierre Dijcks and Martin Gubar


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