Letter from the Editorial Director
This new edition of What Works in Enterprise Business Intelligence offers a fresh, topicallyfocused collection of customer success stories and expert perspectives. We’reproud to offer this resource to enhance your understanding of the tools, technologies,and methods that are central to enterprise BI today. We’ve arranged these case studiesand lessons from the experts into specific categories to guide you through the articles:enterprise BI, operational BI, open source BI, BI for SAP, and predictive analytics.Here’s what you will find inside:
CASE STUDIES
What Works case studies present snapshots of the most innovative BI and DWimplementations in the industry today. The case studies included in this volume demonstratethe power of enterprise business intelligence technologies and solutions forindustries ranging from restaurants to postage meters to loading dock safety systems.
LESSONS FROM THE EXPERTS
Included in this issue of What Works are articles from leading experts in the services, software, and hardware vendor communities. These lessons provide perspectives about enterprise business intelligence best practices and trends.
Q&A WITH THE EXPERTS
Our Q&A section presents answers from these same experts to the enterprise business intelligence questions they hear most often, complemented by insight from an independent consultant.
FEATURE ARTICLE
In this issue, the feature article comes from Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research. In “Hybrid BI: To Centralize or Distribute—That is the Question,” he discusses how a hybrid approach to organizing BI teams ensures data consistency, adherence to standards, and business responsiveness.
TDWI RESEARCH
There’s more from TDWI Research. What Works includes excerpts from TDWI’s recent Best Practices Reports: Pervasive Business Intelligence: Techniques and Technologies to Deploy BI on an Enterprise Scale, TDWI’s latest report from Wayne Eckerson, and Customer Data Integration: Managing Customer Information as an Organizational Asset, from Philip Russom.
We hope you enjoy this collection of case studies, best practices, and expert insight focused on enterprise business intelligence. We look forward to your comments. If there is anything we can do to make this publication more valuable to you, please let us know. And please join me in thanking the companies that have shared their stories and successes, their technology insights, and the lessons they have learned.
Denelle Hanlon
Editorial Director, What Works in Enterprise Business Intelligence
TDWI
[email protected]