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Wayne Eckerson, BI explainer, jumps to TechTarget

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One of the business intelligence industry’s best explainers, Wayne Eckerson, is leaving TDWI for TechTarget. For the everyday BI expert, it’s good gossip. — But for those still on the learning curve, it’s a cue to switch channels.

“It’s true,” he told me this morning about the rumors, “I’m departing the big TDWI in the sky for other pastures.” This week’s rumors were only the latest; I heard the first wave back in early 2009 that he was looking to jump the fence.

The new pasture, as of November 15, will be as director of research at TechTarget with BeyeNETWORK co-founder Ron Powell.… Read the rest “Wayne Eckerson, BI explainer, jumps to TechTarget”

Getting over the ‘P’ word to expand BI horizons

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Many in the business intelligence industry talk about organizational problems getting in BI’s way, but few talk about them very much.

Scratch the surface of most presentations and conversations — such as last week at the TDWI conference in San Diego — and you find people problems bobbing right up alongside data problems: indifferent executives who undermine BI, short-sighted silo keepers, and IT people who enrage business users with paternalism, to name a few top quirks. If only data were all we had to transform!

One business manger at last week’s TDWI conference in San Diego told me that one of his most daunting tasks during a recent data warehouse implementation was persuading silo managers to release their death grip.… Read the rest “Getting over the ‘P’ word to expand BI horizons”

Feature lists miss the point

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So many people who should know better seem to miss the point when they mention Tableau. Why? I asked BI veteran Stephen McDaniel for his thoughts — which he gave, but then went on to suggest an almost unheard of challenge: a data analysis face-off among vendors.

Consider this description by a BI analyst: “Tableau provides business analysts speed of thought visual analysis on data held in memory on their desktop machines.” All that’s fine, but it may as well have been about a whole bunch of other tools, too.

At the root of this fuzz, explained McDaniel, is that most analysts who concern themselves with tools don’t actually use the tools.… Read the rest “Feature lists miss the point”