BI solutions must help decision-makers manage data effectively"

One of the key issues before enterprises today is managing data explosion.

And business intelligence (BI) software plays an increasingly important role in

building fast and scalable databases to service the complex business needs of

such organizations. Andrew Rouche, head, systems, Web server division, IBM

Asia-Pacific, has worked on specialized practice-delivering systems

administration, consulting and services for major corporations deploying

business systems.

Rouche was recently in India for the launch of IBM’s NUMA-Q range of

e-servers, which benefit BI. He spoke to DATAQUEST on BI and how NUMA-Q

architecture benefited companies. Excerpts:

On the key requirements for a knowledge-hungry company:

Modern businesses have learned that they are more effective when the

decision-making power for particular issues are in the hands of the employees

closest to them. Thirty years ago less than 10% of a company’s employees made

important decisions. Imagine that kind of scenario in modern business! It has

reversed completely, with around 90% of the employees being decision-makers now.

This means huge data flowing in and out of the organization, and to tackle this

problem, a modern, knowledge-hungry company needs a BI solution.

On how BI solves the needs of an enterprise:

BI solutions help decision-makers manage data effectively, and this is a

challenging task, since the amount of data that can be captured is exploding.

The number of people within a company who need access to the data, and the

number of different ways in which data can be accessed and used, are matters of

concern too. This calls for an economically and efficiently scalable BI system.

On the prerequisites of BI architecture:

With the Internet access a norm rather than an exception, users of a BI

system may be located anywhere in the world. This necessitates constant uptime

with continuous access, and hence the scalable model. A plethora of requirements

must be accommodated in one overall solution that allows inter-operability.

There is also a growing integration of separate components of a BI solution;

hence the need for flexibility.

As companies grow, they normally acquire customers spread over diverse

geographies. With the Internet connectivity increasing worldwide–which demands

a growing selection of application software–raw data is being made available

abundantly. The ultimate purpose of any BI solution is to transform these data

into usable knowledge. A good example is supply chain management (SCM) where

data captured from customer purchase transactions is fed into programs that

automatically configure orders to suppliers. So, it analyzes customer behavior,

projects future demand for products, reviews current inventory and adjusts

purchasing pattern accordingly.

On how BI can reduce total cost of ownership:

Considering that the investment in software and hardware represented by BI is

on the higher side, the investment for training personnel may be greater. Here

comes the manageability of the BI system. If it is simplified, it allows the

company to reduce the number of highly paid specialists who are retained to

administer and maintain it. So, I think manageability goes a long way in

reducing total cost of ownership.

On the NUMA-Q range of servers:

Ten years ago, it would have been hard to find a business database as large

as a terabyte. Today, that is a common phenomenon among corporate users. IBM’s

"terabyte club" (customers running databases of at least a terabyte of

storage on IBM systems) has more than 170 members, and recently an IBM

NUMA-Q2000 server was configured for a proof-of-concept system totaling 82 TB.

IBM NUMA-Q architecture forms a scalable foundation to keep pace with the

unpredictable growth in data. It follows a modular "quad

architecture", which allows easy, flexible and balanced growth, and all

quads are tied together with NUMA-Q’s IQ-Link interconnect technology. Each

quad is an Intel-based processing package comprising four processors, local

memory and multiple I/O ports. Expanding an NUMA-Q system is easy, unlike system

expansions under massively parallel processor architectures. Adding performance

to an NUMA-Q system does not require reconfiguring the database across hundreds

of MPP nodes, with days of down time. In fact, a company can plug in enough

quads to double its system capacity and the operating system will detect and

configure the new quads automatically.

On global companies, that has deployed BI on NUMA-Q:

A good example is the Ford Motor Company that has built a global warranty

system based on the NUMA-Q datawarehouse. The strategy of turning the world’s

second largest automobile manufacturer into a global organization involved a lot

of reengineering in its manufacturing processes. Now the company has a system

built on a corporate-wide datawarehouse that stores vehicle information and

warranty claims. As each vehicle is manufactured, detailed information on its

exact specifications is captured in the database. The consolidated information

allows Ford engineering and manufacturing organizations, in conjunction with the

company’s suppliers to rapidly identify emerging product quality problems and

to correct them. Credit Lyonnais, National Security Association of Software and

New Westminster Bank are amongst our other customers.

VENKATESH GANESH



in Mumbai