Business unIntelligence: Insight and Innovation beyond Analytics and Big Data

by Barry Devlin

Overview

Business intelligence (BI) used to be so simple--in theory anyway. Integrate and copy data from your transactional systems into a specialized relational database, apply BI reporting and query tools and add business users. Job done.

No longer. Analytics, big data and an array of diverse technologies have changed everything. More importantly, business is insisting on ever more value, ever faster from information and from IT in general. An emerging biz-tech ecosystem demands that business and IT work together.

Business unIntelligence reflects the new reality that in today's socially complex and rapidly changing world, business decisions must be based on a combination of rational and intuitive thinking. Integrating cues from diverse information sources and tacit knowledge, decision makers create unique meaning to innovate heuristically at the speed of thought. This book provides a wealth of new models that business and IT can use together to design support systems for tomorrow's successful organizations.

Dr. Barry Devlin, one of the earliest proponents of data warehousing, goes back to basics to explore how the modern trinity of information, process and people must be reinvented and restructured to deliver the value, insight and innovation required by modern businesses. From here, he develops a series of novel architectural models that provide a new foundation for holistic information use across the entire business. From discovery to analysis and from decision making to action taking, he defines a fully integrated, closed-loop business environment. Covering every aspect of business analytics, big data, collaborative working and more, this book takes over where BI ends to deliver the definitive framework for information use in the coming years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935504566
Publisher:	Technics Publications, LLC
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	1.00(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 A modern trinity 1 1.1 Why now? Why Business unIntelligence? 2 1.2 What’s it all about, trinity? 5 1.3 Pandora’s Box of information 8 1.4 Process, process every where 10 1.5 There’s nowt so queer as folk 11 1.6 Architecting the biz-tech ecosystem 13 1.7 Conclusions 16 CHAPTER 2 The biz-tech ecosystem 19 2.1 The birth of the Beast 20 2.2 Beauty and the Beast—the biz-tech ecosystem 26 2.3 Key features of the biz-tech ecosystem 33 2.4 Tyranny of the Beast 35 2.5 In practice—all change in the organization 38 2.6 Conclusions 39 CHAPTER 3 Data, information and the hegemony of IT 43 3.1 The knowledge pyramid and the ancient serpent of wisdom 44 3.2 What is this thing called data? 47 3.3 From information to data 50 3.4 The modern meaning model—m3 53 3.5 Database daemons and delicate data models 62 3.6 The importance of being information 67 3.7 IDEAL architecture (1): Information, Structure/Context dimension 72 3.8 Metadata is two four-letter words 73 3.9 In practice—focusing IT on information 77 3.10 Conclusions 78 CHAPTER 4 Fact, fiction or fabrication 81 4.1 Questions and answers 82 4.2 Where do you come from (my lovely)? 88 4.3 It’s my data, and I’ll play if I want to 91 4.4 I’m going home…and I’m taking my data with me 94 4.5 Information from beyond the Pale 96 4.6 Tales of sails and sales 100 4.7 A new model for information trust 104 4.8 IDEAL architecture (2): Information, Reliance/Usage dimension 109 4.9 In practice—(re)building trust in data 111 4.10 Conclusions 112 CHAPTER 5 Data-based decision making 115 5.1 Turning the tables on business 117 5.2 The data warehouse at the end of the universe 119 5.3 Business intelligence—really? 133 5.4 Today’s conundrum—consistency or timeliness 141 5.5 Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness 145 5.6 IDEAL architecture (3): Information, Timeliness/Consistency dimension 149 5.7 Beyond the data warehouse 152 5.8 REAL architecture (1): Core business information 153 5.9 In practice—upgrading your data warehouse 156 5.10 Conclusions 158 CHAPTER 6 Death and rebirth in the information explosion 161 6.1 Data deluge, information tsunami 162 6.2 What is big data and why bother? 166 6.3 Internal reality mirrors the external 177 6.4 A primer on big data technology 180 6.5 Information—the tri-domain logical model 190 6.6 REAL architecture (2): Pillars replace layers 197 6.7 In practice—bringing big data on board 199 6.8 Conclusions 201 CHAPTER 7 How applications became apps and other process peculiarities 205 7.1 Hunter-gatherers, farmers and industrialists 206 7.2 From make and sell to sense and respond 211 7.3 Process is at the heart of decision making 214 7.4 Stability or agility (also known as SOA) 220 7.5 Keeping up with the fashionistas 227 7.6 IDEAL architecture (4), Process 231 7.7 REAL architecture (3), The six process-ations 236 7.8 In practice—implementing process flexibility 244 7.9 Conclusions 246 CHAPTER 8 Insightful decision making 249 8.1 BI (the first time) 250 8.2 Information—some recent history 252 8.3 Copyright or copywrong 259 8.4 I spy with my little eye something beginning… 262 8.5 The care and grooming of content 270 8.6 A marriage of convenience 276 8.7 Knowledge management is the answer; now, what was the question? 284 8.8 Models, ontologies and the Semantic Web 286 8.9 In practice—finally moving beyond data 294 8.10 Conclusions 295 CHAPTER 9 Innovation in the human and social realm 299 9.1 Meaning—and the stories we tell ourselves 301 9.2 Rational decision making, allegedly 306 9.3 Insight—engaging the evolved mind 314 9.4 Working 9 to 5…at the MIS mill 319 9.5 Enter prize two dot zero 326 9.6 People

Editorial Reviews

As the person who defined the conceptual framework and physical architecture for data warehousing in the 1980s, Barry Devlin has been an astute observer of the movement he initiated ever since. Now, in Business unIntelligence, Devlin provides a sweeping view of the past, present, and future of business intelligence, while delivering new conceptual and physical models for how to turn information into insights and action. Reading Devlin's prose and vision of BI are comparable to reading Carl Sagan's view of the cosmos. The book is truly illuminating and inspiring.

--Wayne Eckerson, President, BI Leader Consulting

Author, "Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders"

From the Publisher