Don’t stop – there is a lot more to discover out there!

There is a rumour out on the street that says that the age of the Zettabyte is near. Now that is a realistic number when measuring internet traffic. But could there possibly be analytical environments of this size? There are lots of Teradata customers that are in the Terabyte range, and they do unique stuff with their data. Is there any point in having huge data volumes available in itself? A Zettabyte equals 1024 Exabytes, which equals 1024 Petabytes – and the Petabyte club is still an exclusive circle of Teradata customers (although their volumes are increasing at a breath-taking pace.) What is their interest in “big data”? Couldn’t there be a point when large data volumes become an obstacle, rather than an opportunity for analytical purposes?

Listening to the big guys, you don’t get the impression that they worry about size. Large data volumes rather seem to be their playing field on which they try out new tricks. While many data warehouse architects are heavily concerned with economics, these guys are worried that they do not capture enough detail. Oliver Ratzesberger of eBay specifically quoted one of his colleagues who said that you should never throw away any data at all because you never know what you may want them for in a few years’ time. The knack is to have the data ready when the business idea pops up rather than having to wait an extra 12 or 30 months until you have collected enough material to test it on.

This appears to be the attitude that sets the Petabyte club apart from (and often ahead of) other players: they are moving away from using data to confirm suspected answers towards discovering genuinely new things. It requires them to capture high quality detailed data as opposed to summary data. For example, storing information about transactions will enable you to identify some long-term patterns. But it is the interactions with the company that a customer has before and during the purchase that tell the whole story, especially when the sale does not take place in the end (which is clearly the more interesting case.) On websites, simple usability details may turn out to be deal-breakers en masse. But you will never find them unless you track and analyze customer interactions. The club members make sure they can do so when they notice that they need to.

The lesson to learn from these giants is that when you are laying out your data warehouse, it makes sense to look beyond the first few years when you do standard reporting and a bit of analysis. At a later stage, when you have learned to make full use of your insights and when your organization has begun to direct more and more questions at the analytics department, you will want to predict, react to and trigger business events. For example, look at the telecommunications sector. A few years ago, some people questioned the benefits of storing call detail records. The reality today is that if you cannot analyze these data by now, you’ll probably find it hard to stay in business at all, given your competitors’ analytical advantages. The same is happening with OSS data now. This data is turning out to be extremely valuable if you want to understand customer experiences with your services. Are there, for example, any bandwidth bottlenecks in any area that actively drive customers away? And isn’t there any way you can spot these problems in real-time and rectify them right away? Well, there will be, unless you have decided against capturing those data on a detailed level in the first place.

It’s worth to keep this in mind as social media data, and all those other new data sources, are about to be integrated into enterprise analytics. An assortment of data won’t keep you at the head of the field. I am aware that this looks like a massive challenge to many enterprises. If handling the Petabyte was like breaking the sonic wall, handling the Zettabyte appears to be like trying to travel at speed of light. Well, I’d say just don’t stop (as Freddy Mercury has put it), keep on pushing – and we will get there all together! The consensus at the panel was that in the next 3-5 years, we will see the required innovations. Now ain’t that worth keeping the faith?

Socialization at the Partners

Darryl McDonald has elaborated his concept of socialization of data (socializing is a key thing at conferences, so why have we never thought of those data before) today, and if you want to watch him doing so you can see for yourself here. People have expressed their curiosity about this concept in response to my post yesterday, so I will try and depict it here, in the way I understand it.

Darryl basically argued that if you want to draw value from your data, you need to do three things: integrate, explore and share them. Now this is what you do in databases of any size, no matter whether you are running a mere data mart or a full-scale enterprise data warehouse. In my own simple words, Darryl’s message was that we are used to building our own little model worlds – some smaller, some bigger – and tend to be content with them for some time, while at the same time data out there is virtually exploding. The examples he gave were social media, mobile devices and sensors. All of these new data sources hold huge business potentials once enterprises start to tap into them, which is already happening, and will be even more of it in two years’ time or so. What Darryl was really telling us was that we should think up ways to find and grasp those new opportunities. Teradata is providing the technical means for it.

What it all comes down to is what I call the “realization gap”, which occurs because we have been preached in the past years that (textbook style) innovation is led by business: we need it, so we invent it. But I think that at the moment, changes in business will be driven by new technologies, not the other way round. Just remember that mobile devices and geospatial data came first and all those location-based services that we appreciate now followed. In fact, only 18 months ago Teradata CTO Stephen Brobst predicted, not reported, these services. This gap has been closing with frantic speed.

Back to the technical side, the three steps of integrating-exploring-sharing your data. There was a challenge for us that we have risen to. On the one hand, we know that deeper insights require integration of new data with existing data – for example, making customers suitable offers requires more than just their location data, obviously. On the other hand, there is a whole new diversity both of data types and analytical tools specializing on these types. This is why Teradata has put so much effort on integration with partner tools and why we are looking for new ways in which our platforms can work together. From in-database analytics, data labs and the unified LDM to the alignment with Hadoop systems, it all serves to support the vision of an enterprise ecosystem that is open for data and people, as Darryl put it.

So we at Teradata are enabling tomorrow’s business breakthroughs because we have a clear idea which data are being generated and because we are making them available for analysis. Darryl’s platform socialization of data is our bit to help close the realization gap and at the same time take the pulse of all those pioneers that brace themselves to take those new opportunities. After all, ideas get born when people with different backgrounds engage in discussion, don’t they?

So much for now. If you want some lighter inspiration, what views you can get from truly granular material, have a look at the Sand Artists who performed at today’s general session.

Time-travelling with your data warehouse

This headline is not an allusion to the inevitable jet lag that many visitors from our region still feel. It’s about the most spectacular announcement that has been made today at the Teradata Partners conference today, in my view at least. And, as I indicated yesterday, there was a whole wealth of technologically interesting news at today’s media briefing. More on those later.

Think about this: Have you ever wondered why on earth you have taken a decision that turned out to be awfully wrong? If this has ever happened to you, I am sure that you had at least one well-worked out theory. You will say that you didn’t pay enough attention to X or that you were too much preoccupied with Z and, most importantly, you vow to never make this mistake, any mistake again. Data warehousing is all about decision support. So if you want to know why decisions were made in a certain way, they should give a good idea, shouldn’t they? You should be able to simply rewind those data and look at the full view of the time.

This was actually not so easy for various reasons. Data change over time, some of the data simply gets overwritten, and this is why we used to take snapshots of these data every now and again. But this is not enough to capture when exactly certain changes occurred and what effect this had on dependent data. This used to require a lot of “manual” work (complex coding, really) that is now being done by the Teradata Database 13.10. The effect will be much like with geospatial in the recent past: everyone relied on zip codes because geographical representation was such a hustle – and suddenly every mobile application uses it. So it bet that the temporal rewind button will be everywhere in the near future. And you can use it to find out what you really did know when you took a certain decision. You can even use it to demonstrate this to third parties if you want to. And there are lots of business questions that you can answer a great deal more easily and accurately with this feature. I find this whole idea really fascinating, maybe because I remember the movie Back to the Future so well. It was released in Italy exactly 25 years before Teradata’s temporal data announcement. If I could rewind my life to the 80s, I would probably be having a good time listening to an U2 vinyl. I wonder whether I would feel more like “Marty McFly” (Michael J. Fox) who doesn’t really grasp what is happening to him or like “Doc” who feels completely in control all the time.

- Teradata offers a Unified Logical Data Model now that allows enterprises to map all of their value chains from beginning to end (and possibly crossing boundaries of industry that were previously catered for with distinctive LDMs)

- More performance, storage and usability with the platform family, which has a full five members by now

- Teradata Relationship Manager has incorporated modules to engage customers on smartphones, iPads and social media sites within seconds – with all the knowledge stored in the data warehouse at hand

- Teradata Accelerated Analytics Portfolio includes lots of new data types, emerging technologies, partner optimizations, and tools for application development

And there is also some news from our partnerships that I won’t be able to cover today. As I have said, there was a lot. And hey look, I can’t go massive-parallel. I’m a mere human being – and I plan to keep it that way for the foreseeable future. But I pledge that I’ll come back to you as soon as I can. See you.

Another Euphoric State Conference

I have arrived in San Diego at this year’s Teradata Partners Conference now, and as usual when I reach the West Coast of the United States I feel somewhere in between a terrible jet lag (the difference to Milano and most of Europe is nine hours) and feverish excitement that tells me to just shrug off the fatigue and enjoy. When I flew in on Saturday, I found myself humming “it never rains in Southern California” to the San Diego rain and some people even seemed to nod at me in silent agreement. Now, who was it again that referred to California as “Euphoric State?”

The only real calamity that plagues this piece of land (apart from the occasional earthquake) seems to be wildfires that break out from time to time. In fact, back in 2007 a wildfire raged in the area near Rancho Bernardo where both the Teradata Research and Development and the Global Support Center (GSC) reside. The authorities wouldn’t run any risk and ordered an evacuation that forced Teradata to close its facilities temporarily. They were not harmed, and a few days after the fire (and the smoke) was gone, operations resumed as usual. In the meantime, the GSC was facing a major challenge, having to ensure that Teradata’s 24/7 customer support would be kept up. It turned out that its business continuity plan worked splendidly and operations progressed despite of the fires. For example, when a retailer reported performance challenges at one of its nodes, Teradata Customer Services were on cue and solved the problem as speedily as usual. The GSC was rising to the challenge alright.

The proximity to Teradata Research and Development at this year’s conference makes sense because – I think I can reveal that much – that there will be a lot of technologically relevant announcements from Teradata and its partners on Monday. During the next few days, I plan to follow around some journalists the Expo area and report back to you which partners they are most interested in and what questions they debate. The same goes for the various conference highlights, most importantly the general session on Monday where our Chief Marketing Officer Darryl McDonald will explain his concept of the socialization of data.

So much for now. Let the show begin!

A busy final day in Berlin

After three intensive days, this conference is coming to an end now. Apart from the pleasure of meeting so many friendly faces who share an interest in our discipline, I am enjoying the feeling that I have once again gathered a multitude of fresh ideas – or should I say, loose ends – that I will take home and reflect upon. And I hope you feel the same way. Here are just a few thoughts on today’s keynote and workshops.

Stephen’s bid for the BICC
Stephen Brobst, Teradata’s CTO, made a strong case for the concept of the BI competence centre (BICC) that would serve as a link between IT and business users. The idea is to say good-bye to the project-based implementation approach and form permanent teams with experts from both sides. “Good plans are not set in stone. They embrace change, and don’t prevent it,” he said. The BICC would spread analytical skills and best practice examples throughout the enterprise, and quickly identify new business information needs and find their solutions. This entity would define standards and the overall BI architecture – but more importantly, it would adjust the BI environment to business users’ preferences and requirements, not vice versa.

Healthcare workshop
There was also the healthcare workshop that we set up together with SAS. Jürgen Kellermann and Matthias Kleinschmidt of GKV Spitzenverband, a German association of statutary health insurance based here in Berlin, gave us some insight into the good work both they and their members do. Apparently, they do not only have to make extra sure that they comply with privacy regulations – there is also the competition among its members that they have to take into account. Still, they manage to establish meaningful benchmarks and produce figures that serve as a valuable basis in negotiations with the medical associations. In other words, even in a highly sensitive environment, there is leeway to examine anonymous health data for opportunities to cut costs and increase medical effectiveness. Which is good news considering that practically all healthcare systems (in the Western hemisphere, at least) face similar problems.

Automotive podcast
As for our special automotive track at this conference, I am sorry that I couldn’t find the time to cover it. From what I hear, it has been a very productive encounter of two (up to now) distinctive cultures, engineering and IT. On the one hand, data analysis has already been a common method among engineers, for example in quality assurance. On the other hand, the enterprise-wide approach that Teradata adheres to means: First, that there are many other valuable data warehousing applications for the automotive industry, for example in supply chain management or CRM. Secondly, this leads to more available data, such as reported early warranty cases, opening up new analytical opportunities in quality management. As for the latter, this podcast with Duncan Ross explains the potentials.

Remember the Marauder’s Map?
Finally, just one more remark. I remember that last year, during the Istanbul conference, I was formulating the vision of some kind of Marauders Map on our smart phones that maps the marvels of the city we’re in adjusted to our individual preferences and social networks. Judging from what I have seen on the smart phones of our participants, we have already come halfway here. There is no shortage of apps that help you to find your way through a city you don’t know. As for the analytical part which is necessary to further customize this information, I am sure that we will see a lot more in the future.
For now, let me thank you for your participation. I hope you found this conference as inspiring as I do. I wish you all a safe and comfortable journey home.

Facing and embracing a changing world – with sneakers and energy

If I had to sum up what I’ve learned at yesterday’s Teradata Enterprise Intelligence Summit, it would probably go like this: the world is changing and that’s OK, as long as we respond accordingly. Geoff Burch claimed that managers need to notice when their staff are doing things right – one of the basic rules of motivation. But how do you empower people to get things right in the first place? Hermann Wimmer’s answer during the closing session: By handing them the information they need. He made an impassionate plea: “Set information in your organization free so that every decision is a smart decision”.

The eagerly awaited keynote of Joschka Fischer, the former Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Germany, was equally passionate. I love the story of Joschka Fischer wearing sneakers at his inauguration as the first minister of the German green party in 1985, which my German colleagues told me. Pretty bold in a surrounding that couldn’t be any more formal! In addition to making a fashion statement, wearing sneakers also demonstrates a dynamic and forward-looking mindset. It seems to me that Fischer started a trend with it. Or do you still find it odd that Steve Jobs always gives his famous presentations wearing sneakers.

Apart from his forward-looking “sneakers-attitude”, Fischer is also known for being a strong advocate of environmental protection. That doesn’t mean he longs for pre-industrialized times, he rather embraces high tech as part of the solution. You could have heard a pin drop when Fischer drew an impressive picture of the ongoing shift in power from the Western countries to the emerging new economic powerhouses in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. At last, billions of people are reaching a decent standard of living through progress in society and technology – and that is definitely a good thing, a dream coming true! There are downsides to this development however. They include shortages in energy and water supply as well as worldwide environmental pollution and climate change – quite severe consequences. Fischer’s conclusion: Since we only have one world, the challenges of this century can only be managed if all mankind act as one, which so far has never been the case. Waste of resources, especially energy, must come to an end quickly, because we are definitely running out of time. Instead, we urgently need to make energy supply more efficient and to enforce the adoption of renewables.

We at Teradata share this view. And we strongly believe that data warehousing is indispensible here. The “smart grid”, for example, would not work without a precise and dynamic, real-time picture of the electricity networks. The same applies if you want to give your customers an opportunity to find out about the carbon footprint for, let’s say, flying from Milan to Berlin, and to choose the “greenest” option accordingly. In addition to saving energy and enabling ecologically responsible decisions, data warehousing also makes energy supply more reliable. After all it is, in a way, a long supply chain, in which you need to forecast demand and order pre-products timely and accurately, for example. This is definitely one field in which advanced analytics will play a crucial role in the next ten years.

Faraway, so close

Before I dart off to my first of our Enterprise Intelligence Summit, let me share some impressions from day one. Having ploughed through a packed agenda, we let the evening wind down at Tempelhof Airport, which was closehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd in 2008 and has since earned a reputation as an event location. It has been the setting of a number of films like Billy Wilders “A foreign affair”, or Wim Wenders’ ingenious “Faraway, so close” with the famous U2-Song “Stay”. More importantly, it was the centre of the Berlin airlift in 1948/9 when railway and road access to the Western parts of the city were blocked. It was Tempelhof where the so-called “Raisin Bombers” landed and supplied the people of Berlin with food and other essentials for nearly eleven months.

How times have changed! Groceries and consumer goods are abundant – and retailers have to compete for the customer by creating the best shopping experience. Which basically means offering a consistent customer dialogue across sophisticated sales channels, as Dr. Gerd Wolfram, Head of CIO-office, METRO Group, explained. Metro’s future store initiative is following the Zeitgeist by offering customers a mobile shopping assistant (MSA) that creates shopping lists and provides additional product information. As for the relevant data, no one would seriously complain that they have become generally scarce recently; the real question is how to leverage the data as a strategic asset for the organization. With data at your disposal you’re as close as you can be to understanding every aspect and process of your business. But if you’re not able to unearth the treasure, meaning to draw the information from the data – you’re far away from it, maybe even further than if the data didn’t exist at all…Faraway, so close.

Certainly Professor Hans Rosling would agree with that. He impressively demonstrated that decisions based on presumptions are no better than those made by chimpanzees. There is no alternative to considering all the available data out there if you want to understand what is happening out there. Forget about gut decisions.

Trend-spotter Markus Lindkvist is in line with Rosling. He claims that our thinking can be at odds with reality. Do you still feel like twenty, although you’re already past your fifties? A common attitude, according to Lindkvist. This is because we all tend to see things not as they are, instead we see them as we are and call that being focused. Future is about unpredictability and things we’ve never thought about, says Lindkvist. And I would like to add: you’d better take care that you are really aware of what’s going on right now, because it will be challenging your status quo.

Before I’ve got to go, let me quickly call your attention to some of my personal highlights of today, which are the general sessions with Bob Pritchard, Joschka Fischer and Geoff Burch. I definitely won’t miss those.

Teradata prepares universities for the digital decade

Business intelligence is the key differentiator that will make or break businesses in the near future, Hermann Wimmer, Teradata president EMEA, impressively argued in his welcoming address this morning. He cited eBay as an outstanding example of an analytical company. At the same time, data volumes continue to explode: “Storage has become so affordable, you cannot afford not to use it,” Wimmer said. With abundant data, new opportunities arise. For example, a single car nowadays has 60 processors under its lid that produce a permanent data stream recording component functions. “Imagine an early warning system that alerts you about vehicle system failures after 500 cars have rolled off the line – not 50,000,”he said. There is, in fact, a system like this up and running at one Teradata customer.

Universities struggle to teach BI

While business intelligence is conquering organizations at every level, companies experience difficulties in finding qualified employees who have the skills to make sense of query results. One of the reasons is that students shy away from tough statistics courses and are ill-prepared for rigorous statistical analysis as they leave university. Another reason is that universities are under-equipped to teach analysis in a way that reflects the rapid growth of business data. They lack access to larger systems and data sets as well as real-world business problems. This is the result of a survey that was presented at the media briefing earlier today. Teradata is partnering with several universities around the world to provide free access to data warehouses, databases and data sets via Teradata University Network, a web-based portal for faculty and students. Led by academics, it currently has more than 2,300 registered faculty members from over 1,200 universities in 80 countries and thousands of student users.

Teradata – a top strategic IT vendor

Teradata fared well in the uneasy waters of 2009: EMEA revenues grew by 2 percent and earnings-per-share increased by 4 percent last year – a truly strong performance! Teradata is now ranked among the top ten US software companies and, according to a survey by Information Week, among the seven most strategic IT vendors, as Teradata President and CEO Mike Koehler pointed out during today’s media briefing.

Moreover, Teradata revenues continue to grow even at a high level of market penetration as enterprises keep expanding their analytical capabilities to accommodate new types of data, using them for more and more applications. CTO Stephen Brobst said that Teradata has “analytics in the DNA”, thus continuously outpacing the capabilities of the competition.

Thus Teradata continues to develop its customer base across various industries:
- Banque Populaire Group migrated from DB2 to Teradata in 2005. Now the bank has upgraded its Teradata enterprise data warehouse to improve the strategic and operational decision-making capability of its business intelligence environment. The group is currently integrating data from 21 regional retail banks in its central platform, which it will use for customer profitability analysis, sales lead administration, marketing, customer relationship management, risk management, fraud prevention and anti-money laundering analysis.
- Pannon: Hungary’s leading mobile operator has upgraded to Teradata Relationship Manager (TRM) 6.0. The enhanced system optimizes marketing analysis and outreach. It will enable Pannon to pursuit new approaches such as customer lifecycle and inbound marketing.
- Swisscom (Schweiz) AG: Switzerland’s Telco number one is consolidating its business intelligence (BI) data platforms to result in one integrated, centralized data warehouse running on a Teradata platform. This will give the company a comprehensive and detailed view of its customers, products and financial economics, while also reducing operational costs.

Keep checking this blog for more conference news.

What Toyota could have done better

Beye network has already turned up in Berlin and quickly produced an audio podcast with Duncan Ross, Teradata’s EMEA director of advanced analytics. In the interview, Duncan explains how data warehousing might have helped Toyota handle its recent quality problems in a better way. Mind that he doesn’t say that problems could have been avoided in the first place, given the complexity of engines, electronics etc. you find in cars these days. Rather he says that the scale of the problems, and possibly the cause, could have been identified earlier.

If you want to get an idea of what the automotive track on Tuesday morning is all about, take 10 minutes and listen to this podcast: http://www.b-eye-network.com/listen/13067.

Get started with drive

Good morning Berlin – it’s conference time. As exhausting as these days tend to be, they are certainly exciting, and I simply love them! I already had the chance to talk to some of the conference participants yesterday during our traditional welcome party, this year at Potsdamer Platz, in the heart of Berlin. On my way back to the hotel I found myself whistling a simple tune that I identified as “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions. Pure coincidence? I don’t think so. Wind of change was the hymn of the ’89 revolution and Berlin was its epicenter. Everyone knew that after the wall had come down the world was subject to radical change, and people were positive about it.

Today, many industries are in profound transformation processes. In contrast to last spring, when everyone was just wondering how to best weather the economic storm, experts in business and IT this year are displaying a kind of “future’s in the air” attitude. It seems that everybody is willing to ride the tiger. Companies are out to fully exploit the potential of cutting-edge analytical technologies to manage the change that comes both from economic challenges and new business models fuelled by technical progress. And, as Hermann Wimmer and Mike Koehler will point out at their opening sessions later this morning, we are in pole position to support these efforts. Teradata has proven that it can help companies to grow even in tough economic environments and will continue to do so – wherever the ride will take us.

Yesterday, we started out riding the “Trabi”, the cult vehicle of the former GDR that we took for our sightseeing tour through Berlin.

I do hope though that the cars of the future won’t have much in common with it. By the way: amidst a fundamental ongoing change process, the automotive industry is a remarkable example of new drive in every sense of the word. A lot of ideas that have been around for a while are now on the verge of becoming reality. And this is not only about innovative engineering but about entirely new mobility concepts, influenced by new web and mobile communications technologies – a “smart-phonisation” of individual cars and traffic management. Looking out of my window I find that is some way away yet, at least here in Berlin. But for now, let’s get started – with drive!

Getting started for Berlin…

„Berlin is the newest city I have come across“, wrote Mark Twain about 150 years ago, and I think it’s still true. This city is the embodiment of German history and the upheavals it has seen since the American writer has travelled the country. It seems that it keeps making fresh starts, never finishes, and is always under (re)construction. We were there for a few days to prepare the Teradata Enterprise Intelligence Summit, and when I looked around I saw recently built office blocks, old houses being renovated even though there are newer houses that looked even more decayed, empty sites, some of them having been empty for months or even decades, and so on. My German colleagues didn’t think all this activity was anything special. They remember that a decade ago the Berlin skyline was shaped by whole armies of cranes. And they showed me a few places where the locals retreat to relax as Berlin is one of the greenest capitals in Europe.

It’s this mixture that makes Berlin such an interesting place to be – at least for those who try to figure out a meaningful structure that captures life’s disorder. This is, in a way, what we are doing. I hope that this challenging mood will carry over into our conference sessions and fuel open, fruitful discussions.

Just like in the past years, the conference schedule is fully packed, so that some sessions take place in parallel. Also there are some special tracks that I would like to highlight:

- Automotive: On Tuesday morning, you can join our special automotive track with a number of sessions that focus on quality management and supply chain management in the industry. Various representatives of car manufacturers and Teradata will explain how data warehousing helps to identify quality problems and their causes faster.

On Wednesday, you can choose between our three User Group sessions:

- Healthcare: How can data analyses help improve quality of care while reducing costs? Representatives of GKV Spitzenverband, SAS and Teradata will debate this.
- Advanced Analytics: Data analyses have become critical for the success of many enterprises in the past decade. Panellists from Migros, SFR France, Indicium and Telefonica O2 will discuss which tools and models will shape the next 10 years.
- Customer Management and Insight: In this panel, representatives of Metro, Lloyd's and Pannon will tell us what they do in CRM. A Webtrends guest speaker will explain the latest developments in integrating online and offline channels to create a single customer experience.

Whatever your choices will be, you can always check out this blog for more news during the conference.
See you in Berlin!

Mario Bonardo

Empowered users know their information needs

In his seminal work In Search of Excellence, business guru and Teradata Universe keynote speaker Tom Peters identifies common denominators of America’s most successful businesses. Among others, Peter highlights customer-centred approaches and several characteristics (bias for action, autonomy and entrepreneurship) that we might refer to as “agility”. Simultaneously, Peters emphasizes the importance of sparking enthusiasm among your employees.

Peters’ call to empower employees on all levels of organization is widely considered as the blue-print for operational business intelligence as we know it. And it’s being taken another step further with the advent of “private clouds” in enterprise data warehouse environments. As business users have become increasingly adept in using BI tools, they want more and more of them. And they want them fast, to help them explore the relevant data while their freshly-conceived questions are still in their minds. Private clouds are not so much a technology trend as a response to growing demands from the business side.

This is good news because it means that those empowered and motivated employees that Peters had envisaged don’t seem to fall into the trap of making decisions based on “experience”, which would come down to pure intuition. As Stephen Brobst said in Istanbul last year, “don’t trust your guts. Your guts will deceive you.” Instead, business users at multiple organizational levels realize (and describe) their information needs. And private clouds make it easier than ever before to fulfil these needs.

The Customer comes second (crikey!)

A bit of a strong statement, what I’d actually call a provocation.
The saying “Customer first” is becoming anachronistic. Tactical even. Operational yet others would say.
No, I’ve not lost my mind, those who know me know I have a strong inclination to listen, to resolve the problems of both my external and my internal customers.
The idea for this post came to me from a presentation by that genius Tom Peters, entitled “The customers come second”. Find it here.
I like it because it chimes fully with what Collins says on fifth-level leadership and on the theme of the corporation’s and the managements’ ability to listen.
But what does Peters say in a nutshell? First you have to build the team, recruiting the right people, those with the right mindset.
Motivated and happy with their job, their role in the organization, whichever one it is.
You have to build and manage an organization capable of supporting and responding to the market’s demands, even if not called for by the procedures and convention.
And then, but only then, can you focus on the client, who, in that sense, does come next.
For the simple reason that only then will you be able to serve and respect them, to support and help them. And earn their trust so that they come back to buy even more.
And from trust, confidence is born, from confidence, loyalty.
The business will grow naturally with the client who will find it only natural to grow with the business.
The client may come “second”, but only to the company’s ability to listen to them.
That genius Peters. I will have the opportunity to listen to him again on Tuesday morning, April 13th in Berlin where he will surely spark his “unconventional views” during his Supersession: "Excellence: Continuing the Search".

Please complete: “There are things known and things unknown and in between …”

Now, guess what!? Well, if you were to ask a BI expert at the Teradata Universe Conference to complete this sentence, he’d probably say “…a Teradata data warehouse”, and, for an amazing lot of questions, this is a perfect answer. Nonetheless I suppose that if you asked Joschka Fischer, former Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Germany, who will be one of our keynote speakers in Berlin, he’d answer like a shot: “…there are doors” - and he’d be the winner of the quiz. I believe this is because Fischer, also known as the “godfather” of the German Green Party, was culturally conditioned in the years of the 1968 student movement to which Jim Morrison’s Band “The Doors” delivered the soundtrack.

When asked about the name of the band, Jim Morrison once said: “There are things known and things unknown and in between there are doors”. And, funnily enough, that is why even today many people believe that the Door’s singer authored these poetic words, while in fact he plainly quoted the famous British poet William Blake. Today, it will take you only a few clicks on the internet to check this out, but notably Blake is ranked only Nr. 4 of the Google search results. Jim Morrison gets the top spot with other links suggesting, for example, Aldous Huxley as the author of the quote. How do you know which source you can trust? That may be a routine question for every Google user but it also gets to the core of what data warehousing is all about: trustworthiness and quality of information are key when it comes to decision-making.

And there is another dimension, too: handling complexity. Long before the term “globalization” was coined, international relations experts formed the idea of “interdependence” to grasp the growing complexity of the modern world. Some of them have concluded that we need stronger supranational institutions if we want to have any effective governance at all. One probably wouldn’t deny that such institutions sometimes increase, not decrease the complexity of the political sphere. So how did Fischer handle the decision-making process within these frameworks, trying to influence an opaque and permanently changing outside world, without being able to tell just how reliable the information at his hand is? This makes me curious about his keynote.

A city model for the Expo?

I’m currently in Munich on a few days business. I’ve always liked the city and feel a cultural affinity.
Seeing that Munich has 1.3 million inhabitants, it’s fairly comparable with Milan.
This city has three things that I love:
- the public transport system
- the green areas
- the cycling paths
A few facts to back that up: Munich has 6 urban subway lines and 10 (yes 10!) suburban subway lines. That means living in a farmhouse and working downtown, seeing that it takes only 40 minutes to get to any part of the city.
Green areas are plentiful, clean and well-groomed.
But the cycling paths… the cycling paths are just amazing…there are a whole 900 kilometers of them (that’s right 900!) crisscrossing the city, all “cyclists only” and its bad news for you if you dare walk on one.
I’m keeping a close eye on Milan City’s plans for the Expo 2015, which include some nice projects also for cycling paths, as well as the rest of the urban system.
I’m counting on it, I really hope they come to fruition.
We deserve them.

Could this be the next big – whoops, it’s already here!

Spotting trends early-on is the ultimate challenge in marketing. It’s one of the tricks that demand chain management (DCM) solutions can do if they are fed with real-time sales data and leverage powerful analytical capabilities. What makes trend spotting so challenging is the fact that it only makes sense if you manage to do it in a relatively small time frame: the trend must be there but it mustn’t be obvious to everybody yet.

If you want to know what a trend looks like at an early stage, ask Magnus Lindkvist. He identifies trends for a living – in the old-fashioned way, actually walking the high streets and other places, watching people. Click here to see a perfect example from his website. The video demonstrates impressively the various stages in which a trend evolves:

• a trend is (usually) started a long time before you can tell whether it will ever become popular
• a handful of “first movers” does not automatically mean that there will be a massive breakthrough (albeit it makes it more likely)
• once there is a critical mass, the trend is self-sustaining and it attracts more and more attention from bystanders
• once people start joining the existent “in-crowd” in larger numbers, it turns into a stampede as nobody wants to miss out

In the video, a successful trend spotter would have to predict the popularity of the dancing at some time between 0:55 and 1:30 (because afterwards, it really is obvious to everybody.) Not so easy, don’t you agree? Well, it’s retailers’ daily business. Economic uncertainty has made consumer demand extremely volatile, which means that retailers need to identify changes quicker than ever to take full advantage of their insights. We are sure that Magnus Lindkvist’s keynote at the Teradata Universe Conference in Berlin will spark some new ideas how to enrich the existing trend analyses in retail as well as in other industries.

Here you can read my post on the Teradata Emea blog, where you'll find many other interesting posts.

A rich market, ripe for the picking: the tweens are on their way

For this post I am in a privileged position seeing that my children have just celebrated their 8^th birthday, meaning that they now are full-fledged “tweens”.

Yes, tweens, the word coined for kids aged between 8 and 12, readily identified as a new market segment, but not to be confused with a teen, who is 13, 14, etc.

America has 23 million tweens and the brands want to know their tastes, they want to launch a tween trend, one that helps them sell more and better.

That has led Disney, Sephora, Fundex Games and other groups to sponsor the National Tween Summit, organized by consulting firm Ak Tweens.

And tweens like Kiley Krzyzek – at just 12 – have become powerful corporate consultants influencing the tastes of millions of tweens.

Like when she says “Selena Gomez is my icon”. Who? But of course, she’s the new girlfriend of Kevin, the leader of Jonas Brothers, who has ditched left Miley Cyrus, alias Hannah Montana, for Selena.

Am I speaking a foreign language? Well, that just goes to show you’ve no tweens in your house.

Some info to enlighten:

- Miley’s latest CD, released July 10, has been in the top five of the US hit list for the past five weeks.

- the first High School Musical, 290 million spectators, stayed at the top of the most-watched films list for months.

- High School 3 brought in a cool $150 million.

- Forbes magazine has voted Miley Cyrus the most influential young girl in the world.

...And now, fresh and new, two First Tweens, Malia and Sasha Obama have arrived on the scene, far too exposed to the media to be ignored...the tween segment is set for growth, of that you can be sure.

"Ich bin ein Berliner"

«Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum". Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner". All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner"».

These words, spoken 47 years ago by John Fitzgerald Kennedy (read the full speech here), placed Berlin at the center of the world stage (watch the video).

Since June of last year, me and my team have been working practically nonstop to develop the program for the conference that Teradata has chosen to stage in Berlin in less than two months time. A complex project and an excellent multidisciplinary workshop that encompasses a wide range of topics, from team building to international relations, from communication and sales to project management and the income statement... An organic and multipurpose business case that leaves you sleepless as you take it forward, but which we are all very excited about, just like the city chosen for its venue. Berlin! What a unique city… which 20 years ago was once again at the centre of the world stage as the Berlin Wall finally came tumbling down. What seemed an impossible feat when I was 20… but which finally happened when I turned 21!

Unforeseeable? With hindsight perhaps not, it would’ve been enough to transform the data available at that time into information and then it would have been really possible to make more accurate forecasts. Just like the companies who use Teradata to better understand and more accurately serve their clients. Let’s take an example from among the globe’s major airline companies -  Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, Alitalia, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines – which all use Teradata solutions for their business intelligence operations. Successfully analyzing critical moments as these arise and enabling their frontline operators to resolve problems and give the client concrete responses. The job of dealing with delays and changes in flight bookings has greatly accelerated in pace and logistic and operational issues now can be resolved almost instantly.

Many of these airlines are sending their delegates to Berlin to listen, but also to share their experiences. Such as Dr. Wolfgang Schwegle, Lufthansa’s Senior Manager Corporate Data Warehouse, who will present his work The BI-Cockpit of Lufthansa Passage Airlines - There's no better way to make decisions and explain how BI-Cockpit enables more than 1000 Lufthansa staff across the world to access fresh data and so optimize their service to the customer as well as their marketing activities, sales, and operating processes.

Companies from a whole spectrum of industries will be coming to our Berlin event, including famous brands such as Metro, DHL, Carrefour, Nokia, Telefonica, to reap the rewards of an extraordinary opportunity for comparison and enrichment.

But also keynote speakers from the international arena, but on that I’ll give you more details later…

Stay tuned!

Overtaken

It’s finally happened.
Readers of The Huffington Post website now outnumber (by a lot) the readers of The Washington Post.
Well, no big deal you might think, just another battle between publishers, if it weren’t for the fact that The Huffington Post is a blog, created and managed by Arianna Huffington.
In the past year, the Huffington blog has increased its reader population 26% to the dizzy figure of 9.4 million single readers, while that same period saw the number of The Washington Post readers plunge 29% to 9.2 million.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Inevitably.
Convergence is everywhere. It has never been so easy to reach such a vast audience, the problem is interacting with the audience you’ve captured.
And this is the change on which everything hinges, because it has an impact on the way people behave. (People meaning us, me who’s writing, you who’s reading, who wants to voice your thoughts and get some feedback, who wants to be treated as a person and as a client…).
Some data to highlight the trend underway:
- In America, the reader count of printed daily newspapers has plummeted more than 7 million, while the number of online blog readers has swelled to 30 million.
- In the past two months, the number of videos uploaded to You Tube surpassed the total number of program hours broadcast by American TV stations 7 days a week since 1948!
- About 10 million people visit the American information websites each month, while Facebook, My Space, and You Tube attract roughly 250 million visitors.
- Six years ago not even one of the three social networks just listed existed.
Now that’s what I call an uptrend!

All chubby and super-nourished

This time it’s information I’m talking about though, not food.
American households are exposed to 34 Gigabytes of data and information.
Each year?
No, each day!
It’s the result of research by the University of California, San Diego on how Americans behave in front of the computer, TV, radio, cell phone, and videogame console.
But the risk of indigestion is high, almost unavoidable in fact. It means digesting 100,000 words every day, a quarter of those contained in the tome War and Peace by Tolstoy.
According to San Diego University estimates, American households consumed 3.6 zettabytes of data and information in 2008.
A monstrous amount, when you compare it with the fact that the biggest commercial data warehouses in the world have a storage capacity of slightly more than a petabyte*.
So what are the potential remedies? Like food, to consume less. To use the medium in an appropriate way, to use correct form and to not disabuse it. Easy to say, not so very easy to do.
* Units of Information:
1 Terabyte = 1000 Gigabytes
1 Petabyte = 1000 Terabytes
1 Exabyte = 1000 Petabytes
1 Zettabyte = 1000 Exabyte