Rob Preston’s little article on BI infancy is fantastic quick read on the state of BI in the real-world (forget all the cute things you hear from BI vendors), with pointers to some excellent studies and other articles.  I love the quote from Randy Mott, HP’s CIO (they got a huge DW): “There was no lack of data. But there was a lack of consistent, timely data spanning different parts of the business.”  Keywords: Timely and Consistent – how true!  And that comes from a place that more than likely spent millions on their BI infrastructure.

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Our latest white paper is out – get the PDF version here. We’ve titled it “The $1500 Oracle Data Warehouse” – cutesy title, but I hope will catch some attention. Although the full warehouse costs just a tad more than that (hey, some one’s gotta pay the developers and BI folks! ), the point should be clear enough … there are ways to get a solid prototype data warehouse for those who need to prove the value of Business Intelligence to upper management, especially management in smaller companies who may have heard some Oracle (or general DW) horror stories.

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