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IN THIS ISSUE:
DECISION TECHNOLOGIES IN DATABASE MARKETING: PART III
by Gene M. Ferruzza, Senior VP, Decision Technologies
For 14 years, Gene Ferruzza has provided integrated business solutions for clients in telecommunications, electric utilities, financial services, aerospace, manufacturing, and retail. He is an internationally recognized expert in strategic database marketing planning and implementation, as well as development and application of data marts, statistical and A.I. modeling, and decision systems for understanding and predicting human behavior. In addition, he directs research in statistical, neural, evolutionary, and hybrid modeling techniques, and the implementation of decision technologies for marketing programs and software productization. He has also developed and marketed his own database management and segmentation software and is currently advising in on-line market research services and products. Prior to CMS, he worked as a consultant and instructor for two leading neural network hardware and software providers (HNC and NeuralWare). Gene graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics.
In this third installment of an extensive multi-part series, Ferruzza
writes: "In reality, data mining is a professional practice, analogous to
medical or legal practice, where data miners apply a repertoire of processes,
employing a variety of technologies or tools, to meet the needs of their
clients. Furthermore, just as in other professional practices, any
individual or firm engaging in data mining continually improves, refines, or
changes methods and approaches, as a result of accumulated experience and
advances in technology. Finally, to take the medical analogy further, there
are frequent disputes about which methods are most effective."
Parts I and II of this series are available as D S * articles
100073 and
100080.
"WAREHOUSE GALACTICA": BUILDING THE GLOBAL DATA WAREHOUSE
by John Ladley
John Ladley is a Program Director in META Group's Application Delivery Strategies service. Ladley is an authority on data warehouse architecture including on-line analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining tools, data movement, and related technologies. Additionally, he specializes in methodologies and IT process improvement for the application development organization -- especially related to technical architecture development. Prior to joining META Group, Ladley was Director of Information Management Alliance, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Missouri. His 20+ years of IT experience also include working as a management consultant with Coopers and Lybrand's IT practice. He has experience with the healthcare, insurance, defense and consumer products industries. And he is a published author and keynote speaker on data warehouse architectures and related IT processes.
Ladley observes: "A large percentage of companies' clients with global operations are using data warehouse technology (DWT) as a way to engineer data consolidation, quality, and analysis solutions that span lines of businesses (LOBs) and international borders. Much like Marshall McLuhan?s vision of the 'Global Village' was brought about by the advent of modern mass communications, the 'Global Data Warehouse' will also bring about profound changes in Information Logistics as the Internet dramatically reduces global boundaries."
UTILIZING A TERAPLEX INTEGRATION CENTER:
AN INTERVIEW WITH ALLEN PERRY, OWNER OF COGLIN MILL SOFTWARE
by Alan Beck, editor in chief
IBM's Teraplex Integration Centers in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Rochester, Minn. -- created about 15 months ago at a cost of $47 million -- are designed so that IBM business intelligence customers or business partners can see how far their applications can go before they crash. These are not benchmarking facilities but integration centers, designed for testing the limits of business intelligence applications.
One partner, Coglin Mill, sells software to major banks, retailers and manufacturers in Australia. Many of its customers, AS/400 users, were building huge data warehouses for BI and data mining. Coglin Mill wanted to be sure its database management product, Rodin, would work properly on terabyte-size databases. The firm performed the crucial tests at the IBM Teraplex Center in Rochester, Minn. "We needed to test how well Rodin and the new AS/400e would scale to terabyte size and perform as an enterprise-wide solution for our customers' real challenges, and not in theory," said Alan Jordan, Coglin Mill Development Manager. D S * interviewed Allen Perry, the owner of Coglin Mill, about his firm's experience with the TIC.
ACTION ITEMS
Retek Announces Predictive Enterprise Solution
Retek Information Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of HNC Software, has announced the Retek Predictive Enterprise Solution, which expands the traditional view of a retail enterprise information system by providing predictive solutions that drive revenue enhancement benefits while streamlining operations and controlling costs.
WhiteCross Systems and MRJ Technology Solutions, two leaders in the field of data mining, exploration, and decision support, announced they have agreed to create a Data Exploration and Mining Center. The Center will combine WhiteCross' massively parallel processing (MPP) data exploration server and HeatSeeker data mining software with MRJ's expertise in applying a full range of techniques for mining and analyzing very large databases (VLDBs) for hidden information.
Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) and Red Brick Systems, Inc. have announced plans to provide an integrated data-warehousing suite of hardware, software, solutions and services designed specifically to improve retail business decision-making. The integrated data-warehousing suite is expected to provide highly scalable solutions for building, deploying and extending retail decision-support applications.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Autonomy creates political problems when shared data
definitions are promoted. In many cases, we have noticed that there must be
central metadata and local metadata to soothe problem users."
-- John Ladley, META Group
D S * INFORMATION
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