Data mining, data warehousing, decision support and knowledge discovery make up the universe of DSstar, the only executive business newsletter supporting strategic employment of these technologies.

The On-Line Executive Journal for Data-Intensive Decision Support
*** Aug 17, 1999: Vol. 3, No. 33 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

HOW DO YOU COMPUTE DATA MINING ROI?
TAKING PARALLEL PROCESSING TO A NEW LEVEL
THE DATA WAREHOUSE ON S/390

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

FORMAL COMPUTATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS IN CALCULATING A RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)
By Ed Colet

Executive Editor-at-Large Inderpal Bhandari presents a guest editorial by Virtual Gold's Acting Director of Research:

Technology is an expensive undertaking and historically it has been difficult to conclusively show that investments in technology translate into productivity gains. Data mining is a recent technology that promises to provide competitive advantages and financial gains to organizations that invest in it. But a data mining implementation can be quite costly and so a justifiable concern is whether the investment can be definitively shown to be worthwhile. In this two part series, we'll take a look at issues related to return on investment (ROI). Part I addresses the formal computation of ROI, and that the relationship among elements within this formulation can itself be investigated and understood with data mining software. Part II will cover the relationship between the measures of how interesting a pattern may be into financial terms that can be directly used for decision making.

TAKING PARALLEL PROCESSING TO A NEW LEVEL
By Rawn Shah For Windows TechEdge

Ever wonder just how much processing power your data warehousing and mining products are going to need once your database starts growing into the tens and hundreds of terabytes? How could you possibly afford a server that can process that much information quickly and efficiently - without it keeling over from exhaustion?

THE DATA WAREHOUSE ON S/390: PART 1
By Dan Graham, global strategy and operations executive, Global Business Intelligence Solutions, IBM; and
Malcolm Nolan,marketing manager, Business Intelligence, S/390, IBM

We are going to discuss the role of mainframes as a resource for data warehousing. On that note we can already hear some of you thinking: Uh oh, these IBM guys are harking back to the glory days when mainframes ruled the roost. Don't rush to judgment. We are not talking history. We are as up to date as today, and as forward looking as tomorrow. Here's why.

ACTION ITEMS

Trajecta's Optimization Simulation Environment (O.S.E.) Integrates Key Decisioning And Management Technologies To Optimize Customer Value
O.S.E. is an innovative software system that was designed to be the most complete and sophisticated prediction, simulation and optimization platform in the marketplace. It is the first such solution developed to capture and measure the causal relationships and interaction effects of all customer behaviors in a complete and structured manner.

S2 Systems Partners With Ardent Software, Inc., Data Warehouse Industry Leader With The Largest Installed Base Worldwide
This partnership allows S2 to help its customers enhance the value and effectiveness of their data warehouses, as the company continues to deepen its product and service offerings supporting mission-critical business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions.

Acta Ships Inventory Management RapidMart For SAP R/3; Siemens Medical Systems Recognizes Million Dollar Savings
With the Acta RapidMart for Inventory Management, companies can monitor historical trends and changes in inventory levels across a variety of dimensions including plant, material and storage location.

Acta Introduces MetaShare Packaged Metadata Integration; Open Metadata Architecture Extended To Support Leading BI/OLAP Tools From Hyperion And Brio
OMA enables open metadata exchange with any metadata repository, traceability of data elements from front-end BI/OLAP tools back to ERP sources, and advanced impact analysis of changes to the source ERP or target data warehouse.

DecisionPoint Applications Teams With Sequent To Develop ASP Channel For Its Data Warehousing Software
These Web-hosted applications will enable DecisionPoint Applications to take full advantage of the Application Service Provider (ASP) model for delivering business applications to a broad range of customers over the Internet.

Exchange Applications And Fleet Financial Group Win Data Warehouse Institute's 'Best Customer Relationship Management Solution' Award
The trophy marks the third consecutive year that Boston-based Exchange Applications has won a DWI award.

Fujitsu's 3rd Datawarehouse Center Sets Up In Philippines
These three data warehouse factories are intended to support Fujitsu/ICL's global data warehouse business. Located in different time zones, the three factories seek to provide so-called "follow- the-sun" coverage, providing 24x7 global support and services to Fujitsu's data warehouse customers worldwide.

Informix And Cytek Introduce New Banking Intelligence Solution Geared Towards Retail And Commercial Banking Industries
This solution leverages the power of Informix's Decision Frontier and Cytek's Bankers Edge, facilitating bankers' analyses of their customers, products and channels to identify revenue growth and cost-saving opportunities.

Quadstone's Decisionhouse Increases Profitability Of C&A's Database Marketing Program
Decisionhouse enables C&A to analyze actual purchase behavior in order to improve the service to their million plus UK customers, with the potential to handle many more millions of customers across Europe.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"As data mining and prediction technologies differentiated success and failure in the credit card industry in the 1990s, optimization will make that distinction in the new millennium."

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