WhereScape RED Builds data warehouses, fast.

The Intergen guys, one of our favourite partners, have just sent us through a case study they produced with Westland Milk Products.  Killer quote from Wayne Leach, CFO for Westland Milk Products, is:

“Our Business Intelligence environment is outstanding.Intergen used the WhereScape RED tool to rapidly build SQL Server Analysis Services cubes over our Dynamics NAV, plant control, milk collection and CRM systems. This is presented through Excel 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to our users, providing them with the information they need to make decisions to improve the performance of our organisation.” “They committed an excellent flow of resources across all projects, and demonstrated an exceptional understanding of our business processes.”

The full case study is on the WhereScape website.Thanks to the Westland Milk Products and Intergen guys - we always love to read about successful WhereScpae RED projects.

While playing with the new swicki I came across William McKnight’s Best of Data Warehousing 2007 post (and yes I am a bit slow and have only just noticed the post). I was really pleased to see that he had awarded us “The best data warehouse prototyping tool”.  We think that is pretty cool - thanks William.

We are currently trialing a swicki to our website.  It is hidden in resources section (we will move it if it is popular).  Swickis are custom search portals developed around a topic that “learn” from a community, bought to you by the smart guys at Eurekster.

As an example if you type “prototype” into google you get:

However if you enter it into the data warehouse search swicki you get:

As you can see data warehouse pages are to the fore.

We have only just put this up so it has yet to have any “community” input - although if you can read the screenshots you can see I couldn’t resist bumping the WhereScape results up a bit.

The results will get better and better the more it is used and the more people vote so…happy searching.

As if wearing a chicken suit was not enough humiliation for one month, it’s Mo-vember time again, when previously solid citizens get to grips with their inner eighties moustache wearing guy.    It is not just about bringing back that Tom Selleck special something - the money will raise awareness of men’s health issues and be donated to the Cancer Society of New Zealand and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.  These two charities will use the money raised to fund research and increase support networks for those affected with prostate cancer and experiencing depression.

More information is available at http://www.movember.com/

More importantly, you can click these links to donate:

Steve:  https://www.movember.com/nz/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink®o=1631836&country=nz

Michael: https://www.movember.com/nz/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink&rego=1989541&country=nz

All donations are gratefully accepted, and remember if you live in New Zealand, any donation over 5 bucks is tax deductible.

Portland, Oregon Nov. 3, 2008 — WhereScape today announced its inclusion on Software Magazine’s Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and services providers, now in its 26th year.

“We are pleased to be recognized by Software Magazine as one of the world’s largest software and service providers”, says Michael Whitehead, CEO and Founder of WhereScape Software.  “Data warehouses are the building blocks of business intelligence and our customer understand how important it is to be able to build them fast and deliver value quickly.  This is especially true in the current economic climate.”

“The 2008 Software 500 results show that revenue growth in the software and services industry was healthy, with total Software 500 revenue of $451.8 billion worldwide for 2007 representing 14.7% growth from the previous year,” says John P Desmond, editor of Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com “We have added over 100 new companies to the list this year. We’re seeing strong growth from more companies based outside the U.S., especially from systems integration and outsourcing services firms based in India.”

“Total employee head count was a modest 1.3% increase from the last year. Sectors seeing the highest rates of employee growth included Software as a Service, Search/Portal tools, Supply Chain/Manufacturing, Legacy System Renewal/Integration and Database,” Desmond says.

Some 42 percent of the 2007 Software 500 companies are privately held.

The Software 500 is a revenue-based ranking of the world’s largest software and services suppliers targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers and business managers involved in software and services purchasing.

The ranking is based on total worldwide software and services revenue for 2007. This includes revenues from software licenses, maintenance and support, training and software-related services and consulting. Suppliers are not ranked on their total corporate revenue, since many have other lines of business, such as hardware. The financial information was gathered by a survey prepared by King Content Co. and posted at www.Softwaremag.com, as well as from public documents.

About WhereScape Software

WhereScape Software is the developer of WhereScape RED, software that builds data warehouses fast.  Privately held with headquarters in Portland, Oregon and Auckland, New Zealand, WhereScape was recognized as one of the top private companies of 2007 by Red Herring Magazine.

About Digital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, and Softwaremag.com

Digital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, has been a brand name in the high-tech industry for 30 years. Softwaremag.com, its Web counterpart, is the online catalog to enterprise software and the home of the Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and services companies, now in its 26th year. Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com are owned and operated by King Content Co.

WhereScape Contact:
Mark Budzinski
VP, Sales and Operations
markb at wherescape.com

Software 500 Contact:
Tracy Kunichika
Software 500 Project Leader
Tracyk@softwaremag.com

WhereScape’s Mark Budzinski (VP Sales & Operations - North America) and Jason Laws (Chief Architect) won overall first place in the Demo ‘Til You Drop contest at the IBM Information On Demand conference in Las Vegas (held in the last week of October 2008).

In Demo ‘Til You Drop, contestants can demo anything from company products and projects to their own personal talents (technical or not!).  They take center stage in this lighthearted evening event and share a demo, announce their latest invention, just a great idea or share their vast expertise with the audience.  Plug-ins, add-ons, apps and tips are all fair game.

In true “Gong Show” style, prizes are awarded to the evening’s most talented demoers.  Demos are limited to 5 minutes and must be within the bounds of good taste, respect for others, and the laws of the State of Nevada.

Jason silently migrated a Data Warehouse in another type of database to IBM DB2 using WhereScape RED while Mark talked about being on vacation on the wrong island and needing to get to the right island…   Oh, and Jason was dressed as a giant chicken!

The entire demo was completed in less than five minutes, to rapturous crowd applause.  Mark’s final line was: “if a giant chicken can do this, you can”.

The migration included:

- migrating a star schema (with data) from another database to DB2

- rebuilding all code to load the data warehouse using DB2 SQL stored procedures

- generating a new cube on top of the migrated star schema

- building a new graphical report in Excel on the cube

Thanks to Gerry from LIC and Laura Hammond from IBM for the photos.

Last week I got a phone call from the Australian chapter of TDWI & I was asked if I would like to have dinner with Bill Inmon. It took me 4 hours get flights books, grab my passport and a suit & of course, get permission from the Secretary of the Home Office. Bill Inmon was the keynote speaker for TDWI Sydney, where he launched DW 2.0 - Architecture for the Next Generation of Data Warehousing.

Bill and the folks @ CIF introduced the next data revolution: unstructured data management. Bill covered all you need to know to make unstructured data work for your organization. How to bring textural information into your existing DW, leverage existing front end visualisation toolsets, and implement textual analytic processing technologies. Inmon talks about the place for textual integration & how to integrate it into the DW, and new techniques for reading and analyzing textural data. For more information - http://www.inmoncif.com/home/

The feedback from the attendees re his content was superb – but I also think they were excited to have met ‘the man’ & see him in action. Below is a photo of (from left to right) Steve Hitchman - Master Distributor of WhereScape RED in Australia, William H. Inmon & me.

Perry, Steve and Bill Inmon

That night we had a fantastic meal with Bill & his lovely wife Lynn at Glass in the Hilton Hotel, which would have to be one of the best restaurants in Sydney & they really turned it on. Bill & Lynn live in Colorado in a small town where Lynn is very involved in the business as one of the founders of Inmon Data Systems (among other things).

Thanks TDWI & of course Bill & Lynn Inmon … it was a real pleasure … cheers Perry

 Perry Sansom, VP Asia Pacific, www.wherescape.com

One of our fine UK partners, Business and Decision, sold WhereScape RED to Cancer Research UK last year (thanks Julian).  I don’t think there are many people who have not been impacted by Cancer, and at WhereScape we have had more than our fair share of knocks.  For us it wasn’t necessary to make a decision - we donated the money back to them.  In the mail this morning I got a letter of appreciation and certificate from CRUK which we will proudly hang in our office.

We are pleased to announce that WhereScape will be exhibiting at IBM’s Information on Demand conference at the Mandelay Bay, Las Vegas from October 26-30th.  Our thanks to IBM for their support and if you are passing through the conference hall, please stop by and ask about our 24 hour challenge.

I read today that Gartner has updated their ten most important technologies for 2009, and new to the list is BI.  Obviously this comes as no surprise to us, we have always had a view that business intelligence is strategic.  It was still good to see it recognized that In these times of economic doom and gloom helping business leaders to “make faster, better and more-informed decisions” is critical.

In our own experience we are certainly still seeing companies investing in BI systems.  September was the last month of our quarter, and was a record September, a record month and a record quarter for us.  Some great companies have signed up with us and we look forward to working with them to help rapidly build superb data warehouses to assist them through these times of global turmoil.

It’s coming up to Marathon season again.  On 2nd November New York, the world’s largest marathon, takes place as well as the somewhat smaller Auckland Marathon.  After having run in the 18 mile tune up event in Central Park last weekend I am looking forward (if that is possible) to the lesser humidity of the Auckland Marathon. 

We have a limited number of red (of course) adidas adistar short sleeve t shirts available for Marathon running WhereScape customers.  If you would like one let your sales person or reseller know and if there are any left we will ship you one.

Wednesday, September 10th, the Business Intelligence webinar featured WhereScape VP Rick Smith and his presentation “Getting the Backend Right and the Foundation Solid”.

In a brief, dynamic mode this presentation focused on some of the very important points of Data Warehousing development that many DW practitioners have to deal with on a daily basis. The first few slides of the presentation raised the issue of why Data Warehousing efforts fall short so consistently. The rest of the presentation showed the audience how to deal with these failures. The Approach is needed! The WhereScape RED Approach!The Approach combines these crucial concepts:

1.       Agile data warehousing development

2.       Integrated Development Environment

3.       Design-through-Deploy technique

4.       Prototype and Iterate tactic

The WhereScape presentation in conjunction with CIBER’s Global Enterprise Integration Practice, Front-End presentation by Strategy Companion and the Case Study: BNP Paribas, where WhereScape played major role in training/development effort, painted a holistic picture for Data Warehousing users.

This webinar is another step for WhereScape toward global acknowledgement of our state-of-the-art Methodology and Practice.

We have just started working with IBM, and I have to say what a pleasurable experience it has been.

A big thanks to Boris, Laura, Ceyhan and their team for all their assistance.  We are now in the IBM Global Services Directory, the IBM developerWorks wiki and have been validated with the “Ready for IBM DB2 data server software” mark.  We still can’t believe how quickly you guys got all this done.

The official press release will follow, but WhereScape RED for DB2 is now available…roll on IOD.

Morgo is a two day conference for hi tech entrepreneurs from New Zealand held in the picturesque Bay of Islands.  The official theme this year was “Partnering for Success” but some of the strongest presentations were on giving back rather than partnering.

Selwyn Pellet, on the board of AIM listed Endace and now with Imarda talked about an entrepreneurship apprenticeship he is looking at setting up.  Born from the idea that you need entrepreneurs to grow economies he is looking at program that apprentices promising gen-ys (which he acknowledges may be a contradiction) with dark side CEOs – he is looking for sponsorship so the youth can fully participate with the CEO – joining them in all meetings, travel etc.  Sounds to me like a great idea and I would be in.

Scott Farquar from Atlassian (one half of the Australian Entrepreneurs of the year a couple of years ago) talked about www.kiva.com as well as Atlassian’s 1% initiative – giving 1% of revenue, equity and time into the Atlassian Foundation.  They also offer non-for-profit licences, and he offered the details from his web site if anyone wants to copy the idea.

Other highlights of the conference were Ben Anderson from CT Partners on the talent war and Andy Lark from Dell using an Olympics medal metaphor to discuss New Zealand’s relative performance to other countries. 

Glenn Martin’s talk about his recently released jet pack was highly engaging.  After spending 27 years working on a dream he was justifiably proud of his invention – and there is no denying flying with a jet pack is pretty cool.  Unfortunately the pack didn’t arrive in time so we were not able to get a demo.  Didier Elzinga, CEO from Rising Sun Pictures, gave a great talk about working with Hollywood from Adelaide, and how for the people he does business with if you outside their zip code you might as well be in Adelaide.

The Honorable David Cunliffe launched the Government’s Digital 2.0 Strategy at the conference.  His comparison of politicians to entrepreneurs was a bit of a stretch – I don’t know of too many politcos who have mortgaged their homes and borrowed money off their friends to go into Parliament.  I was a little surprised the Digital 2.0 targets were not a bit more ambitious. They are throwing some money at making sure the entire country can get broadband which is great, but surely we can plan for a bit faster speed especially in the urban areas?

Overall a great couple of days. As usual it is the informal discussions that are as useful as the actual content, it is great to catch up with a bunch of people all trying to make a difference, and a conference without people trying to sell you stuff is always refreshing.  Thanks to the Morgo team for organizing it and inviting me.

I’m soaking up sunshine on the terrace outside the annual TDWI World Conference in San Diego.   Pelicans are diving into the harbor just a few yards away.  Must remember to add tube of expensive French sunblock to expense report.  This is a great town for a conference.  Sales Veep Mark Budzinski and I walked to the Gaslamp district for dinner last night and it was hopping.  Restaurants and bars full of people and a big private party with a live band that took up a whole street.  Note to Michael: I’ve got the details if we want to do something similar for next year’s conference.  Maybe we can book Flight of the Conchords.

The exhibition hall has been mobbed and Mark, Raphael and I are talking non-stop to people who want to know about RED.  The new booth is really drawing them with the bright graphics and hard-to-ignore message: save TIME and MONEY.  With budgets tight, folks are really interested in what RED can do for them.

There’s also a growing buzz here about using Agile (or RAD) development methodologies for data warehouse development.  Agile methods are old hat, of course,  to Wherescape and our community of RED fanatics.  Six months and a zillion dollars to gather user requirements that will be outdated before the first draft is even written?  No thanks, mister multi-national tasseled-loafer consulting company.   How about we just GET IT DONE using RED?  Develop right alongside the users so they can show us exactly what they want and so we can respond quickly as the business evolves.  

This idea is catching on throughout the DW/BI community and several folks came up to talk about RED as enabling technology for Agile projects.  Stay tuned for more developments around Agile methodologies, including a White Paper and ultra-secret Project X.

It’s not all sunshine and carrot cake here in San Diego, though.   We get a little punchy after a couple of hours of talking about data warehousing.  Here’s a conversation that took place late yesterday afternoon between me and Raphael Klebanov, Wherescape’s main technical brain in Denver.  Raphael is originally from Russia, so you have to apply the correct accent to his lines:

Raphael:  I am sorry, Vince, I have maybe stupid question.

Vince:  There are no stupid questions, Raphael.  How can I help you?

Raphael: It is “TDWI”.  I have figured out that “DWI” stands for “Data Warehouse Institute”.  But what does “T” stand for?

Vince: You were right before.  That is a stupid question.  It stands for “The”.

Raphael: The what?

Vince: The Data Warehouse Institute. TDWI.

Raphael: I have that already.  This is Data Warehouse Institute.  But what does “T” stand for?

Vince: ”The”!

Raphael: The what?  This is what I want to know.  If it stands for something I would like to know what it is.

Vince: It stands for THE.  Just that word.

Raphael: What word?

Vince: The word THE!  THE DATA WAREHOUSE INSTITUTE!  TDWI!  That’s what it stands for!

Raphael: Yes, I know it stands for that.  But the “T” I don’t understand.

Vince: [turning to address the waiter who was clearing our coffee cups] Sir, could I tell you about how Wherescape RED can save you time and money on your next data warehouse project?

That’s it for now, live from TDWI 2008 in San Diego.  A big shout-out to our homeboy Sid from Sid Adelman and Associates;  Larissa Moss from Method Focus; Grace from Tagzfly Solutions in sunny Kingston, Jamaica; the BI crew from P.F. Changs (nice work snapping up all those raffle prizes);  and our booth neighbors Pervasive software, who were out the door and on the trolley to Tijuana as soon as the exhibit hall doors closed.  Don’t bother calling Pervasive tech support tomorrow. Those boys are going to be sportin’  major headaches, and maybe even a few new tattoos.