IM2007 was just superb, IM2008 I did not attend, and now IM2009 was still a fine conference in spite of the financial climate. Banks and insurance companies were modestly represented, of course, but when you do not rely on external consulting assignments they are dispensable! It was still nice to meet a number of former colleagues and professional acquaintances of times past. But mainly there were the inspirational presentations. I kind of like the classic style of presentation - break - presentation - break - presentation, etc, - let me briefly recap the presentation highlights for readers of the blog and for myself to remember in times to come.
Tuesday, 16 June (afternoon only)
TARGIT has somehow never crossed my path, but Morten Middelfart's presentation was quite lively and it is nice to now have a real impression and cursory knowledge of what it is. Great to know that such ingenuity flows from the north of Jutland.
SAP is also no stronghold of mine, but since it is the ERP system of choice and first pillar of BI in Novozymes, I am bound to see and hear more of it in times to come - even though my main focus is Microsoft BI, primarily "backend". - Now, Ken Seitzberg produced a fine overview of the present status of SAP BI offerings including ongoing integration with BusinessObjects, which is much more familiar to me.
Wednesday, 17 June
Frank Buytendijk was first with 'Performance comes from Venus, Management from Mars' on the basis of his recent book Performance Leadership (which should probably be my first online review target - 5-star - on Amazon.co.uk soon). Frank's ideas may be radical, but they are not easily refuted, and his presentation is as delightfully audible as his writing is readable.
Stefan Eriksson (Sandviken) on How to Govern BI in a Global Organization was a pleasant surprise. He started out with a phone bill analogy - when it is so difficult to summarize and report on just a single phone user, how difficult must it then be to provide Decision Support to a heterogeneous global organization. But he seemed to be on top of it with just the right blend of personal (company) terminology and structures combined with recognizable standard BI phraseology.
Kristine Kerr of Microsoft succinctly explained the core differences between the big 4: SAP is Business oriented, Oracle is database centric, IBM is mainly a consultancy conglomerate, and Microsoft thrives on end-user focus. Furthermore, she gave a reassuring presentation of where MS BI is going the next couple of years where PerformancePoint features are divided between SharePoint, SQL and Excel (incl. Gemini).
Jay Mazzucco (Johnson & Johnson Health Care) replaced a colleague for a presentation of an advanced and successful data governance program. And his case story was easily the best of its kind at the conference. OK, he had a good story to tell, and he did it well, but what was truly remarkable was himself! Working with data governance for J&J for 20+ years he admitted that the first 15 years had been unfulfilling. Only over the last 5 years had technological opportunities really caught up with architectural aspirations. But where the average guy would probably have long succumbed to years and years of technical disappointment, Jay had remained ready and alert and went straight for the current solution once it became technically feasible.
Nigel Pendse (OLAP Report and OLAP Solutions) closed the conference in style with his BI Survey 8 questionnaire findings, and it was sobering to hear that there is actually quantitative evidence for common sense principles such as focusing on the product as opposed to the vendor, for formally comparing alternative products, for involving end users, for employing dedicated BI consultants rather than general purpose IT or management consultants and - last but not least - for recognizing query response time as (still!) a primary driver for user satisfaction, - or the opposite.
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