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Barry Devlin

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Founder and Principal, 9sight Consulting

243 points

Dr. Barry Devlin is a leading authority on BI and data warehousing. He is a widely respected consultant, lecturer and author of the seminal book, "Data Warehouse - from Architecture to Implementation". Barry envisages a fully integrated business, covering informational, operational ...

Dr. Barry Devlin is a leading authority on BI and data warehousing. He is a widely respected consultant, lecturer and author of the seminal book, "Data Warehouse - from Architecture to Implementation". Barry envisages a fully integrated business, covering informational, operational and collaborative environments: Business Integrated Insight. He is founder and principal of 9sight Consulting, specializing in the design and implementation of deep business insight solutions. Prior to that he worked for IBM as a software architect, manager, consultant and distinguished engineer.

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March 20, 2012

Barry Devlin and 2 other people answered this question

Will limited user participation impact the likelihood of the business intelligence system development & implementation success?

In a word - yes. In two words - yes, significantly!
For many years now, the accepted wisdom is that the "build it and they will come" approach by IT to developing BI systems will not work. Users need to be involved to tell IT ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Jan. 6, 2012

Barry Devlin and 6 other people answered this question

How thin is the line between business intelligence and business analytics applications?

How thin is the line between BI and BA? If I may be provocative... what line???
Business Intelligence has always been a broad church. As has probably every generic term invented in IT, promulgated by analysts and grabbed by vendors. And I haven't seen a ... more

Business Analytics

Business Intelligence

Data Governance

Data Management Software

Dec. 29, 2011

Lauren Buchsbaum selected a best answer for

Does big data present fundamental privacy concerns for customers?

For consumer companies, big data often comes in the form of collecting information about current and potential customers - whether it's willingly shared or not. This information could certainly be put towards helpful causes, but it's still gleaned from the consumer. Does anonymizing the data ... more

Information Technology

Dec. 2, 2011

Barry Devlin and 1 other person answered this question

What are the drawbacks of using only business intelligence analytics for driving sales performance?

This is a VERY interesting observation ... worth taking up off-line, perhaps. If interested, e-mail me at barry@9sight.com more

Business Intelligence

Aug. 26, 2011

Barry Devlin and 9 other people answered this question

Why should SMBs consider investing in BI and which kinds of SMBs don't need it?

The most important factors in judging what BI tooling, if any, an SMB requires are the complexity and scale of its base data and the size of its decision-making unit. Measures such as revenue, profit or number of employees have far less relevance.
The base data ... more

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence & Analytics

Aug. 25, 2011

Barry Devlin and 1 other person answered this question

What's the difference between metadata and data dictionary?

A data dictionary typically refers to a specific tool / store of information describing the contents of one or more databases or applications. This information is often focused on techical characteristics such as data type, field length and so on. Over the years, more business-related ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Data Dictionary

Information Management

Aug. 19, 2011

Barry Devlin and 7 other people answered this question

Do you think HP's decision to bet 80% of their cash reserves on Autonomy is a wise decision? Y/N?

On balance, No. It's a big bet in the already crowded information management space where they have only very limited traction (via prior acquisition of Vertica and a failed DW product NeoView). For a bit more detail, see my blog at: http://bit.ly/hp-autonomy more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Enterprise Search

Aug. 15, 2011

Barry Devlin and 9 other people answered this question

Does 'big data' need to be better defined?

IDC's "Digital Universe Study" 5th annual update was released recently. Most coverage has been around the size and growth rate of the data universe... and we're talking really big data! However, of more interest for me are the implications for IT data managment, some of ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

June 5, 2011

Barry Devlin and 4 other people answered this question

Do you need a data warehouse to have mobile business intelligence?

Jonathan's "It depends on the information that the mobile BI technology will be accessing" is absolutely correct. However, I believe you must focus more on the consistency and reliabilitycharacteristics of that information rather than limitations of specific sources. A data warehouse (or dependent data marts ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

June 1, 2011

Barry Devlin and 3 other people answered this question

What are the top 3 pros and cons of data warehouses?

Hi Dan, I suspect that the divergence here is on what we mean when we say "data warehouse". I use DW to mean the environment consisting of hard (structured) data in the EDW and marts fed from it that has been modeled, structured and reconciled. ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

April 26, 2011

Barry Devlin and 5 other people answered this question

What is the impact of social media on decision making?

Nice primers, Courtney! I'm not a great fan of the "2.0" labelling that gets applied to everything, but the BI 2.0 concept (and I'm guessing what you mean by it) does certainly apply wider than Strategic BI. Business analysts, in general, are far more innovative ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Decision-making

March 29, 2011

Barry Devlin answered this question

What can social business intelligence offer businesses? Can any business reap the benefits?

While social BI is high on the hype curve - ie, most every BI vendor claims to have it - that positioning should be see as positive... for a change!
Let me explain. When was the last significant business decision in your company taken by a ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

March 22, 2011

Barry Devlin answered this question

What are some of the latest trends in Business Intelligence architecture?

Business Intelligence architecture is undergoing (or about to undergo - depending on your viewpoint) one of the most significant transitions in its approximately 25 year history!
The drivers for this change are:
1. The increasing speed, complexity and interconnectivity of business
2. The explosion of information in volume ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

IT Architecture

March 14, 2011

Barry Devlin and 1 other person answered this question

What is operational business intelligence and why is it important?

Nigel's list of "components" of operational BI is excellent. At the same time, it illustrates the real problem with the term - it covers a multitude of business needs and technological approaches. The result is that practitioners are often left at the mercy of vendors ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

March 5, 2011

Barry Devlin and 1 other person answered this question

What is 'Big Data' & how will that market be affected by Teradata's acquisition of Aster Data?

First, the phrase "Big Data" is one big red herring! As Dan's answer points out, absolute size of the data has little meaning, because where size becomes an issue depends on a variety of factors - hardware speed and capacity, organizational ability and familiarity with ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

March 3, 2011

Barry Devlin and 3 other people answered this question

How could businesses benefit from the technology used by IBM's Watson?

The Watson technology, based on UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Archiitecture), is focused directly on the fastest growing aspect of business intelligence - unstructured (or, as I prefer, soft) information. Given the absence of a relational database in the architecture, traditional BI will be less affected. ... more

Human Resources

Information Technology

Feb. 18, 2011

Barry Devlin and 4 other people answered this question

What are some things that need to change in the BI industry in order to see a higher adoption rate?

Becky asks for "some things that need to change", and of course the list can be as long as you feel like typing... But let me focus on one key change that I feel leads to all others ... a total commitment to business relevance.
There ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence Implementation

Jan. 29, 2011

Barry Devlin and 3 other people answered this question

Can Business Intelligence tools include Customer, Market & Competitor Intelligence?

This question firstly revolves around your definition of "Business Intelligence" and the tools you include in the category. Business intelligence is an expanding concept these days - as evidenced by the use of terms like operational and collaborative BI. In this sense, yes, BI can ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Jan. 25, 2011

Barry Devlin and 3 other people answered this question

Can emerging Business Intelligence tools impact corporate business/operational models?

Emerging BI tools, in common with all other tools, in themselves can change nothing of the way business operates. How they are used, who uses them and what is done with their ouput is what counts. Many businesses gain relatively little strategic or operational benefit ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

Jan. 18, 2011

Barry Devlin and 12 other people answered this question

Business Intelligence Trends: What are the top business intelligence trends to track in 2011?

Most of the previous contributors have covered the high-visibility trends, and I would have to agree with social networking for BI, mobile BI and visualization as the top three trends for 2011. I'd like to focus on a few more subtle, but very fundamental trends ... more

Information Technology

Business Intelligence

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