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Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and
Strategies

by David Wells and Mary Hope

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This report is available in Decision Maker and Decision Maker PLUS+ formats. See below for details.

Choosing data warehousing tools for your company?

Get it right, and you will slash the cost of your data warehouse and significantly boost its value to your users.

With tools costing up to $250,000, you simply cannot afford to get it wrong

No tool gives you everything you need, so you must choose carefully . . . and you must start the selection process with Ovum’s new report, Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and Strategies. Take the risk out of product selection and settle on the right system for your business . . . and quickly.

Helping you make the right choice

Whether you are implementing a new data warehousing strategy or improving an existing one, you need Ovum’s independent and in-depth comparative analysis of the leading warehouse population tools.

Warehouse population is the most complex, expensive, risky and unfamiliar part of the data warehousing process. It also accounts for most of the management and maintenance cost of a typical data warehouse – up to 80% of its lifetime cost.

The population process requires data to be extracted from source information systems, then transformed and integrated before being loaded into a data warehouse or datamart. Data warehouse population tools can automate this process, speeding initial development and reducing your costs.

The first generation of tools was expensive and flawed. Vendors have learnt from their mistakes, and users have a clearer idea of what they need. Now the variety of population tools on the market mirrors the complex tasks they perform . . . and so do their price tags! Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and Strategies spells out the differences between products and tells you when, why and how to invest.

Datamart, data warehouse . . . or both?

Order Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and Strategies and you will not only benefit from our expert evaluations, but you’ll receive invaluable guidance on your data warehousing strategy. We provide answers for the burning question on everyone’s lips – do you need an enterprise data warehouse, smaller datamarts or the best of both worlds, federated data warehousing? You will be taken through the arguments and issues for each approach, ensuring you follow the right strategy for your company.

Invest in essential, independent advice

Some of these data warehousing tools are extremely expensive. But you can reduce the risks and get maximum value out of your data warehouse by first investing in Ovum’s expert advice.

Order a copy of Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and Strategies today, and you'll be guaranteed to:

• understand the different types of 'population toolkits' available so that you can select and integrate the right tool to suit your needs;
• have a thorough knowledge of the leading toolkits, and how they compare;
• be able to prepare a business case to support your tool decision;
• be in a position to explain how your selection can maximise business value and reduce your company's costs in its data warehousing projects;
• be sure that you've chosen the right product at the right time, and that future developments will not render your decision obsolete;
• ensure that you are forging the right strategy for your company based on a thorough examination of the issues and our expert opinion.

The Product Evaluations

You are clearly shown how the product matches up to our evaluation criteria in the report’s 30-page evaluation for each tool. Each evaluation includes a summary page for quick comparisons:

1. Ease of setup – does the tool help you to quickly set up and populate a simple data warehouse or datamart?
2. Management – will the tool help keep your data warehouse management costs down?
3. Adaptability – will the tool make it easier to adapt your data warehouse to changing requirements? Or might it make it more difficult?
4. Support for growth – as you increase the size and scope of the data warehouse, will the tool cope?
5. Advanced data transformation – how much does the tool help with more complex transformation requirements and data quality management?
6. Metadata for users – how easy is it to use metadata from the tool to enhance the value of the data warehouse for its end users?
7. Consistency and reuse – does the tool make it easy to ensure consistency between different datamarts or subject areas in the warehouse? Does it encourage reuse of transformation logic to reduce development and maintenance costs? Can it be used to implement integrated federated datamarts?

The suitability of the tool for different roles in a data warehouse architecture – for populating a…

Data warehouse	Independent datamart	Dependent datamart	"Starter data warehouse"	Federated data warehouse
·	·	·	·	·

Decision Maker

Is your organisation embarking on the selection process for new data warehousing tool software? Are you involved in making the decision? If you need to make and justify the right product choice within strict deadlines, Ovum's Decision Maker package is for you. You will receive:

• All current Product Evaluations –we evaluate all the leading products in the market, helping you to make a decision that is right for your current and future needs.
• Guide to the Evaluations –to help you get the most from our detailed evaluations, our guide describes the criteria used and explains the approach taken.
• Summary of the Evaluations – a quick and easy-to-use summary comparing the functionality of all products evaluated.
• Everything you need to know to back up your decision –four chapters (100 pages) describing the latest in data warehousing – to help you choose the right strategy and tool for your company.

Decision Maker PLUS+

If you need regularly updated product information and market news that keeps pace with current developments, then Decision Maker PLUS+ is for you. In addition to all the elements of the Decision Maker service, you’ll receive:

• Product Evaluations – continuously updated for a whole year. As new releases become available, we will update our product evaluations to keep them current. We will also evaluate significant new products as they are released. New products planned for evaluation during the next year include;
  * SAP Business Warehouse * Microsoft DTS for SQL Server * Acta * Sybase Warehouse Studio.
• Annual Market Forecast – Ovum's expert analysts forecast market development, predicting how sections of the market will grow or decline, and identifying the key factors behind this movement. Ovum's Annual Forecast provides you with the foresight you need to plan your business strategy.
• Quarterly Update – every 3 months, Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and Strategies will bring you an update on product and market developments to ensure that you will stay informed in this fast-moving technology area.
• Telephone enquiry service – speak directly to the Ovum Evaluates: Data Warehousing Tools and Strategies analyst team for additional information and advice when you need it.

Who should read this report?

CIOs and MIS managers who want to develop a data warehousing strategy which delivers the best business information to their users.

Business and technical strategists; data warehouse architects who want to build the right decision support architecture to deliver maximum business value.

Project managers who need to choose the right tool to populate data warehouses and/or datamarts.

Systems integrators and consultants who need to choose the right toolkit for client projects.

Packaged application vendors and VARs seeking the right tools to help add decision support functionality to their core products.

Decision support tool vendors looking for complementary technology or in-depth information on competing products and market developments.

No more confusion

These products have been called extraction tools; transformation tools; "backend" tools; warehouse population tools; warehouse management tools; ETT tools; EMT tools; DTMS tools, DTE(A)MM tools... Ovum cuts through the confusion and tells you what they really do and which one you should choose for your data warehouse.

Ovum’s expert analysis of the latest developments in data warehousing

…to help you choose the right data warehousing strategy and the tool to fit it.

Management summary

Choosing the right data warehousing strategy

Is an enterprise data warehouse the right strategy for your company, or should you build smaller, cheaper, focused datamarts? Choosing the wrong option is likely to be disastrous. We explain the pros and cons of the different strategies; how to choose the right option for your organisation, and when to opt for a "best of both worlds" strategy – federated data warehousing.

Data warehouses and datamarts dissected

How do data warehousing strategies map onto technical architectures? What components are required to implement a data warehouse architecture? What are the important design options and how should you choose between them?

Implementing a successful data warehousing strategy

How does building a data warehousing architecture differ from a typical IT project? The role of prototyping. The practical value of metadata. What is data quality and how can it be managed?

The Ovum model of data warehouse and datamart infrastructure

The Ovum model illustrates the functionality coverage of data warehousing tools. The model shows clearly which operations the tools automate and which they leave to you to implement on your own.

Guide to the evaluations

A comprehensive guide to the evaluation criteria, explaining how and why we compare the tools in the 7 evaluation criteria.

H Summary of the evaluations

J Evaluations

30-page tool evaluations from each of these leading vendors *Ardent * Constellar * Carleton * ETI * D2K * Informatica * Genio * Platinum Technology * Prism * systemfabrik * Acta Technology * Microsoft * SAP * Sybase

Don’t just take our word for it

Hundreds of companies worldwide have invested in our previous evaluations of data warehousing tools. Take a quick look at the sample below. Some are your competitors – and have already reserved their copies of this brand new report.

Finance
* Bank of Scotland * Bristol & West Building Society * Capital Bank Plc * Commonwealth Bank of Australia * Credit Lyonnais * Deutsche Bank * Lloyds Bank Insurance Services * Morgan Grenfell * National Bank of Kuwait * Prudential Banking Plc * Saudi American Bank * Standard Chartered Bank * Swiss Bank Corporation * Union Bank of Switzerland * Zurich Reinsurance UK

Oil and Manufacturing
* BHP Information Technology * British Steel Plc * Ciba-Geigy * Detroit Edison * Fujitsu * Kuwait National Petroleum Company * Pfizer * SGS-Thomson Microelectronics * Shell International Petroleum * Sony International

Telecommunications
* Bell Atlantic * BT Plc * Cable & Wireless Plc * Deutsche Telekom * France Telecom * Hongkong Telecom * Portugal Telecom * Telecom Italia * Telia * Telstra

Systems Integrators and Consultants
* Andersen Consulting * Booz Allen & Hamilton * CSC * Cap Gemini * Debis Systemhaus * Deloitte & Touche * Ernst & Young * KPMG * Logica * Perot Systems Europe * Price Waterhouse

Vendors
* Business Objects * Digital Equipment Corporation * Hitachi * IBM Corporation * Information Builders * Intersolv * Microsoft Europe * NCR Corporation * Oracle * SAS Institute * Siemens Nixdorf * Sun Microsystems * Sybase * Tandem Computers

Shouldn’t you be among them?

• Bloor Research Group: Business Intelligence through Data Mining
• Bloor Research Group: Data Warehousing
• Bloor Research Group - EIS Tools in the Data Warehouse: An Evaluation and Comparison
• Ovum evaluates: OLAP