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In-Memory Analytics Gives The Edge

Instant analysis, greater insight, and rapid delployments are the main benefits of in-memory analytics.  It used to be the case that there were only a small number of business intelligence users in an organisation, and these people were happy to get a weekly report. Not any more - with modern tools, such as In-Memory Analytics that take advantage of the huge advances in technology, you can spread decision making throughout the organisation and you don't have to spend large quantities of money or involve your IT staff in developing complex reports. The pace of business now demands fast access to information and easy analysis; if the tools aren't fast and easy, business intelligence will continue to have modest impact, primarily with experts who have no alternative but to wait for an answer to a slow query.  In-memory analytics promises to deliver decision insight with the agility that businesses demand. It's a win for business users who gain self-service analysis capabilities, and for IT departments which can spend far less time on query analysis, cube building, aggregate table design, and other time consuming performance-tuning tasks. Some even claim that in-memory technology eliminates the need for a data warehouse and all the cost and complexity that entails. Business users have long complained about slow query responses. If managers have to wait hours or even just a few minutes to gain insights to inform decisions, they're not likely to adopt a BI tool, nor will front-line workers who may only have time for gut-feel decision-making. Instead they'll leave the querying to the few BI power users, who will struggle to keep up with demand while scarcely tapping the potential for insight. In many cases, users never ask the real business questions and instead learn to navigate slow BI environments by reformulating their crucial questions into smaller queries with barely acceptable performance. For example, the Austin, Texas, fire department serves over 740,000 residents and responds to more than 200 calls a day. The department recently deployed QlikTech's QlikView to better analyze call response times, staffing levels and financial data. QlikView is an in-memory analytic application vendor that has been growing rapidly in the last few years. With QlikView, users can get to data in new ways and perform what-if analysis, which the department says has helped in contract negotiations.

 

Benefits of QlikView go well beyond the fire department. "Unless we spend more efficiently, costs for safety services will take a larger share of tax dollars, making budgets less available for services such as libraries and parks," says Elizabeth Gray, a systems supervisor. Gray says that attendance and payroll data come from different systems and never seemed to make the priority list in the central data warehouse. "With QlikView, we can access multiple data sources, we can control transformations and business logic in the QlikView script and easily create a presentation layer that users love."

In many cases, In-Memory products such as QlikView have been deployed at the departmental level, because central IT has been too slow to respond to specific business requirements. A centralized data warehouse that has to accommodate an enterprise's diverse requirements can have a longer time-to-value. Demand for In-Memory is also strong among smaller companies that lack the resources or expertise to build a data warehouse; these products offer an ideal alternative to older BI tools because they can analyze vast quantities of data in memory and are a simpler faster alternative to relational data marts. 

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Why QlikView In-Memory wins over OLAP Technology

So why choose QlikView in-memory software over your traditional business intelligence tools? Let’s first talk about all the confusion. After many acquisitions and mergers in recent times such as SAP, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, you now have a choice of multiple disparate solutions without any insight into the future of these products.

However if you did decide to purchase one of the many OLAP-based solutions over an in-memory product like QlikView, which one do you choose? Lets take SAP Business Objects for example. Do a search on Business Objects Intelligence Solutions and you will find SAP B.O. Voyager, Set Analysis, Predictive Workbench, XCelcius, Desktop Intelligence, Dashboard Buidlder, and many many more. Are you required to purchase the B.O. Enterprise XI platform as well?

If you have simple Ad Hoc analytical requirements, all you require is a simple solution. Select a product that does what it says with a simple pricing model. In-Memory software is the answer for many reasons. Many of the solutions owned by these large business intelligence vendors are OLAP based solutions. OLAP engines can be very limiting:

• Creating OLAP cubes is an iterative process that takes considerable time, requires specialist skills and involves significant cost. Consequently it’s often restricted to Sales and Finance only. Surely other department have important data too. Just try adding another data source.
• Cube builds often take many hours and are usually built overnight or at the weekend, so real time reporting is not possible. Can you really afford to wait?
• Business user requests to create alternative drilldown paths or change hierarchies must be referred to I.T. and seldom are prioritised, leading to frustration and low expectations
• The staff originally trained have moved on so innovation is scant, resulting in a ‘it’s not broken so don’t fix it’ mentality So what’s the solution?

Learn more about the limitations of OLAP-based solutions, how business had changed, and what the advantages are of selecting QlikView in-memory business intelligence tool. Join our free webcast on How much is your business intelligence software costing you?

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QlikView In-Memory Business Intelligence Moves in on Cognos PowerPlay

QlikView in-memory business intelligence has moved in on Cognos PowerPlay like the iPhonehas moved in on the old brick mobile phones with attached antennas.  PowerPlay was one of the world's leading OLAP based analysis tools. However, it was also originally developed back in 1990.  For old technology it functioned, but new needs and higher demands were developed, similar to the evolution of mobile phones.   QlikView in-memory was created out of these demands. As businesses changed, as requirements increased, and data became more complex, technology improved to meet these needs.  Unbelievably PowerPlay is still being used by some organisations today; so why the ‘perceived' loyalty?

As a former Cognos partner, I know of many reasons:

• A large economic investment was probably made in the product originally
• It took a long time to implement and ‘bed down' the original solution and there is no appetite to go through that pain again. Upgrades are difficult enough.
• The traditional Cognos rivals like Business Objects, SAS, Hyperion and Microsoft all have similar offerings using the same OLAP based technology, so why switch horses!

But the software does have its limitations:

• Creating OLAP cubes is an iterative process that takes considerable time, requires specialist skills and involves significant cost. Consequently it's often restricted to Sales and Finance only. Surely other department have important data too. Just try adding another data source.
• Unlike in-memory business intelligence, cube builds often take many hours and are usually built overnight or at the weekend, so real time reporting is not possible. Can you really afford to wait?
• Business user requests to create alternative drilldown paths or change hierarchies must be referred to I.T. and seldom are prioritised, leading to frustration and low expectations
• The staff originally trained have moved on so innovation is scant, resulting in a ‘it's not broken so don't fix it' mentality

In-memory business intelligence gives you the flexibility and ease of use technology to analyze your data when and how you need it.  To better understand the challenges of businesses today, and how decision-making and data analysis has changed since the purchase of your business intelligence tool register for "how much is your business intelligence tool costing" you and learn how you can fix the current issues that your company may be challenged with today.

Register Here:  How Much is Your Business Intelligence Tool Costing You