Intelligent Enterprise

Let's be honest. Customers who think carefully don't make sales guys' lives any easier. But customers who fail to think carefully don't make their own lives any easier. What's true in the used car trade happens to be true in the data warehouse trade as well. And that's what one of our stories this week is all about.

One of our picks this week is an article by Ralph Kimball called "Beware The Objection Removers," which details the most common distractions data warehouse vendors use to ease the concerns that might impede customers before they make a purchase. As Kimball points out, such objection removers are sometimes legitimate. But other times, they're outright misrepresentations. Kimball does you the favor of carefully dissecting each "remover" to help you determine which are illegitimate, and when.

You should also check out a story this week from the ever-popular Cindi Howson about how BI has finally reached the workforce mainstream and begun to elevate decision-making on the operational level. Howson is the president of ASK, a BI consultancy.

And lastly, our own Jennifer Bosavage brings us back to the problem that never seems to diminish for many BI practitioners: data quality. Bosavage spoke with a group of vendors that specialize in resolving customers' data quality problems and got their advice on how to avoid "bad data in, bad data out" syndrome.

Also see Cognos earnings, HP's burgeoning business intelligence initiatives, and the latest from Microsoft on SQL Server in our Business Intelligence Pipeline news section.