Part One - BI Architecture/Methodology
1.Methodology
Architectural Framework
Intellectual capital
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Cost estimates, project plans, designs, code, ROI justifications, case studies
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Best Practices, education, certification
Processes for execution
pic1 Methodologies & Ref. Architectures
2.Reference Architecture
Provides architectural guidance
Incorporates best practices
Can be used as a blueprint for designing and deploying solutions
Defines hardware, software, and environmental components that are needed to build end-to-end solutions to help meet specific business needs
3.Three virtual views of the BI Reference Architecture
Each view is intended to communicate with a different audience. We often discuss BI solutions with everyone in an organization from end users to DBA’s to business executives.
(1) “business” view. It is intended to communicate with a business or enduser audience. It uses business related terms and is non-technical. A key principle of our analytic framework is the importance of the information consumer and
“
role based business intelligence”. Role based BI is a concept that suggests we don’t want to drown people with information, but rather delivery just the information they need, customized to their function. This is shown in the first layer to recognize that there are different types of consumers at different levels of the organization. The architecture supports each type, including external consumers to the organization.
(2) This is the second view and you can see that it is a little more detailed. It is slightly more technical. The intended audience of this view is a technically savvy business person, someone from the IT department or the CIO. This view contains the same fundamental concepts as the Analytical Framework, but takes it a step further. You will see the same layer concept from the Access layer through to Data Sourcing. This view also introduces the concept of cross infrastructure layers. Things like Metadata, Security, and Hardware/Software Platforms. These are layers that play a very important role in a BI architecture, but also span beyond BI in the organization. These are layers for which IBM has deep knowledge in other areas of our organization. IBM has a lot of material, knowledge capital and capabilities in these areas as well.
4. Applying the Reference Architecture
(1)
Here is an example of a specific application of the BI Reference Architecture. This is a view of the BI Reference Architecture to support the Basel II accord.
(2)
This is an example of how the BI Reference Architecture can be applied to do a fit-gap
analysis. This came from an actual client example where the highlighted areas show the components the client already had in their environment. The BI Reference Architecture allowed a common way to map those existing components and discuss with the customer other areas they may want to consider.
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