AN INTERVIEW WITH ANTHONY L. POLITANO, CEO USA MIS AG
by Tim Staub, assistant editor

DSstar: What is MIS Decisionware?

POLITANO: MIS Decisionware is a suite of business intelligence applications built to allow organizations to harness the velocity of change though business intelligence. By basing our Decisionware products on open standards, companies no longer need to rely on proprietary OLAP environments to get all types of applications from high end modeling and data mining to Web-based analysis and reporting. MIS Decisionware easily integrates with existing data warehouse architectures to deliver the collaborative analytical applications demanded by today's data starved organizations. Through an advanced business intelligence server, which includes built in modeling and analysis functionality, and powerful data self service applications and templates, MIS Decisionware allows organizations to take their business intelligence to the masses without sacrificing quality or performance or mortgaging their future on proprietary platforms.

DSstar: Please explain more about the "velocity of change"

POLITANO: We have seen the business intelligence marketplace concentrating how to manage the current business environment through data warehouses, reporting tools and OLAP concentrating on the existing data. Today, though, organizations are faced with not only having to manage in the current, but manage for the future. The velocity of change is increasing exponentially, and companies need to have a business intelligence environment that can react to this change and enable infinite possibilities for business modeling and what-if scenarios. Let's use the dot-com phenomenon as an example. With the pressures from new business models, organizations were forced to move at e-speed. Many organizations moved into this new click and mortar world without the business intelligence to support the decisions. They were forced to a new business model by the velocity of change and many failed. One can easily replace the dot-com phenomenon with "downturning economy" or "increased competitive pressures" or "increased regulation". Organizations require a business intelligence environment which enables advanced modeling and what-if scenarios based on existing known data. The MIS Decisionware environment enables this advanced collaborative modeling by people at all levels in an organization. Thus a company can model a business scenario before committing capital and resources and be better prepared to harness the velocity of change.

DSstar: This seems like a different approach, is it?

POLITANO: Actually, for the US market, it is different. MIS Decisionware, though, has had great success in implementing these types of solutions throughout Europe and Asia. This is major break from the traditional "brute force" method of data warehousing which many US companies have tried for years and had limited success with to date. The MIS Decisionware approach is a more process centric, finessed approach than the brute force method. For organizations, this results in a lower total cost of ownership and quicker implementation times.

DSstar: Tell me a little about MIS AG.

POLITANO: Interestingly enough, MIS AG, is a global leader in business intelligence. In fact, in Europe, we are the market leader in many countries. MIS AG has done limited marketing in the US, but even with the limited marketing, we have had marked success with blue chip clients such as 3COM, HP, StorageTek, Bayer and Ogilvy & Mather. I think this says a lot for our ability to deliver business solutions and concentrate on the products instead of the hype. MIS AG was founded in 1988. We are a publicly traded company and have offices in 12 countries around the globe. We have over 600 employees and more than 15,000 users. In the US, we are headquartered in NJ and have an office in California.

DSstar: How does MIS Decisionware plan to expand in the US?

POLITANO: We recognize that in order to succeed in the US, partnerships are key. We are expanding our global relationship with Microsoft and SAP. Also, key are our relationships around the globe with major integrators such as KPMG and Deloitte & Touche. In addition, our partner program seeks out the best of breed for system integrators, VARS, OEMs, and consulting partners. MIS Decisionware will also continue with our success of directly serving our clients though our consulting, training, support and sales organizations.

DSstar: You mentioned data mining, can you expand on this?

POLITANO: Actually, MIS Deltaminer is part of new breed of tools known as "active analysis" tools. Active analysis combines the ease of use of OLAP tools with the powerful algorithms of data mining. The challenge of many data mining tools is that they are very "black box" in their design. The user must trust that the mining tool has provided the right answer and dare not ask "why?". Conversely, the challenge with traditional OLAP is that users must hunt and peck though a multi-dimensional database until they find that nugget of knowledge they are seeking. In a traditional OLAP system, users can spend 50% or more of their time chasing dead-ends until they get to that nugget of knowledge. Active analysis combines the best of the two practices. MIS Deltaminer can guide the user to the sweet spot of the data, but still allows the user to drive the analysis efforts. By providing the data mining behind the scenes, combined with an intuitive interface, MIS Deltaminer brings data mining to the masses.

DSstar: What about the environment supported?

POLITANO: MIS Decisionware is based on open standards, so we can work with any ODBC or OLE DB compliant database. In addition, we can support a variety of proprietary OLAP databases. The MIS Decisionware products run on a Microsoft platform and can be deployed in a Web-based or thick client architecture, in fact if you are a power user of Excel, you can access MIS Decisionware directly from Excel. This offers significant savings in training and having to have people learn a new environment. We believe that organizations are tired of supporting stand-alone proprietary platforms for business intelligence and that collaborative open standards based systems are the future.

Contact Ellen Montemayor, Marketing & Public Relations, USA MIS AG, 973-379-1700 X31, emontemayor@misag.com.