Analysis & Commentary:

eBay RECEIVES TDWI LEADERSHIP IN DATA WAREHOUSING AWARD

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), the premier educational association for the data warehousing and business intelligence industries, is pleased to announce eBay as the winner of its 2001 Leadership in Data Warehousing Award competition. Informatica nominated eBay in the category of E-Intelligence & Clickstream Data Warehousing. This competition, along with the Best Practices in Data Warehousing Awards competition, provides thousands of practitioners with best practices that they can follow as the data warehousing and business intelligence industries continue to grow and expand.

eBay was chosen from 14 Best Practices Awards winners competing for the Leadership Award at TDWI's Best Practices Summit in Anaheim, CA, in August. "Once again the competition for the Leadership in Data Warehousing Award was incredibly strong," said Ellen Hobbs, General Manager of TDWI, "But eBay stood at the forefront, demonstrating true leadership in data warehousing and business intelligence. They definitely provide a model that others can learn from and adapt for use within their own environments. They showed genuine innovation, and their ability to quantifiably measure the impact of their warehouse on their business was truly impressive."

eBay will present their winning solution at the TDWI World Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Thursday, November 8, at 8:00 a.m.

Summary of eBay's Data Warehousing Implementation

Category: E-Intelligence & Clickstream Data Warehousing Solution

Sponsor: Informatica Corporation

Founded in 1995, eBay created a powerful marketplace for the sale of goods and services that would become the world's leading online trading community. On any given day millions of items are offered for sale on the site across thousands of categories. eBay has regional sites in 53 markets across the United States, and country-specific sites in the world's top five Internet markets, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Australia. With the acquisition in 2000 of Half.com, eBay's community now benefits from a marketplace combining traditional auction style and fixed-price trading.

eBay needed to effectively capture, manage, and process enormous volumes of customer data and web site statistics to gain insight across its business operations. There are 20 million registered users, with 30,000 to 40,000 new users registered every day; billions of dollars of merchandise is exchanged; millions of unique visitors scan the site for that item they cannot find anywhere else.

In January 2000, eBay senior management funded a business intelligence group to establish a better understanding of market dynamics between buyers and sellers, to improve customer relationships, and increase bottom-line revenue. The eBay data warehouse, a.k.a. "Cosmos," was deployed in June 2000, after a 6-month development, to provide customer and business insight across eBay corporate operations. It uses Oracle 8i running on Sun servers and utilizes Informatica's PowerCenter for data movement.

eBay has recognized many benefits from Cosmos. Business users are able to find comprehensive answers to their questions in hours rather than the weeks required for generating the very basic SQL reports they relied on previously. The impact of Cosmos reaches beyond eBay as information can be shared with partner companies via a subscription extranet. Before the data warehouse, eBay managed a backlog queue of 25 to 30 report requests per month. That backlog was completely eliminated by the high availability of the information regardless of its source. eBay can quantify adoption or impact of a new feature or marketing campaign immediately after its launch.

The Data Warehousing Institute

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), a division of 101communications, is the premier provider of in-depth, high-quality education and training in the data warehousing and business intelligence industry. TDWI is dedicated to educating business and information technology professionals about the strategies, techniques, and tools required to successfully design, build, and maintain data warehouses. It also fosters the advancement of data warehousing research and contributes to knowledge transfer and professional development of its Members. TDWI sponsors and promotes a worldwide membership program, annual educational conferences, regional educational seminars, onsite courses, solution provider partnerships, awards programs for the best practices and leadership in data warehousing and innovative technologies, resourceful publications, an in-depth research program, and a comprehensive Web site.

101communications

Founded in 1998, 101communications LLC is an integrated media company in the business-to-business market aimed at the many specialized targets within the greater information technology community. 101's portfolio includes 15 magazines, more than 30 conferences, and extensive digital offerings in the U.S. and Europe in five areas: Software Development (Application Development Trends, Java Report, Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, Application Development Advisor, JavaSPEKTRUM, OBJECTspektrum, SIGS/101 Conferences); Vertical Markets (Recharger Magazine, Recharger WorldExpo, Copier Marketplace, Syllabus, Syllabus Conferences); Certification (Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, MCP TechMentor Conferences), Enterprise Technology (Enterprise Systems, ENT, Enterprise Linux, The Data Warehousing Institute, IT Events); and Government Technology (Federal Computer Week, civic.com). For more information about 101communications visit www.101com.com.

Contact Meighan Berberich, Marketing Manager, The Data Warehousing Institute, 206-246-5059 x104, mberberich@dw-institute.com.