SURVEY PREDICTS BOOM IN DW BENEFIT FOR UK TELECOMS

Many UK companies are on the verge of reaping commercial benefits from use of information that they are gathering and storing in ever larger data warehouses, according to a survey conducted by MicroStrategy, a specialist in technology used to explore, analyse and distribute information held in central data warehouses. The findings are based on a survey of 163 senior business and IT managers of a broad cross section of both national and multinational companies who attended MicroStrategy's annual Data Warehousing Congress in London this Summer.

Within the UK telecoms market specifically, data warehousing is being driven by demand for quantifiable rapid return on investment and realization of commercial benefits. 75% of telecommunications companies in the sample surveyed expect to get return on investment from their data warehouse within 6 months.

One in ten UK telecoms companies surveyed are already using information from their data warehouse for significant commercial gain, ultimately to turn their data warehouse from a cost centre into a profit centre.

Half of all UK telecoms companies in the sample have reached the production stages of data warehousing, where many different types of users can carry out complex analysis of information to achieve specific business goals.

The market for data warehousing solutions is increasingly being driven by a demand for analytically sophisticated applications focussed around specific market or business needs. Over 50% of all businesses surveyed were setting up data warehousing projects in order to carry out analysis specific to their own business. For the telecoms industry these include analyses 'fraud/risk analysis', 'chum' and 'billing analysis'.

A possible reason for the successful uptake of data warehousing is the increasing involvement of business sponsors. Board directors and divisional heads are heavily involved in defining the scope of the data warehousing project at outset. 82% of all respondents to the survey confirmed that board level approval was important or very important, while 87% of respondents felt that sponsorship by business heads was very important to the success of the project. The ideal for successful data warehousing projects is formation of solid partnerships between business and IT management so that it delivers true business benefits, the research reveals.

It is clear from the survey that data warehouses in the telecoms industry are set to grow in size significantly in the coming year. From the survey sample the number of telecoms data warehouses larger than 250 gigabytes is set to soar by 64%. A significant contributor to this trend is the increasing interest in using the data warehouse to understand the customer so that companies gain competitive advantage and market themselves more effectively. This inherently requires analysing data at the level at which the customer interacts with an organisation - at the transaction level.

The survey also reveals the accelerating take up of Internet or web-based infrastructures. 83% of telecoms companies in the sample are currently considering this as the direction their companies should head in. This finding suggests that the dominance of traditional platforms such as Windows is being gradually eroded. Web-based systems enable information to be extracted from the data warehouse and communicated to people across and beyond the organisation, via their PCS or through information broadcasting infrastructures to their mobile communications devices (including mobile phones, pagers, PDAs and palmtops).

Stewart Holness, UK managing director, MicroStrategy, explained the findings: "Companies are truly beginning to exploit the power of the information assets. On the evidence of this research we believe that for those companies with the vision to take the next steps forward. the road to reaping commercial benefits from information is now in sight."

MicroStrategy is a leading provider of enterprise decision support systems ("DSS") software and related services. More information can be found on MicroStrategy's web-site: http://www.strategy.com