Human Side Key to Data Warehousing
ACTION ITEMS

At the Data Warehousing Institute Implementation conference in Anaheim, Calif., this week, there will be plenty of technical talk about Web interfaces, repositories, packaged analytical applications and architectures. But the human side of data warehousing will share the spotlight.

In warehousing projects, social science can be as important as computer science, said Wayne Eckerson, vice president of technology services at the Data Warehousing Institute, a for-profit educational group in Gaithersburg, Md.

Unlike many information technology projects that run quietly once they're put in place, a data warehouse usually grows exponentially once it's implemented, Eckerson said. To make sure the projects have the ongoing support they need, IT managers have to make sure they keep in touch with their users and executives through team-building and quality assurance presentations, he said.

"Data warehouses are not simply IT projects because their ultimate success depends so much on the end users," said Jackie Sweeney, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.

"More data warehousing projects fail from organizational reasons than from technical reasons," said Herb Edelstein, an analyst at Two Crows Corp., a consultancy in Potomac, Md.

The conference will be far from a sociology seminar, however.

The event will also feature several sessions covering integration of data warehousing and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. That topic garners so much interest because "ERP systems have become the big datagenerators for many organizations, but they aren't particularly good at business intelligence and analysis," Edelstein said.

Eckerson said he expects sessions on data warehouse Web-connectivity to be well-attended. "Because it requires minimal training and reduces IT overhead, the Web is becoming the de facto warehouse access platform," he said.