GOOD STRATEGY REBELLION

Tag: Information and Technology

  • DATA WORLD: Fixing the Data Warehouse – 2026/02/10

    DATA WORLD: Fixing the Data Warehouse – 2026/02/10

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Zamora, Tuesday 10th February 2026

    What to say?

    I was reading an article. It was written by Jeff Wilts and recommended by Bill Inmon. I got to this statement: “Teradata is a full-featured enterprise data warehouse.”  For me, it went further downhill from there.

    It was very disheartening and deceptive. I decided to write an article about my thoughts on it. (Understanding the Data Warehouse Dilemma – 2026/02/07, https://goodstrat.com/2026/02/06/understanding-the-data-warehouse-dilemma-2026-02-07/).

    As a result, many people approached me. They asked directly and indirectly if I would suggest ways and means to overcome or avoid those dilemmas.

    This is the result.

    Enjoy! But even better, let me know what you think.

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  • Navigating Data Warehousing’s Professional Crisis – 2026

    Navigating Data Warehousing’s Professional Crisis – 2026

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Read my absolutely fabulous books: http://www.goodstrat.com/books
     
    A quiet disquiet has settled over the once-confident corridors of enterprise data. What was, not so long ago, regarded as a rigorous and rather specialised craft, data warehousing and business intelligence, now frequently presents itself in a more casual, even improvisational guise. A growing number of senior executives, technology directors and indeed practitioners themselves confess to a mounting discomfort with the quality, and at times the sheer quantity, of self-proclaimed experts who populate the field.
     

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  • A Brief History of Data Warehousing – 2026/01/07 – Includes Podcast

    A Brief History of Data Warehousing – 2026/01/07 – Includes Podcast

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Madrid, 7th January 2026

    The origins of data warehousing are often pinned to the late 1980s, when the term “business data warehouse” first appeared in an influential IBM Systems Journal article by researchers Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy. I was based in Birmingham at that time, and I also wrote a similar foundational document on Information Centres for Sperry Univac.

    Yet, as with many technological breakthroughs, the story is far richer and older than the conventional narrative suggests. The foundational components of what we now recognise as a data warehouse were quietly taking shape as early as the 1960s, driven by the need to organise, integrate, and analyse growing volumes of business information in an era of punch cards, magnetic tape, and the first mainframes.

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  • Silly Season! Data Warehousing is Hadoop is Big Data? – Unplugged for 2026

    Silly Season! Data Warehousing is Hadoop is Big Data? – Unplugged for 2026

    Martyn Richard Jones

    2026 Remaster

    Let’s get this baby off the ground

    This weekend I read a piece on the Information Management website by Steve Miller with the title of Big Data vs. the Data Warehouse. It’s an old piece, from March 2014.

    It was in response to a piece by Bill Inmon titled “Big Data or Data Warehouse?” Turbocharge Your Porsche – Buy an Elephant, in which he singled out for criticism the ad campaign of a big-data and Hadoop promoter.

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  • Mugged in Data Hell – Perils of embracing the Faustian Side of IT – Part 4 – Remaster 2026

    Mugged in Data Hell – Perils of embracing the Faustian Side of IT – Part 4 – Remaster 2026

    By Martyn Richard Jones

    Continued from Part 3, which can be found here -> Part 3

    “The following week, the full high-powered delegation from The Taffia Connection and BogartSys flies in. It was as if an army had come to do battle with us. Uniformly slick, sullen and tacky. iPhone; laptop; knock-off Marks and Spark’s; check patterns; butt ugly ties; ‘plastique’ shoes; mismatching socks; ‘business’ rucksacks; all weather hoodies; and, worst of all, off-the-peg smirks just begging to be slapped”.

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  • Essential Principles for Effective Data Warehousing

    Essential Principles for Effective Data Warehousing

    Written by Martyn Richard Jones

    These are my principles for successful Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. If you don’t like them, I have others. Musings on being led by the nose by experienced practitioners of charlatanry, deception and obfuscation.

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  • Addressing Professionalism Issues in Data Warehousing

    Addressing Professionalism Issues in Data Warehousing

    People are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the quality and quantity of many self-styled data warehousing and business intelligence professionals, organisations, and individuals. The perceived and increasing degradation of professionalism and integrity in my own areas of specialisation also finds echo in other aspects of Information and Communication Technology practice, but for now, that is outside the scope of this piece.

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  • A Brief History of Data Warehousing

    A Brief History of Data Warehousing

    There is a general consensus that Data Warehousing first appeared in the 1980s. However, the components of Data Warehousing were being developed and implemented as early as the 1960s. Many individuals are credited with discovering Data Warehousing. Wikipedia has a great chronological timeline that provides a lot of context for the evolution of data warehousing methodologies.

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  • Understanding Building Scientific Value: A Homeowner’s Guide

    Understanding Building Scientific Value: A Homeowner’s Guide

    Twenty years ago, you wanted a new bathroom, so you hired a building contractor to come in and build a bathroom of your own design.

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  • Understanding IT Failures: A Path to Improvement – REMASTER 2026

    Understanding IT Failures: A Path to Improvement – REMASTER 2026

    My original intention was not to write a book on the decline and fall of so many projects, but rather to pen a short essay, a sort of hard-hitting criticism of the litany of IT failures. Of course, this is rarely enough; it wasn’t enough because it identified the issues without provoking debate, and it highlighted common issues without providing guideline suggestions, which meant that it appeared upon reflection to come across as too much like a hi-tech hit and run exercise, beating up on IT failures without actually offering tangible solutions.

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  • Transforming IT: A Guide for CEOs – REMASTER 2026

    Transforming IT: A Guide for CEOs – REMASTER 2026

    Far too few CEOs regularly think about IT on a habitual basis, and especially as something that is potentially integrated into everything their companies do and could do. This, however, is not at all surprising; there is a general lack of time for any CEO to be actively involved in what IT does, and they will generally have some degree of misunderstanding of both the historic roles and the relative successes and failures of IT.

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