Hold this thought: There are real golden nuggets of data that many organisations are oblivious to. But first let’s look at business process management. (more…)
Tag: information management
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Consider this: Big Data in Context
Big Data, together with Cloud computing and the Internet of Things, are topics that are very much to the fore in contemporary trends in Information Management. (more…)
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Enterprise Data Warehousing: Future Trends and Key Components
Artefacts for Enterprise Information Management
Key Data Warehousing Reference Architecture Components
Martyn Richard Jones
As an effective business process paradigm and a powerful mixture of technology, engineering and pragmatic design, Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) is arguably unmatched in its capacity to address complex and essential information requirements in Management Reporting, Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Analytics. In spite of the occasional outbreak of anecdotal ruminations to the contrary, key indications point to a bright future for EDW. Indeed, the breadth and richness of nascent applications, that the EDW model can adequately support, will drive an expansion in its utility, acceptance and advancement. For instance, a significant and practical way of maximising the value of innovation and investment in Enterprise Data Warehousing is by reusing and extending the Inmon paradigm to construct the enterprise information hub of the future. (more…) -
The management and architecture of Information Assets: Ask Martyn!
Martyn Richard JonesThe management and architecture of Information Assets
For more than two decades I have tried to convey the importance of treating information and knowledge as potential assets.
Around the world, the response has usually been mixed.
It is understandable that there is frequent reluctance to accept that information might have real value. (more…)
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Overcoming Mediocrity in Data Warehousing and Analytics – 2026 Vibes
“Anger is the enemy of nonviolence, and pride is a monster that swallows it up.”
Mohandas Gandhi
Martyn Richard Jones
Aspirational trends
The predominance of strength and innocence, better known as ignorance and arrogance, is undermining Information Management, and in turn is ensuring that many Data Warehousing and Decision Support initiatives are disappointments.
2015 will again give IM professionals the opportunity to regain some dignity and professional integrity.
First, by recognising that there are grave problems within IM; then, by slowing down and halting the toxic trends, carelessness and bad practices; and, subsequently, by reversing, through intelligence, perseverance and integrity, the ingrained and decrepit habits that still trouble the profession.
Present indications
In the rush to the bottom, we throw excellence in analysis, architecture, engineering and business understanding, under the bus. In IM as well as in many other branches of IT (Information Technology), mediocrity has become the new excellent, regular the new exceptional, and shoddiness the new normal.
Whether it is in Data Warehousing, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Analytics, Decision Support or Data Integration, we see that professional integrity and ethical behaviour – already enough of a rarity in IT – is being repeatedly trumped by short-term expediency, wilful witlessness, and the cultivation and perpetuation of dogmas, dysfunctional behaviour and dubious doings.
The Information Management sector is rife with elaborate charlatanry, partisan expediency and wilful self-deception. There is not a day that goes by in which we are not subjected to an avalanche of contemptible claims from rogue IM evangelists, DW neophytes and unsophisticated opportunists, who choose to simply make things up as they go along.
Manifest requisites
It is in the best interests of IM to raise the profession out of the ditch; to reform the profession from the inside; to drive sea-change improvements in knowledge, quality and professional integrity; to ensure a drastic reduction in destructive hype, deception and dogma, and to show the artless charlatans, chancers and snake-oil merchants the door.
Data Warehousing and Decision Support – if done right, and for the right reasons – can deliver tangible benefits to many organisations. Simply stated, if business information has a value in the realm of business and strategy, then it should be treated as an asset; if it is an asset, then it should be managed and nurtured as such, which means aiming to do the right thing right, first time, every time, whilst focusing on maximising confidence, availability and agility.
File under: Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Richard Jones, Martyn Jones, Cambriano Energy, Iniciativa Consulting, Iniciativa para Data Warehouse, Tiki Taka Pro
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Why Management Fails in Information Strategy
In the dim and distant past most organisations struggled along with what they euphemistically referred to as Information Systems.They were Information Systems with no overall design, no elements of management and no architecture.
Information Systems were built to show how the company had been performing in the immediate past, and that was it. (more…)
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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
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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Mugged in Data Hell – Perils of embracing the Faustian Side of IT – Part 2 – 2026
Written by Martyn Richard Jones
Continued from Part 1: Crème Continues…
Part 1 can be found here -> Part 1
“We had recently acquired a media news and entertainments business – Media Macaroni International, and we were planning on integrating their general ledger into the corporate IT landscape. One morning I received a call from the CIO of the newly acquired company, inviting me to their site for a meet and greet event.”
“So I moseyed on down to Tinsel Town and got a briefing from not only the CIO, but the full board of directors of Media Macaroni.”
“To cut a long story short, they basically put me on the spot. Either I integrated the entire Data Warehousing across the corporate in 9 months, or we would have serious problems of convergence. The message couldn’t have been clearer. Either I got my act together and made this acquisition work, or what looked like a humongous hot potato could be burning my mouth anytime soon.”
“I told the directors there and then that the mission was going to be incredibly difficult to fulfil. However, the mood changed.”
“Their CIO looks across the table and tells me that he can help me out of the hole. You see, we have employed a service company that does most of our IT work for us, and according to us at Media Macaroni they are the bee’s knees.”
“So ‘who are these guys’, I ask. Back comes the ominous response: The Taffia Connection”
“So, back home, I call all of my business managers together to discuss the next steps, and despite the misgivings of most of my department heads, and indeed my gut instincts, I become convinced that we should give The Taffia Connection a chance to tell us what they can do for us”.
“So, to cut a long story short, I bring in The Taffia, they give me a dog and pony show on what they can do for us… full data integration, enterprise application integration, enterprise data warehousing, business intelligence, MDM, CRM, Data Quality, Total Quality, IT Business Alignment up the wazoo, and I find the message so compelling that we initiate contractual discussions with The Taffia Connection”.
“As a result, and against all the best advice of my own best staff, I decide to outsource a large chunk of the integration, CRM, EAI, EDW and BI work to The Taffia Connection, work which I am assured will be carried out very cost-effectively by the offshore sister company Bogartsys (whose unofficial slogan at the time was ‘powered by gerbils, motivated by greed’) To be honest, I thought it was great; hell, my board thought it was great. You have to understand the mood of the times. It was all crazy. We were all crazy”.
“Then over the following two years I lost all my friends, my staff who once worshipped the ground I walked on, loathed me, my cat Lucky died of loneliness and depression, my family refused to talk to me, and every now and then a stray dog would pee on the alloy rims of my two year old beamer”.
Part 3 can be found here -> Part 3
Many thanks for reading.
File under: Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Richard Jones, Martyn Jones, Cambriano Energy, Iniciativa Consulting, Iniciativa para Data Warehouse, Tiki Taka Pro
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Want the same partner in old age? Never marry tall! – Remaster 2026
You walk down the street, maybe in London, Paris and Rome. You look out of your spacious apartment in Manhattan, Unter den Linden or Mahim. You are cycling slowly along the streets of Amsterdam, Bonn or Zurich.Got the picture?
