Virtual Prototyping: Bridging the Business/IT Gap

Many companies that embark on business intelligence (BI) initiatives experience serious setbacks to project budgets and timelines. Recent research reveals that “efforts to eliminate time and cost overruns in business intelligence and data warehousing projects are mostly unsuccessful.” In fact, these issues are so common that 62 percent of those surveyed factor delays and cost overruns into the budgets for data warehouse projects (Havenstein, 2007). One of the many factors that contribute to the high costs and missed deadlines of BI projects is a lack of alignment between the business and information technology (IT). Prototyping is one way to bridge the gap between business and IT and regain control over BI projects. Prototypes provide a means to validate business requirements, design decisions, and data quality issues before the final product or service is delivered. Prototypes can also be controversial: their associated time and cost are perceived to be prohibitive, and the risks may outweigh the prototype’s benefits. In this article, we explore the use of a virtual prototyping warehouse (VPW), created using data federation technology, to achieve the same goals as a physical prototype but at a fraction of the cost and time. Introduction Business intelligence is not driven by IT alone. Many business initiatives require access to data across many sources to drive profits and reduce costs. Among the common drivers are: n Management: planning, budgeting, and forecasting n Marketing: marketing analysis, customer segmentation, direct marketing Jeff Reagan is a senior solutions engineer with Sypherlink, Inc., responsible for product implementation, client training, and sales support. [email protected]