Teradata AEIWP 11 11

INTELLIGENT
BUSINESS
WHITE PAPER
STRATEGIES
Active Intelligence for Smart Business
By Mike Ferguson
Intelligent Business Strategies
November 2011
Prepared for:
Table of Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3
What is Active Intelligence? .................................................................................. 4
On-demand and Event-driven Analytics - Why every business needs them ......... 6
On-demand Active Intelligence .................................................................. 6
Event-driven active intelligence .................................................................. 7
Near Real-time Data .................................................................................. 8
Automated Analysis ................................................................................... 8
Automated Actions ..................................................................................... 9
Why Intelligence Must Go Enterprise-Wide to Maximise Business Value ........... 10
Key Questions When Implementing Active Intelligence ........................... 11
Whats Possible With Active Intelligence?........................................................... 12
Using Active Intelligence To Optimize A Supply Chain ............................ 12
Using Active Intelligence To Improve Procurement .................................. 13
Using Active Intelligence To Improve Risk Management ......................... 14
Summary of Whats Possible ................................................................... 14
Architectural Change: A DW Journey to the Centre of the Enterprise................. 15
Requirements: What to Look For in an Active Intelligence Solution .................... 17
Product Example: Teradata Active Enterprise Intelligence ............................... 20
End-to-End Technologies In A Teradata Active Enterprise Intelligence
Environment ............................................................................................. 21
Teradata Database In An Active Intelligence Environment ...................... 22
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 25
Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved
INTRODUCTION
BI systems are used
mainly at tactical and
strategic levels today
In many organisations today, business intelligence (BI) systems are now well
established, supporting decision making in many business areas. Most of these BI
systems are typically used by business analysts, line managers and executives to
support decision making at tactical and strategic levels with finance, sales and
marketing often dominating BI usage. Yet, despite the maturity in the BI market, the
demand for intelligence has never been so strong. This is still a vibrant market with
technologies such as data warehouse appliances, big data visualization, Hadoop
and new analytical algorithms now making it possible to undertake more complex
analyses on much larger volumes of detailed data to answer questions that could
never be answered before.
BI is still in the hands

of the few when many
executives would
prefer it to be pervasive
However, while this all continues to offer business value, it still keeps BI in the
hands of the few when many executives today would much prefer it to be in the
hands of the many. More specifically, they would like to use BI to empower the
people in their business operations and not just in back office analysis and
managerial roles. For example, what if all customer- facing staff had on-demand
access to intelligence about each specific customer as they dealt with that
customer? What if they were guided on what actions to take to boost customer
profitability, deliver better customer service, be more personal and avoid risk? But
that is just the front-office. What about other operational areas? Why cant they
also run smart? For example, what if people in retail distribution centres could
see real-time intelligence on inbound deliveries as well as actual sales and
inventory in each store on a continuous basis? What if they could see trends
emerging and got alerts on predicted stock-outs based on actual sales so they
could match supply with demand every time. There is also a need to automate
analysis to automatically see opportunities and problems and to guide the business
as it operates. For example, continuously monitoring spend activity across a
department could predict problems ahead of time so that spending budgets are not
exceeded.
Thousands of small
operational decisions
are still made without
any kind of guidance
The point here is that there are literally thousands of small decisions that are made
every day in operations, and an organisation should not be entirely reliant on
business analysts to see everything. What many chief operating officers are now
asking is: Why cant people and applications involved in those decisions leverage
intelligence to help them act in a more timely and effective way so that all the small
decisions taken add up to making a major contribution to overall business
performance?
BI systems need to
become active in
business operations to
help people and
systems become more
effective
These requirements mean moving BI systems beyond just having a passive role in
supporting tactical and strategic decision making to having an always on active
role in operational decisions as well. The ultimate objective is to get to the point
where BI systems are continuously monitoring, managing and driving all business
operations on a 24x365 basis. Achieving smart operations requires organisations
to integrate BI into their core operational business processes so that front line
employees are constantly alerted and guided to act in a more timely and effective
way than they do today.
This paper looks at this transition and asks What is Active Intelligence? It also
looks at how BI systems have to change to help people and applications become
more effective in the tasks they perform and more responsive to business events
as and when they happen. It then looks at some business examples of what is
possible, the requirements that need to be met by active intelligence solutions and
how one vendor, Teradata, steps up to meeting those requirements.
WHAT IS ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE?

Active intelligence is about empowering people and systems across the enterprise
to be able to act on intelligence at exactly the right time to optimise and improve on
business performance. Although applicable to all levels, active intelligence is
particularly important to business operations. It can be defined as:
Active intelligence
allows people and
systems at all levels of
the enterprise to
continuously know the
best action to take and
when to take it
AI extends the reach

of BI into operations
so that everyone
works smarter
Using business intelligence and analytics to guide people and applications so that
they continuously know the best action to take and when to take it in every
business process activity. It is about dynamically using BI to keep a business
running optimally while remaining compliant, minimising risk and maximizing
profitability
Starting down the road to implementing active intelligence signals a fundamental
change in the way you intend to use BI systems. The intention of Active
Intelligence (AI) is to make it possible for everyone to work smarter with far more
people in the organisation being guided by insights to help them contribute to
bottom line performance. In addition, the insights provided also need to guide
people to take actions that all contribute towards achieving targets and objectives
set out in a common business strategy. This can be achieved by improving
precision of BI delivery so that people get role-based, relevant intelligence in the
context of every task they perform, as and when each task is performed. It must
also cater for people who are mobile whether they are employees, suppliers,
partners or customers. This kind of capability opens up BI to a much larger number
of concurrent users.
But its not just BI for humans. Many self-service systems like web sites,
interactive voice response units at contact centres, bank ATMs, travel kiosks, and
even self-checkouts at stores can be made smarter with active intelligence. In this
case it is applications that need to be guided by insights.
Figure 1 shows the some of the key differences between passive and active
intelligence. It shows that active intelligence encompasses passive back-office use
but adds additional capability to empower people and systems in business
operations.
Active intelligence
introduces near realtime data, on-demand
BI automated analysis,
recommendations
alerts and automated
actions
Passive Intelligence
Used by business analysts, managers
and executives
Active Intelligence
Used by business analysts, managers
and executives AND front-line
operations staff, partners and suppliers
Historical data
Near real-time data and historical data
Human analysis and reporting
Human, guided and automated analysis

and reporting
Human action taking
Human and automated action taking

(auto alerting, auto recommendations,
auto campaign and transaction
invocation)
Role-based Classic Dashboards
Role-based Active Dashboards
(Historical trends, reports, and KPI

visualizations, drill downs)
(Alerts, early warnings, real-time AND

historical trend visualizations, drill
downs AND guided intelligence,
predictions, recommendations)
BI tools for human analysis and

reporting
BI services supporting on-demand

requests for intelligence from
operational applications, processes,
portals and mobile devices

Recommendation services supporting
on-demand requests for automated
analysis from within operational
applications and processes
Event-driven automated analysis and
action taking
BI integrated into operational business
processes
Human escalation of alerts if not acted
upon
Automated escalation of alerts if not

acted upon
Corporate Performance Management

(CPM) Scorecard with business strategy
and KPIs at executive level
Role-based scorecards with personal

objectives, targets and KPIs linked to
higher levels so that all roll-up to
contribute to common objectives in a
multi-level strategy management
implementation
Multi-level action management to
cause co-ordinated execution of a
common business strategy across all
levels of the enterprise
Figure 1
Active intelligence can
drive actions at all
levels of the business
to co-ordinate
execution of a
common business
strategy
Some refer to active intelligence as operational BI however that description would

be falling short of what it tries to achieve. It is more than that. An organisation that
has implemented active intelligence can align and drive accelerated actions at all
levels of the business including strategic, tactical and operational actions. It is not
just an operational thing. In that sense the intention is to integrate intelligence into
operational and managerial business processes by making BI more accessible
and by automating analysis and action taking so that management by exception is
also possible. Doing this is a seismic shift because it transitions an organisation
from just deploying BI as a support tool to becoming a smart business with BI
underpinning most decision-making.
ON-DEMAND AND EVENT-DRIVEN ANALYTICS WHY EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS THEM

BI systems need to take
on new characteristics to
support active
intelligence
Looking at Figure 1 it is clear that if BI systems are to become active they need to
take on new characteristics over and above what you would typically find in a
traditional passive BI set-up. Two key active characteristics that stand out are the
support for on-demand and event-driven use of BI. In addition, Active intelligence
systems also introduce the use of near real-time data, automated analysis and
automated actions rather than relying entirely on the need for human analysis
before making decisions. Lets explore each of these active characteristics in more
detail to understand why every business needs them to provide the majority of their
employees who work in operational areas with the insights they need.
ON-DEMAND ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

Just because people in
front-line operational jobs
have no time to use BI
tools, it does not mean
that cant make use of BI
Front-line workers and

self-service applications
need BI on-demand
One of the road-blocks to the use of BI in business operations in the past has been
the inability to make use of BI because many people in front line business
operations are in job functions where there is no linkage to BI. A good example
here would be a contact centre operator, a bank teller or a point of sale operator in
a retail store. In many cases these front-line workers are constantly tied to specific
operational applications that they use to do their jobs.
This problem goes beyond people. It also extends to front-line applications in
business operations where there are no employees involved. Examples here
include e-commerce applications, airline kiosks, and other self-service applications
that could be customer- or supplier-facing. Many of these applications are also
accessible via mobile devices. In this case these applications allow customers,
partners or suppliers to interact and transact business as part of self-service
operations.
Any organisation looking to introduce smart operations should not take the no
access to BI tools problem to mean that they cant leverage intelligence or
analytics to guide people and applications in front-line operations. It simply means
that there needs to be another way to do this.
On-Demand Intelligence
Introducing BI services
opens up the way to
make BI available to
applications on an ondemand basis
Modern BI platforms
support BI services outof-the-box
That way is to design and deploy BI services so that operational applications in use
by front-line workers or by customers (as self-service applications) can request the
appropriate BI on-demand. So for example, a contact centre agent entering a
customer name into a customer service application gets back not just account
information, but also other valuable BI insights and context like lifetime value of
the customer, recent purchases, and any recent service interruptions. Equally a
self-service on-line insurance quote application could request customer and risk
intelligence on-demand so that the pricing engine can leverage specific intelligence
about a customer (or similar customers) or claims to more accurately calculate a
price before displaying an on-line premium quote. Fortunately today, modern BI
platforms make on-demand access possible by supporting BI services out-of-thebox. This allows reports, queries, and analyses to be published as web services for
subsequent on-demand invocation (in an industry standard way) from any
operational application, processes or portal.
On-Demand Recommendations
Another form of active intelligence is the on-demand recommendation. This is an
online request for an automated decision to guide someone in operations. It is
different from on-demand intelligence because it requires automated analysis of
specific data and an automated decision based on the intelligence produced by

On-demand
recommendations are
also needed to guide
people
that analysis. Therefore, services need to exist that will analyse specific data and
use rules to decide what to recommend. A good example here is an on-line retail ecommerce application where a customers data is analysed to produce a cross-sell
or up-sell recommendation while the customer is online. Another example is an
accept/decline recommendation (based on a customer risk score) to a customer
advisor dealing with a loan application in a branch of a retail bank. On-demand
recommendations guide people and keep decisions within tolerance limits.
EVENT-DRIVEN ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

The ability to detect,
analyse and act on
events is also needed
Thousands of events can

occur in business
operations thoughout a
working day
People cannot be
expected to spot every
problem
On-demand requests for intelligence are based on applications pulling intelligence

when needed in the context of a business process activity. For example frontline
applications request customer intelligence when the user or the application is
interacting with the customer. In addition, in this example, the context is small, i.e.,
only the intelligence about one customer is retrieved for each interaction. By
contrast, another key characteristic of smart business operations is the ability to
detect, analyse and act as soon as specific events or event patterns occur in
business operations. This is known as event-driven intelligence which involves
determining the business impact an event may have. Event-driven intelligence
occurs when an event or event pattern occurs that may have a ripple effect,
perhaps big, perhaps small, perhaps noteworthy, perhaps not. The use of BI in this
case is to figure out what small local events have ripple effects and do early
warning and analysis of side-effects. This is important because the business
impact signalled by certain events may warrant the need to take action(s) to keep
the business optimised and on track to achieving its goals.
All kinds of events can occur in business operations throughout a working day.
Examples include a sale of shares on the financial markets, a price change, an
order change, an order cancellation, a customers birthday, a large withdrawal on a
savings account, the closure of an account, a mouse click on a web site, a missed
loan payment, a product or pallet movement in a distribution chain (detected via a
radio frequency identification [RFID] tag), a change in flow rate in an oil pipeline, a
tweet, a competitor announcement etc. Whatever the events, there are literally
thousands of these that can occur in business operations on a daily basis - millions
in some cases. And while not all events are of business interest, many require
some kind of responsive action to seize an opportunity or prevent a problem
occurring or escalating. That response may need to be immediate and automatic in
some cases or subject to human approval in others.
What event-driven provides is the ability to monitor the pulse of business as it
happens. It means we can set up always on look-out posts to continuously
monitor for specific conditions in different parts of the business and act when they
occur. It helps us manage and respond in a more timely way. We can use this
capability to assist people in operations, middle management and at executive
level. The purpose of event-driven active intelligence is to detect events that
impact (or are predicted to impact) operational costs, revenue, budget, deadlines
and customer satisfaction and to take the appropriate action when they occur.
Event-driven active
intelligence is about
automatically detecting,
analysing and if
necessary acting on
events to keep the
business optimised
The issue with event processing is that in many cases it cannot be done manually.
This is especially true if action is required immediately, if the volume of events is
very large (e.g., financial markets) or if event correlations are very complex to
identify. Also, certain conditions may need to be true for a specific combination of
events to be deemed important. For example if six different events all occur within
a certain timeframe (e.g., the last 20 minutes) then action is needed but otherwise
it is not.
Events and Big Data

Sensor data is now
generating terabytes of
data a day in some
industries
In some industries, the volumes of events can be significant. For example ebusiness web logs on very heavily used web sites can hold millions of mouse clicks
as they record behaviour of every user on every page on the site. That can amount
to terabytes of data per day. Sensor data is another example of high volume event
data. Even though the use of this technology is still in its infancy, sensor networks
are increasingly being used to instrument business operations so that
organisations can see what is happening in specific parts of their business where
they had no insight before, e.g., in a supply chain. This allows them to improve
these operational areas and respond if problems are detected in the process.
Today there are sensors in mobile phones, on manufacturing production lines, in oil
pipelines, in buildings, on utility grids, in cars, on white goods, and on products to
track their movement. As instrumentation is deployed in more areas of operation,
the volume of event data being emitted by sensors (e.g., RFIDs) continues to grow
into hundreds of terabytes or even petabytes in some cases. Events involving
unstructured or semi-structured data are also starting to be monitored, such as
tweets on Twitter. Of course not all sensor data needs to necessarily be stored.
Only if a pattern deviates from the norm might the data need to be persisted.
Nevertheless, the volumes of data can be considerable.
Active intelligence
systems can leverage
technologies such as
Hadoop when dealing
with multi-structured big
data sources
These new big data sources are opening up new challenges especially around
semi-structured and unstructured data types where more complex analytical
constructs have emerged to walk web logs, analyse social graphs, etc. Given the
volumes of multi-structured data, there is a need to run analytics to pick out
patterns in parallel. This problem is now being addressed by technologies such as
Hadoop. Hadoop can leverage thousands of servers to store big data volumes
which can then be analysed in batch using Hadoop Map/Reduce programs. In
some products, it is also possible to store multi-structured data types and invoke
Map/Reduce analytical functions as user-defined functions via SQL. This allows BI
tools and SQL developers to exploit the power of thousands of servers to analyse
and report on big data. Massively parallel RDBMSs and Hadoop can both be part
of an active intelligence system.
NEAR REAL-TIME DATA

Near real-time data is
particularly important for
event-driven analysis
A key difference for active intelligence systems is the ability to capture and react to
operational data in near real-time. Near real time data is needed so that
organisations can act much more quickly when problems and opportunities occur.
Near real-time data can be pushed to an active BI system or pulled. Information is
pushed when an application puts the required data in a message on an enterprise
service bus as soon as a transaction occurs. The ESB then routes the data to the
active BI system as opposed to using traditional batch ETL. This is particularly
important for event-driven analysis. Listeners can pick up these messages and
load the data into a DBMS for analysis. It is common to see event listeners in
complex event processing technology where automated analysis and automated
actions on that event data can occur. Alternatively an event message on an ESB
can trigger event-driven data integration to pull data from one or more sources
every time an event occurs. Pulling data in near real-time can also be achieved via
micro-batch extract which could be scheduled to happen at frequent intervals.
AUTOMATED ANALYSIS
Automated analysis is
needed in event
processing and in
recommendation
services
Using predictive and
statistical models to
analyse data is one way
to implement automated
analysis
With the speed of business increasing and the number of data sources feeding BI
systems also increasing, the number of business events that need to be detected
and acted upon is also on the rise. It is therefore not practical in most cases to
expect business analysts using traditional BI tools to manually analyse all data to
identify every problem and every opportunity. In many cases today, it would be
preferable to be able to analyse data automatically,. Complementing human-led
analysis with automated analysis makes sense in a lot of operational and
managerial areas. It allows people to start managing by exception while delegating
some analyses to software. The use of predictive and statistical models to
automatically analyse data is one way in which to make this possible. Power users
who build these models can deploy them to constantly and automatically analyse
data either on an event-driven basis or on a timer-driven basis. Automated analysis
using statistical and predictive models is particularly effective in business
operations but it is not limited to just operational areas. It is also needed to
implement on-demand recommendations (discussed earlier) and can be used to

detect specific conditions so that automated or manual actions can be taken.
Active intelligence systems should support both manual and automated analysis.
AUTOMATED ACTIONS
Automated actions can
be implemented using
rules
Automated actions are automatic decisions. An active intelligence system uses this
capability to trigger alerts, to automatically invoke transactions in operational
applications or even to invoke whole business processes. Generally speaking, this
is most effective if used to drive automated actions (e.g., invoke transactions) when
the most common problems occur and to alert people when exceptions occur that
need to be dealt with manually. Rules are needed to make automated decisions
and to trigger automated actions. Therefore a rules engine is an important
component of an active intelligence system.
The combination of automated analysis and automated actions is needed to
support another unique characteristic of an active intelligence system. That
characteristic is on-demand recommendations, i.e., to automatically analyse data
and then make a recommendation decision based on the outcome of the analysis.
The same combination is needed for event-driven analytics to automatically
analyse the significance of an event correlation and to automatically take action as
soon as possible after the business condition is determined. For example, a surge
in orders may have a major impact on a manufacturing schedule and materials
inventory requiring action to accommodate the change, (for example, more
materials may need to be ordered, other orders put on hold, shipping may need to
change, etc.) Similarly, scheduled automated analysis of customer and account
data in a retail bank may detect that a customer has a lot of money just sitting in a
checking account that could earn better interest in a savings account. This is
automatic pro-active analysis and decision making.
WHY INTELLIGENCE MUST GO ENTERPRISE-WIDE

TO MAXIMISE BUSINESS VALUE
Having understood some of the key characteristics of an active intelligence system
over and above traditional BI systems, another key point to raise is that on-demand
and event-driven analysis and recommendations are not just required in one part of
the business. They are needed enterprise-wide. Figure 2 shows why this is the
case.
Process execution can

span the enterprise
People in different roles

in different parts of the
enterprise may perform
process tasks using
different applications
Figure 2
As a process executes,
different users in different
parts of the enterprise
participating in the
process may need
access to on-demand BI
to help them perform
tasks more effectively
Events occuring in one

part of the business can
affect people in other
parts of the enterprise
Whether you work in a retailer, a bank, an insurance company or a manufacturer, it

is highly likely that your core business processes will span the enterprise or even
beyond. Figure 2 shows an Order-to-Cash process in a manufacturer. It could have
equally been a Procure-to-pay process or a Trade-to-Settlement process in an
investment bank. The point here is that the process starts to execute in one part of
the business and then flows across business units and systems as it executes. To
process an order in this case, people in different roles and different parts of the
enterprise need to perform specific tasks. This is often done using different
functional applications. As a process executes, each user may need on-demand
access to BI and/or recommendations to help them perform their tasks(s) more
effectively. Integrating BI into processes therefore means that BI and
recommendation services need to be tailored to the role of the user, the task they
are performing and the device that they are using. This is a mission critical success
factor.
Meanwhile process events and other external events are being monitored using
event-driven automated analysis to keep watch on business operations to make
sure they are running smoothly. For example, an external event like a failure of a
supplier to provide needed parts for an order in Figure 2 may have ripple effects in
the chain. Alternatively, if an order change occurs, people further downstream in
the process may need to be notified and changes made. Those notified may have
to make a decision and may need access to on-demand BI and recommendations
10
Active intelligence
therefore needs to be
deployed enterprise-wide
to maximize business
benefit
to help guide them. Therefore, normal process execution may involve on-demand
BI and recommendations while event-detection, automatic analysis and automated
actions such as alerts may trigger even more use of these services in different
parts of the enterprise. Active intelligence is not restricted to one part of the
business. Its uptake becomes enterprise-wide. This is especially important when
trying to co-ordinate different parts of the business so all contribute to common
objectives.
Finally (but now shown), active dashboards provide role-based views into the realtime activities enabling managers in different parts of the business to get early
warnings, see trends in each functional area and get KPI-rollups for entire end-end
processes. And of course, all of these new process-oriented active intelligence
operations occur while the traditional use of BI and analytics also continues in its
normal way, with business analysts and managers accessing analytical databases
using BI platform tools such as ad hoc reporting and on-line analytical processing
(OLAP).
KEY QUESTIONS WHEN IMPLEMENTING ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

To implement active intelligence and move beyond traditional BI systems, new
detailed questions need to be asked that help to formulate requirements to
integrate BI in business operations. These questions include:
Users
During what tasks is BI needed?
What BI do they need to help them make operational decisions more
effectively?
In what form do they need BI to help them contribute to an objective (e.g.,
reports, guided analytics, instant live recommendations integrated into
another application, alerts..)?
Do they have time to use a BI tool or not?
Do they need to use a mobile device?
Roles, processes, events
and actions need to be
understood to
successfully implement
active intelligence
What actions does a person in this role need to take?

Is the action expected to be automatic (i.e., no people involved)?
Data/Events
What events need to be monitored?
What data are needed to monitor these events?
Insights
What are the rules that dictate if action is needed?
Actions
What people and/or applications get notified if a problem/opportunity is
detected?
How do they get notified / alerted?
What are the possible actions that can be taken and what governs which
action is the best to take?
When should they act and what happens if action has not been taken by a
certain time?
All of these questions need answered to help make active intelligence successful.
The more collaboration there is between business process professionals and BI
professionals, the greater the chances of success.
11
WHATS POSSIBLE WITH ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE?

Given the characteristics of an active intelligence solution and how it empowers
people in business operations as well as traditional back office roles, the obvious
questions are how does active intelligence make a difference to business? Whats
the value? These questions can be answered with a few examples.
USING ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE TO OPTIMIZE A SUPPLY CHAIN

Active intelligence is
particularly effective in
helping to optimise and
manage supply chains
Managing a fast
moving supply chain
requires access to
near real-time
information so that
people can act quickly
to resolve problems
The first example is in the area of supply chain management. Keeping a supply
chain optimized is a very challenging task, especially when things can change
rapidly. The faster moving the supply chain, the more challenging the task to keep
it running smoothly while minimizing cost.
One of the fastest supply chains involves newspapers.. Eight hours from point of
product manufacture to point of sale. So many things can happen in a fast moving
supply chain that can impact:
Human resources
Packing allocations for outbound distribution
Goods-in processing
Distribution centre inventory management
Packaging requirements for distribution
Correct, complete and on-time deliveries
Correct invoicing
Correct delivery documentation
The need to do delivery re-runs if they are wrong
Customer satisfaction
Operational costs
Profitability
Any kind of event in a fast-moving supply chain like this has to be monitored mainly
because there is often very little time to react while remaining within service level
agreements. To guarantee smooth-running operations requires continuous
observation of the supply chain and related events. Therefore the logistics
operation in each distribution centre needs access to on-demand BI on near realtime data and also needs insight about events that could impact operations.
To simplify consumption of information in such a time-constrained business means
that data needs to be integrated in near real-time into a data warehouse so that it
can be interpreted quickly and acted upon if necessary. Lets drill into the printing
and distribution part of the overall supply chain. This data comes from core
operational data sources including:
Publisher data feeds
Order entry system (to see demand changes and spikes)
Distribution allocation systems
Distribution centre inventory management
Goods-in
Claims management
Customer service
Returns
A combination of active intelligence, near real-time data integration and eventdetection is needed to keep distribution centres aware of all changes as they
happen.
12
Being able to see a near

real-time picture of
operations at a glance
helps minimize
unplanned operational
cost, late deliveries and
customer dissatisfaction
Last minute changes

can delay distribution
if not seen early
Inventory shortages
can drive up
operational cost if not
seen early
Several events are monitored on operational dashboards including order changes,

bundle sizes, last-minute price changes, in-stock inventory, goods-in, damaged
inventory counts, in-bound shortages, out-bound packing allocations, packing
adjustments, driver and route information and returns inventory. The objective
here is to always have up-to-the-minute data on anything and everything that
would result in additional operational cost, late deliveries and customer
dissatisfaction.
For example a late-breaking news story may cause additional pages to be added to
a newspaper resulting in an increase in its weight. The publisher may then make a
last minute change in newspaper bundle size to stay within weight regulations. This
would invalidate all packing sheets and all delivery notes in all distribution centres.
In fact if this one event is not detected early enough, the business could not
respond in time and it would stall distribution altogether. As it is, it could result in
inventory having to be taken off partially loaded distribution trucks only to be reloaded back on again once delivery amounts on packing sheets have been recalculated for each customer to reflect the new bundle size. Equally a shortage on
newspaper titles in goods-in can cause out-bound delivery shortages and delivery
re-runs potentially causing customer dissatisfaction.
With so many things to keep an eye on across different internal and external data
sources, event-driven active intelligence makes it possible to stay in control while
minimising un-planned operational cost. Event-detection of a bundle-size change
results in invocation of transaction services to re-calculate and re-print packing
sheets. It can also send alerts to distribution centre supervisors to delay loading,
destroy existing packing sheets and pick-up new ones on the printer. The benefit
from implementing event-driven active intelligence is to keep the supply chain
optimised, keep deliveries on-time and avoid millions of Euros in un-planned
operational costs through delays, incorrect deliveries and missed sales
opportunities due to product arriving too late to sell.
USING ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE TO IMPROVE PROCUREMENT

On-demand
intelligence on
expenditure and
suppliers helped keep
procurement budgets
on track
Another example is in procurement. An organisation that wanted to improve

operational effectiveness with respect to cost control used active intelligence along
with other infrastructure to achieve their goal. First, business process management
(BPM) software was used to introduce a common integrated procure-to-pay
process to help improve efficiency and reduce cost. In addition, they also
introduced a BI system for spend analytics. However while these were functioning
reasonably well in a stand-alone capacity, the introduction of active intelligence
brought them together so that spend intelligence services became available for use
in procurement tasks as they were actually being performed. That meant all
employees with purchasing authority started to be guided by BI in every task. It
helped them make the right decisions while staying within budget boundaries set
by the executive.
Event processing is
also used to identify
cost saving
opportunities
With active intelligence, they went further. Adding event processing allowed
automatic monitoring of expenditure against budget and cash flow providing the
ability to monitor spending on a continuous, real-time basis. Using event
monitoring, they monitor purchase requests across the business looking for
opportunities to save money. The company can, for example, monitor to see if
several purchase requests have been detected within a set period (e.g., the last
20-minutes). Correlation of multiple events in this case indicates that several
requests are for materials from the same supplier. Automated analysis spots a
discount opportunity if these purchases are batched together and automated action
causes alerts to a procurement manager to take action.
Integration with CPM

helps to dynamically
manage budgets
across all levels of the
enterprise
In addition, they integrated BI services and event-processing with their Corporate

Performance Management (CPM) software to be able to co-ordinate execution of a
corporate procurement strategy (via active dashboards), and to dynamically
manage budgets at multiple levels of the enterprise.
13
USING ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE TO IMPROVE RISK M ANAGEMENT

In this last example we will look at insurance risk management and at underwriting,
in particular. We will look at the manual underwriting process and also the idea of
automated underwriting. Lets consider a corporate property underwriter. These
people regularly have to make decisions on whether to underwrite the insurance of
corporate and industrial properties in response to broker or direct quote requests.
They also have to decide on whether or not to renew policies for existing
customers on a daily basis. All kinds of factors influence these decisions. They
include fire risks, flood risks, property features, previous claims history, industrial
hazards, similar property claims, and more. . Also, the BI needed to decide on
whether or not to underwrite a property in a new quote will be different from that
needed for a renewal decision.
On-demand BI and
recommendations are
used to guide
underwriters in
making decisions
With active intelligence, both are accommodated by having access to on-demand

BI and recommendation services from within an underwriting application.
Alternatively an underwriters portal may have a portal page for new business and
a portal page for a renewal. Each task therefore has its own corresponding page
with transaction portlets, BI portlets and other information portlets. On performing
the task (for example, policy renewal), the appropriate portal page is launched.
This page requests BI and recommendations on-demand to guide the underwriter
in making a decision.
Automated analysis
and automated actions
makes automated
quote management
possible
Now consider the same insurance company trying to expand into the mid-market.
The impact of this is that it will be inviting a much greater volume of inbound
property quote requests from a larger broker network and/or prospects. To do this,
it cannot afford to hire large numbers of underwriters. Therefore the underwriting
decision process needs to be automated to handle much larger volumes of
inbound quote requests coming in via online applications or via electronic
messages from more brokers.
In this case, the insurance company makes use of active intelligence automated
analysis and rules-based automated actions to create rating (pricing) decision
services with underwriting expertise represented in the decision rules used by each
service. The rating decision service repeatedly makes use of automated analysis
and rules to improve the pricing accuracy and automate underwriting decisions
every time a quote request occurs.
In addition, the same rating decision services are used to guide underwriters as to
the correct premium price to minimise risk or to recommend re-insurance if a
property risk borders on the uncomfortable side.
These are examples of manual and automated insurance underwriting decisions
being guided by intelligence every time. Also the ability to automate underwriting
decisions laid the foundation to go more into commercial insurance lines of
business where automated quote management was needed.
SUMMARY OF WHATS POSSIBLE

These examples of Active Intelligence for Supply Chain Optimization, Procurement
Improvement and Risk Management can be augmented with examples for Active
Intelligence applied to areas like Customer Service, Sales, and Marketing, driving
dramatic improvements in frontline decision making by both humans and
automated systems like self-service websites or interactive voice response
systems. For example, synchronizing all front-office channels with the same
customer intelligence and customer recommendations ensures all front office
employees and systems treat each customer uniquely, consistently, and well.
Access to on-demand intelligence as well as event monitoring means that active
intelligence is not specific to a single business function but can be deployed
enterprise-wide.
14
ARCHITECTURAL CHANGE: A DW JOURNEY TO

THE CENTRE OF THE ENTERPRISE
The decision to implement active intelligence has a significant impact on data
warehouse (DW) architecture. With active intelligence, we move away from the
classic split of operational systems over here and passive BI systems over there
to one where BI systems move to the centre of the enterprise and are wired to
everything operational (for example,, operational applications and processes) and
managerial (such as scorecards and dashboards).
BI systems need to
move to the centre of
the enterprise and be
integrated into
operations to make
intelligence actionable
across all areas
This is achieved by the bringing together of BI infrastructure with business

integration infrastructure software. In particular, enterprise service bus (ESB)
technology and business process management (BPM) software have a major role
to play in active intelligence. An ESB is the spinal cord in a modern service
oriented architecture (SOA). The ESB makes it possible for BI and
recommendation services to be integrated into business processes alongside
transactions and other services so that relevant business insight becomes
available in the context of each process task as it is being performed. In this way,
organisations can deliver relevant intelligence to the right people (and systems) at
the right-time to guide them in continually keeping the business optimised. Figure 3
shows how the use of SOA and the ESB makes smart business possible.
Accessing business
analytics in a SOA
helps organisations run
smarter and improve
effectiveness
Continuous business
optimisation is also
possible
Figure 3
On-demand requests for BI and recommendations can be made by operational
applications, executing business processes, portals, CPM scorecards, dashboards,
office applications and search engines - all accessible from a browser or mobile
device. Monitoring of real-time event streams is also possible. This can be
integrated into role based dashboards alongside historical data to allow managers
to see what is happening over time as well as what is happening now.
This change in architecture to position BI at the centre of the enterprise closes the
loop with operational systems, making business insights accessible to everyone
leveraging common BI services. In addition, it provides the capability to monitor live
events, undertake traditional data warehouse analysis and reporting, deploy
multiple DW appliances for specific projects and analyse large amounts of data in
15
Hadoop MapReduce technologies. Choice of analytical data store will depend on

response time, the complexity of analysis and the ability to scale easily.
In addition, being able to do real-time analytics close to the data and in-memory
caching in the BI tools platform across multiple analytical data stores are important
to an active intelligence set-up. Note however that irrespective of whether there are
one or multiple analytical data stores, data governance is controlled by a common
data transformation and management platform feeding all analytical data stores.
Common data definitions
are important to
consistency
Common data definitions and governance should also be implemented across

analytical data stores to guarantee common understanding and consistency of
dimension and metrics data.
Multiple analytical data

stores may be deployed in
an active analytical
environment
Finally, given that there can be multiple different types of analytical data store in an
active analytical environment, it should be possible to move analytical workloads
between these so as to match the workload to the appropriate technology. The
focus should be on the analysis that needs to be done and not the underlying data
store. Therefore workload management needs to seamlessly manage analytical
workloads across analytical appliances, data warehouses and ultimately Hadoop
MapReduce platforms irrespective of whether they are event-driven workloads, ondemand operational BI workloads or traditional analysis and reporting or complex
analysis on large volumes of data.
There are many more requirements that are part of an active intelligence system. A
complete set of requirements is discussed below.
16
REQUIREMENTS: WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AN

ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION
Still referring to Figure 3 and working from the top of the diagram down, the
following requirements need to be met by an active intelligence solution.
An active intelligence solution should be architected with BI and analytics
in the centre of the enterprise
BI services need to be
supported
In addition to accessing data via BI tools, it should be possible for a BI

platform in an active intelligence solution to publish BI artifacts such as
queries, reports, dashboard components, predictive models, etc., as web
services that can be invoked on-demand by applications, processes and
portals
An active intelligence
system must be capable
of managing large
numbers of concurrent
users and offer high
availablility
It should be possible for an active intelligence solution to scale to support

large numbers of concurrent users invoking BI services on-demand from
operational applications and mobile devices as well as traditional backoffice BI tools
Active multi-level strategy

management is a key
component of an active
intelligence system
An active intelligence solution should engage business users at all levels in

the enterprise within the context of the business strategy. Therefore active
intelligence should include active CPM to provide multi-level strategy
management with active dynamic scorecards and active dynamic
budgeting and planning
If operational applications requesting on-demand BI services are available

24x365 then an active intelligence solution must meet the same availability
requirement
To become pro-active, it should be possible for an active intelligence

solution to support automatic analysis via use of predictive and statistical
models as well as traditional human led analysis via BI tools
An active intelligence solution should be capable of supporting large
numbers of concurrent requests for business insights and triggering of
automatic analysis
Hardware components
that speed up access to
data will help manage the
increase in concurrent
user requests for
operational BI
It should be possible to embed predictive and statistical models in or

alongside the DBMS (see Figure 4) for better performance
It must be possible to create and actively update predictive and statistical
models on-demand or at selective intervals. These models must be
capable of being invoked on-demand from front line business processes or
on an event-driven basis
It should be possible for an active intelligence solution to support ruledriven automatic actions to automate decision making. This can be
supported via a rules engine accessing the outcomes of predictive /
statistical models and using historical data to put the outcomes into context
(as shown in Figure 4).
An active intelligence solution should be capable of offering high
performance access to specific intelligence.
Support for hardware
components that speed up access to data such as solid state disk [SSDs]
are therefore a key requirement
17
Automated analysis via indatabase analytics is

needed for on-demand
recommendations and
event processing
Figure 4
An active intelligence
solution includes event
processing
It should be possible for an active intelligence solution to support event

processing to monitor operational activity by:
o
Using complex event processing (CEP) on streaming event data

that is in motion
or by
o
Supporting event processing in the DBMS via event-driven loading

of near real-time data into an analytical database and triggering indatabase analytics for automatic analysis.
Both satisfy the need to automatically analyse events as soon as possible

after they occur
Automated analysis and
rule-driven automated
decisions are both
needed to create decision
services
It should be possible for an active intelligence solution to combine

automated analysis and rule-driven automated actions to create decision
services that can be invoked on-demand, on an event driven basis and
also on a scheduled timer-driven basis. These decision services would
automatically analyse specific data and use rules to make a decision
based on the outcome of this analysis. An example of a decision service is
a recommendation. Recommendation services are a key part of an active
intelligence solution
It should be possible to automatically invoke alerting services (such as
email or SMS), transaction services and/or whole business process
workflow services as part of an automated action
It should be possible to integrate real-time event data and alerts into a BI
platform to provide early warning alerts and more, on role-based
managerial dashboards alongside historical data
If possible, an active intelligence solution should understand organization
structure so as to escalate alerts if a user has not taken an action within a
user-defined timeframe
18
Automated analysis
should also be capable of
being scheduled as this
allows conditions in
historical data to also be
automatically detected
In addition to on-demand and event-driven decision services, it should be

possible to schedule automated analysis and action taking at user-defined
intervals to automatically identify opportunities on a timer-driven basis
It should be possible for an active intelligence solution to take into account
role-based KPI targets set in CPM products during automatic analysis. The
purpose here is take actions that keep particular users or parts of the
business on track to achieve their business strategy targets and objectives.
This can be achieved by including CPM data as input to automated
analyses so that any automated actions taken and recommendations made
guide users towards achieving their targets
It should be possible for an active intelligence solution to manage a mixed
workload of
o
Workload management is
also a key requirement to
manage operational BI
and traditional analytical
workloads
Concurrent requests for on-demand BI services from operational

systems
o Event-driven automatic analysis

o Traditional BI complex analytical queries on large data volumes
o Continuous near real-time and batch data loading
Workload management needs to be able to prioritise specific workloads
It should be possible in an active intelligence solution to seamlessly
manage and optimize workloads across multiple analytical data stores in
the active intelligence environment so as to exploit the best technology for
specific analytical workloads
It should be possible for relational data stores to integrate with Hadoop
based systems to exploit the power of massively parallel batch analysis on
large volumes of multi-structured data to extract additional insight for
loading into a data warehouse. Doing this broadens the level of insight
available to people and systems in front-line operations
It should be possible to support trickle feed and fast incremental loading of
data using the data management platform
Integration with ESB and

BPM infrastructure opens
up BI access across the
enterprise
A common data
management platform
supplying clean,
integrated trusted data is
fundamental to success
It should be possible to integrate an active intelligence solution with other

business integration infrastructure software already running in the
enterprise to make BI pervasive. This includes Enterprise Service Bus
(ESB), business process management (BPM) and portal technology
The foundation of any active intelligence solution offering right-time
intelligence is enterprise data governance. Without trusted data all else will
fail. An active intelligence solution should therefore enforce use of common
data definitions for the same dimension, transaction data and metrics data
across all analytical data stores used. Common definitions (metadata)
should be accessible to other technologies such as multiple BI tools and
Office applications (such as Microsoft Excel) throughout the enterprise so
as to drive consistency everywhere.
To that end, an active intelligence solution should make use of a common
data management platform (suite of data management tools) to define,
model, discover, profile, clean, transform and integrate data and to
consistently supply it to one or more analytical data stores in the active
intelligence analytical ecosystem
19
PRODUCT EXAMPLE: TERADATA ACTIVE

ENTERPRISE INTELLIGENCE
Having looked at the implications on traditional DW/BI architectures and the
requirements for an active intelligence solution, this section of the paper looks at
one vendors technology to see how it rises to meet these requirements and deliver
the benefits of pervasive BI to all parts of the enterprise. That vendor is Teradata.
Teradata has over 30
years of experience in
building BI systems
Teradata was founded in 1979 and manufactures the Teradata massively parallel
relational DBMS which runs on an optimized hardware solution assembled from
industry standard technology from Intel and NetApp. The Teradata Purpose-Built
Platform Family includes several products that span customer database size,
concurrency and performance needs. These are:
The Teradata Data Mart Appliance - An entry-level Teradata database
appliance for production data warehousing and data marts with up to
5.8TB or 12TB disk storage
The Teradata Extreme Data Appliance A Teradata database appliance
aimed at complex analytical workloads on large amounts of data. It scales
from 45TB up to 196PB of storage with 4096 nodes
The Teradata Platform

family includes a number
of appliances
The Teradata Extreme Performance Appliance A Teradata database

appliance with Solid State Disk (SSD) only storage components aimed at
hot operational BI workloads with high volume concurrent on-demand
requests from operational applications in an Active Enterprise Intelligence
environment
The Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance A Teradata database
appliance scaling from 5.8TB to 343TB disk storage aimed at companies
that are just starting out or for those with other analytical platform
requirements in their enterprises
The Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse - A Teradata database
solution that introduces a hybrid storage environment with both SSD and
traditional hard disk drive (HDD) technologies enabled by the Teradata
Virtual Storage feature. This optimizes the use of storage by automatically
placing often used hot data on high speed SSD storage and less used
cold data on traditional speed HDD. Teradata offers two Active Enterprise
Data Warehouse models, the 6680 and the 6650. The 6680 scales from
4TB to 36PB while the 6650 is based on traditional HDD storage only and
scales from 4TB to 96PB but is field upgradable to SSD storage
In addition Teradata also offers analytic applications and accelerators for specific
horizontal and vertical needs
Teradata also acquired

Aster Data to help
integrate big data into an
active intelligence
environment
In March 2011, Teradata acquired Aster Data, which offers the Aster Data nCluster
analytic platform. This is a massively parallel relational database solution that is
capable of embedding Hadoop MapReduce analytic application logic within the
Aster Data nCluster for big data analytics on multi-structured data sources. It runs
SQL-MapReduce analytic application logic inside the Aster Data MPP system, for
analysis of massive data sets. To speed up development, Aster Data also provides
a pre-built suite of optimized SQL-MapReduce analytic modules known as the
Aster Data Analytic Foundation and a visual development environment known as
Aster Data Developer Express to exploit the Analytic Foundation and generate
MapReduce analytic modules. SQL-MapReduce analytic application logic can be
20
written in a variety of programming languages including Java, C, C++, C#, Python,

and R.
Figure 5 show how the Aster Data nCluster integrates with Teradata.
Aster Data uses SQL

MapReduce to find clues
in big data sources that
can be fed into a Teradata
Active Enterprise Data
Warehouse to drive
actions
Figure 5
Insights discovered in semi-structured data on Aster Data can be fed into the
Teradata Active EDW for integration with traditional data to increase the
effectiveness of decision making. For example, in a Telco, customers churning
because of bad network experiences may influence others to churn. To minimise
churn, Aster Data can be used to identify clusters of callers where one individual
leads the way on churning behaviour and influences others. With this insight
loaded into the Teradata EDW, marketing campaigns can be launched to quickly
turn around potential defectors and their followers.
END-TO-END TECHNOLOGIES IN A TERADATA ACTIVE ENTERPRISE

INTELLIGENCE ENVIRONMENT
With reference to Figure 3 and the requirements defined for an end-to-end solution,
an Active Intelligence environment built around Teradata Database would include:
A data management platform from a Teradata partner and/or near realtime data capture technology such as Teradata Active Load
Teradata has multiple
offerings that are all
capable of being part of
an active intelligence
ecosystem
Teradata DBMS technology that could include:

o
The Teradata Extreme Performance Appliance
The Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse
Aster Data nCluster
SAS predictive and statistical analytical models embedded in the Teradata

DBMS
Data virtualization software from a Teradata partner to see across multiple
DW appliances in a Teradata Active Enterprise Intelligence analytical
ecosystem if more than one is used
A service-oriented BI platform from a Teradata partner like MicroStrategy,
IBM Cognos, SAP Business Objects or Microsoft accessing the Teradata
and Aster Data RDBMSs
21
CPM software from a Teradata partner accessing Teradata Database that

supports multi-level strategy management
Business Process Management, Enterprise Service Bus and Enterprise
Portal infrastructure to integrate BI into the enterprise
For straight operational BI, the Teradata Extreme Performance Appliance has
been designed to handle hot workloads with SSD technology. Therefore certain
operational BI workloads could be placed on this appliance to handle large
numbers of concurrent users requesting specific BI on-demand.
For a mixed workload of traditional analysis and reporting, on-demand operational
requests for BI services and event-driven analytics, the Teradata Active EDW is
the most appropriate platform. Organizations could start with the 6650 and
upgrade to the 6680 with hybrid storage as more integration with operational
processes occurs. Mature organizations may already have the powerful 6680 and
begin building out active intelligence from that starting point.
TERADATA DATABASE IN AN ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE ENVIRONMENT

With respect to the Teradata DBMS, Teradata positions its active intelligence
offering as having the following capabilities
Active Access
Active Load
Active Events
Active Workload Management
Active Enterprise Integration
Active Availability
Active Access
Parameterised queries
and join indexes are
particularly well suited to
very specific on-demand
BI requests
This is the ability to handle concurrent queries coming from on-demand BI and
recommendation services being invoked by operational applications, processes
and portals. These BI services sit in a service-oriented BI platform on top of the
Teradata DBMS. To cater for an increase in concurrent users invoking operational
BI services on-demand, join indexes and parameterized queries can be created on
the Teradata DBMS. Join indexes help retrieve frequently used data without
needing to join tables in real time. Instead, pre-computed answers can be stored
and accessed quickly. Parameterized queries allow the Teradata optimizer to
cache SQL it has seen before and reuse the execution plan the next time it sees
the same SQL. This means that popular BI services (such as those invoked by
contact centre representatives) may be turned around quickly.
Active Load
Event-driven trickle feed,
micro-batch and change
data capture help get data
into the Teradata DBMS
quickly
Given that Teradata does not provide a CEP engine for event-processing, it needs
to support another way of handling events. That way is based on the ability to get
data into the Teradata DBMS as close to real-time as possible. Teradata Active
Load is the mechanism for doing this. Using Active Load, near real-time data can
be loaded into the Teradata DBMS from a messaging backbone (for example, from
JMS message queuing software), via mini-batch and also via change data capture.
Teradata Parallel Transporter caters for streaming messages and mini-batch while
Teradata Replication Services (via Oracle GoldenGate) handles change data
capture. In the case of messaging, changes to operational systems can be posted
to message queues on middleware such as IBM WebSphereMQ. Teradata Parallel
Transporter then reads the message queue(s) and directly updates the Teradata
DBMS. Note that queries can still access Teradata table structures while they are
being updated by Teradata Parallel Transporter.
22
Active Events
Teradatas partnership
with SAS makes indatabase automated
analysis of events
possible
Large volumes of event

data can also be analysed
in Aster Data using Aster
Data SQL- MapReduce
In addition to near real-time data coming into the Teradata DBMS via Active Load,
event-processing needs to trigger automated analysis to analyse that data. As data
is loaded into the Teradata DBMS, database triggers can fire and invoke analytics
on data in the DW. Support for automated analysis is taken care of by the Teradata
partnership with SAS Institute. Statistical and predictive models developed in SAS
can be deployed alongside the Teradata DBMS and executed in parallel to analyse
detailed data as shown in Figure 4. In-database analytics pushes automated
analysis as close to the data as possible which is an important performance feature
in an event-driven operational environment. Data or events can then be inserted
into a queue table which fires a trigger to drive appropriate actions like sending
alerts to users and invoking transaction services to keep the business optimised.
Events can also be analysed outside of the Teradata environment by Complex
Event Processing engines in real-time or by Aster Data off-line. The reason for
doing the latter is to analyse event data to determine if event patterns constantly
reoccur over time. The use of Aster Data nCluster is particularly compelling in this
regard especially in environments with very large numbers of events. Sensor
event data is a good example. This big data source can be loaded into Hadoop
and analysed using SQL- MapReduce logic built into the Aster Data nCluster MPP
DBMS. Event patterns that are of interest could then be passed into the Teradata
Active EDW to be combined with other data to determine what action should be
taken to prevent operational disruption or unplanned operational cost from
continually reoccurring.
Active Workload Management

Teradatas dynamic
workload management
allows operational BI and
traditional analysis and
reporting to co-exist in an
active intelligence system
To cater for the much larger numbers of concurrent user requests for on-demand
BI, on-demand recommendation, near real-time event-driven analysis, as well as
traditional BI usage and data loading, it is important to be able to balance
workloads so that the system continues to satisfy the needs of all users. That
means being able to fence off resources for some workloads and dynamically
change priorities at peak times while continuously monitoring workloads. To cater
for this requirement, Teradata offers a set of Active System Management tools.
They include the Teradata Workload Analyzer, which analyses Teradata Database
user logs and system tables to profile actual usage behaviour and analyse
workloads over time. Teradata Workload Analyzer recommends workload groups
and parameters which can then be established in Teradata Dynamic Workload
Manager as workgroup categories and control settings. Also workloads can be
prioritized by time or by user group. Dynamic Workload Manager then
continuously monitors resources at run time. So for example, on-demand
operational BI services could be separated from traditional complex analyses and
loading to give them a high priority.
Active Enterprise Integration

Integration with ESB and
messaging middleware
supports event detection
and allows automated
actions to invoke alerting
and transaction services
in a standard way
A key part of integrating with business operations is the ability to plug into a
service-oriented architecture (SOA). We have already seen that BI platforms
accessing Teradata and Aster Data can publish BI services for invocation by
operational applications and processes. The Teradata DBMS itself can also exploit
ESB and BPM software. The Teradata Parallel Transporter can capture process
event messages streaming over an ESB (running on top on a JMS messaging
middleware) to trigger event-driven automated analysis using SAS models
deployed in the database. In addition, triggers in the database that fire to carry out
actions can also send requests over an ESB to invoke transaction services and
whole processes as part of an automated action. In addition, Eclipse IDE
developers can also create custom BI services using the Teradata Eclipse plug-in.
23
Active Availability
High availability means
Teradata can easily
accommodate service
levels imposed by
operational systems need
to access BI on-demand
A key requirement when integrating BI into operational environments is to be

capable of inheriting service level agreements of operational systems that need ondemand access to BI. That may mean having to operate on a 7x24 basis.
Therefore it is important that the BI environment is capable of meeting high
availability and reliability requirements. Teradata answers this requirement by
automatically managing component failover in the Teradata software, and by
providing hardware redundancy such as dual uninterruptible power supplies, dual
I/O controllers, RAID controllers, and dual interconnections to the Teradata
BYNET.
24
CONCLUSION
Integration into business
operations is now a
strategic requirement for
BI systems
Organisations have to
undertake some
business analysis to
understand how they
operate to get maximum
value from an active
intelligence
implementation
Key infrastructure
software also needs to
be integrated
Teradata has already

added the functionality
needed to support active
intelligence and
compete in this market
To conclude, organisations are now looking to work smarter in all corners of their
business-- from executives to front-line workers-- to improve strategic, tactical and
now operational decisions. To make that happen the BI systems are moving to the
centre so insights can be integrated into every business process. The intent is to
deliver role-based contextual intelligence in the context of every operational task.
The new operational intelligence workloads can run on the same BI infrastructure
that supports traditional BI processing. We are also starting to automate the
monitoring of internal and external events to keep a finger on the pulse of the
business as processes execute.
To compete, organisations have to become active to make sure that people are
always aware of events going on around them and able to make informed
decisions. To get there it is important to
Understand your processes
Understand the roles of people who participate in those processes such as
customer facing contact centre operators, bank tellers, store managers,
salespersons, etc.
Understand the activities (tasks) they perform
Understand the applications they use to perform the activities in a process
Determine the relevant BI and/or actions needed in each process activity
such as alerts and on-demand recommendations
Identify the correct strategy for integrating BI to fit with the user needs,
e.g., portlets that display information needed by contact centre agents
Create required BI web services and integrate them into business
processes to guide operational activity
Create an inventory of events and identify which ones are worth monitoring
Connect data integration tools or DBMS utilities to your ESB to capture live
events as they happen in operational systems
Deploy predictive models in your analytical databases and/or CEP
technology to automatically analyse data in near realtime
Integrate BI, BPM and event-processing into role-based dashboards and
scorecards
Integrate active dashboards and alerts with collaborative workspaces and
mobile devices
There is no question that Teradata has already recognised the importance of active
intelligence and has added the functionality to the Teradata DBMS and hardware
platform family to allow it to easily cope with large numbers of concurrent requests
for operational BI. Hardware advances like SSDs in the Teradata Extreme
Performance Appliance and the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse with
Teradata Virtual Storage, as well as workload management and high availability all
make it fit for purpose in this much more agile and responsive environment. The
SAS partnership also makes automated analysis possible in servicing requests for
on-demand recommendations or for analysing the business impact of events.
Finally, Aster Data has added another string to their bow to analyse event data
from big data sources such as sensor networks, web logs and social networks. All
this, plus integration with other infrastructure, makes Teradata a strong competitor
to sit front and centre in an always on intelligent enterprise.
25
About Intelligent Business Strategies

Intelligent Business Strategies is a research and consulting company whose goal is
to help companies understand and exploit new developments in business
intelligence, analytical processing and enterprise business integration. Together,
these technologies help an organization become an intelligent business.
Author
Mike Ferguson is Managing Director of Intelligent Business Strategies Limited. As
an analyst and consultant he specializes in business intelligence and enterprise
business integration. With over 30 years of IT experience, Mike has consulted for
dozens of companies on business intelligence, enterprise architecture, business
integration and data management. He has spoken at events all over the world and
written numerous articles. Mike is a resident expert on the Business Intelligence
Network, providing articles, blogs and his insights on the industry. Formerly he
was a principal and co-founder of Codd and Date Europe Limited the inventors of
the Relational Model, a Chief Architect at Teradata on the Teradata DBMS and
European Managing Director of Database Associates. He teaches popular master
classes in Business Intelligence, Enterprise Data Governance, Master Data
Management, and Enterprise Business Integration.
INTELLIGENT
BUSINESS
STRATEGIES
Water Lane, Wilmslow

Cheshire, SK9 5BG
England
Telephone: (+44)1625 520700
Internet URL: www.intelligentbusiness.biz
E-mail: info@intelligentbusiness.biz
Active Intelligence for the Smart Business
Copyright 2011 by Intelligent Business Strategies
All rights reserved
EB-6458 > 1211

26

Teradata AEIWP 11 11

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Teradata AEIWP 11 11

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

INTELLIGENT

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

BI is still in the hands

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

WHAT IS ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE?

AI extends the reach

Near real-time data and historical data

Human analysis and reporting

Human, guided and automated analysis

Human action taking

Human and automated action taking

Role-based Classic Dashboards

Role-based Active Dashboards

(Historical trends, reports, and KPI

(Alerts, early warnings, real-time AND

BI tools for human analysis and

BI services supporting on-demand

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

portals and mobile devices

Automated escalation of alerts if not

Corporate Performance Management

Role-based scorecards with personal

Some refer to active intelligence as operational BI however that description would

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

ON-DEMAND AND EVENT-DRIVEN ANALYTICS WHY EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS THEM

ON-DEMAND ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

Front-line workers and

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

EVENT-DRIVEN ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

Thousands of events can

On-demand requests for intelligence are based on applications pulling intelligence

Events and Big Data

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

NEAR REAL-TIME DATA

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

implement on-demand recommendations (discussed earlier) and can be used to

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

WHY INTELLIGENCE MUST GO ENTERPRISE-WIDE

Process execution can

People in different roles

Events occuring in one

Whether you work in a retailer, a bank, an insurance company or a manufacturer, it

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

KEY QUESTIONS WHEN IMPLEMENTING ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

What actions does a person in this role need to take?

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

WHATS POSSIBLE WITH ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE?

USING ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE TO OPTIMIZE A SUPPLY CHAIN

Copyright Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Active Intelligence for Smart Business

Being able to see a near

Last minute changes