TechnoSocial Blog

My Article on BI Vendor Selection - Published in ITNext Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:50:00 +0000

This is my blog post after a long time,recently i got a chance to write a article for ITNext Magazine (http://www.itnext.in/),the topic is on "How to select a BI vendor or a BI Tool".It was really a good experience to see the published article finally.Here is the link to the article.

"Go by the BI Functionality Not by the Hanging Fruit"

BI Vendor Selection

View more documents from Rajasekar Nonburaj

My TEDxSydney Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:54:00 +0000

Last saturday it was a great day to remember ,I got a opportunity to attend TEDxSydney Event It was really one of my dream to attend a TEDx Event (outside India) and it happened just because of my association with TEDxChennai (Special thanks to TEDxSydney team )

(YouTube was streaming the TEDxSydney Event,given away flip book for the attendees)

The event was really one of the best with great talks from a anthropologist to a Bird Behaviourist and from a astronomer to a inventor,apart from the great talks it was nice to hear the music performance by various artist and bands.

TEDxSydney Name Badges

Event Agenda

There is a lot of learning for me and gathered lot of information which i can utilize for TEDxChennai Event.It was really good to see some ideas which we planned for TEDxChennai event,one such is printing the participant booklet I was lucky enough to get the place in the booklet.

My Name Badge

Below is the picture of TEDxSydney Goodies

Some of the TEDxSydney 2011 Photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedxsydney

Barcamp Chennai - 4 and Social Media Day Events in Chennai

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:16:00 +0000

Barcamp Chennai -4

THE KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION is pleased to announce Bar Camp Chennai 4 to be held on June 27 at Cognizant Auditorium. BarCamp is an open, welcoming, anytime-in-a-year event for geeks to camp out for the day with wifi and smash their brains together. It’s about love and geekery and having a focal point for great ideas. It’s a typical unconference . This is the fourth edition of Barcamp to be held at Chennai

This edition of the event is sponsored by Cognizant. Discussion will revolve around latest trends in Technology,

mobile and gadgets.

It will be a day long session starting from 9 am to 6 pm.

Date:	Sunday, June 27, 2010
Time:	9:30am - 6:00pm
Location:	Cognizant
Street:	Okkiyam, Thoraipakkam
City/Town:	Chennai, India

Social Media Day

Social Media Day is a day to celebrate the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue by attending or organizing a Social Media Day meetup in your area on June 30. What better way to celebrate social media than connecting with other enthusiasts in your area? The event was presented by Mashable in all the cities on 30th June.The First "Social Media Day" Meetup is organised in Chennai by "Echovme Consulting"- A Digital Marketing Firm in Chennai

Event Description

Time: 7:00 PM
Date: 30th June Wednesday
Venue: Echovme consulting Pvt Ltd, Gemini Parsn Manere, Nungambakkam (Above Hotel Veg Nation)
Agenda:

Quick Networking and Introduction (No Card Exchanging Please, that’s scheduled post event ;D)
Answering Question in Minute on "Why & How Do You use Social Media"
The Social Media Game and Fun!
Contribute to a Cause (The way you want)*

*We call for the NGOs based out of Chennai to raise an issue that needs financial, social or awareness assistance. The NGO that gets majority supporters takes away the contribution.

Celebrate Social Media Day with Mashable by attending the meetup near you on June 30.

Use the hashtag #smday on Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

Follow on Twitter:http://twitter.com/mashSM
More info:http://bit.ly/mashSMday
Join our Facebook Social Media Day event page:http://bit.ly/cbPWUk

World Environment Day (WED) and Sapling Project in Chennai

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:15:00 +0000

World Environment Day (WED) is a day that stimulates awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and public action. It is on 5 June. It was the day that United Nations Conference on the Human Environment began ,Every year the WED has an theme for the year 2010 the theme "Many Species. One Planet. One Future" and the host city is Kigali and Rwanda.(Source:Wikipedia),It is also called as "Earth Day".

As part of the World Environment Day (WED),Sapling project is organizing a green drive in chennai.Sapling Project is an Initiative started by two young bloods from Mumbai "Satish Vijaykumar"(@bombaylive) and "Ranjeetsinh Walunjpatil" (@ranjeet_walunj).

The last edition in chennai has got huge number of volunteers for the sapling project,the saplings was planted in "MGR School for the Hearing Impaired in Ramapuram" on Jan26th as part of the Republic Day Celebration.This time as part of World Environment Day (WED),Sapling Project is Planned on June6th 2010.Sapling distribution drive is happening on 6'th June 2010 in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Thane, New Mumbai and many more cities.

As part of World Environment Day we are planning to give saplings in two place,If you are in Chennai be part of the social Cause.

Chennai Venue 1:

Isha Project Green Hands,
No. 5 Moolachathiram,
Perumal Kovil St, MMC Post,
Chennai 51
Time: 10:00 AM

Chennai Venue 2:

Peter’s Colony
Royapettah
Chennai – 600014
Time: 3:00 PM

If you like for to volunteer for chennai event of Sapling project on 6th June 2010,
Pls call me

Rajasekar :9840727371 / @rajasekarn (raja@rajasekar.net)
or
Magesh @ 9940305209 / @mageshcse

Last Edition of Sapling Project ,we distributed over 1500 saplings in the previous drive held on Jan 26th in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.

You can participate in the sapling project if you are in the below given places,find the venue and other details

Bangalore:
Venue: Lalbagh, Glass house.
Time: 10:30 AM
Contact: Joel Fernandes - 9008905774

Delhi :
Venue: Rose Garden, (Inside Lodhi Gardens), Delhi
Time: 8:00 AM
Contact: Garima Agarwal - 9810807082

Mumbai:
9 AM - Opp Barista, Shivaji Park
11.00 am - Vile Parle (e), Opp Parleshwar Temple
12.00 pm - Vile Parle (w) HDFC Bank, SV Rd.
1.30 pm - Near Shoppers Stop, Andheri (w)
3.00 pm - Inorbit Mall, Malad (w)
5.00 pm - Near IC church , IC Colony, Borivali(w)
Contact : Ranjeet - 9322131415 , Satish - 9833443545

South Bombay:
9.30 AM - Gateway of India
10.30 AM - Eros Theatre
Contact: Priyanka Dalal - 9004350022

Navi Mumbai:
- Nerul (Bangalore) - Tentatively Parsik hills
- Vashi - Tentatively Sector 10
- Panvel - Tentative (Partha is co-ordinating)
Contact : Shailaja - 9819076469, HarishK - 9833959899

Pune:
7:30 AM - Kalyani Nagar ( Jogger's Park)
8:45 AM - University campus/ University Circle
9:30 AM - F.C Road
10:30 AM - Law college Road
Contact: Libu - 9881460654, Pradaxina - 9881093149

Latur
Date : 5th June
Venue: Old MIDC Area,
Time : 10.30 am
Dinesh - 9890774748

About Sapling Project

The Sapling Project is about planting and distributing saplings, free of cost to one and all in different parts of our country.

The model is simple, we collect funds, buy Plant Saplings and distribute it free of cost to anyone who sign up on the website or turn up at the event.

While most tree plantation drives are done in Parks or Forest areas, we think it's the colonies and buildings in suburbs, that need more trees where one can monitor the health and progress of one planted sapling.

We look forward to your support and contribution towards making out cities greener and help us in buy and distribute more saplings.

"Picture of the Sapling Distributed last time"

Sapling Project Poster : http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2774/4146532432_0d4c4b96bc_o.jpg

Website : http://thesaplingproject.com

Flickr (photos) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/thesaplingproject/

Twitter : @saplingproject

Facebook Group : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=190098221995

Media Coverage :-

America.Gov : http://blogs.america.gov/climate/2010/01/27/combatting-climate-change-one-tree-at-a-time/

Times of India : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Citizens-log-on-for-a-green-campaign/articleshow/5360101.cms

DNA : http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_city-gets-a-dose-of-green-revolution_1325810

Global Voices : http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/12/24/india-the-sapling-project/Â

CS Monitor : http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0524/Planting-saplings-in-tree-starved-Mumbai-is-the-least-I-can-do.

It would be great if you can support us by spreading the word on The Sapling Project initiative through your community, Facebook/Orkut/Twitter group. Hopefully online users would be inspired enough to join the initiative.

Do feel free to call us in case of anything.

Take care, Thanks and Breathe easy :-)

Social Media Club Chennai - Seminar on Social Media Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Social Media Club (SMC) was started by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells in March 2006 to host conversations around the globe that explore key issues facing our society as technologies transform the way we connect, communicate, collaborate and relate to each other.The first chapter launched in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA (USA) on August 16, 2006. There are 150+ chapters in existence today, and we cover six of the seven continents.To know more about social media club check it out @ http://www.socialmediaclub.org

Chennai also got a Social Media Club Chapter and it was run by few social media enthusiast.As part of the Chennai chapter various events are planned every month to spread the awareness about social media and to connect with fellow social media Enthusiasts in Chennai.

The First Social Media Club (SMCChennai)Chennai Event was held on Apr 4th at "Access Atlantech" (Thanks to Rateesh Babu for providing the space for our event) .The Guest speaker for the event was R. Narayanan, Co-Founder, 20:20 Media.The Event was about Social Media for PR and Mr.Narayanan shares his experience on PR and also about social media usage in PR.you can get the coverage of the first event by soravjain on his blog .

After successful first edition now we are back with second event especially for Marketers and new entrants on social media.We have with us the Industry experts Mr. Sukumar Rajagopal and Mr. David Appasamy as speakers for the second event on
May 1st (01-05-2010)

Speaker 1: Sukumar Rajagopal

Senior Vice President, Head of Innovation (Cognizant Technology Services)

About Speaker:

Over 21 years experience in the IT industry
Highly successful in project delivery, P&L management, executive relationship building, operations management and knowledge management in consulting companies.
Web 2.0 Specialist also Chief Knowledge Officer at Cognizant and published numerous article related to Knowledge Management and the KM strategy has appeared in the Economic Times, The Hindu newspapers and the Business Week magazine

More Info about Sukumar @ http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajagopalsukumar

Speaker 2:David Appasamy

Chief Communications Officer, Sify Technologies Limited

About Speaker:

David Appasamy is an IIM – Ahmedabad Alumnus and has served as the Chief Communications Officer of Sify Technologies Limited since January 2000.
David is responsible for the all aspects of Corporate Communications, Public Relations and Investor Relations of the company, as well as the 'Sify' brand in terms of identity and image.
He has over 25 years of experience in business management and service and consumer brand marketing.He is actively involved with the eBusiness Task Force of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI)
He has been on the organizing committee of ‘CONNECT’, the major ICT conference and exhibition of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Event Agenda :-

10.30 AM - 11.00 AM Networking and High Tea
11.00 AM - 12.00 PM Session 1 by Speaker 1
12.00 PM - 01.00 PM Session 2 by Speaker 2
1.00 PM - Lunch and Networking

Tickets Cost: Rs. 200/-
Seats Available: 40 only

Location :-

Location: Access Atlantech
Street: 29/8, Haddows Road, Pin- 600 006 Jayalakshmi Estates
City/Town: Chennai
Phone: 9791134451 (Sorav Jain) / 9840727371 (Rajasekar)

you can join the Social Media Club Chennai Group @ http://smcchn.ning.com

What it takes to be an ET-Extra Terrestrials (Fearless Entertainers)

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:22:00 +0000

It's easy to see everything through television whether it's a concert,cricket match,Rock band performance or Show Auditions,but certain things will bring the wow factor only if it seen live.Yes ,that kind of extravagance program is gonna be live next month in Chennai.

The program name is Extra Terrestrials,you can think why the show is named as ET this is because the performers went beyond anything mundane and so they have been named as ET.Also this show will bring you eight stunning international acts that Chennai will get to see LIVE! for the first time. These include Acrobats, skaters, illusionists, laser experts and cyclists from various parts of Europe. In short, some of the most sought after performers who have wowed "LEDO Paris" will now wow Chennai with some incredible acts!

The shows will take place on February 3,4,5,6 and 7, 2010. You not only have a choice of date, but also a choice of time. The shows will take place thrice a day, so there are 15 shows for you to choose from.

The team behind the show is "Show space",an event management company which has Chennai Super Kings IPL Team as one of their clients and also this Extra Terrestrials Event was sponsored by CSK and you can see the lot of ads coming in "The Hindu".

Check out more about ET @ http://etwow.in/home.html

My Journey with TEDxChennai

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:44:00 +0000

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
---These are Lovely line from Robert Frost Poem

I Keep murmuring these Lines always becoz he doesn't say he needs to travel long, he mentioned he need to achieve more and has to go way long to do it before he die.This was the thought i got when i went to be part of TEDxChennai Organizing Team...I said Days to go before the event and we need to achieve something good and there were 4 months to go for the TEDxChennai Initially when we planned.

The TEDxChennai Buzz Started after the "BUZZ 140-Twitter Conference" Nambirajan is the guy who initiated this and Kiruba started the buzz and almost like 40 people jumped into the Discussion and at the end of day the Google Group was created and then Kiruba send the invitation to to few and almost like 30 + guys signed up for the group and get started .

There are lot of things to do on our plate i.e venue,date,speakers,sponsors,Publicity and Team etc. The First task is to list down the name of speakers,Swami took the responsibility and created a Google spreadsheet . when we asked for this there were around 150 nomination for the speakers.

The Second task is sponsor and Meeting,first discussed to have one meeting every two weeks,Initially Benny,Nambi and few other (sorry if i missed some names) met at some of their houses and start the TEDxChennai Conversations.Good way to involve more and show them TED Videos and start disussing about the video.The Initial Meetup was almost dull in terms of the buzz created.But Nambi kept his vibrant Energy and spent most of the time by sending emails the groups and keep everyone engaged at one point of time.

The we thought we all have a game to play and need to play wise,so the first organising meet happened at IIT-CCD (CCD becomes the next home in most of the occasions).we got the mail from Kiruba saying that our TEDxChennai License got approved and everyone thought we are part of the game and kick started.we plan to have IC&SR Venue in IIT to host the TEDxChennai Event and we got it through RTBI ,it was one good achievement which makes the event so success.

so we meet at CCD-Isphani and almost for four month it's been a regular meet up on every weekend,my job is send out an email to the group and set the venue (CCD-Isphani).So as soon the buzz started we created a buzz around net through updating our twitter and FB Page and created a Twitter id for TEDxChennai (@tedxchennai) and
Facebook Page - (http://www.facebook.com/TEDxChennai.TEDxEvent)

we have got our own website (TEDxchennai.com) up and created the buzz through socialmedia and got some good response.we planned and planned and sometime thought we are yet to finalize the speakers,so we nailed down the final list and Kiruba started approaching them and we got the final set of speakers on the board for the event.so then what we got the speakers ,venue,Vibrant Team and the next is sponsors.

So we planned to have some break-up in terms of sponsorship and we introduced "Friends of TEDxChennai" and we got some three sponsor on that slot and one silver sponsor that point of time (Thanks for support guys).Then Kiruba got a chance to attened TEDIndia in Mysore,after his return from TEDIndai he was so much moved by the Event and got some more extra stuff to do along with the regular work and we are so much inspired about the work later.

So we planned a TEDxChennai to invite the TEDIndia Fellow and organizers for a get together,it was really a good initiative and had a good response.There were around 25 plus people turned on the event and which provides us a platform to reach more people.The organisers meeting was going on one side,lot of caffe lattes,hot chocolates,cappuccinos gone in and more to do...

when we started the registration process and the team was given seperate responsibilites and see it doesn't get over loaded.Benny takes care of the printing,felix and sreeram with the design and Photo,Kiruba's F5ive Team(Murugesh,vijay and prem) did a wonderful job of designing the website with the latest content and uploading the photos of the speakers and team organizers.

Kiruba was given the charge of speakers and Sponsors and me take care of the finance and registration and also Prashant (registration),sandeep and ram (catering) and this way the list goes on...It was wonderful to see the guys did the job well even it was first time for most of us.so we were waiting for the d-day to come in.

we are at kiruba's office on the day before two days of the event and started the discussion how to handle the registrations,food,participants..etc..It was exactly 12.30 every one left from Kiruba's office ,that one week was really awesome and mind blowing experience.So the saturday was totally mad because the d-day is coming so we got lot of work to do.I was done with the total no of regsitration and their was a regsitarion team setup by prashanth(Srinath,Vinay,murali,avinash,anuj,radhika,prashanthi,,vaishnavi...and the list goes on-sorry if i missed anyone guys) to carry out all the work related to it and done a wonderful job.Hats of guys.

There are lot of humourous things happend,one with preparing the ID Cards sandeep has done a review on his blog(http://www.sandeepnvarma.blogspot.com).So we all set for the D-Day.

The day starts with the high heart beats saying wake up it's sunday..(BTW i didn't got sleep not me most of us)so i was there at the IC&SR Audi at 6am and was surprise am i came to the wrond place bcoz i was one to come first and was waiting for the team to come in,Slowly the team came and we started the registration process,SAE Team setup the cameras and all set to receive the participants.

Here are some analysis as of 29-nov-2009

Total no of mails exchanged in Google Group=1000+
Total no of member in the Google group=100+
Total no of meetups=20 + 1 mixer
Total no of Cafe Lattes,Cappuccinos,hot chocolates=???
Total no of followers in Twitter and Facebook =130 / 270
Energy and hardwork=Priceless...

All we did just for the Inspiration we had in TED and this brings out all of us into one family TEDxChennai Team, for me it is an close to the heart event and first of its kind i was been part of such a great team.I thought i need to write a blog after one week and here i am .Sorry if i missed any names..It was the dailogue when a film was success they say i like to thank and it goes one...the list is big it was the same for me....and it was even bigger..Thanks to Everyone who helps us to make it a Big success.Special Thanks to David and Rathish for being a TEDxChennai Ambassadors and also for their support for the Event and also to Chinmayi who Compered for us for the event.

We all worked for this moment what kiruba says TED Moment for me...the standing Ovations from the participants...this claps pay us for our 4 months hardwork and gives us an inspiration to do more in next event.

Photos of TEDxChennai Event :
http://picasaweb.google.com/felixchandran/TEDxChennai2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/felixchandran
http://picasaweb.google.com/sreraam/Pics

Whats Up in Chennai >> Info on events in Chennai<<

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:18:00 +0000

I am planning to blog about the events that's gonna happen in Chennai every month.
As a start i am doing this from this month,the post might change as and when i came to know about the events.

November:-

Amazon Web Services Cloud Workshop and UnConference
- 10 Nov 2009, Chennai

This is an one day event happening in Chennai for the Amazon Cloud Enthusiasts ,The session is targeted at System Integrators, ISVs, software architects and Product Engineering Technical Decision Makers and Cloud Computing Enthusiasts .

The person behind this event was Balaji Sowmyanarayan (@labsji)

When :10 Nov 2009 9.30am to 5.30pm

Where:TIDEL Park Auditorium,No 4, Rajiv Gandhi Salai,Taramani,Chennai-6000 113

Free,Open-to-all (Registration Required)

You can Tweet about the event and the hastag is #awschn

The workshop will be led by Seattle-based Jinesh Varia, Technology Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

The UnConference is Facilitated by KirubaShankar

Check more about the event @ http://www.awschennai.in

Next event is TEDxChennai >>Details soon to come

If you come across any good events that's going to happen in chennai,you can mail me rajaobj@gmail.com

Interes[TED] to be part of TEDxChennai

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:04:00 +0000

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Check more about ted @ http://www.ted.com

TEDIndia:
The First TED Conference is going to held at Mysore,on November 4-7,2009 (Infosys Campus).Check more about this Conference @ http://conferences.ted.com/TEDIndia

Tedx is a new way for local communities to create and host their own unofficial TED-style events
Video about TEDx By the TED Curator Chris Anderson

TEDxChennai is one kind of event going to takes place at Chennai (Nov 29th IIT Madras).

TedxChennai Website
http://tedxchennai.com/

TEDxChennai Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/TEDXChennai/133838251856

TEDxChennai Twitter Page
http://twitter.com/TEDxChennai

TEDxChennai Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tedxchennai

If you are interested to be part of the event,please join the group and share your thoughts.

Wikipedia Takes Chennai

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 07:34:00 +0000

Wikipedia Takes Chennai is a a scavenger hunt and free content photography in Chennai in association with The Knowledge Foundation, Chennai. This is inspired by "Wikipedia Takes The City" that happens all around the world. The aim of this exercise is to encourage participants to compete to take photographs of as many local sights as possible for Wikipedia articles. This is aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles, thereby nourishing wikipedia and promote awareness about Wikipedia in the city.

All Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians were invited to participate in team of up to three (no special knowledge was required at all, just a digital camera and a love of the city).

Date: Sunday, 16th August, 2009.

Venue: Natesan Park, Venkat Narayana Road, T.Nagar

It is the starting day of the week long celebrations of Madras Day.To know more about the event and If you are interested please sign-up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Chennai

If you are in Facebook, join the event

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117817882270

Chennai is Wified

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:23:00 +0000

The recent buzz happening in chennai is the news about chennai become wifi enabled,it is good to see parts of chennai is now wifi enabled. The initiative was carried out by the company Zylog systems (http://www.zylog.co.in).Already we have wifi hot spots in some places of chennai expecially coffee world,Pizza Corner and Airports etc.But by the new initiative entire chennai is planned to wified.

The service works by the setting up of intelligent wi-fi nodes atop select buildings across the city, making the area a Wi-fi zone. This essentially means that every house will not need a separate router to gain wi-fi internet access. However, users will still need a wi-fi-enabled laptop or personal computer or a separate wi-fi card to access this service. At the moment, various companies offer wi-max and wireless broadband through USB pen drives.

In the initial phase, the company has rolled out the wi-fi services in Besant Nagar, Adyar and parts of Ashok Nagar and T Nagar. It has also enabled seamless wi-fi connectivity on the IT corridor from Madhya Kailash to Siruseri, which means unlimited connectivity even while travelling on the IT corridor at any point of time. Called as the "Metro wi-fi", Zylog's wi-fi model will work like the telephony network and will work on radio frequencies, like a mobile phone

Zylog will complete wi-fying' Chennai in the next 12-15 months and will extend this service to other major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata in the next 24 months.

Check the website http://wi5.co.in/index.html for more information

Source:Times of India

Buzz 140 | A Twitter Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Buzz 140 is a one day event organized by "The Knowledge Foundation" ,the brain behind the events like Proto.in,Wikicamp.in,blogcamp.This conference is aimed to bring people together to talk about how to share information in 140 characters. Which means, how do you present information in just 140 characters. And how do you do that using Twitter. And also discuss various issues and developments around twitter.

When and Where:-

The Event is scheduled on 21st June 2009 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

at Photon Infotech Private Ltd.

No. 2/102, Photon Towers, Old Mahabalipuram Road,

Karapakkam, Chennai, India

Some interesting topics are planned

Awareness of twitter - how we can enhance it
History of twitter, developments till date (like twestival in feb 2009).
Features of twitter, usefulness, the way it is changing our lives...etc

Check more @ Wiki Page BUZZ140

Wiki Wednesday Chennai

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:43:00 +0000

Wiki Wednesdays are friendly get-togethers to discuss about how we can all contribute towards the growth of Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia. Wiki Wednesdays are a global movement and take place in London, New York, Tokyo, Auckland and cities throughout the world. We are proud to have one now in Chennai. This week i attended the event and it was really cool.

Wiki Wednesdays are held (mostly) the first Wednesday of each month.
The events have featured speakers, round robin of 5 minute talks and unstructured, free-wheeling discussion.
You can RSVP, or swing by if you like

To know more about wiki wednesday

Check out @ http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?chennai

You can part of this event and spread the information about the event

If you're blogging or using flickr, use the tag wikiwed
Twitter channel #wikiwed
Facebook Event Page
Here's the invitation card

If you'd like to be a featured speaker at a future Wiki Wednesday, or would like to give a brief talk or demo, email sarav5891 at gmail.com.

Export and Import Utility in Jasper Server

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:05:00 +0000

Jaspersoft is one of the Opensource Reporting tool available in the market apart from Pentaho,BIRT etc,Now we will see how we can use the Export-import utility to migrate your data from 3.0 to 3.1.Actually we have setup jasperServer 3.0 in Win2003 Environment with Mysql Database.

Make sure to keep a backup of jasper server table before following above steps.

Exporting jasperserver dat:-

cd <JS_3.0_installation_dir>/scripts

Linux : ./js-export.sh --everything --output-dir js-backup.zip

cd <JS_3.0_installation_dir>/scripts

Windows:Go to the Command Prompt and type the following

js-export --everything --output-dir js-backup.zip

For Ex:

./js-export --everything c:/scripts js-backup.zip

For importing JS data :-

Linux : ./js-import.sh --input-dir js-backup.zip

Windows:js-import --input-zip <Filename>

For Ex:-

Here we have kept the backup.zip inside <JS_3.0_installation_dir>/scripts folder

js-import --input -zip js-backup

Recently i have faced a wierd situation,

I have got this error when i tried to start the application inside tomcat 1.6

"FAIL - Application at context path /jasperserver"

I have Installed jasper server 3.1 and have not included the bundled tomcat installation.Already i have installed tomcat 1.6.The issue here is i am not able to run the jasper application.

If you are using Tomcat bundled with jasper server,then it is easy to start the jasper server.

From Windows Start Menu:

Cick Start> All Programs> JasperServer> JasperServer Management> Start JasperServer.

Click Start> All Programs> JasperServer> JasperServer management> Stop JasperServer.

But in case if you are not using the bundled Tomcat,you need to run the below script to start jasper server.

From Command Line:

Windows:-

Go to cd <js-install>/bin

/allclt.bat start [stop]

Linux:-

Go to cd <js-install> (Linux)

/jasperctl.sh start [stop]

So now it is working....

Business Objects Auditing in XIR3

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:02:00 +0000

BusinessObjects Enterprise Auditor provides you with a way to monitor and record key facts about your BusinessObjects Enterprise deployment.

The information provided by the auditor answers the following queries

Who is using your Business Objects Enterprise system?

Which objects they are accessing?

Which groups within the company use our BusinessObjects Enterprise system the most?

How many concurrent user licenses are we using at any given time?

Auditor also allows you to better administer individual user accounts and reports by giving you more insight into what actions users are taking and which reports they are accessing.

Configuring Auditor in Windows

Once you configured the CMS Repository then the next step is to configure the Auditing database.

The audit database can be configured in the same CMS Repository. The Repository will have the following tables gets created in the Database.

CMS_Aliases6

CMS_IDNumbers6

CMS_InfoObjects6

CMS_Locks6

CMS_Relations6

CMS_VersionInfo

Auditing Tables

Audit_Event

Audit_Detail

Server_Process

Detail_Type table

Event_Type

Application_Type

Configure Auditing in UNIX Platform

Run the script CCM.SH to stop the CMS

Run CMSDBSETUP.SH

Choose the "SELECTAUDITOPTION" and then supply the requested information about the database server (Ex: Oracle, SQLServer or MYSQL) where you want to configure the Audit DB.

Run SERVERCONFIG.SH

Choose the "MODIFY A SERVER" Option

Select the CMS and Enable Auditing. Enter the port number of the CMS when prompted (You can use the default port 6400)

Use CCM.SH to start the CMS, when the CMS Starts then it will create the auditing database in the given DB Server.

In a CMS cluster, the cluster will nominate one CMS to act as system auditor. If the machine that is running this CMS fails, another CMS from the cluster will take over and begin acting as auditor.

Auditing Database Schema
BusinessObjects Enterprise Auditor provides you with a way to monitor and record key facts about your BusinessObjects Enterprise deployment.

Auditing Tables

The Audit database contains Six tables:-

Audit_Event

Audit_Detail

Server_Process

Detail_Type table

Event_Type

Application_Type

Audit_Event:-

The Audit_Event table stores one record per action that is audited and

Contains general information about each audit event

Audit_Detail:-

The Audit_Detail table records more details about each audit action recorded in the Audit_Event table. For example, when a user logon fails, the reasons for that failure are recorded as audit details. There may be more than one record in this table for each audit action

recorded in the Audit_Event table.

Server_Process:-

The Server_Process table contains information about the servers running within your BusinessObjects Enterprise system which can generate audit events.

Event_Type:-

The Event_Type table contains a static list of the kinds of events that can be audited in your BusinessObjects Enterprise system. This table provides information roughly equivalent to that provided by AuditIDs and AuditStrings in Crystal Enterprise

Application_Type:-

The Application_Type table contains a static list of the applications that can produce audit events. In BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, the applications that can be audited are servers.

Detail_Type table:-

The Detail_Type table contains a static list of the standard details that can be recorded about audited events. For example, a user logon can fail for a number of different reasons. These reasons are listed as entries in the

Once the tables are created, we need to enable the auditing features through Central Management Console.

Logon to CMC->Go to Server->Click CMS

Select the Audit events for the CMS Server.

Build the sample universe based on the auditing database

Sample reports created to track the users.

Publications and Profiles in XIR3.0

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:32:00 +0000

Profiles and Publications are used for report bursting. publication is a collection of documents intended for distribution to a mass audience. Before the documents are distributed, the publisher defines the publication using a collection of metadata. This metadata includes the publication source, its recipients, and the personalization applied.

We will see how we can create a publications and profiles:-

First create a sample report with E-Fashion Universe

Once the report is created export the report to the repository.

Now create a profile in CMC

Profiles are created and managed in CMC

Inside the Profiles we need to define profile target and profile value
- Profile target links a profile to a universe objects which has the restriction applied to it within a report.
- Profile Value specifies the how to filter a a object for a specific user or group

Ex: Profile Target
- Efashion Universe ->Store(Classname)->State (Object)

Create a profile name "State Profile"

Select the Profile Target as follows

Select the user in the Profile Value

Here the user Steve belongs to the state "California".

Once the profile is created,Now log on to Infoview and Select ->New Publication

In the source document of the publication select the report name ,Here the Report Name is Profile which has been created earlier(See the Image 1)

Select the User in the Enterprise Recipient ,I have created the users as Mark,Steve..

Once the recipient is select then select the personalization in the publication .

Here we need to select the Profile name which we have created in CMC.

In the formats section select either acrobat or excel or what ever the format you like.Here i have selected Excel and Acrobat.

Select the the destination as Inbox

In the Advanced section select Merge .

Once it is done then schedule the publication

Logon to the CMC and go to the user inbox, Here you can see the user Steve has got multiple reports (Excel and Acrobat).

Below is the FinalReport.

Here the user Steve got the report which has the record pertaining to the state California.so by using profiles we can

enable the data level security for the reports.

What Skills Does an Oracle BI Developer Need in 2009?

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:04:00 +0000

I recently read this article from Rittman Mead Blog .He has written clearly about the booming skillset needed for a person to become a full fledged Oracle BI developer.

Check out more @

http://www.rittmanmead.com/2009/03/15/what-skills-does-an-oracle-bi-developer-need-in-2009

Open Document Function

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:29:00 +0000

It been a while i have written a new post in my blog , as promised in my last post here come some information about opendocument function

Open Document Function

OpenDocument Function provides URL access to multiple document types by passing a URL string to a BusinessObjects Enterprise server.

You can use openDocument in BusinessObjects Enterprise to create cross-system links to and from the following document types:

.wid: Web Intelligence documents

.rep: Desktop Intelligence documents

.rpt: Crystal reports

.car: OLAP Intelligence reports

Structuring an openDocument URL

The next sections explain how to use the openDocument function, and how to construct the URL.

An openDocument URL is generally structured as follows:

"http://<servername>:<port>/OpenDocument/opendoc/<platformSpecific>?<parameter1>&<parameter2>&...&<parameterN>"

The exact syntax of the <platform Specific> parameter depends on your Implementation:

For Java implementations, use openDocument.jsp in place of the <platform Specific> parameter.

For .NET implementations, use opendocument.aspx in place of the <platform Specific> parameter.

Implementing OpenDoc function for a Webi report.

First change the Webi preference to "Interactive mode"

1. Construct a default report using Efashion Universe as Follows

Report shows state wise revenue

Right Click the Column State and

Click Hyperlink->New

Check the option Link to Document

Click Browse and select the target report here it is "Sales Revenue-Target Report"

You can check some of the options available if you need

"Don't select the option use complete url it will cause a problem when you change your web server so keep it unchecked"

Once you select the target report it also shows the default prompt available in that report.

Here the default prompt in the target report is "Enter the Values for State", once it done then you click apply and say 'OK'

Final Report

Code generated is as follows:-

="<a href=\"../../opendoc/openDocument.jsp?iDocID=ARAVm7DFcZ9Ak4ceI5HiF9E&sIDType=CUID&sType=wid&sRefresh=N&lsMEnter%20value(s)%20for%20State%3A="+URLEncode(""+[State])+"&sWindow=New\" title=\"\" target=\"_self\" nav=\"doc\">"+[State]+"</a>"

The Code is Explained below

DocID= ARAVm7DFcZ9Ak4ceI5HiF9E

sIDType=CUID

sType=wid(Webi Document)

sRefresh=N(No Refresh on Open,if you want you can set it to 'Y')

lsM=Specify the Multiple Values for prompt

lsMEnter%20value(s)%20for%20State%3A="+URLEncode(""+[State])(The Prompt Given is taken and it point to the column 'State')

sWindow=New\" title=\"\" target=\"_self\" nav=\"doc\" (Once I click the hyperlink 'State',my target report open in new window)

For more info on Open Document Function check out this url Opendocument

Determine version number in BusinessObjects

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:18:00 +0000

Some tips and tricks on Business Objects...The first is about determining the version numbers in Business Objects.

Case 1.

I have installed Business Objects and have upgraded to SP2[Service Pack2] ,but how can i see my updated version

Here is the way to see your version number

1. Central Configuration Manager

Desktop Intelligence Report Server (Start > All programs > Business Objects XI Release 2 > Business Objects Enterprise > Central Configuration Manager).

2.EXE Version Tab

1. Browse to the drive where you installed Desktop Intelligence. For example:

\Program Files\Business Objects\Business Objects Enterprise 11.5\win32_86

2. Right-click the busobj.exe file, click Properties then click the Version tab.

The following list shows what the version numbers should be depending on which patch combination you have

BO XIR2 RTM = 11.5.0.313

BO XIR2 + SP1 = 11.5.3.417

BO XIR2 + SP1 + MHF1 = 11.5.7.608

BO XIR2 + SP1 + MHF1 + CHF16 = 11.5.7.811

BO XIR2 + SP1 + MHF1 + CHF20 = 11.5.7.1048

BO XIR2 + SP1 + MHF1+ SP2 = 11.5.8.826

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.1 = 11.5.8.826

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.2 = 11.5.8.939

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.3 = 11.5.8.963

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.4 = 11.5.8.998

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.5 = 11.5.8.1030

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.6 = 11.5.8.1061

BO XIR2 SP2 + FP2.7 = 11.5.8.1111

BO XIR2 SP3 = 11.5.9.1076

BO XIR2 SP3 + FP3.1 = 11.5.9.1101

BO XIR2 SP3 + FP3.2 = 11.5.9.1138

Here SP=Service Pack, MHF=Monthly Hot Fix, CHF=Critical Hot Fix

Next is OpenDocument >>>

Asia remains lucrative BI market

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:18:00 +0000

Recently read this article on "Asia remains lucrative BI market".It was clearly indicated by Gartner that BI is continued to be growing sector in 2008 and these predictions will really create a healthy market for BI in coming years..

"As growth of the global business intelligence (BI) software market starts to slow, the Asia-Pacific region is still set to grow healthily, says Gartner.

Fueled by "greenfield" opportunities and fast economic and structural developments, the region's growth is expected to be higher than that of Europe and North America, said the analyst firm in a statement.

Worldwide growth rates, by contrast, are slowing at a CAGR of 8.6 percent to US$7 billion in 2011.

Gartner predicts BI software revenue for the Asia-Pacific region to reach US$399 million this year, and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5 percent to hit US$577.6 million in 2011.

In the latest Gartner Executive Programs survey, some 1,500 Chief information officers ranked BI top on their list of technology priorities for the third year running.

According to Gartner, CIOs feel a proper BI strategy is the foundation to upgrade areas of the business such as customer service and legacy applications.

Bhavish Sood, Gartner senior research analyst said: "The days of strong double-digit growth in the global BI market are over, as the industry enters a state of flux following vendor consolidation, increasing maturity and price erosion.

"However, BI remains critical for businesses as it turns information into an asset for insight and decision making, especially in high-growth markets in Asia," added Sood.

Furthermore, consolidation in the BI market through major acquisitions such as IBM and Cognos, Oracle and Hyperion and SAP and Business Objects is expected to drive increased usage from the large vendors.

Sood said new vendors will try to differentiate by introducing newer technology and products to fill gaps in the larger vendors' product lines. Examples of which may be predictive modeling, enterprise search, and interactive visualization techniques.

Gartner advises customers of recently-acquired players to wait for proper product roadmaps from the vendors, to avoid investing in overlapping products". [Source :ZDNet Asia]

Apart from the Major player like Business Objects ,Cognos, Microsoft,oracle,sas and microstrategy which competes in the global BI Market and also in Asian Market, one should not forget about the growing BI software vendor from India i.e MAIA Intelligence which has its own flagship product called 1key.

Recently they came up with an idea of license replacement program enables customers of Business Objects and Cognos to trade in their existing BI licenses for MAIA's 1KEY BI licenses.so it proves BI will be driven by new vendors also.....Check out more @ http://www.maia-intelligence.com/Business-Objects-Cognos.html

Predictive Analytics-A future Insight of Data Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:48:00 +0000

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining that analyze current and historical data to make predictions about future events.Such predictions rarely take the form of absolute statements, and are more likely to be expressed as values that correspond to the odds of a particular event or behavior taking place in the future.

In business, predictive models exploit patterns found in historical and transactional data to identify risks and opportunities. Models capture relationships among many factors to allow assessment of risk or potential associated with a particular set of conditions, guiding decision making for candidate transactions.

It is been used with the applications involving CRM,Cross-Selling,Direct marketing ,Collection analytics not only that even helps to detect Fraud detection in credit card Apps.

The statistical techniques used in Predictive Analytics are as follows

Regression Techniques

Linear Regression Model

Discrete choice models

Logistic regression

Time series models

Apart from these Statistical Techniques there are some Machine learning techniques are used such as Neural Networks and k-nearest neighbours

The tool used to help with the execution of predictive analytics are SAS, S-Plus, SPSS and Stata and For machine learning/data mining type of applications, KnowledgeSEEKER, KnowledgeSTUDIO, Enterprise Miner, GeneXproTools, Clementine, KXEN Analytic Framework, InforSense are some of the popularly used options.

WEKA is a freely available open-source collection of machine learning methods for pattern classification, regression, clustering, and some types of meta-learning, which can be used for predictive analytics.

Recently Business Objects has announced a partnership with SPSS , a worldwide provider of predictive analytics software, announced the companies have entered into an original equipment manufacturer agreement in which Business Objects will offer its customers the ability to use SPSS predictive analytics data mining technology as part of the market-leading Business Objects^TM XI platform.

Users of Business Objects XI with predictive analytics data mining technology will be able to leverage business predictions to make more informed decisions that can help generate revenue, control expenses, and mitigate risk.

Today SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has significantly enhanced its award-wining SAS Enterprise Miner, SAS Text Miner, and SAS Forecast Server software, bringing predictive analytics to their highest level yet.

The newest release of SAS Enterprise Miner improves productivity through added interactive advanced visualization and new analytics. Fifteen new analytical tools improve the resulting predictive models, which can mean significant savings for customers with proactive marketing departments such as in retail or banking.With innovative new modeling algorithms, including gradient boosting, partial least squares and support vector machines, SAS Enterprise Miner users can build more stable and more accurate models and thus make better decisions faster and with more confidence.

Source:Wikipedia and SAS,Business Objects

Proto.in-A Platform for Startup's

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:50:00 +0000

Proto.in stands true to its mantra "Create, Contribute, Collaborate."India, and Asia as a whole has experienced its first wave of rapid economic transformation. We have tapped into the greatest resource that we had - skilled labour at a significantly lower cost. But with rising labour costs, how can we sustain this economic growth? That is the dilemma and our big question.Entrepreneurs drive the economy.

It is the grand visions and resourcefulness of an entrepreneur that utilizes the society to the maximum, creates opportunities and pushes technology to its limits to create a better lifestyle - be it an enterprise or an end-consumer.

This year Proto.in starts on Jan 18-19,2008

Check out Proto Blog @ http://www.proto.in/proto2007se/blog/

More about Proto.in @ http://www.proto.in/proto2008/index.html

Business Intelligence @ 2K8

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:06:00 +0000

Business Intelligence is gaining more attraction and got more predictions...

This is what the Industry Experts speaks about Business Intelligence @ 2K8 .

First it was Ken Rudin, CEO of LucidEra

1.SaaS BI will gain increased market acceptance
2.Innovation will be led by newer vendors.
3.There will be a shift away from tools towards prebuilt analytic applications.
4.Applications that integrate data and improve processes across transactional systems will
drive the next wave of SaaS
5.A new breed of channel partners will emerge.

Next is by Seth Grimes [analytics strategist] Predicted

1.Ever increasing attention to data quality.
2.BI integration of streaming and text-extracted data.
3.Location intelligence.
4.Collaborative analytics.
5.Advances in natural-language query and question-answering capabilities, which will all the
same remain far from mature.
6.The start of attention to data provenance, reliability, and uncertainty; for instance, see
Jennifer Widom's Trio work.

Above this the prediction from Diann Daniel of CIO Magazine

1.IT-business teamwork will be crucial.
2.Operational business intelligence will lead the way.
3.Open source and SaaS tools will become more attractive.
4.Structured and unstructured data will be needed for BI.
5.BI competency centers will increase in importance
6.The Wild Card: Effects of BI Vendor Consolidation

From of all these prediction we can see that
1.SAAS BI will get more insight in the near future
2.Open source will have more market share (I totally agree with this..)

When i came to know about unstructed data ,once I used Talend (An opensource ETL) where we can use the unstructed data [information from RSS,Wikis,comments] to built a useful information.Using Talend it is easy to extract the RSS and load into any text file or db...

So lets us wait and see what's the new innovation will rule BI @ 2K8 and how BI2.0 AND BI3.0 Will have his focus..

Business Objects-Scheduling Servers

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:42:00 +0000

If you have a situation of restarting BO Servers on every Sunday for maintenance purpose you can use this piece of code which will automate BO Servers.
You can add in the scheduled task of the windows,so that it will run at that time.

**************************************************

cls
echo off
echo .
echo .
echo Starting all the BOXIR2 services
echo .
echo .
net start “Central Management Server”

net stop “Connection Server”
net start “Connection Server”

net stop “Crystal Reports Cache Server”
net start “Crystal Reports Cache Server”

net stop “Crystal Reports Job Server”
net start “Crystal Reports Job Server”

net stop “Crystal Reports Page Server”
net start “Crystal Reports Page Server”

net stop “Desktop Intelligence Cache Server”
net start “Desktop Intelligence Cache Server”

net stop “Desktop Intelligence Job Server”
net start “Desktop Intelligence Job Server”

net stop “Desktop Intelligence Report Server”
net start “Desktop Intelligence Report Server”

net stop “Destination Job Server”
net start “Destination Job Server”

net stop “Event Server”
net start “Event Server”

net stop “Input File Repository Server”
net start “Input File Repository Server”

net stop “List of Values Job Server”
net start “List of Values Job Server”

net stop “Output File Repository Server”
net start “Output File Repository Server”

net stop “Program Job Server”
net start “Program Job Server”

net stop “Report Application Server”
net start “Report Application Server”

net stop “Web Intelligence Job Server”
net start “Web Intelligence Job Server”

net stop “Web Intelligence Report Server”
net start “Web Intelligence Report Server”

net stop “WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service”
net start “WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service”

echo .
echo .
echo All services has been restarted.
echo .
echo .
pause

**************************************************

*************************************************

Once you written this above statement in the notepad ,save the notepad as a bacth file ("bo.bat").

Then you can add this batch file in the windows scheduled task.so if you want to restart your servers after any any patch install or for any purpose you can use this batch file.

To create a Schedule Task

Go to Start->Settings->Control panel ->Scheduled Task

Now give the path and name of the batch file then schedule it

Once it is done then the servers will get restarted automatically at that particular time.

What you need to be a Business Intelligence Consultant ??

noreply@blogger.com (Rajasekar Nonburaj) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:34:00 +0000

I read this article recently here the author Reinald Bormann from Harvey jones system gives and insight about the BI Consultant

Most recruiters daily face the sad reality that there is a serious skills shortage in the local IT industry.

The business intelligence (BI) market is not exempt. With BI going from strength to strength since 2003, market-savvy IT professionals are trying to enter this lucrative market, with many cross-skilling on multiple BI platforms or products.

One of the changes afoot in the market is that companies no longer simply deliver a BI solution and then leave clients to their own devices.more often than not, client/consultant relationships extend well beyond delivering the initial project.

Successful BI consultants must be well-rounded people with solid project experience, preferably across various market sectors.

Successful BI consultants should excel in the following four areas:

* Technical ability
* Interpersonal skills
* Project experience and
* Market knowledge

Technical ability

BI projects are being completed quicker today than they were three years ago, with the result that top BI consultants can work on multiple projects each year.

Properly applying the latest technology should always be a BI consultant's highest priority and, with so many technical components to these solutions, specialising in at least one component is beneficial.

While core skills allow consultants to work on projects other than BI, they should always strive to improve their abilities on other components.

Interpersonal skills

All projects involve interaction between BI consultants, fellow team members and clients. Interpersonal communication is a vital skill that each BI consultant must master.

The wealth of knowledge contained in BI consultants' heads is not easily transferred. Effective use of communication skills allows them to share knowledge across the team.

Successful BI consultants also act as mentors and guide internal IT teams through the uncharted waters of their first BI projects. It is BI consultants' role to point clients toward good resources, books and conferences for further education.

Project experience

IT consulting is always evolving. Because project rotation is generally more frequent than in the past, BI consultants must quickly understand new businesses in order to deliver solutions on time and within budget. Getting to grips with unfamiliar businesses is always difficult, but is also very rewarding.

Successful BI consultants leverage their technical capabilities to re-use certain components developed on previous projects.

Essentially, project experience breeds problem identification and reinforces the use of best practice and methodology.

Market knowledge

Just as consultants become comfortable, a new product or toolset emerges, which nine times out of 10 changes the way they deliver. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as successful BI consultants usually make market changes work for them by aligning their technical skills in the new direction.

The release of Microsoft Performance Point Server (PPS) at the end of the year is a very good case in point; most BI organisations are uncertain of the true impact PPS will have in the market, so having skilled BI consultants at hand when the product is released could ensure a significant market share of new BI solutions on PPS.

It should be every BI consultant's goal to be as active as possible in the community. That means attending seminars and Webcasts, taking part in BI forums or using other knowledge-sharing channels.

Conclusion

In today's challenging and demanding BI market, successful BI consultants must be well-rounded and experienced people, able to adapt quickly to various business environments, continuously share knowledge internally and externally, understand future BI market trends and, most importantly, be very sound technically.

If you are lucky enough to have such a person in your employ or can find one, hang on to them tightly with both hands as they are worth their weight in gold.

By Reinald Bormann, BI consultant at Harvey Jones Systems

Source from itweb