Those of you who were not able to travel to Boston to the DIUC this June (and that includes me) might be interested to sneak a preview of the DI Roadmap and Purpose that was presented as the Keynote by Fred Powers, President and CEO of Dimensional Insight.
Of course, as always you will be able see much of the innovative content from the Boston DIUC when it’s presented at our own user conference in Dublin which is scheduled to take place on Tuesday October 17th. You should mark it in your diary now!
Fred presented 3 main themes which together categorise the Goals DI is pursuing currently –themes that describe the consensus of opinion relating to the BI sector’s main criteria for successful implementations – satisfying the requirements of users and organisations.
In keeping with the findings of 3 key research organisations Fred’s team is working on Usability, Collaboration and “Reducing Time Spent” overall on BI projects – development, modifications and maintenance.
In the sections below see the how the DI Roadmap looks for new work in these areas from 2016 – 2020 and underneath you can refresh on the key features and developments that DI delivered in the past, from 1990-2015.
Usability
According to the “Access Group”:
Reliability, ease of use, and ease of integration are the top three requirements project managers look for when shopping for software.
DI’s Goal
Continue improving usability across the platform to:
- Get users up to speed in less time
- Enhanced mobile support
- Support for larger data volumes, better performance, etc…
Time
According to the “Standish Group”:
Only 16.2% of software projects are completed both on-time and on-budget
DI’s Goal
Reduce the amount of time required for:
- Development
- Modification
- Maintenance
Collaboration
According to “Gartner”:
The main reason for failure is that there are different perspectives on the specific objectives for the initiative among the primary stakeholders
In other words: executives can’t agree!
DI’s Goal
Provide collaboration functionality to:
- Facilitate governance
- Involve various stakeholders in dialogue about the data
- Increase Collaboration – new for this period
Some of the key projects 2016-2020
Usability
- Spectre Engine improved performance, Virtual Spectre Build
- Diveport improved dialogues and visuals for Diveport 7.0 e.g. date slider, collapsible Quickviews, waterfall charts, mosaic charts, geographic charts, treemaps and animations, chart galleries, modern colour picker
- ProDiver Visual Refresh and features from Diver Portlet e.g. Change Dimension
- Assisted Analysis Engine, Assisted Displays
- Divetab improved visuals, iphone and Android support, Prodiver functionality
- By end of 2019 – common codebase for Prodiver, Diveport and Divetab
- Prototyping/researching crossplatform functions – new crossplatform clients
- Bringing lessons learned in the Measure Factory back to the Platform.
- Merge build, cPlan, scheduling and data access control into one object.
Time
- Assisted Analysis Engine, (e.g. software helps to pinpoint why certain patterns occur in data)
- Assisted Displays
- Updates to Caching and Performance
- Measure Aware Portlets
- Analysis Portlet Information
Collaboration
- Data Governance – Measure Dictionary, Measure Factory
- Embedded capability of Teamer Di’s collaboration application
- Collaboration of knowledge bases and Measure Factory applications for measures and Dimension Values across Diveport and Divepad.
- User can create Queries on issues coming to light in the data based on the measures definition held in the Measure factory. Can share and answer in one central location
We are all very excited about these developments in the Diver Platform and look forward to telling you more about them at our own conference on October 17th!
Some of the key projects 1990-2015
Usability
- Models went from 9 dimensions to any number of dimensions in cBases
- ODBC connectivity, Broadcast, Scheduler
- Report Markers and Diveplans
- Timeseries, Calcs, Divebooks, Lookup Manager, Input Forms, Named Groups, Dimcounts
- Real-Time access, Access Control and Security
- From Multi-model, Multi- level to Multitab, In-Memory Compiler
- Output to Tabular, Graphs, Reports, Control Charts
- Client software –to zero footprint web access in Diveport, the new Simplified User Interface, using Portlets
- Divetab designed specifically for tablets
Time
- From sequential Batch/Shell scripts to Visual Integrator and Production Scripts and Consolidated Workbench – parallel processing.
- From Builder to Spectre Builder saving 95% on build time in many cases.
- In Memory – columnar data is accessed at a fraction of the time using cBases once it is held in memory.
- Measure Factory – saves time in creating business rules each time a new cBase or report is designed.
- Other features specific to US Healthcare sector
About Debbie Lonsdale
Debbie Lonsdale has been working with the Diver Solution as a BI Consultant at Dynamic Business Informatics since 2008. Her previous experience includes computer programming, analytical and technical roles, team management, account management, sales and marketing in a variety of market sectors, including the Travel Industry and Distribution. She combines this experience as an all round ICT professional in the BI sector.