In today's competitive business landscape, access to the right information at the right time in the right format could be the difference between organizational success & failure. Business Intelligence provides organizations the tools they need to deliver business insight and user perspective successfully by leveraging the organizations data assets. As the demand for BI increases, a robust and well-architected data warehouse infrastructure becomes essential. The growth of Zero Latency Enterprise (ZLE) strategies and trends, such as real-time business intelligence, are driving the need for new and dynamic approaches to deploying and populating a data warehouse.

Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing are well-evolved technology initiatives. The importance of this solution is unquestionable and the key is in developing a solution that is cost effective, scalable & easy to use. ESI has a well-established data warehousing practice staffed with over 30 technology & business consultants. Leveraging on this expertise, ESI has successfully completed various DW & BI projects from its clients.

• Data Warehouse Readiness Assessment
• End-to-end solutions design and development
• ETL & BI Product Selection Engagement
• Business requirements analysis and data modeling
• ETL architecture and implementation
• Custom reporting and OLAP solutions
• Data mining

ESI can implement an Enterprise level architecture that can satiate your most demanding corporate or divisional customers. This architecture can be built ground up by using 'Data warehouse in a box' or 'Rapid Implementation with minimal programming' incorporating real time or near real time data.

In addition, ESI follows a comprehensive methodology for executing various DW/BI related engagements. The core-foundations of this methodology are based on the principles of Iterative implementation and component reusability.

The processes contains the following broad stages

• Project Requirements Definition & Project Planning (Project Definition, Project Planning & Management, User Requirements Definition)
• Data Design (Dimensional Modeling, Analysis of Data Sources)
• Architecture (Technical Architecture Design, Implement Tactical Security Measures, Develop Strategic Security Plan, Product Selection & Implementation)
• Implementation (Physical Database design, Physical Database implementation, Data Stating Design & Development, Populating & Validating database, Performance Tuning, End-user application Specification, End-user Application Development)
• Deployment & Growth (Deployment Planning, Complete System Test, Deployment, Data Warehouse Maintenance, Data Warehouse Growth).
  

The methodology is consistent with the overall ESI Iterative Development Methodology and allocates tasks for Onsite, Offsite and Offshore Teams, thus using its cost effective O3 model.

Data Warehouse & Business Intelligence is a well-evolved technology initiative and there are great products available for implementations. ENTERPRISE Data Warehousing practice consists of experienced consultants specializing in various best of breed solution providers. These include

• Data modeling tools ERWIN, Powersoft Warehouse Architect, and Designer/2000.
• Business Intelligence tools ranging from OLAP tools like MicroStrategy, Brio, Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, Information Advantage, Informix Metacube, Webfocus, Hummingbird BI Suite.
• Extraction Transformation and Loading (ETL) tools like Informatica, Datastage, Datajunction, DataMirror, SAS Warehouse Administrator.
• Databases like Oracle, MS SQL Server 2000, Sybase, DB2, Informix, UDB, Teradata.
• Datamining Tools like SAS Miner, Intelligent Miner, Darwin
• End to end ERP tools such as SAP Business Warehouse suite, Oracle Data Warehousing product suite and Peoplesoft EPM.