We are excited to welcome Stephanie Chee to the BiTQ family. Stephanie is BiTQ’s first entrant into our graduate program. BiTQ are committed in helping students transition into the world of working and provide them with the required skills that will enable them to adapt and contribute successfully in society post their Graduation.

Focus on Stephanie:

Stephanie is in her final year at QUT and will graduate in November with a double degree Bachelor of Business Administration and Bachelor of Information Technology, majoring in Finance and Information Systems.

Stephanie is the current President of Women in Technology at QUT. She is also an active member in the QUT Economics and Finance Society and a recognised award recipient in the Golden Key International Honour Society. 

Her current interests range within the realms of food, from wine and dine to watching Gordon Ramsay's cooking channels. 

Stephanie is enthusiastic to be working with BiTQ. BiTQ’s mission is to help Stephanie gain an understanding around the value of creating data transformation strategies that deliver that the right data, presented to the right person(s), in the right format, at the right time.

Welcome aboard Stephanie. Let the good times roll.

If you would like to contact Stephanie, email us at info@bitq.com.au or visit www.bitq.com.au

In my previous article, I explained the need for Data Warehouse Automation to reduce the cost and the time to market for an enterprise grade data warehouse.

There are several companies offering data warehouse automation tools today. They all seem to have a different approach to achieving this automation and therefore require slightly different skill sets and level of effort from the developers using the tools.

If you use Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to build your data warehouses, you would most likely have heard of the Business Intelligence Markup Language (Biml) brought to us by Varigence. This has been included in the hugely popular BidsHelper add-on since 2011, and has been used by many ETL developers since. Since 2011 Biml & BimlScript have enabled developers to create frameworks which remove the repetition from their day-to-day jobs, thereby reducing the development time and cost of their projects.

Now Varigence is on the cusp of releasing their new flagship product, BimlFlex, which will take their offering to a completely new level. Prior to this, I and my colleagues used BimlExpress & BimlStudio to reduce effort and time spent on data warehousing projects. This was possible by an investment we made up front to use these tools with custom metadata frameworks. BimlFlex comes with an extremely rich metadata framework already baked into the product, which allows new and existing customers to gain even more efficiencies in their data warehouse automation.

The kind folk at Varigence have recently provided me with a Beta version of BimlFlex, and to say that I am very impressed is an understatement. They were recently involved in a Data Warehouse Automation proof of concept shoot out, in which they were identified as the clear front runner. They are busy preparing a white paper about this, which I will share when it’s available.

See future articles in which I discuss the main features of BimlFlex. I’ll discuss why this product can reduce your TCO and speed up your delivery of better information systems to your key decision makers.

These days I often hear people say that data warehouses are no longer needed due to a plethora of modern self-service BI tools (e.g. Microsoft Power BI), which allow end users to combine data from different systems and formats into a model for use in reporting and dashboards. Although these tools have certainly started allowing that in simple circumstances, they are a long way away from replacing the value that organisations get from an enterprise grade data warehouse (DW).

Data Warehouses provide the following advantages:

Better decision making - a DW acts as the central repository for data from multiple transactional systems and should be the main source for any cross functional reporting (single source of truth).Corporate governance – a properly executed DW will guarantee the quality and consistency of data.Historical Intelligence – a DW keeps track of the changes in data attributes allowing analytics based on how the data looked at a point in time.Increased Performance – a DW has been designed with reporting performance in mind.Scale – DWs can become very big while still maintaining performance.

Most of the modern self-service BI tools do not provide these benefits. Copies of the solutions end up everywhere. They are hard to manage. They are limited in size and performance. The accuracy of the data cannot be guaranteed. Don’t get me wrong, I do love some of the benefits of these tools, but I feel that they are best used when they source their data from a data warehouse.

Data Warehouses, however, can cost a lot of money to implement and maintain. I chuckle every time I hear someone say that their data warehouse project is finished. Businesses are in a state of constant change, and therefore so should your DW/BI program be. Data warehouses lose their value quickly if not maintained. This cost has traditionally been one of the main inhibitors to organisations adopting a proper data warehousing strategy.

To reduce the costs associated with implementing and maintaining a data warehouse, you should be looking at one of the many data warehouse automation tools available to us today. Data warehouse automation has come a long way in the last 10 years and there are several technologies that can provide you with significant time and money savings when executing on a data warehouse program of works. See some of my follow up articles where I discuss some of these data warehouse automation tools and their benefits to your business and your bottom line.

BiTQ was founded because two individuals had complimenting contrasts in their approach to helping organisations achieve success.

Craig is exceptionally talented technically. Craig loves designing and building systems that help organisations make sense of the vast amounts of disparate data that exist. Craig is well known at Microsoft for his efforts around their BI products. In fact, Craig even runs the Microsoft Power BI user group for Queensland.

David is extremely passionate about organisational growth. David joined the corporate realms of Australia to enhance his understanding of the local business environment. During this time, David invested three years of long nights and endless weekends into completing a Masters in Leading Innovation and Change. David has a relentless drive to help organisations achieve their business critical objectives, realise their visions and accomplish their growth ambitions.

When David and Craig decided to join forces, it made sense for David to join Craig's already successful company (then named TetraQuark). BiTQ is the re-branding of that company.