Research

I’ve been asked by one of our sales guys to give a presentation of data warehousing strategy to a potential customer... talk about open ended. I suspect they want to know if what they already do is still sound, if they could do it better, and whether their current supplier is giving good value. The only clear steer was to keep it vendor neutral.

So today has been spent knocking up a library of “compare and contrast” slides for half a dozen database vendors and perhaps the same again for BI tools. I won’t use them all at the presentation, but I have them at hand in case I’m asked.

So, what’s the point of this piece? Is it that I get asked to present? No, it’s that when I started out I thought this would be quick as I knew the topic and had a good idea of what I was going to say, but when I came to verify things I found that some things have changed (sneaky vendors adding new features). What I knew a few months ago may not always true now. The overall story is much the same – but it’s getting the detail right that wins prizes.