OLAP usage in the UK

The use of OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) is gaining ground, especially in these straitened times when organisations are increasingly keen to squeeze any advantage out of data that is already held in the transactional systems.

An OLAP database is populated with data from transactional systems and held in a form that facilitates rapid analysis. It is not uncommon to think of the UK as lagging behind the US when it comes to the adoption of new computer technologies. However, OLAP is an exception and there has been interest in OLAP in the UK for many years. If you'd like to gain more knowledge of the OLAP market and possible future developments, there are a number of places to find out more.

The industry analyst Nigel Pendse first published The OLAP Report in 1995 and last year (2009) it transmogrified into The BI Verdict. This subscription-based site offers coverage of BI products and market analyses; it also runs The BI Survey, an independent annual survey of BI users.

Another sign of the popularity of OLAP comes in the rise of organisations such as Obis Omni which act as a forum for people and companies interested in any aspect of Business Intelligence. Obis Omni (a rough translation of which is “Meet everyone”) is an independent body which runs regular forums, offering talks from those in the industry and the opportunity to talk to people who share an interest in BI.

Obis Omni has around 2,500 members and its most recent move has been to instigate The Cloud Circle, a ‘networking community’ for those interested in cloud computing. A forum on this topic is scheduled for the 20th of April and the next general BI forum for the 15th of September 2010, both to be held in London.

Research by the BeyeNETWORK suggests that adoption of data warehouse appliances is increasing. These appliances are a popular way of implementing a database for analytical purposes and are frequently adopted at departmental level and, in the right circumstances, they can enhance the BI strategy of an organisation. The site (actually a range of sites including French, German and American ones) requires a sign-up for access to all content.

A report published by Datamonitor, also available from ReportBuyer titled ‘Understanding Adoption of Business Intelligence Solutions’ indicates that a growing number of organisations planned to invest in BI over the next two years. Although the survey of 500 IT decision makers across western Europe, the US and Australia took place before the economic downturn, recession, call it what you will, this appears to be an accurate prediction.

As Obis Omni director Jay Butcher puts it, “At our forums in the UK we see dramatic evidence of the increasing uptake across the entire spectrum of Business Intelligence technologies including, of course, OLAP. There is a general awareness that business value is locked inside data already held by the organisation, and releasing that value may give the business what it needs to mitigate the current economic gloom.”

Multi-dimensional analysis has become mainstream and represents a growth area and an attractive career path. For anyone with an existing interest in and knowledge of database systems in general, the move to acquiring a more specialised knowledge of multi-dimensional systems is could be an excellent one.