NECUG Meeting

September 22nd, 2011

Littleton, MA


Agenda

8:30 – 9:00 am Registration

9:00 am – 9:15 am Welcome and Introduction

9:15 – 10:00
am Dashboard Design Tips

(Featuring IBM Cognos 8.4 and a SQL Server Database)

Presenter(s): Greg Novotony, Architect, Enterprise Business Intelligence & Analytics

Greg will discuss best practices for designing dashboards and will build a stacked portal page on the fly.
(stacked, meaning one portal page nested inside another)The portal will have both horizontal and vertical tabs (allows user 1 point of entry for 30-40 pre-run reports) The underlying reports will be visually appealing (increases user adoption) and will include a combination of object types (list, crosstabs, charts, heatmaps,etc.)The underlying reports will be pre-run, but may include drill through links to more detailed data

10:00 – 10:45 am Automating Administration & the BI Life-Cycle

(Featuring MotioCI 2.1 & MotioPI 2.5)

Presenter(s): Adam Bonneau Senior Software Developer & Lead Feature Developer at Motio Duke University: BSE Civil Engineering, BS Economics, BA Public Policy, Honor Societies Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, & Chi Epsilon;

Founded in 1999, Motio is the leader and largest 3rd party Cognos software technology provider; building solutions targeted at automating and address standard Cognos process and challenges. All uniquely innovated (some weakly imitated) our solutions range from 100% and Complete BI Change Management, Automatic Report Testing, and Cognos Stress Testing, to Cognos Admin Utility Solutions, Mass Report Spec Analysis and Documentation, and BI Output Storage and Retention.  With thousands of software customers, ranging from mom-and-pop to Fortune 10, and the largest Cognos customers in the world, our applications are designed to scale, address broad BI challenges, and deliver to any organization seeking better managed and more effective BI.

10:45 am Break

11:00 am Data Virtualization

Presenter(s): Jason Hull

11:45 am IBM??

12:00 pm Lunch Networking

12:45 – 1:30 pm “Ask The Experts” Round Table

1:30-2:15 pm Predictive Analytics with IBM SPSS Modeler

Presenter(s): Daniel Hess, Jing Yin, Technical Consultant at The Ironside Group

(Featuring IBM SPSS Modeler 14)

Jing will discuss how organizations can take advantage of the predictive power of data mining to automate decisions to achieve business goals and deliver better results. The presentation will include a demo session to show how to use IBM SPSS Modeler to build a data mining stream to quickly identity trends behind the data. The demo will highlight on some of the advanced features of SPSS Modeler including automated data preparation and modeling, result visualization, IBM Cognos integration etc.

For many years, Cognos clients and users have only had the ability to renew their subscription and support for their licenses through IBM at full entitled price.  As of April 2011, IBM has authorized Ironside to resell S&S directly to users, very often at a discounted price.  Many organizations have begun to take advantage of discounts and credits by being cognizant of the start and end dates of their S&S cycles.  By keeping an open dialogue with Ironside we have ensured that our clients will have every opportunity to save money on their S&S and trade-up purchases. Read more

Since IBM Cognos 10 was released last winter, upgrading has become a very hot topic among the Cognos user community. Why upgrade? There are many reasons: new features and functionalities, easier to use, better performance and more. Cognos 10 will not only serve your business better but also deliver a revolutionary new experience as well as expand traditional business intelligence with planning, scenario modeling, real-time monitoring and predictive analytics in one place. Here are some eye-catching new features: Read more

IBM Cognos Tomcat Heap Monitoring with PSI-Probe

Some of the most common requests that we field from our clients are related to IBM Cognos application performance tuning. Most administrators have the desire to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their applications and make the most out of the hardware they are hosted upon and Cognos is no exception to this practice. Read more