Unfortunately, the drivers of data modelling were, and still are today, driven by the issues that are facing managers today, not what might be lurking around the corner tomorrow. Hence time and cost quite often out-muscle quality as the prevailing wind almost always includes the standard phrases “we don’t have time for that”, “what do we look like we are made of money”, and “just do the minimum necessary to deliver X before month-end”.  It is usually these same organizations that then wonder why they are constantly reinventing their data-warehousing models every 9-18 months. Seems there is never enough money to do it right but always enough to do it over.

What BI brings to the table is a more holistic approach to data analytics. The standard method data analytics is to work from the data model layout outwards to custom, usually one-off, type reports. The BI way is to start with the key management questions that need to be answered and work backwards to the data model.

This is a substantial difference in that it requires leadership to really think about what is important to the strategy, tactics, and operations of the organization. The process involves thinking about the analytics required to answer those questions and in turn what data is required to drive the analytics. The word “report” is something that should never be mentioned in a BI planning session because in a well-designed BI environment, there are no reports. There are only views of the metadata and methods of interpretation.

By focusing on methods rather than specific outcomes, the permutations of data views can be near limitless. Most likely only a few dozen may be required at a specific moment in time, but so long as the class of management questions that need to be addressed can be adequately described early on in the process, there is very little need to have to redesign the data warehouse.

Beyond this, the BI method becomes more strongly tied to the organizational strategy. Instead of asking “this is what I’ve got what can you give me”, the more competitive question in the BI world is “what am I missing and how do we get it”. This is again because the driver is focused on business outcomes not IM/IT expediency.

So enough of the background stuff – where is all this going

Gartner got a write-up in CBR Online on January 6^th as to their prediction that

By 2013 33% of BI functionality will be consumed via handheld devices. Initial mobile BI capabilities will focus on existing reports and dashboards ported to the mobile device, Gartner said, but by 2012 organisations and vendors will develop mobile analytic applications for specific tasks or domains. This should help take BI and analytics to a more mainstream audience, which in turn will mean more investment, according to Gartner.

Nice pipe dream but there are three very important points that Gartner failed to address. 1) Audience, 2) Culture, and 3) Security.

Audience: First off – which organizations? There is a very big distinction between the capabilities of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) compare to those of multi-national enterprises (MNEs). Bi is not a simple matter of just waiving a magic wand and it happens. Poorly designed BI systems are simply fancy reporting engines. If an organization wants people to think they are on the cutting edge the easiest way to give that appearance is to put some nebulous statistical report through Cognos, create a couple of rudimentary analytical cubes, and then stream to a mobile device. Technically they have delivered functionality using BI but what they have really done is taken an elephant gun to shoot a fly with corresponding similar results.

Culture: If anyone is in a good position to make a prediction of this nature come true it is SMEs. Primarily because niche players tend to substitute entrepreneurial spirit for capital in the production of goods and services. SMEs are better capable of driving innovative change as there are fewer hierarchical barriers to get through in order to make real change happen. The leadership of these organizations are more in tune with their operations and as such are more dynamically involved at a level that makes true BI applications work. Plus they have a greater vested interest as they are more strategically driven rather than tactically driven.

MNEs by contrast have to break down barriers of resistance to new ways of doing things. Large organizations have established bureaucracies which view change in very long cycles. While the implementation of the technical aspects of BI may receive very little resistance within the workplace, the cultural change required to develop BI solutions that take best advantage of these methodologies requires strong buy-in and leadership from the top. That means typically a 3-5 year cultural shift being driven by a consistent business plan and message to the troops. Considering that most executives at that level will typically move placements every 18 months or so, that is a very tall order for an MNE to overcome. In short, the odds that MNE’s are going to represent the bulk of those moving to this ‘new BI-order’ are somewhere between slim and none unless they are already on that path today.

Security: What is going to make the job even harder for MNEs to embrace this new BI-order on mobile devices is that security of transactions is still in its infancy. A well functioning BI system exposes a much broader spectrum of metadata to the outside world than do the simple transaction processing apps that have just in the last year made their way onto mobile devices. Protection and confidentiality of personally identifiable information is much more difficult BI systems because it requires substantially more layers of security than does a typical reporting mechanism. More layers means a larger number of points of failure in the system which could, if an organization was not careful, risk the exposure of hundreds or thousands data points.

Since BI specializes in methods of access, not just the raw data, that could potentially mean would be thieves of such information could not only steal gigabytes of raw information but also use those same methods to provide more relevant information than what raw data might be able to provide on its own. Consider that most SMEs take substantive short-cuts in security and development by comparison to the lengths a MNE will, all it would take is one high-profile theft to put the brakes on all development globally. Not necessarily stop but certainly it would slow things down dramatically.

It is true that as more organizations start to find product means of putting BI-rich applications onto mobile devices, the more the consumer will demand of other companies to do the same. My feeling however is that, 2013-2014 is an extremely aggressive target. It appears to ignore the types of organization that is leading this charge and the cultural shift that will be required to get there. It is, in my mind, a best case scenario of which any project manager will tell you the best case rarely happens in information technology.

Could I see these numbers being surpassed by the end of the decade? Sure but if it were me I’d probably drive out the predictive analysis to range between 2014-2016 after which we should start to see an exponential rise as public confidence in these types of technologies solidifies. Public confidence which btw also follows its own timelines and not that of Gartner.

Still – will be interesting this next decade me thinks.

- Kevin Feenan

To understand why World of Warcraft provides these capabilities it is first important to understand the foundations of the WOW world. Game play is sub-divided into five main categories each of which is mutually supporting of each other: questing, battlegrounds, raids, dungeons, and professions. The combination of each of these categories means that there really isn’t an “end game” to playing the software. Rather, game play can go on indefinitely.

PART I – World of Warcraft

Questing, or levelling, is the main thread of the game. WOW itself is broken up into 4 graphic novels consisting of the main WOW modules and 3 expansion modules: The Burning Crusade, The Lich King, and now Cataclysm. Each story line requires that the character gain increasingly more difficult levels of experience (known as levelling) in order to complete “end game”. That is, the final chapter of the storyline for that specific module.  The character goes on a series of quests that reveal parts of the storyline and gains experience.  The main WOW modules go to level 60. The Burning Crusade goes to level 70. The Lich King goes to level 80. And Cataclysm goes to level 85. Getting to these levels allows you to finish the novel, usually with the help of other adventurers and play out the last of the story line.

Professions could almost be considered to be a sub-plot to the main story line. Adventurers can select from up to 6 primary and secondary professions including tailoring, blacksmithing, mining, herbalism, cooking, fishing, and more. Each of these skills provides some benefit towards the other aspects of game play. Cooking for example allows a character to create foods which will replenish health and sometimes convey special attributes which are not normally available such as increased strength.  The goods which are gathered or produced as part of a profession can in turn be sold to a vendor for a set price or auctioned at an auction house.

Auction Houses (also known as AH) allow for the development of a free market for goods to be traded between adventurers. So for example, if I choose mining as one of my primary professions (you are allowed 2), then anything which I mine, such as copper ore, I can place on the AH at a price of my choosing for a specific length of time. I pay a commission to list the item which I lose if the item doesn’t sell. Other people can undermine my price point however if the market is strong for a particular good, then most items which are reasonably priced will typically sell. The benefit is that items on the AH typically sell at 10-100x the amount you can sell your items to a vendor. The drawback is that you can sometimes lose more game tokens through repeated attempts to sell an item than the item will fetch once it is finally sold.

Battlegrounds are areas where random teams of players face off against one another. Some battlegrounds are a simple ‘capture the flag’ type of game whereas others have a specific objective each team needs to complete. In either case the battleground engages people in player-verses-player combat where tactics play as much a role as simply completing the objective. Battlegrounds also represent a sub-plot to the main storyline in that there is a direct tie in between the objectives of the battleground and the main questing storyline. Battlegrounds earn players experience which helps with levelling.

Dungeons are also a sub-plot to the main storyline. Dungeons are essentially quests which require a team of 5 players to cooperate on more complex questing activities. Not all dungeons are ancillary to the main storyline.  Dungeons also tend to contain higher value prizes such as better armour, weapons, toys, or spells than what can be obtained through regular questing. Dungeons earn players experience which helps with levelling.

Raids are the last form of sub-plots to the main storyline. Similar to a Dungeon, a raid is a dungeon which may require up to 40 people in order to complete although most raids typically require either 10 or 25 people. Raids typically have the best prizes for completing the raid objective and provide experience toward levelling.

Other components to the WOW game include achievement awards (over 1000) which range anywhere from speed to complete a dungeon to the number of kills on a battlefield or the number of cooking recipes collected and prepared.  Some achievements are only available at specific times of the year such as Halloween and Christmas.  In addition, players can form self-organizing groups called “guilds” which allow groups of like-minded adventurers to pool their resources for a specific purpose. For example, some guilds exist to reach ‘end game’, others are for doing raid challenges, and others are simply just for social fun.

PART II – World of Teachcraft

The variety of content available within World of Warcraft, and the consistency by which it is applied, is what makes the environment particularly suitable for conducting lab studies on various topics including leadership, teambuilding, operations, information technology, statistics, sociology, psychology, economics, and education. Four very notable factors are important to utilizing WOW effectively.

The first is the consistency of the starting conditions for battlegrounds, dungeons, and raids. In order to effectively examine the outcomes of a specific application of knowledge, the starting conditions need to be consistently applied each time the lab assignment starts. The second is the size of the target population from which the lab obtains its sample size from. The third is the ability to establish reasonable boundaries on the sample size from the target population. And lastly is the statistical significance of the results based on the number samples that can be taken.

If this looks like a lot of statistical work then congratulations, you’ve just discovered the first and most primary educational objective to why WOW is such an ideal tool. Without even designing experiments there is a wealth of statistical opportunity that is available to those in the math profession that established the groundwork for other types of educational content that can be developed for WOW.

The auction houses provide a rich opportunity to develop micro and macro-economic models of how a free floating economy works. Principles of arbitrage, production supply and demand,  factors of production, competition, and other economic principles can be examined as they apply to virtual economies. This may include parallels with other forms of economic trading situations such as stock markets.

Sociology and psychology are obvious area in which lab assignments can be generated. The narratives and interrelationships of ‘people watching’ within public space provides opportunity to examine networks and collaborations.

Leadership and teamwork can be examined from the points of view of battleground, dungeons, and raids. How to groups self-organize? What types of leadership theory are in place? How to people react to stress? Differences in attitude when their side is winning verses losing. How does this compare and contrast with the real-world environments? There are a myriad of questions that can be asked and examined on a micro scale within WOW across a variety of social conditions.

Guilds provide for opportunities for people to explore their operational and information management capabilities. The development of add-on programs for the WOW game through established application programmed interfaces (APIs) publically available in the game. Some guilds develop their own external social networking sites through NING and other platforms. A guild’s hierarchy may sometimes account for specific roles as to operational management which have co-relationships with logistics and materials management.

The ways in which the platform can be used to develop training and / or laboratory assignments ancillary to learning is in part bounded only by the imagination of the instructors that choose to use the platform to its maximum advantage. The platform however is not without its disadvantages some of which have become self-evident through the World of Teachcraft program. 

The first is an understanding by the student of the platform and how it works. It takes a player, on average, until about level 20 before they start to become comfortable with the interface and the nature of the game. This includes a fair bit of instruction to short-cut the learning process. More realistically, a minimum level of 30 is needed so that students are not trying to overcome two learning challenges which divide attention: the first being the game, and the second being the classroom objectives. This imples approximately  1-2 months worth of “pre-assignment” with the average homework being 4-6 hours of game play per week supported by targeted activities so that students do not get distracted by other game elements.

The second is the very nature of the game itself. Computer games can have a tendency to become self-addictive. While currently literature shows that using an immersive 3D environment to supplement classroom based learning increases comprehension and retention, there is a line over which game play can become counter-productive. Classroom programs that use WOW and other 3D immersive games need to be careful to structure the relationship between classroom – 3D immersion – and real life application such that the “end game” focus is on the real-life application and not on the 3D immersion experience otherwise there is potential for the participants (including the instructors) to lose focus on the objectives.

On balance, the benefits of the 3D immersive experience outweighs the drawbacks. As 3D environments become more and more commonplace, the challenge will be how to more appropriately structure future applications rather than bending other virtual environments to educational needs for which they were not originally intended. For now we work with what we have. As a ready-made 3D immersive environment World of Warcraft provides unique opportunities to play with the future today, and if for no other reason it provides opportunities to identify what they future should look like, not necessarily what it will look like.

At the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show, Steve Ballmer announced the latest and greatest Windows 7 which “will make PCs faster and easier to use”.

This got me to thinking (always a bad sign) that, the propaganda around an operating system being “faster, easier, more reliable” notwithstanding, we really have sort of hit the limit of the current user interface. Are there improvements that can be made? Sure. However every ‘innovation’ seems to be a play on the same theme where software companies are simply conducting refinements of the product – the addition of bells and whistles so to speak – rather than actually making things easier.

The MS ribbon introduced into all MS 2007 products for example is the most hideous non-user friendly piece of ergonometry that has even been invented. How this ever got put into production I will likely never know but considering the cost of having to retrain everyone on the face of the planet who uses MS products because they won’t be able to find anything after upgrading is a cost that I think most businesses will start cursing MS over once they discover exactly how messed up it is.

Regardless – I digress. So here is the thing: Really, the next stage of operating systems is not about making them necessarily faster but rather to make the user interface more intuitive and ergonomic. To that end, products such as Second Life I could very easily see as being the next real stage of development of the operating system such that your desktop becomes a virtual world. Second Life already has been extremely innovative by incorporating a number of applications into a 3d space and making them accessible. The next step would be to integrate something like Second Life with the operating system.

So here is a potential vision: You as an avatar would be able to use a gaming interface, or possibly something like a Wii controller, to manipulate your virtual office area. This is your private space which may simply be a room or could be an entire island from which to explore. Similar to how you invite others over for dinner, you could have the option to invite people over to your “pad” or similarly go to their personal desktop for social interactions. This might include watching videos, music, working on an application together, any number of things. As a group you could then go out to other virtual worlds, take a class, role playing games, etc..

This is likely going to be the next big innovation in operating systems. The question is – who is going to go there first.

Personally I think it would be it would a stunning achievement if Linden Lab and Nintendo’s Wii were to do a trial to see what the impacts are for working with different interfaces in a 3D environment. IBM is already working with Linden Lab to seamlessly transfer avatar agents from one virtual world to another. So the idea isn’t really all that far fetched and could be a reality within the next 5 years.

Now that is innovation.