Learn About BI, Cloud and Big Data for Free

The Data Warehousing Institute is really busy this week, offering not one, but three free webinars on hot topics like BI, Big Data and cloud computing as an integration platform. If you live on the East Coast, this would be a good week to brown-bag lunch and sit in on these discussions.

CIOs contemplating how to use business intelligence tools for retail, logistics, supply chains or manufacturing or really any situation where you need mobile devices and geospatial data might want to sign up for the first event, scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday) at 9 PT/12 ET. The focus will be on best practices for cutting-edge BI applications, such as mobile BI, cloud computing and the role of data visualization tools and new kinds of data, including geospatial information.

David Stodder, the director of TDWI Research for business intelligence, will lead the event. He has a long record as an analyst, writer and researcher; among his credentials are work as a vice president and research director at Ventana Research and the founding chief editor of Intelligent Enterprise. The event is sponsored by Tableau Software.

If the Tuesday BI session wets your appetite for more BI, on Wednesday you might want to also check out the Aberdeen Group’s free presentation on, “Agile Business Intelligence: What is it, Why you might need it, and How you can achieve it.” It starts at 9 a.m. EDT, or 6 a.m. PDT. There are three speakers, including David White, Aberdeen’s senior research analyst on BI. He’ll be joined by Neil Pratt, the assistant principal at Bournville College’s CIS division, and Niall Thomas, a sales director at BI company NeutrinoBI.

TDWI’s Stodder will host “Managing Human Information in a Big Data World,” on Wednesday, Sept. 12, at 9 PT/12 ET. TDWI promises this discussion will provide strategic technology guidance, as well as best practices for using that 85 percent of unstructured data you have sitting around in email, Web pages and so on.

Why the “human information” in the title? Unstructured data tends to be “human information, generated by customers and prospects,” the write-up explains, and can provide clues to their behavior and influences. Of course, it will cover social media data, but it looks like the discussion will expand beyond that obvious choice into other forms of unstructured data that can provide insights.

This event is sponsored by Hewlett Packard, which is quieter in the Big Data space than other vendors, but is steadily working its way into the market.

Finally, on Thursday, Sept. 13, Philip Russom will host a free webinar on “Cloud – Your Next Data Integration Platform?” Russom is the director of TDWI Research for data management; he also heads up many of TDWI’s research-oriented publications, services and events. He’s been with TDWI since 2005, but previously worked as a BI analyst at a number of firms, including Forrester Research and the Hurwitz Group.

The TDWI notes that many technologies are first tried on-premise before moving to the cloud, and TDWI is now seeing this happen with data integration tools.

There are a few reasons why Russom thinks this makes sense. First, cloud computing relies on virtualized servers, which Russom notes “lends itself to data integration solutions.” Second, there’s Big Data, which has a number of characteristics — growth, capacity planning, tactical reactions to spikes in growth — all of which could be simplified using cloud computing, he writes. Third, there’s B2B, which gives companies in different locations a neutral place to stage and process B2B data.

But while there are use cases where it makes sense to use cloud-based integration, that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems, and that’s a big part of what Russom will discuss at this event, which also starts at 9 a.m., CT, or 12 p.m. ET.

All events will require you to sign up as a free user and register. If you’d like to save time, it’s possible to sign up for multiple TDWI events on one page.