What makes a successful BI Centre of Excellence or BI Competency Centres as they are commonly known?  We were recently asked this and came up with the following.

Here is a copy of the TM1 version 10.1 New Features Guide from IBM. 

InfoCube customers and friends are able to book your seat at Forum and receive up to a $550 per seat discount from IBM and InfoCube.

According to an IBM website in Switzerland, there is a Business Analytics Round Table in Zurich on 27 March 2012.  At this event the following will be reviewed:

This excellent summary was written by Dan Hess of the Ironside Group.  It provides insight into the use of levels from a TM1 dimension for use in Report Studio (and indeed Cognos Express Xcelerator and Cognos Express Reporter).

TM1 and Report Studio – The Mystery of the Missing Levels

As many of you know, TM1 has become a major component of the IBM Cognos BI application offerings. As a corporate OLAP solution, there are a number of advantages to utilizing TM1 versus PowerPlay; from faster response times in larger cubes to the capability to handle vast volumes of data. The expectation of course is that the application will work within the IBM Cognos BI infrastructure, specifically within the user facing studios that make Cognos a best of breed solution. While this is true in most aspects, there are a couple of “work arounds” that must be implemented in order to optimize the user experience with TM1 as an MDX based data source.

This article was originally posted by Rick Ensign from The Ironside Group and we thought it to be an excellent article, especially for those of us who come from an EP backgroup originally!

Managing SKIPCHECK and Feeders in IBM Cognos TM1

When you first begin to use TM1, especially if you came from the EP world as I did, you can quickly become enamored with how well TM1 can handle large cubes with ease. You can create multiple hierarchies within a cube and within those hierarchies TM1’s sparse consolidation algorithm aggregates values at light speed. You can reach out to virtually any data source with a Turbo Integrator (TI) process and create a dimension, create and populate a cube with data, or a myriad of other tasks only limited by the developer’s imagination. The challenge comes when you need to write rules governing more complex calculations or movement of data between cubes. No intuitive D-Links or BiF’s here. Everything must be coded, and getting the calculations to work properly requires mastering the art of feeders.

The IBM Redguide for Cognos 10 highlights the features of IBM Cognos BI version 10.

IBM publish their own books for use with their products.  The IBM Cognos 10 Redbook is available here.

I received an interesting email the other day from a colleague regarding an alternative way of financing software, hardware, support and InfoCube services from IBM.  Using IBM Global Finance (which apparently is in the top ten largest financial institutions globally), you can lease the entire package so that it includes not only the hardware and software, but also our services to implement the solution.  Neat, huh!

Configure single signon between CX 9.5 and Windows 2008

I found this blog post by Tim Richardson from GrowthPath in Melbourne extremely thought provoking and an excellent, although simple analysis of the opporutnity costs involved with extending the monthly close process for a smallish enterprise.

The IBM Business Analytics Forum (Cognos Forum, as it used to be known) will be held in Melbourne next Year in the week building up to the Australian Grand Prix.

Save up to $550 from your booking: InfoCube customers and friends are able to book your seat at Forum and receive up to a $450 per seat discount from IBM.  All you need to do is quote the promotional code "INFOC" (for InfoCube) when booking and you will be offered this discount.  Please let us know when you have done this and when it is confirmed by IBM, we will pass on additional cashback to you of another $100, saving you a total of $550 off your registration fee (this is limited to the first 10 people who advise us of their registration).

The only official guide to building effective business solutions with TM1 from IBM Cognos

Cognos iPad app now included with Enhanced Consumer license and mobile server now included with Cognos 10.1.1.

Nesting dimensions from SAP BW InfoCubes in Cognos Report Studio reports can sometimes lead to failure when the report is run.  This is primarily because the amount of data returned by the query can very quickly become enormous.  This discussion gives some pointers as to how you might overcome the problem.