Visual Business Modelling

With the latest release of its data warehouse technology, Kalido has introduced an interesting new twist on business modelling. Previously in a Kalido implementation, as with a custom build warehouse, the design of the warehouse (the hierarchies, fact tables, relationships etc) was done with business users in a whiteboard-style setting. Usually the business model was captured in Visio diagrams (or perhaps PowerPoint) and then the implementation consultant would take the model and implement it in Kalido using the Kalido GUI configuration environment. There is now a new product, a visual modelling tool that is much more than a drawing tool. The new business modeller allows you to draw out relationships, but like a CASE tool (remember those?) it has rules and intelligence built into the diagrams, validating whether relationships defined in the drawing make sense and are valid or otherwise as rules are added to the model.

Once the model is developed and validated, it can be directly applied to a Kalido warehouse, and the necessary physical schemas are built (for example a single entity “Product SKU” will be implemented in staging tables, conformed dimensions and in one or many data marts). There is no intermediate stage of definition required any more. Crucially, this means that there is no necessity to keep the design diagrams in sync with the model; the model is the warehouse, essentially. For existing Kalido customers (at least those on the latest release), the business modeller works in reverse as well—it can read an existing Kalido warehouse and generate a visual model from that. This has been tested on nine of the scariest, most complex use cases deployed (in some cases these involve hundreds of business entities and extremely complex hierarchical structures), and seems to work according to early customers of the tool. Some screenshots can be seen here.

In addition to the business modeller Kalido has a tool that better automates its linkage to Business Objects and other BI tools. Kalido has for a long time had the ability to generate a Business Objects universe, a useful feature for those who deploy this BI tool, and more recently extended this to Cognos. In the new release it revamps these bridges using technology from Meta Integration. Given the underlying technology, it will now be a simple matter to extend the generation of BI metadata beyond Business Objects and Cognos to other BI tools as needed, and, in principle, backwards also into the ETL and data modelling world.

The 8.4 release has a lot of core date warehouse enhancements; indeed this is the largest functional release of the core technology for years. There is now automatic staging area management, which simplifies the process of source extract set-up and further minimises the need for ETL technology in Kalido deployments (Kalido always had an ELT, rather than an ETL philosophy). One neat new feature is the ability to do a “rewind” on a deployed warehouse. As a warehouse is deployed then new data is added and changes may occur to its structure (perhaps new hierarchies). Kalido’s great strength was always its memory of these events, allowing “as is” and “as was” reporting. Version 8.4 goes one step further and allows an administrator to simply roll the warehouse back to a prior date, rather as you would rewind recording of a movie using your PVR. This includes fully automated rollback of loaded data, structural changes and BI model generation. Don’t try this at home with your custom built warehouse or SAP BW.

This is a key technology release for Kalido, a company who has a track record of innovative technology that has in the past pleased its customers (I know; I used to do the customer satisfaction survey personally when I worked there) but has been let down by shifting marketing messages and patchy sales execution. An expanded US sales team now has a terrific set of technology arrows in its quiver; hopefully it will find the target better in 2008 than it has in the past.