Content area
Full text
The reasons, hurdles, and benefits
SQL Server 2008, with its built-in SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), SQL Server Integration Services (SSlS), and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) business intelligence (BI) subsystems, is a recognized leader in the enterprise BI space. In this interview, SQL Server Magazine's Megan Keller and Michael Otey talk with IIan Wajsman, director of IT Data Systems at Stein Mart, and Fausto !barra, senior director of Microsoft Business Intelligence, about Stein Mart's experiences migrating from a legacy platform with limited BI reporting tools to SQL Server 2008. IIan shares some of the main reasons why Stein Mart migrated to the SQL Server platform, the hurdles faced along the way, and the benefits that Stein Mart attained from the move.
Ibarra: As you know, most companies today are facing a data explosion with terabytes or petabytes of data that they need to manage. Forrester research estimates that the amount of data in large databases is growing aï 65 percent per year. One company facing such a growth in data is Stein Mart. Stein Mart is a large department store chain that's based in Florida. And, like so many other retailers, it's always looking for ways to get better intelligence and better insights into its business. Specifically, it was looking for a new BI system that would offer faster data reporting and new ways to analyze data. It had previously been using a BI system based on technology by IBM. Stein Mart chose a data warehousing and BI solution built on SQL Server 2008 with hardware from HP. As a result of this migration to a new system, Stein Mart not only got new tools for business analysis and forecasting but also was able to reduce the time it takes to generate its weekly sales reports from 14 hours to only 3 hours. And it was able to get significant savings of the order of $600,000 per year in IT operation costs. So, let me introduce you to IIan, who's going to be walking you through the project and what Stein Mart found out.
Wajsman: At Stein Mart, we faced some technical limitations because of our infrastructure and we needed to increase our BI capabilities. The existing solution we had was running...