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Architecture options - European Service DW

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flicg

IS-IT--Management
Nov 17, 2005
12
GB
I need to provide a reporting solution based on a DW design for the service business in EMEA. The reports required have one thing in common: they will all use data from a Siebel Service/ClickSchedule deployment on a common European db. This is being rolled out country by country. The service reporting solution will follow this project as it completes each country. However, the service reports also need data from other applications: e.g. Financials, billing, inventory, service planning etc. Each country has a different application, or a sometimes a different flavour of the same application in each country and they all run on separate, country-specific databases.

One other thing: there are two related projects ongoing to harmonise all these backoffice systems to one European ERP system and another project to harmonize the European data model across all systems. These are long term projects & I can’t hold off this project until those are done.

The service business wants country-specific reporting immediately and is less interested in a European view. (the second needs the first anyway). The IT steer is to have a single European data warehouse – presumably the idea is to rationalise development and maintenance costs, and reuse / share reports rather than duplicate them.

My question is: should each country implement it’s own DW (staging, ODS, data warehouse, service datamart) and at some point in the future link or merge to a European DW. Or should we just build one DW (same model) around the Siebel application and integrate all the country-specific BackOffice systems to it and when the ERP project finishes integrate that to the DW and undo the integration of all the country-specific back office systems?

There is one DW in the group already which is also in the same country where the Siebel app was first deployed. So the other question is whether we start from that or start again, possibly with new tools. I know that Siebel is not ‘leading’(?) in that DW and apparently it would require a lot of work to change it to be the starting point for a European DW. That country has Oracle as the db, BODI for the ETL, Microsoft Analysis Services for the MOLAP and an excel based tool developed by the local DW consultancy as the front end for users.

Sorry for my newbieness. My background is Clarify / Peoplesoft CRM and I am 3 weeks old to data warehousing.
 
Are there legal implications which might force the issue? That is, are there separate corporations or tax issues which might require separate DW's and a master DW at headquarters?

How about long term viability? Is the company planning to sell or buy assets in the near future? The decision you are asking about is strategic, and you need to get more info from the corporate executives or provide them with enough info from your end so they can make the decision. This is not purely a technical decision.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
 
Thanks! I have asked about this.
 
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