Siebel data warehouse 1

[rohitk1973]

Sorry for duplicating this post. I posted the same post in Siebel ERP forum too.

I come from data warehousing background, specifically ETL. My understanding of Siebel is rudimentary. The company I work for is starting to implment Siebel7. The current data warehouse has data coming from SAP, Ariba, and few other systems. I am just being proactive to understand what may come my way down the road.
Is there a strong case for Siebel data to be analyzed over a given period of time?, for example, does it make sense to go digging data of an opportunity dated two years ago?

Siebel comes with its own inbuilt Informatica engine, if the organization has already identified a different ETL vendor as its preferred ETL, does it still make sense to use Siebel's Informatica interface, specially when the other vendor supplies extensions for Siebel data extraction?

If I remember correctly Siebel supplies canned Actuate reports for analytics, does it make sense to use a MOLAP tool for analytics.

I am copying this message to Data Warehouse forum, but am not sure if folks over there would be in any better position to answer this.

Hoping to start a good discussion, max thanks in adv.

 

[JRO061601]

Q: Does it make sense to analyze Siebel data over a long time period?
A: Up to your business users. Most would probably say 'yes' though.

As for the rest of your questions, I think it's important to understand exactly what Siebel is offering with Siebel 7. Siebel bought a ROLAP tool in 2001 called nQuire. They have since completely integrated it into their product suite. The Informatica routines are meant to ETL Siebel data into a pre-packaged data warehouse, where you can use pre-defined metadata and the nQuire tool (now called Siebel Analytics) to do all the OLAP analysis. I don't think they leverage Actuate at all. In fact, you can buy Siebel Analytics as a stand alone product and create your own OLAP solution using it has the engine and front-end.

I don't know if the other ETL vendors offer a mirror image of the Informatica routines. But I would say you essentially have a build versus buy argument on your hands. You can pay Siebel $$$ and get everything out of the box, or you can follow some best of breed approach and build it out yourself, or do something in between. You'll also have to determine if Siebel Analytics provides enough of what your end-users demand in terms of features and functionality.

FYI, there is also a Siebel Analytics forum available within Tek-Tips now.

Hope this helps.

 

[rohitk1973]

Thanks JRO061601. This is somewhat helpful.

So Siebel supplies a sort of ready-to-go CRM datamart. That would be something like Acta's eCaches for SAP data. Is this Siebel datamart on some sort of properitory database or its installable on Oracle? We have been burnt by Acta's eCaches in the past, they required a lot of custumization, so Siebels datamarts would be put thru rigorous testing, unless we decide to go ahead with custom development of CRM datamart.

Rightly said about nQuire reports. If Siebel's reports are meeting the requirements then Cognos need not be brought into picture at all. Cognos is the MOLAP tool accepted by my company.

Thanks again.

 

[JRO061601]

The Siebel datamart can reside on any major relational database. It is not proprietary. It is recommended that you also have independent servers for the middle-tier application server and the web application server. These can be on either NT/2000/XP or UNIX(AIX, Solaris, HP-UX).