Over half of data warehouse projects doomed

More than 50 per cent of data warehouse projects during the next two years are doomed to outright failure or will have only limited acceptance, industry analysts warned today.

The main problems with such rollouts centre on a lack of attention to data quality issues, according to Gartner.

"Many enterprises fail to recognise that they have an issue with data quality. They focus only on identifying, extracting and loading data to the warehouse, but do not take the time to assess the quality," said Ted Friedman, principal analyst at Gartner.

"Consistency and accuracy of data is critical to success with business intelligence, and data quality must be viewed as a business issue and responsibility, not just an IT problem."

Friedman added that enterprises must eliminate multiple data silos, assign stewardship to critical data, and implement a process for the continuous monitoring and measurement of data quality.

Gartner went on to cite its recent survey in which chief information officers said that business intelligence implementations will be a significant factor in delivering IT's contribution to business growth. However, the analyst firm believes that most businesses are failing to use business intelligence strategically.

"It is hard to believe that IT organisations still build data warehouses with little or no business involvement," said Frank Buytendijk, research vice president at Gartner.

"But some IT experts still believe it is important to anticipate the needs of the users. They also suffer from the 'Atlas Syndrome', trying to carry the weight of the world on its shoulders, and solving problems the users do not understand. As valid as this may seem, it results in a negative outcome."