Real Time Applications Increasingly Becoming a Reality
But it may be a long while?if ever?before such real-time reporting dominates. "We look at it as a supplemental tool to our data mart," says Thomas Adler, manager of customer data and integration at the California State Automobile Association (CSAA), which is evaluating Iteration’s suite. "A lot of the reporting that we do on regular [time] increments is going to be fine." But if all goes well, the Iteration application will bridge an information gap, allowing CSAA to quickly route time-critical information to those who need it in minutes?not days.
Of course, this does raise a big question: Where is all this real-time data access headed? A control panel full of dials showing the average words per minute of typists in an enterprise? The average number of syllables per closing for each salesperson? Ridiculous? Of course. But considering that not many years ago a request such as "I need that worldwide sales summary by next week" used to give IT folks the giggles, isn’t it interesting to be so close to the other end of absurd?
