IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio - Practical Examples

Maximize the Value of Business Intelligence with IBM Cognos v10 -- Hands-on, from Start to Finish
This easy-to-use, hands-on guide brings together all the information and insight you need to drive maximum business value from IBM Cognos v10. Long-time IBM Cognos expert and product designer Sangeeta Gautam thoroughly illuminates Cognos BI v10’s key capabilities: analysis, query, reporting, and dashboards.

Gautam shows how to take full advantage of each key IBM Cognos feature, including brand-new innovations such as Active Reports and the new IBM Cognos Workspace report consumption environment. She concludes by walking you through successfully planning and implementing an integrated business intelligence solution using IBM’s best-practice methodologies. The first and only guide of its kind, IBM Cognos Business Intelligence v10 offers expert insights for BI designers, architects, developers, administrators, project managers, nontechnical end-users, and partners throughout all areas of the business—from sales and marketing to operations and lines of business. If you’re pursuing official IBM Cognos certification, you’ll also find Cognos certification sample questions and information to help you with the certification process.

Coverage Includes
• Understanding IBM Cognos BI’s components and open, extensible architecture
• Working with IBM Cognos key “studio” tools: Analysis Studio, Query Studio, Report Studio, and Event Studio
• Developing and managing powerful reports that draw on the rich capabilities of IBM Cognos Workspace and Workspace Advanced
• Designing Star Schema databases and metadata models to answer the questions your organization cares about most
• Efficiently maintaining and systematically securing IBM Cognos BI environments and their objects
• Using IBM Cognos Connection as your single point of entry to all corporate data
• Building interactive, easy-to-manage Active Reports for casual business users
• Using new IBM Cognos BI v10.1 Dynamic Query Mode (DQM) to improve performance with complex heterogeneous data
• Identifying, exploring, and exploiting hidden data relationships
• Creating quick ad hoc queries that deliver fast answers
• Establishing user and administrator roles

VoIP Performance Management and Optimization

A KPI-based approach to managing and optimizing VoIP networks

IP Communications

Adeel Ahmed, CCIE® No. 4574

Habib Madani

Talal Siddiqui, CCIE No. 4280

VoIP Performance Management and Optimization is the first comprehensive, expert guide to managing, monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimizing large VoIP networks. Three leading Cisco VoIP experts bring together state-of-the-art techniques for ensuring that customer service level agreements (SLA) are consistently met or exceeded.

The authors begin by reviewing how VoIP is deployed in enterprise and service provider networks and the performance tradeoffs and challenges associated with each leading VoIP deployment model. Next, they present a comprehensive approach to diagnosing problems in VoIP networks using key performance indicators (KPI) and proactively addressing issues before they impact service.

In this book, you will find a proven tools-based strategy for gauging VoIP network health and maximizing performance and voice quality. You also will learn how to perform trend analysis and use the results for capacity planning and traffic engineering—thereby optimizing your networks for both the short- and long-term.

The authors all work in the Cisco Advanced Services Group.

• Deploy, manage, monitor, and scale multivendor VoIP networks more effectively
• Integrate performance data from multiple VoIP network segments and service flows to effectively manage SLAs
• Use performance counters, call detail records, and call agent trace logs to gauge network health in real time
• Utilize dashboards to analyze and correlate VoIP metrics, analyze trends, and plan capacity
• Implement a layered approach to quickly isolate and troubleshoot both localized and systemic problems in VoIP networks
• Optimize performance in networks where the service provider owns the “last mile” connection
• Improve performance when VoIP is deployed over publicly shared infrastructure
• Manage performance in enterprise networks using both centralized and distributed call processing
• Plan media deployment for the best possible network performance
• Monitor trends, establish baselines, optimize existing resources, and identify emerging problems
• Understand and address common voice quality issues

This IP communications book is part of the Cisco Press® Networking Technology Series. IP communications titles from Cisco Press help networking professionals understand voice and IP telephony technologies, plan and design converged networks, and implement network solutions for increased productivity.

Category: Networking: Unified Communications

Covers: Voice over IP Network Management

A world-renowned innovation guru explains practices that result in breakthrough innovations

"Ulwick's outcome-driven programs bring discipline and predictability to the often random process of innovation."

For years, companies have accepted the underlying principles that define the customer-driven paradigm--that is, using customer "requirements" to guide growth and innovation. But twenty years into this movement, breakthrough innovations are still rare, and most companies find that 50 to 90 percent of their innovation initiatives flop. The cost of these failures to U.S. companies alone is estimated to be well over $100 billion annually.

In a book that challenges everything you have learned about being customer driven, internationally acclaimed innovation leader Anthony Ulwick reveals the secret weapon behind some of the most successful companies of recent years. Known as "outcome-driven" innovation, this revolutionary approach to new product and service creation transforms innovation from a nebulous art into a rigorous science from which randomness and uncertainty are eliminated.

Based on more than 200 studies spanning more than seventy companies and twenty-five industries, Ulwick contends that, when it comes to innovation, the traditional methods companies use to communicate with customers are the root cause of chronic waste and missed opportunity. In What Customers Want, Ulwick demonstrates that all popular qualitative research methods yield well-intentioned but unfitting and dreadfully misleading information that serves to derail the innovation process. Rather than accepting customer inputs such as "needs," "benefits," "specifications," and "solutions," Ulwick argues that researchers should silence the literal "voice of the customer" and focus on the "metrics that customers use to measure success when executing the jobs, tasks or activities they are trying to get done." Using these customer desired outcomes as inputs into the innovation process eliminates much of the chaos and variability that typically derails innovation initiatives.

With the same profound insight, simplicity, and uncommon sense that propelled The Innovator's Solution to worldwide acclaim, this paradigm-changing book details an eight-step approach that uses outcome-driven thinking to dramatically improve every aspect of the innovation process--from segmenting markets and identifying opportunities to creating, evaluating, and positioning breakthrough concepts. Using case studies from Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, AIG, Pfizer, and other leading companies, What Customers Want shows companies how to:

• Obtain unique customer inputs that make predictable innovation possible
• Recognize opportunities for disruption, new market creation, and core market growth--well before competitors do
• Identify which ideas, technologies, and acquisitions have the greatest potential for creating customer value
• Systematically define breakthrough products and services concepts

Innovation is fundamental to success and business growth. Offering a proven alternative to failed customer-driven thinking, this landmark book arms you with the tools to unleash innovation, lower costs, and reduce failure rates--and create the products and services customers really want.

Does it make a difference that the God Christians claim to worship has revealed himself as triune-the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Does this fundamental truth of biblical authority have an effect on a believer's personal fellowship with God?

Puritan theologian John Owen recognized the great need for every believer to understand the triune God. Communion with the Triune God revisits the truth presented by John Owen and challenges all believers to truly recognize and appreciate the ministry that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have in their lives. This work of John Owen encourages Christians to enjoy true communion with each person of the triune God.

Create innovative, game-changing products with high-performance Product Management

“A must-read for all business leaders driving their organizations to develop winning products and solutions. The book’s insight and thought-provoking scenarios help crystallize actions needed to achieve growth and marketplace success!”
—Jerry Rose, VP Product Management, United Technologies Corporation, Fire & Security

“An indispensable guide for any executive looking to develop a world-class Product Management organization. Haines outlines a 360-degree view of the practice and offers practical, accessible guidance to implement positive change.”
—David Desharnais, Group Director, Product Management, Cadence Design Systems

“Excellent Product Management is critical to the success of any business. This [is] an indispensable guide to realizing the true value of Product Management in any business.”
—Nick Hallwood, VP Product Management, SHL Group, Ltd.

“Haines’s diverse industry experience is clearly evident in this well-written guide to creating a high-performance Product Management function.”
—George Coulston, VP Global R&D, Kennametal, Inc.

“This easy-to-read, practical book is a natural extension of Steven Haines’s passion for enabling businesses to make sustainable improvements to their products, services, and organizations. It is an essential resource for any leader wishing to develop, cultivate, and sustain a world-class Product Management organization.”
—C. Melissa Connolly, Director, Six Sigma Programs, Baker Hughes

“There is perhaps no more important job in the modern enterprise than Product Management—and none harder to get right. Haines offers up wise, practical, and indispensable advice on how to do just that.”
—Richard Bravman, Chairman, Intelleflex Corporation, and former CEO, Symbol Technologies, Inc.

“Managing Product Management is the icing on the cake in helping us design, integrate, and elevate the Product Management function.”
—Paul Eichenberg, VP Corporate Development and Strategic Planning, Magna Powertrain, Inc.

About the Book:

The well-being of any high‑performance organization is tied to its ability to align business functions and to produce and manage profitable products—and Product Management is the function most suited to meeting that imperative. When Product Management takes root in a company and thrives, the entire organization succeeds and everyone wins.

Does your company use Product Management to its fullest potential?

In Managing Product Management, Steven Haines, one of the world’s top authorities in the field, lays the groundwork for moving Product Management out of a supporting role and establishing it as a vital, strategic partner with other business functions. He provides a solid, implementable framework that takes you step-by-step through a process that will transform your company in profound ways.

Learn how to:

• Better situate Product Management organizationally for more consistent operations that generate predictable results
• Defeat the “city of silos” mentality and create cross-functional engagement models
• Utilize a stable reference model for the planning, execution, and management of products and services
• Clearly define the role of product manager, hire the right people for the job, and institute effective job-development plans for those product managers
• Design and support cross-functional product teams to steer a product line and deliver agreed-upon business results
• Institute a governing model that sustains Product Management in its dynamic role

Steven Haines sees an answer to business challenges in a place where few people have even thought of looking. Product Management done right has worked wonders for companies around the world—and it can do the same for yours.

Managing Product Management is the one and only resource you need to start thinking of Product Management in a whole new way, utilizing it to its utmost capabilities, and making it a dynamic, ongoing structure in your organization.