Data Warehousing For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 24. Working with Data Warehousing Consultants

In This Chapter

• Deciding whether you need data warehousing consultants for your project

• Being careful when choosing a consultant

• Considering all your consultant options

Let me begin this chapter with a disclaimer: I'm a data warehousing consultant and a data warehousing product vendor — a double whammy!

I try to treat the subject of whether you need data warehousing consultants fairly in this chapter. You won't see any subliminal advertising (call Tom . . . blink, blink . . . call Tom) anywhere in this (use Tom for your data warehouse needs) chapter.

The reason I discuss data warehousing consultants is simple: You'll most likely need consultants for your data warehousing project, and I give you as unbiased a perspective on this subject as I can, like I did in Chapter 23, which deals with the product vendors.

Do You Really Need Consultants to Help Build a Data Warehouse?

You probably need data warehousing consultants, not because people from within your organization aren't capable of working with data warehousing technology or completing a project without outside help. A simple fact of current corporate IT life overwhelms factors such as capabilities and knowledge: We're in a consulting-driven era, plain and simple.

I've been in the software and consulting industry since the early 1980s, and the demand year after year for outside consulting expertise in nearly every medium- to large-size organization has skyrocketed remarkably. The increased ...