Takaway: The author teaches data warehousing (DW) and business intelligence (BI) courses evenings for the Graduate School of Engineering at a university in the Boston area. Recently a former student came back and reported the following:  She said that she has been finding herself trying to keep from laughing when she is working with her company's BI/DW applications and their users. She is amazed at how many data silos the company has created and how dependent the business people are on these data shadow systems, i.e. spreadsheets strung together to provide reporting and analysis.

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Source: Data Doghouse