Zach Skyles Owens

I’m fascinated with the changes in economies and the role of economics and business on these changes.  I’m lucky enough to have a job which allows me to have an inside look at these changes and have the opportunity to play a part in this discussion.

Today, I’m at an internal Microsoft event related to doing business in China.  The session I’m looking forward to the most is related to the cultural aspects of working with Chinese partners.  Anytime that I have the opportunity to travel to another country I always buy the Culture Smart! travel book.  In my experience knowing the culture is the most important part of travel.

The title of this article pretty much sums it up… “Todo Tiene Su Finalâ€? translates to “Everything Has an Endâ€?. This is a really famous salsa song by Hector Lavoe. Today has been a big day for me. It was my last day at my current job and I ended the last class of my MBA about fifteen minutes ago.

None of it has really sunk in yet but I am full of conflicting emotions. The past year and half during my MBA at the Instituto de Empresa has been a time of deep personal evaluation and growth. Recounting some of the significant events:

• Accepted at one of the world’s best business schools
• Finished Lanzarote Ironman in the Canary Islands
• Attended PMI Global Congress in Madrid
• Attended IE Conference in Madrid
• Promoted to project manager position
• Attended PMI Global Congress in Seattle
• Attended IE Conference in Mumbai
• Visited Thailand
• Attended another IE Conference in Madrid
• Landed a dream job at Microsoft
• Completed my MBA

Wow… As I type it out, I really can’t believe it is coming to an end. Everything is packed and I moving off Maui to start the next chapter in three days.

I generally don’t share things quite this personal on this blog but I know that many of my classmates have gone through a similar transformation over the past couple of years and I hope some of these little things can help bring some closure.

I’ll miss my Friday evenings with my international crew from: China, India, Morocco, Japan, Germany, Russia, Dubai, South Africa, Colombia, Spain, Italy, UK, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Technorati Tags: Instituto de Empresa, Global MBA

I was recently blown away by a feature I ran into on the Business Objects website called Fiat Lux. It’s a short marketing video describing the company’s mission and vision. Normally this type of thing is pretty boring and not worth mentioning. Business Objects has proven this not to be the case. I’m very impressed with the following statement made during the presentation.

“We are not a Business Intelligence company.
We are in the business of helping companies become more intelligent.”

Below are some screen captures from the video which I strongly encourage you to watch by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: Business Objects, business intelligence, marketing

Paul Murphy, a fellow Global MBA student at the Instituto de Empresa (IE), recently posted an article on his blog about IE’s success in the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings 2007.  In his article he predicts that once a category for ranking programs similar to IE’s Global MBA is established that it will rank among the Top 5 in the world.  I’ve also done my research on programs of this type and have confidence that IE is really doing an excellent job and deserves to be recognized for it. 

Paul and I entered the Global MBA program at different times and had the opportunity to meet Mumbai (Bombay), India this past year.  He lives in London, works for Microsoft and is a really interesting person.  I recommend you checkout his blog if get the chance.

Technorati Tags: Instituto de Empresa, Global MBA, Mumbai, India, London, Paul Murphy, Microsoft, MBA Rankings

I recently stumbled across the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite and so far I’m really impressed. After doing some research what I discovered is that Pentaho is an Open Source BI company with a service oriented revenue model. What they have done is hired the key developers from a variety of Open Source products such as JFree and built/enhanced those core technologies for an end-to-end BI solution. They were founded by five (hence the “pent”) extremely accomplished BI experts and have been marketing themselves for less then a year.

I have had some insightful answers to technical questions I’ve posted on their forums which is a requirement for a quality open source project. I’ve also been told that their lead engineers spend a certain portion of their time doing technical support so at this point you may actually be able to get the product developer on the phone if you are having issues.

If you are interested in checking them out, running their Pre-Configuration Installation was a quick three step process on my Windows workstation.

• Download the Pentaho Open BI Suite
• Unzip the Product
• Click on “start-pentaho.bat”

I ran into some issues getting it to run on my Fedora Core 6 workstation, but I think those are related to some configuration issues on my end.

This will provide you with a JBoss Application Server and Portal running a bunch of well put together BI Reports and Dashboards. It even has an example Dashboard with Google Maps integration.

If you end up checking this out or have implementation experience with their products please let me know as we are evaluating using some of their components in a project right now.

Technorati Tags: Pentaho, Open Source, Business Intelligence, Red Hat, JBoss, Fedora, JFree