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Should placement companies use a markup %?
To expand on what I talked about in Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?: If you are a consultant working through a placement firm, should the markup percentage (client...
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When the person you hire is not the person you hire
This is something I just heard about recently, but then experienced it for myself. This story was told to me: A client is looking for a contractor and contacts a staffing firm to find candidates. The...
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Consulting company: Perm/Salaried vs 1099/W2
One of my pet peeves is seeing a top-notch BI architect/developer working as a salaried/perm employee of a consulting company where they are making a good salary but are being billed out to the client...
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I’m presenting at the PASS Summit!
I am fortunate enough to have been selected to give a presentation at the PASS Summit 2013 in Charlotte, NC on October 14-18. It’s amazing to think that, although I have been in IT for 25 years, I...
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Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering
There are three fundamental steps in building a data warehouse for a BI solution (see Why you need Business Intelligence): Identify the data the users interact with, or would like to interact with, via...
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Ralph Kimball Books
If you are involved in Business Intelligence, then the books by Ralph Kimball are required reading: The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Data Warehouse and Business...
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Power View for Multidimensional Models Released
As a followup to my blog Power View for Multidimensional Models – Preview Available, the final version is now available via SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 Cumulative Update 4. So you can now create...
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SQL Server 2014!
Just when you thought you got a handle on SQL Server 2012, here comes the next version! SQL Server 2014 was announced yesterday during the TechEd North America 2013 Day 1 Keynote. It is due to be...
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IT recruiter’s response
I asked a recruiter to check out my blogs about consulting, and his response is below. He had some good points on billling rates and what recruiters do behind the scenes: I really enjoyed reading over...
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Business Intelligence Maturity Assessment
Do you ever wonder how your business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DW) environment compares to other companies and what steps you should be taking to progress your analytics platform? One of...
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Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture Presentation
I will be presenting the session “Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture” this Thursday, June 13th at 11:00am EST for Pragmatic Works. Below is the abstract. It will be a remote...
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Levels in IT consultancy
The Big 5 IT consulting companies (Accenture, Deloitte Consulting, PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP), KPMG, Ernst & Young) have various titles given to consultants along a career path....
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Presentation Slides for Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture
Thanks to everyone who attended my session “Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture” for Pragmatic Works. There were over 500 attendees! The abstract is below and the recording of the...
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Low-rate recruiters – The bane of my existence
There is nothing more annoying to me in my profession than getting calls and emails from recruiters who are looking for senior-level BI people at ridiculously low rates. A common example: they want...
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TechEd North America 2013 videos online
Microsoft has posted ALL the session videos for TechEd North America 2013 and they are available for free! What a great way to learn all about SQL Server 2012 and Business Intelligence (some sessions...
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SQL Server 2014 CTP1 is here!
As I mentioned in my blog post describing the new features in the next version of SQL Server (see SQL Server 2014!), the CTP1 was to be released in June, and that time has come. Download it here, or it...
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Visual Studio 2013 preview available
Wow, Visual Studio 2012 is just out of diapers and here comes the next version! Microsoft officials released the preview of Visual Studio 2013 at the Microsoft Build 2013 developer conference on June...
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SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) – June 2013 update
SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) has a new update: VS 2010: June 2013 version: 10.3.30618.1, December 2012 version: 10.3.21208.0, November 2012 version: 10.3.21101.1, September 2012 version: 10.3.20905.0,...
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Power BI for Office 365
Announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 is Power BI for Office 365: Power BI for Office 365 is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution that enables customers to easily gain...
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I’ll take “Products that start with Power”, Alex
FYI: Geoflow (see Geoflow Preview for Excel 2013) is now called Power Map, and Data Explorer (see Microsoft Data Explorer) is now called Power Query. Microsoft Power Query for Excel has reached General...
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