Gemini destroys the world….Not!

So in a previous post I tried to tear down Gemini to something relatively simple, instead of curing cancer. This post is when I build it back up. Gemini just lets end-users combine data without having to get IT and DBAs involved. This is precisely where some fear begins to be revealed by IT and DBAs and practitioner partners. It’s twofold because some fear for their jobs and others fear for their sanity. (Disclaimer: I’m not on the Gemini team, I’m just talking about my interpretation of all the demo’s I’ve seen and the experimentation that I’ve done. If you are wondering what all the excitement is about, the Gemini team has instructions on how to get access to preview builds here.)

Anyway, I think these fears of Gemini are unwarranted because regular folks don’t have access to raw database tables. (Right? If they do, then I have a lot of fear about your systems.) The integration shown in demos with data feeds and Reporting Services reports looks much more like the kind of data sources that regular folks will consume. IT publishes data in a relatively bland report, which is fairly cheap and easy for them. Power users and some adventurous non-power users will consume these kinds of published models, not building them from scratch. (Ok some people will build them from scratch, but only if you give them access to raw tables. Which not a fault of Gemini. And power users are already beyond your control). In this scenario, yes DBAs who are building trivial models, need a little fear. But just enough to motivate them to move on to the harder problems.

Then we are back to the all-important single version of the truth. That holy grail that IT and DBAs seem to think has been achieved. There is great fear that Gemini will destroy that palace and the empire of IT will be overrun by trolls and gremlins. Ha! What I think the fear-mongers are missing is: end users are already building multiple versions of the truth that are different from the IT version of the truth! Even in places that have the strongest data warehousing implementations. Worst of all, this alternate-reality-version-of-the-truth data goes directly to senior management!

They are doing this with such dastardly tools as Excel and PowerPoint. But it’s so hard to get data into Excel, how can they possibly do this?! They are copy/pasting data or manually entering it while reading from another source. Then they build presentations and give them to senior management. Who is there to make sure that the data still matches the one-truth? Nobody. I just don’t believe that you present by to the board of directors by clicking refresh in a web browser to look at a dashboard. (Well, I wish you would since I work on PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint. Maybe, if you’re lucky, the audience goes back to their desk and does this, but I doubt it.) Anyway, my point should be clear: When people are truly making monumental decisions based on data, it does not come directly from the one-truth-palace, it comes from false prophets!

So how do I think Gemini helps instead of maintaining the status quo? With the data size minimized, there’s no reason not to include the data model in the workbook. That way it can be examined and vetted – especially if you leave the connections back to the data sources. Now the new version of the truth is documented and it has a clear link to the original version of the truth! So if you continue in this vein, why not embed the entire workbook+Gemini into the presentation? Now people with access to the slides also have the data, so they can dive into the assumptions instead of heckling from the back row. I think this is a huge advance. I don’t know if it was intended to bring the one-truth to presentations, but I think a Gemini-style solution is absolutely critical to a one-version-of-the-truth solution. It acknowledges multiple truths, but provides a mechanism to explain how and why this truth is better.

I think that’s pretty powerful, and I’m disappointed that commentators haven’t come to the same conclusion I am. Or maybe I’m wrong? Flame away if you have comments…I can take it… Well at least I can delete them if it hurts too much!

(Again, I’m not on the Gemini team, and I’m not a spokesperson for Microsoft in any shape. I’m just talking through through what I see, and why I am thinking differently than others about what Gemini can do for end-users.)