Biographical Sketch: Mike Biere is a Sr. Marketing Manager with IBM reporting to the Silicon Valley Lab and responsible for Data warehousing and Business Intelligence solutions for System z. He has worked in the industry since 1978. Within this span he has been a technical sales specialist, consultant, product support specialist, and more. In 1996 he joined Ferguson Information Systems as Exec. VP responsible for building a DW and BI practice. He returned to IBM as a WW Technical Sales Manager for DW and BI solutions. In 2003 he left IBM to report to Cognos as Dir. of Product Management for Cognos covering the IBM stack. He returned to IBM in 2007 in his current role. He is a published author (Business intelligence for the Enterprise – IBM Press/Pearson Publishing), New Intelligence for a Smarter Planet (IBM Press 2009), and has written numerous journal articles and white papers on DW and BI. In July of 2010 the new edition of his 2003 book will be published. In his spare time he plays lead guitar in a 60’s rock ‘n roll cover band which is his ‘real’ job … he just can’t make enough money at it!