Bill Inmon

Bill Inmon (William Harvey Inmon) (b. July 20, 1945, in San Diego, California) is recognized by many as the "father of data warehousing" and the co-creator of the Corporate Information Factory, and the Government Information Factory, as well as DW 2.0, the next-generation data warehouse architecture. Mr. Inmon has over 35 years of experience in database technology management and data warehouse design, and has consulted with Fortune 1000 clients and leading IT executives on Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Database Management. He is known world-wide for his seminars on developing and managing data warehouses, and has been a keynote speaker for all of the major computing associations and vendors. In addition, Mr. Inmon is a key participant in many industry conferences, seminars, and tradeshows.

As an author, Mr. Inmon has written about a variety of topics on the building, usage, and maintenance of the data warehouse and the Corporate Information Factory. As an author, Bill has written 46 books, many of which have been translated into nine languages. He has written more than 651 articles, many of them have been published in major computer journals such as Datamation, ComputerWorld, DM Review and Byte Magazine. Bill currently publishes a free weekly newsletter for the Business Intelligence Network, and has been a major contributor since its inception.

Prior to co-founding Inmon Data Systems in 2003, he founded and took public Prism Solutions in 1991. In 1995, Bill went on to found Pine Cone Systems, later named Ambeo.

Many claim to be the inventor of the data warehouse concept, principally Barry Devlin of IBM - it must be also noted that work by Martyn Richard Jones (TSB Scotland Information Center 1983, Sperry Information Center 1982), Joseph Bielawski, Bob Richards, Thaluber et al (all originally at Sperry Univac, predate the IBM claim by at least 4 years), it is disputed as to whether or not Bill Inmon deserves the title he has been given, although counter claims regarding the invention of data warehousing seem to be based on involvement in Information Center initiatives, which was not precisely the same thing. In recent years, Inmon's role has been overshadowed by contributions from Ralph Kimball. Earlier database experts such as James Martin perhaps have an even greater claim to this manifestation of a decision support approach.

Bill Inmon's association with data warehousing stems from the fact that he wrote the first book on data warehousing, he coined the original term, he held the first conference on data warehousing (with Arnie Barnett), he wrote the first column in a magazine on data warehousing, he has written over 1,000 articles on data warehousing in journals and newsletters, he created the first fold out wall chart for data warehousing and he conducted the first classes on data warehousing. Recent advances by Bill include the creation of DW 2.0 - the definition of the next generation of data warehousing. In addition Bill was the creator of the corporate information factory (the "cif") which describes the larger information architecture into which warehousing fits. More recently Bill has developed the technology for including unstructured textual data into the data warehouse - the worlds first "textual ETL". In July 2007 Bill was named by COMPUTERWORLD as one of the ten people that most influenced the first 40 years of the computer industry.

Books by Inmon
Building the Data Warehouse - by W. H. Inmon

Exploration Warehousing: Turning Business Information into Business Opportunity - by William H. Inmon, R. H. Terdeman, and Claudia Imhoff

Bill Inmon William H. Inmon