Data warehouses fail precisely because they are conceived and built as data warehouses.
Trade places with the CFO of your insurance company. Now you're struggling with a loss ratio of 105 percent and can't get a handle on the underlying reasons. A software vendor pops in to see you, suggesting he can help. His sales pitch: He'll build you a nice thing called a "data warehouse" that will store the data from which you can easily "mine" information. Curious, you agree to a meeting and the dialogue soon begins.
Unfortunately, a roadblock appears. You quickly start to believe that you have been kidnapped and are now on an alien planet. The language doesn't seem to be in English, or at least not insurance-speak (remember, you're the CFO here). You hear words and phrases like: "ODBC," "multi-dimensional," "RDBMS," "bit-mapped indices," "object-oriented design," "extendable," "scalable," "pre-packed data models," and the kicker, "enterprise-wide data warehouse." That's it. For $2 million to $4 million and 18 to 24 months, the answer is an enterprise-wide data warehouse.
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