Peter Alons

Getting acquainted

I was born by nature as typical ‘beta’. My preference for figures and calculus was greater than for language. This made me start studying Physics, which culminated in my PhD at the ‘Vrije Universiteit’ in Amsterdam on a topic from Nuclear Physics. My rambling feet took me to the United States of America, where via the universities in Colorado and Indiana, I ended up at the ‘Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility’, an environment rich in history. From this period of my life you can still find on the internet a number of rather obscure articles from my hand. Does a human being have several lives too? For me it feels that way. After this period I went back to the Netherlands and threw myself into the world of IT, where I joined BSO, nowadays Atos. In those days you still got a handshake from the CEO himself, Eckart Wintzen. When I asked him how I could join his company with my background, he answered: "Simple, helicopter view! That is typical of physicists".

Ever since then I tried live up to that wonderful principle, although I thought that my passion for modeling the real world had something to do with it too. I started to work with my acquired knowledge of data modeling, such as ERM and ‘Bubbles’, and after a while Harm van der Lek put me in touch with NIAM. I was immediately convinced in particular by his version of NIAM, the current FCO-IM. And so I learned that in my present work I ‘only’ had to model the communication about reality, and not reality itself.

Since then, I have specialised in Information Modeling and Information Management, and from 2007 also in Information Quality Management, in particular the approach of Larry English. From 1990 till the end of 2010 I worked as consultant for Atos Origin in the area of Business Intelligence. As a BI consultant, I have helped performing many Business Intelligence projects in various sectors of our society, such as Banks, Railway companies, Aviation, Public service companies, Research institutes and the Medical sector. In my projects I have always used an approach for Information Management that I have developed myself, the Information Management Frame. This frame has been applied successfully at KLM, Prorail, the Erasmus Medical Center, and Generali Verzekeringsgroep nv. Two of these projects have won a national and a global award.

Since November 2010 I am self-employed as advisor and trainer. I provide advice and professional training on the succesful design of Data Warehouse models, effective Information Management, and how to realize the required Information Quality. I'll be glad to motivate your people to deliver the desired results and to help you implement your ideas.

You can find more information about all this on the other pages of this website.