A large US federal government agency required an advanced decision-support system. Because this agency has arguably the most complex network infrastructure in the world, its IT team had to deal with (and enforce) security, bandwidth consumption, and connectivity every day. But the existing system took too long to give users a clear picture of how and where money was being spent. The government agency needed to empower its workforce to make more intelligent business decisions, but to make these decisions, the workers needed more-current information.

The...