BI Themes for 2011
We are starting to see the emergence of so-called “Next Gen” BI. Trends include mobility, visualization/busines discovery, collaboration & search, cloud, “big data”, and a move back to self-service or ‘departmental’ BI. Long gone (thankfully..) are the days of “BI is dead”, “BI is just Reporting” etc.
According to @Claudia_Imhoff, Business discovery has 4 key points:
– simple & fast
– focused & personal
– shared & social
– mobile
Cindi Howsen is also making a list for 2011, and it’s called “5 Big Themes in BI for 2011”
Cindi predicts “Business intelligence will become more visual, mobile and social in 2011. But how should you balance central vs. departmental control, and does it make sense to upgrade?”
Here are the 5 Themes:
1. Advanced Visualization and Dashboards Go Mainstream
Advanced visualization and discovery tools continue to garner significant interest because of their ease of use, visual appeal, and ability to speed the time to insight amid vast amounts of data.
2. Mobile BI Gets Recharged
Mobile BI didn’t even make my top trends last year, so one could say its appearance this year is quite a leap. In the cool BI class I teach at TDWI events, this innovation rarely gets top nod from attendees. However, few could have foreseen the wild adoption of Apple’s iPad. The wider screen real estate and sheer beauty that this tablet brings to BI is reason to take stock of your mobile BI strategy.
3. Facebook Gives BI More Than a Facelift
Envision a Facebook influence on BI: decision-makers bring together the right people virtually; users themselves control the flow and content instead of a central IT group who secures the data and subsequent analyses. Tasks, comments, opinions, and even new sets of data and analyses are brought together seamlessly.
4. Economic Recovery Stretches BI Teams
The economy shows signs of recovering. Companies that weren’t using BI to work smarter are no longer with us. BI budgets are once again expanding. The challenge is to continue to spend wisely, but also, to keep up with insatiable user demand. Central BI can’t handle it all.
5. Will New Releases Bring Upgrade Fever or Flu?
The top-four BI vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP) all had major new product releases in 2010. Customers who have been burned with painful migrations in the past will not rush to adopt the latest versions. In some cases, 2011 will be a time to assess the cost of upgrading versus the cost of switching preferred vendors.
(Full article: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/bi/229000780)
I’m happy to see the move back towards ‘Self-Service’ BI. When traditional BI vendors walked away from their sweet-spot of quick-win, departmental BI solutions in pursuit of the ‘holy-grail’ of Enterprise Standardization (many users = big $$$…), they lost sight of some of the original attractions of BI in the 90’s: Ease of Use and Time to Value. Hence I was interested to hear how the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) developed a flexible BI environment to help meet the energy needs of 30 million Californians:
Self-Service BI: An Inside Perspective
2011 looks like being an exciting year for BI. And not just for vendors.
