Are Analytics the future of BI?

2 Min Read

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While analytics have been around for a long time, most BI implementations focus on building the data warehouse and delivering the data in a nice format. For analysis, OLAP cubes are created, but often, the serious analysis work is done by exporting the data to Excel. The major BI vendors have tried to branch out into analytics, offering packages, usually for an ERP system, built with their own BI tools. The exception is SAS, which has focused on analytics, and pretty much owns the higher end of the market.

However, there are some upstart BI vendors attacking the weak analytics offerings in the existing BI solutions. NextAnalytics is one such company, founded by Ward Yaternick, a former Cognos employee.
In a recent blog post, he sums up the problem his software solves: “analytics are iterative and sequential.” This makes analytics very expensive to do and to maintain with the current BI tools. NextAnalytics also has a non-traditional licensing and pricing model, similar to other commercial open source products, which will be a breath of fresh air for those used to negotiating with the big BI software vendors.