Mardi Gras in November

I spent most of last week at TDWI in New Orleans.  Although I didn’t get much of an opportunity to attend the classes, meeting with vendors and getting the scoop on what different solution providers are doing always helps give me additional insights into the market in general.  With the ability to meet with many people and discuss what is going on in the market within a condensed amount of time, it becomes possible to identify some similarities or disparities within the industry at large.

One interesting thing to note is the seeming gaps between what offerings exist and what companies are actually doing.  Aside from the fact that BI is only now becoming user friendly and more available to business users, the reality exists that the pace of development is growing with technological advancements and organizations aren’t necessarily following suit.  This type of trend has occured in the past with technology being able to accomodate forms of unstructured data and the like, but with organizations not being ready to take advantage of the technology.  It remains to be seen if the same will occur with todays technology.  Hopefully, the Internet and use of Web 2.0 will help propel organizations to the next level of technology use that extends beyond BI.