Four Hot Trends in Business Intelligence

Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team

It’s been a while since we brought a hot trends post to the Spotfire blog. So, here’s an update on what’s happening now in business intelligence.

Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team

It’s been a while since we brought a hot trends post to the Spotfire blog. So, here’s an update on what’s happening now in business intelligence.

1) Big Data is a big topic. 

 Last week, we brought you a week of posts on what’s happening in Big Data and how to process all that data to generate business value. PC Magazine reporter Damon Poeter (@dpoeter) has a great article and link to an infographic on “Data, Data Everywhere” that illustrates this trend’s size and scope. The takeaways: 

• Big Data has left the door open for innovators “who can deliver more for less to handle our exponentially increasing data management needs.”
• Data is expected to grow 40 percent each year, as IT spending is only set to grow 5 percent each year.

2) We’re lacking in data analytics talent.

Richard Herschel, professor and chair of decision and system sciences at St. Joseph’s University, recently surveyed BI professionals and reported that the problem lies in that “only a handful of academic institutions worldwide offer comprehensive business intelligence/analytics programs that can address this issue.” See our coverage of this hot trend here.

3) Alternative BI solutions lead to speed and lower costs.

The cloud has been around a while and can lead to lower expense and better results as  Shawn Rogers (@shawnrog), VP of Research – Business Intelligence at EMA, recently told us.  However, a new trend in BI is pre-built analytic applications also known as PAAs. Phil Simon (@philsimon), a technology consultant, covered this in a Search-CIO Midmarket article this week.

The takeaway is that PAAs may offer a faster BI deployment and may be better suited for specific purposes such as helping companies answer specific questions, especially around KPIs. Simon writes that “PAAs come with industry and department benchmarks, allowing data to be placed in an appropriate context.” But they don’t solve the data management problem. The data quality is still important, Simon writes.

4) BI is more than an IT function – it’s about people and business decisions.

We cover this topic more than most on the Spotfire blog. And Jim Ericson (@jimericson), editorial director at Information Management makes a very good argument about this trend in his blog “Tired Words and Real Trends.”

To help make his point, Ericson quotes Forrester Research’s Clay Richardson (@passion4process):“We’re seeing a shift from IT to ‘business technology’ where the business takes more ownership of driving technology solutions. In current scenarios, the business is partnering with IT, but now has the cloud, mobile and other directly accessible technologies as well. Innovation is happening so quickly at the edge of the organization and with the customer, IT and enterprise architecture can no longer keep up with the pace, Clay figures. “It’s almost like IT and the enterprise architecture function becomes a sort of venture capital group that takes in ideas and invests in the best ones,” Clay says.

Now, it’s your turn. Share your thoughts on these four trends and what you consider to be the latest, greatest trends in business intelligence in the comments below.