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Annuals

Hot Technologies: Business Intelligence: Getting Real Time

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The business intelligence or BI market globally is in transit.

Driving this movement toward real time BI is the emergence of operational BI,

which is the next frontier in this area. The next evolution in BI is operational

decision-making, which has the potentiality to make BI pervasive and real time.

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Today, companies are placing BI into operational applications,

and it has metamorphosed from a mere strategic analytical tool to frontline tool

in business operations. Gradually percolating down the line, BI is slated to

eventually pervade the entire value chain of enterprises, and their partners.

Journey of Evolution



While the first phase of traditional data warehousing efforts focused on
querying and reporting to understand what happened, the second wave focused on

technologies like online analytical processing (OLAP), and data mining for

historical analysis to understand why, and recommend what should be done to

rectify. Strategic planning, and the third generation solutions are focusing on

the frontline workers, providing them with increased business insight within the

context of business processes.

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Key

Technology Trends

  • Hosted or SaaS BI

  • In-memory analytics

  • SOA-enabled BI

  • Text mining, metadata

    repositories, and integrated search

  • Real time performance

    management

  • Business activity

    monitoring

  • Open source BI
BI

Growth Statistics

  • According to IDC, the

    market for BI software is already worth more than $7 bn worldwide, and

    is expected to double by 2007

  • Forrester Research

    states that more than 44% companies worldwide will adopt BI software

    by next year

  • According to Meta Group,

    the enterprise data warehouse/business intelligence market continues

    to evolve rapidly. The research firm estimates that the current market

    opportunity is $4 bn, and is expected to grow to an estimated $10 bn

    by 2008

  • In a survey of CIOs,

    Merrill Lynch showed that BI software topped the list of tech spenders

    in 2006

  •  Gartner Dataquest

    forecasts that spending for BI software market is expected to grow at

    a compound annual rate of 8.5% between now and 2007

  • According to Business

    Objects, the BI market is only 15% penetrated

  • According to Frost &

    Sullivan, the Indian BI market is expected to touch $68.8 mn by 2007

Till 2-3 years back, much of the focus was on querying and

reporting and on what happened and what actions are needed. A lot of values

derived from traditional DW and BI are still revolving in the area of what

happened. However, as the businesses have got matured over a period of time, and

enough data is still being gathered, much of the focus is now on using the data

for doing predictive analysis for proactive decision-making.

The worldwide BI market continues to grow rapidly (see box). But

according to IDC and Business Objects, the market is still under penetrated, and

has a huge potential. One of the drivers is the increase in the number of IT

applications, which necessitates having an environment where information should

be consolidated for a unified view, and having a highly competitive environment

where information based decisions are crucial.

Shipra Malhotra



shipram@cybermedia.co.in

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