It seems companies turn to business intelligence to give them a competitive edge in a still-shaky economy. Enough of them did it last year to drive a healthy increase in BI spending. According to Gartner, global spending on BI, analytics and…
I think the whole “as a service” phrase has jumped the shark as I was quick to tell a Verizon representative who recently walked me through the company’s unified communications-as-a-service offering. “Nice solution, but change the name. The whole ‘as-a-service’ thing is…
In a post I wrote as 2010 was drawing to a close, I noted that a year-end wrap-up piece on TDWI named “insurgent” business intelligence, an approach that minimizes IT involvement, as one of the five top BI trends for the year. Another of the…
Mobile business intelligence is something every organization should at least be thinking about, considering that influential industry analyst Howard Dresner recently predicted mobile will become “fundamentally the new platform for business intelligence.” But there is a big gap between thinking…
I’ve got a working list of eight factors that can derail IT projects. My list: Lack of effective governance Poor communication between business stakeholders and IT Not enough input from folks who will actually use a new system or technology Changes…
A business intelligence best practice pretty much everyone can agree on is establishing a BI competency center (BICC). While competency centers are a good idea for any enterprise software initiative, they are especially important for BI because both BI technologies and…
Ever read an annual report without a pie graph? Me either. That’s because most companies recognize the value of using visuals to break up reams of dry data and spotlight significant trends in a way that’s accessible to users. Despite…
It’s not unusual for people to use the terms “business intelligence” and “business analytics” interchangeably. But now with a debate brewing over whether analytics should become a standard part of BI offerings, it seems like a good time to clarify the…
As I wrote recently, there’s a growing sense that business intelligence just isn’t cutting it for a lot of folks, leading to a trend TDWI recently dubbed “insurgent” BI. As TDWI noted, a slew of emerging vendors including Bis2 Inc., WhereScape Inc., Kapow…
Sometimes an IT budget that’s too big is as bad as one that’s too small. IT pros with lots of dough have the luxury of buying more hardware to solve their infrastructure ills. The result (sometimes, though certainly not always) is…
