Datasouth

Signs of Intelligent Life

Tuesday, 27 July 2009

“Business Intelligence” has become something of an oxymoron for organisations because of the costs and complexity of effectively implementing it. New initiatives from Microsoft have the potential to turn this around and ‘bring BI to the masses.’

What is BI? As in any realm of computing it is used as a term to cover a very broad range of activities. Fundamentally it is about giving historical, current and predictive views of a business’ operations. Effective BI improves businesses by giving managers sufficient context to make smart decisions.

BI is a hot topic in corporate computing. Organisations see it as a way of getting more value out of the mountain of data their information systems store and process, by being able to make better decisions faster with the relevant data at hand. Vendors with specific BI products have emerged and grown quickly, and a new batch of BI offerings is coming out in the Software as a Service space.

But it seems to be failing many firms. “. . . most organisations do not have the information, processes and tools needed to make informed, responsive decisions due to underinvestment in information infrastructure and business tools,” industry analysts Gartner said in a BI study release earlier in 2009. “Although IT organisations excel at building BI infrastructure, business users have lost confidence in the ability of them to deliver the information they need to make decisions.”

Why is BI not delivering for many organisations?

The costs of BI infrastructure can be significant, with large investments often required in software licenses, implementation, training and maintenance. There is also an issue of complexity – average users can struggle to come to grips with complex BI tools and look for other ways to analyse and summarise data.

Underlying this is the battle between IT and users over control. IT wants a stable, secure and cost-effective IT infrastructure while users just want easier access to key business information to analyse.

The pervasiveness of Microsoft in the enterprise means they have a unique perspective on the BI issue.

According to statistics in an October 2009 issue of Fortune Magazine, they have 95% of the operating system market, and sell 94% of the PC office suites. That pervasiveness means tools like Excel are popular for BI tasks. A major Aberdeen Group study in 2008 found Excel was regarded as the top BI tool in terms of use, even though there were a wide variety of specific BI products available.

Microsoft are trying to embrace this reality with changes to their product set that will enable organisations to do better BI with existing tools. SQL Server 2008 R2, to be released in the beginning of 2010, will make integration with core ERP and other systems easier, and enhance Excel’s ability to act as an analysis engine over the top. In Office 2010 Excel is being beefed up with more features for analysing and presenting data. Completing the BI-oriented stack is the enhancement of SharePoint with the bundling of several previously separate and separately licensed, dashboard and other performance reporting tools.

The Microsoft vision is to “bring BI to the masses” by putting more power in the hands of regular users who are familiar with Excel. Instead of having to learn new and complex BI tools, users can analyse and present data in an environment they are familiar with, but instead of them being hidden away in a department, being made available to the enterprise through SharePoint.

If you’d like to discuss your BI strategies, contact Datasouth to talk to a consultant. Datasouth specialises in the provision of technology solutions that assists organisations in enhancing their business by improved information flow and productivity. As an organisation that has been providing advice to government and corporate clients for over fifteen years, we can advise, design and implement solutions that truly provide a competitive edge and reduced cost structures.

To better understand how we may help you to drive your business forward, please contact Datasouth to discuss your specific requirements.