The IT-Finance Connection’s Views on the News

February 3, 2009

The IT-Finance Connection emails newsletters twice per week highlighting hard news in the business intelligence sector. (Please sign up here.) There also are many insightful analysis and feature stories on the Internet. Here are some recent highlights:

Analyst David Linthicum writes at eBizQ that there is a discrepancy between active and passive BI. Passive BI he says, is the analysis of information and data that is more than 78 hours old. Active BI – which he understandably sees as more valuable – is the delivery of key information to decision makers in a nearly real-time manner.

At DestinationCRM, Lauren McKay writes about a mega-opus from Gartner – nine analysts were involved – that delivered five predictions for BI. The short version: Business units will gain more control over projects; companies will make mistakes due to underinvestment in BI-related tools; companies will begin using industry-specific SaaS analytic applications; collaborative decision-making will emerge as a product category and mashups will become important ways to deliver analytic data.

This piece is from England – and appears at a pretty obscure-looking site as well – but deals with an interesting and important topic. The story reports on activities in the House of Commons that focus on the quality of care provided by the National Health Service. BI, the piece says, is assumed to be an important management tool for the NHS. No conclusions are drawn. The takeaway is that BI can be an important tool for the public good as well as business-oriented tasks.

Finally, Darren Cunningham wrote a LucidEra blog on his attendance at a search engine optimization (SEO) conference. The resulting post looks at some of the keywords used in BI and related fields. It’s interesting that Cunningham grouped BI with the software-as-a-service and cloud computing sectors. They overlap, but obviously are distinct. The post is most relevant to the marketing folks at BI vending companies. Everyone in the field should note how BI is perceived.

Posted by Carl · Filed Under Business Intelligence