The Business Intelligence Software Market and developers has been making some interesting moves driven by economical situation and user requests for more integrated solutions for their business. Small and Medium Software Companies’ acquisitions by software big whales, government and authorities’ compliance increasing demands and aggressive market competition is moving Business Intelligence software for new ways to grab non-traditional markets.
It is very complicated (sometimes inappropriate and time-wasting) to try to predict how this dynamic technology area will do, but we could dare to point some trends:
Trends or Wishes
Integration of Business Intelligence applications into traditional system suites: Small and medium companies starving for good and accurate information could choose Commercial off-the Shelf Systems with important advantages over home-made systems. Even changing all Information Technology Platform by well-known software suites that include in its functionality some Business Intelligence modules could be interesting for emerging companies. Then, commercial software companies (until now transactional systems) could start to integrate BI functionality as part of its offer, trying to gain new customers and keep the usual ones.
OLAP Cubes/Slice-and-dice capabilities will be put in most appropriate places and collaboration/social components will arise in Business Intelligence Software Universe: For some customers, slice-and-dice functionality has too much hype and not so much real productivity in terms of companies’ information necessities. Besides, an urgent requirement from all organizational levels is to share and deliver accurate and timely information. Then, BI developers ‘efforts could find smart applications for social networks users’ expertise in order to complement information generation with a social networks penetration. OLAP cubes capabilities will not be depreciated, but it will be used by very specific kind of users, avoiding unnecessary resource-waste.
Performance Reporting and Compliance will be integrated: Compliance requirements have been increasing as isolated subject in all organizations and much of these requirements are related to delivered information confidence. This situation has been detected and now some of important BI software vendors have started to offer performance reporting modules that includes compliance considerations.
Visualization Capabilities will be improved with new paradigms: Many young developers and users were born with game consoles between their hands. They have enjoyed screens and exceptional graphics. Right now, we are seeing very elegant and functional user interfaces and data visualizations, so it is expected that new ways to watch and to handle huge data loads can be improved with new and exciting ways of interaction.