Posted by Noel Shannon on Wed, Jun 16, 2010 @ 04:10 AM
Kurt Schlegel is a vice president in Gartner Research, where he focuses on business intelligence and its ability to improve decision making and optimise performance. He joined Gartner in April 2005 with the acquisition of Meta Group, where he wrote extensively about the business intelligence market.
At a recent Gartner Summit on Business Intelligence he gave a discussion on emerging trends in this market, I have added my comments to his 9 points
1) In memory analytics: As memory capacities increase and costs continue to fall, it absolutely makes sense for us to use in-memory models to analyse data - it's faster and requires less pre calculation; it's only the software that has been built to take advantage of this technology that gives any benefits. Beyond super-fast analysis, one of the compelling features of QlikView business intelligence and a few other in-memory business intelligence tools is the ability to perform what-if analysis on the fly. For example, users can input budget values or price increases to forecast future sales. The results are immediately available and held in memory. In contrast, most disk-based OLAP tools would require the database to be recalculated, either overnight or at the request of an administrator.
2 ) Columnar databases: This is a discussion that has been rumbling on for decades, and in these days of multi-billion row tables and petabyte-sized systems, you might think that columnar databases make more sense than ever, but not everyone agrees, particularly those who argue that analytics is better through row-based models.
3) Cloud: The Cloud isn't the problem here. The existing players are having trouble moving their pricing models to a SaaS model with the consequent reduction in upfront revenues. So I expect it's the new entrants like GoodData that will start to rise here.
4) Interactive visualization: The right graphics deliver insight faster and deeper than simple pie charts. But can the front line troops really understand a scatter plot?
5) Integrated search: I think the Google interface should dominate here.
6) Mobile Business Intelligence: iPhone and IPad applications are already available from some business intelligence vendors like QlikView.
7) Analytical MDM: Master data management combined with brains and analytics can help solve the multiple version of truth problem plaguing most companies. This is the solution to the data quality morass, but it will take time.
8) Data mash-ups: In an increasingly unstructured world we are going to need solutions that combine internal structured data with an exploding growth in social media.
9) Scenario modeling:. In memory analytics and increased computing power will allow everyone build sophisticated what-if models based on vast quantities of data.
To see how QlikView and in-memory business intelligence works, check out our WorldCup Kick It & Qlik It App.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Wed, Feb 17, 2010 @ 05:21 AM
Lat month saw the official launch of the new Data.gov.uk portal. Advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt and others, the UK government has opened up all this data for reuse. This site give access to a wealth of government data and is under constant development. The aim of the site is to provide easy access to reams of public sector data, such as traffic, crime and housing figures. All this information has been made available free of charge, and can be consumed by third party applications. The hope is that the site will encourage individuals and businesses to find ways to make better use of this information.
As they say on their website
''We're very aware that there are more people like you outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative relationship with you.''
The launch of the portal mirrors a similar project kick-started by the Obama administration last year to make US Government data available to the public in an open and accessible manner. Boris Johnson has also announced that data relating specifically to life in London will also be made available publicly and for free.
It seems 2010 may be the era of open data access. It's an exciting propsect to watch what people do with it! Here at QlikPower we have a number of ideas which we will be announcing shortly which will show you the power of QlikView to take real advantage of this valuable data source.
For more details on the new government portal, check out this BBC News article, or visit it for yourself here.
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Posted by Noel Shannon on Mon, Feb 08, 2010 @ 07:32 AM
Interest in the Cloud is growing daily and as we try to predict the impact on Business Intelligence we are faced with a number of interesting thoughts.
Will BI take off in the Cloud? Quite frankly I don't know!
I have read all the important analyst views on this topic and I will summarise two principal ones below - Gartner and IDC
Gartner says that BI SaaS (Software as a Service) adoption, while very low today, will grow steadily as maturing BI SaaS solutions are delivered in private and public clouds and in on-premises and off-premises configurations by trusted vendors. This growth will be accelerated by organizations' increasing need to deploy intuitive BI tools and applications cost-effectively to more users, reduce time to value and time to scale, and lower capital expenditures.
And according to IDC - The market for SaaS business analytic technologies is set to surge.
Industry watchers have long looked for the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market to take off. However, last year BI pros saw several events that belie that expectation. For example, the business intelligence (BI) segment's most prominent SaaS player, LucidEra, ceased operations, the victim -- industry experts and SaaS principals rushed to reassure BI consumers -- not so much of a flawed model but of a brutal economic climate. The latter claim was bolstered by the rise of a number of SaaS vendors, including PivotLink and GoodData.
Beyond the initial cadre of small startup SaaS vendors, larger leading vendors are beginning to pursue SaaS/cloud-based strategies, with most building interoperability with cloud computing platforms, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Google's platform as a service (PaaS) offering and Microsoft's Azure platform. These same BI vendors are also increasing their OEM efforts with SaaS application vendors and industry data providers. The merging of analytics with industry data and by industry data providers delivered via a SaaS model has been one of the more widely adopted use cases for BI delivered as a service and is another key growth driver.
QlikPower as a QlikView partner offers their BI solution on the EC2 platform.
What are your views? - please let us know