In the economic recession and the period aftermath, the spending on IT systems has been pruned a lot. This leaves the professionals with an un-avoidable choice of innovation in operations. Everywhere the mantra is that ‘Do More With Less’. Everyone involved is forced to find out new ways, new methods of delivery, more efficient delivery.
The new trends in Business Intelligence also echo the same. Luckily for BI, there are one or two bright spots. One is that BI spending by companies are still higher and the spending is only increasing. Second, BI technologies are ever evolving and adopting new trends an processes. BI professionals are exploring new trends to cut costs and deliver more.
IT Systems
Worldwide cloud computing is getting more popular. Cloud Computing is Internet—based service, whereby shared servers provide software and data to computers and other devices on demand. Availing the IT System infrastructure like hardware and software from the service providers through internet and paying only for usage is definitely one of the new trends.
Amazon Web Services, RackSpace, Microsoft Azure, GoGrid, Terremark, CloudSigma are some of the service providers who are making available the three major tenets of cloud computing. They are: Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service.
The delivery of these services comes with different types like Private Cloud Service, Public Cloud Service, Hybrid Cloud Service. There no need to build time consuming expensive data centers; or buy expensive servers to host BI systems. As such they are readily leased/rented and paid for use.
Cloud BI
The Cloud BI – which is the concept of providing BI Software in a hosted model (Software as a Service) is catching up with the industry. Particularly so with small and medium size companies; It is quite natural that they are very much investment-conscious.
Now as the cloud computing has evolved from myth to reality, the underlying security concerns of hosting company’s valuable data assets with others has successfully been dispelled. Even the regulatory compliance concerns are being addressed to by geographically limiting the servers. On-demand BI solutions are being offered from big players like IBM, SAP etc.,
New Technology at Low Cost
Some of the strategies reported as considered by BI professionals involve implementing Self-Service BI, setting-up BI competency centers, creating cross functional BI teams and super users etc.
Self-Service BI helps in reducing the intermediary manpower requirements. When the non-technical (Non IT) users are empowered to operate BI systems and produce their own reports, it reduces the cost. For example, Mashboards becoming popular way to implement self-service dashboards.
Additionally, Super Users as extension of BI team, add value without adding costs. For this, companies are going for Super User program where in right manpower resource is identified as Super User and empowered to do analytical and reporting jobs. BICC – Business Intelligence Competency Centers are formed to prioritize the projects and align them with business needs and interests.
As we can see from the above, BI professionals are always up on their feet with new tactics to counter the challenges posed by varied economic conditions; closely follow the trends and adopt the relevant technologies.