Boy, I can't look away for a minute without 47 things happening…
Business Objects and Cartesis: If you want to read a great initial synopsis of the announcement and early reactions, you can do no better than my learned ebizQ colleague (and editor!) Elizabeth Book's recent Integration Watch blog posting on the subject. My take: Business Objects is playing a bit of catch-up, from the perspective of the consolidation and integration of related functions that has been going on for some time now. (See immediately below for more.) However, with Hyperion off the merger-and-acquisition (M&A) table, Cartesis may turn out to be the most complementary, least problematic alternative currently available to Business Objects. Whether or not that company can assimilate Cartesis smoothly, and produce meaningful synergies from the merger rapidly, definitely remains to be seen. Meanwhile, here comes that "immediately below" I mentioned immediately above…
The Business Analytics/Intelligence/Process Tarball, and "BI 2.0:" As I have said numerous times in my blog at the ebizQ "BPM in Action" Web site, several previously separate disciplines are hurtling towards one another rapidly. These include business activity monitoring (BAM), BI, business process management (BPM), business process optimization (BPO), and even elements of identity and IT infrastructure management. The resulting tarball (a term derived from the "tar baby" of the Uncle Remus stories by UNIX folk) is something I've taken to referring to as business knowledge management (BKM). But another way to look at it is as a kind of "BI 2.0," as Joe McKendrick quotes Business Objects CEO in Joe's recent posting here.
But here's where this starts to become some serious fun. "BI 2.0" is precisely like "Web 2.0," "Enterprise 2.0," and any of the other "terrible twos," as Joe delightfully and correctly describes them. What all of these "2.0" constructs have in common is the requirement for what I call an "IT 3.0" enterprise architecture. To paraphrase what I've described previously elsewhere:
"IT 1.0" was all about big central computers hardwired to dumb terminals.
"IT 2.0" was all about smarter clients, smaller servers, and less tightly coupled connections – but still had a predominantly systems-centric focus.
"IT 3.0" is about three things: people, tasks, and information. All other IT and business infrastructure elements must render themselves otherwise invisible in their support of securely linking people to the information and resources they need to perform the tasks that drive the business.
In this context, BI is critically important – but only an admittedly significant sliver of the larger tarball. The goal is to create business and IT infrastructures that together enable the capture, documentation, integration, rationalization, retention, and sharing of the knowledge inside of people and business processes. That knowledge can then be used to improve and refine business and IT operations continuously.
That's what "BI 2.0," "IT 3.0," and BKM are all about. And success with any or all of them will require some new, improved takes on "business intelligence" that extend far beyond any vendor's particular solutions or technologies. There perhaps just may be some human-centric factors and issues involved as well…
Leave a comment