What's the Next Big Thing in BI?

I think the question is also the answer: the next "big thing" in BI *is* (actual) "business intelligence". In other words, moving beyond static reports on historic datasets to more interactive, analytic-supporting insights on business past and present performance, including of course more real-time, operational, intelligence.

One of the next Big Things in BI that i expect is End-User driven Visualization. Large reports, even end-user driven are useless if they just present large amounts of data in a blech, text sort of way. The trick is that Visualization is a vast topic for end users to understand in detail and in all fairness they should not be required to. Intelligent tools that somewaht comprehend the nature of the BI being presented and choose one or a few most appropriate ways of seeing the information would be huge. In fact, this may be THE factor in most top management realizing the true value of their BI investments easily!

Rather than standalone products, BI starts to be incorporated with other solutions to provide analysis and trend data related to specific business processes or applications, particularly around B2B interactions. On-demand business intelligence and SaaS based solutions will come out ahead in this trend because of ease of integration.

The next big thing is simulation and budget. Business needs actual decision instruments that can easily model the impact of change on the existing business.
This process has a lot to do with budget but current systems usually fix issues who are not perceived as such or are scarcely relevant to business.
This, especially in tight times, is a pain point but the industry is looking to the other side, to the megadata solutions which are actually relevant for a minority of the market.

Here's my list:

• Mobile BI on tablets


• Better predictive analytics


• Better data visualization


• Ubiquitous BI

Business Intelligence solutions are unable to address the moment-to-moment need for real-time decision-making. Although BI adds value with a historical perspective, its is often all too late. BI tools also cannot view and analyze the business process data or other sources of non-traditional unstructured data. BI tools give clues about business processes, but no real insight into the business process itself. In contrast, Operational Intelligence (OI) relies on real-time feeds (i.e., Event data). Event data represents in real-time significant changes in data, processes, business transactions, or other business indications.

I'll add to Doug's list and include Social BI.

The mechanism for users to engage around the data, reports and information that is delivered to them via discussion, comments and annotations.

For organizations to be truly intelligent, it is becoming clear that BI, though critical, is only part of the IT value chain that enables enterprises to get better at what they do.

To me, the next big thing in BI is the answer to the question of - How BI systems can work in an integrated & synergistic fashion with other platforms / applications (viz. BPM, PLM, Content Management, SOA, Cloud etc.) in the enterprise landscape. An agile enterprise IT eco-system with BI as one of its core pillars, working seamlessly with other application platforms will be a source of great competitive advantage to organizations.

The next "big" thing in BI is actually "small". 'Small' Realtime Intelligence Apps that run wherever the business user wants them (ie. tablets, mobile, SharePoint, wherever). These Apps need to be visually assembled by business analysts in minutes and hours, rather than developed by BI programmers in weeks and months.

It's about time we stop wishing we get this from traditional BI, but instead look at new emerging technologies that are already delivering Realtime Intelligence Apps to the masses.