Clever businesses follow business intelligence trends

It’s a proven fact that Business Intelligence (BI) is a technology that is playing a significant role to improve the overall financial standings of corporates. Furthermore, despite the economic recession, BI flourished in 2009 and 2010 respectively reiterating its use by CIOs across industries as a critical business decision tool.

It’s imperative then for CIOs to be aware of upcoming trends and analysis in this mission critical technology sector. Martin Rennhackkamp, COO of PBT Group, a of BI and Information Specialists group in South Africa shares his thoughts in this regard.

‚Let me start by saying that organisations have realised they cannot compete on historic and present information alone anymore. More and more executives want to understand their business and base their decisions on up-to-the-minute real and accurate information. Therefore, we have already seen a steady increase in specific virtualisation enabling technology and along with this continuing trend, next year will see an increase in the uptake and deployment of ‚real’ advanced analytics, as well as pre-packaged analytics ‚ both enabling effective data analysis or real-time ‚slicing and dicing’.‚

This is leading to what the industry considers a big trend to look out for in 2011 – the Next Generation Data Warehouse. ‚Decision makers are insisting on Real-time BI for strategic and effective decision making, which requires a real-time data warehouse. The Next Generation Data Warehouse is made up of components such as cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS), all of which will allow real time BI to be achieved.‚

‚On the back of this, as South Africa’s bandwidth continues to increase, companies will be exploring more efficient services such as cloud computing (deployed as private clouds) and SaaS. Companies are realising that outsourcing such specialised services is a real alternative to in-house BI as the expertise needed are high.

Concludes Rennhackkamp: ‚As the market we operate in continues to evolve, so to will the BI industry in 2011 and beyond. The important thing is for businesses to adapt their BI strategies now to meet new market requirements and needs, to ensure that BI remains a successful business component for their organisation. It is only a matter of time before we begin to see the uptake of these trends across businesses. And when decision makers have adapted accordingly, the true benefits of an innovative BI strategy will continue to be reaped.‚