It is becoming more apparent than ever that the leading BI companies of four years ago (Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion) having been taken over by bigger software application companies (SAP, IBM and Oracle) are losing their leadership position in BI innovation as most of their BI product development effort is focused inwardly to better integrate with their respective owners applications to take advantage of easier sales within their own customer base. They have almost become “legacy BI” solutions along with Microsoft who is quickly falling into the same category. As many industry analysts predicted at the time of these acquisitions, this has made room for new startup companies to fill the void left behind. So during these past few years , we have seen the meteoric rise of Apple with its mobile solutions, Saleforce with its phenomenal cloud based CRM application and Qliktech with its high speed, fast deployment BI solutions.

The BI landscape continues to change at an ever-accelerating pace and I am sure we will be looking at many new names, unheard of today, in a year’s time. In the meantime, here are my top 5 BI predictions for 2012 :

Prediction 1:  Mobile Business Intelligence will start to dominate over conventional business intelligence as companies will demand mobility as a compulsory feature. Mobile workforces will start to replace laptops with iPads (which will be the tablet of choice for businesses in 2012) as more useful and compelling BI solutions are developed for mobile devices. Companies like Mellmo, with Roambi (www.roambi.com), are already well positioned to take advantage of this trend but other strong competitors will emerge in the coming year as more BI dashboard solutions go mobile.

Prediction 2: Cloud based BI applications will propagate like wildfire and the race is on as to who, if anyone, will dominate this space. The question is do any of the BI vendors have the execution capability and the vision to do what Microsoft did to dominate the PC software business or Amazon did to dominate the on-line retail space – namely drop the price so low (or even free) to gain market share at the cost of profit? If not, watch out for iCloud or Google making a play for this huge BI opportunity.

Prediction 3: BI dashboards will continue to thrive but there will be more trend towards Operational BI rather than Strategic BI in 2012. As the capabilities for alerting, write back, connectivity to all types of applications (cloud, internet, on premise, mobile and machine interface) continue to expand, the possibilities and demand for operational BI with dashboard interfaces will too.

Prediction 4: “Big Data” wars will drive more demand for BI. With IBM leading the pack and SAP and Oracle not far behind, I predict a battle on an Exabyte scale as they and others compete as to who can analyze the most data in the fastest time and push it into meaningful BI solutions. The good news for businesses is that this will drive the price of BI tools down (as will the competition from Cloud and Mobile BI solutions).

Prediction 5: Business Intelligence for Web and Social Media content will be super-hot in 2012. The demand to perform BI against unstructured data sources from the web and use BI tools to analyze and visualize will go beyond conventional marketing applications and become an invaluable asset in all areas of business. (Of course, this was the prediction I did not score myself well on in 2011 so I want to go further out on the limb with it this year!).

So let’s see what happens. I am certainly pumped up and excited to see how BI will continue to evolve this year. It is a safe prediction to say that it will evolve for sure but it is usually the unpredictable direction that keeps us (especially me) on our toes. Enjoy the ride.

Prediction 1: Visual Dashboards will remain dominant as the BI User Interface of choice. They will expand beyond their traditional tactical and strategic usage and be seen more in operational BI applications as backend performance with in memory analytics and caching continues to improve. Tools like Xcelsius will increase their presence due to both their visual appeal and ease of use.

Well Visual Dashboards did remain dominant and they certainly did expand into operational BI areas. We saw non-traditional BI functions like “write back” become more used. Xcelsius continued to grow in popularity and usage. I think I scored a 5 out of 5 on this one!

Prediction 2: Data Governance will be a priority as both large and mid-size companies are compelled to accurately consolidate and clean up their data for more relevant and precise business intelligence. Data quality, integration and master data management solutions will become mandatory in many organizations.

Data Governance was a priority with many large companies in 2011 but not so much with mid-size organizations as they tried to navigate a very unpredictable and bumpy economy. Data quality remained important but was still often pushed down the priority list in favor of meeting deliverable deadlines. I think I can only give myself a 2 out of 5 on this one.

Prediction 3: The race for optimal mobile business intelligence solutions will get into full swing. With a plethora of new tablet devices and new BI mobile software products, I anticipate a year of experimentation and we will need to wait another year before the real market leaders are determined. Watch out for Roambi (http://www.roambi.com/) because they are definitely heading in the right direction.

Mobile BI was a big topic in 2011 and a lot of new solutions appeared, both streaming and off-line based applications. Many companies did explore and experiment and some purchased and deployed. We saw many new tablet devices appear and almost as quickly disappear. Apple’s iPad remains the business tablet device of choice while Androids are becoming the most popular mobile smart phones. Roambi increased its presence globally and just released more amazing new views (Layers and Squares) and has become the BI mobile solution to beat. I score myself a 5 out of 5 on this one!

Prediction 4: Relational database Data Marts and Warehouses will continue to be the BI repository of choice in 2011. OLAP cubes will remain a niche market and the new in memory databases are just too immature and too expensive to have a serious impact this year. There will probably be lots of hype but until this new technology is affordable to the masses, it will have minimal effect. Data Mart projects will continue to thrive in the small to medium enterprise space.

Data Marts and Warehouses still remain the BI repository of choice although many companies are looking at a quicker method to deploy their ever-increasing demand for BI analytics. SAP spent a boat load of money, resources and hype promoting their new HANA in-memory analytics solution but there are very few running in live production. As the technology evolves and becomes more commodity that may change. I score 5 out of 5 on this one.

Prediction 5: Business Intelligence for Web and Social Media content will be hot and in demand. The need to perform BI against the predominantly unstructured data sources of the web has never been greater as more business and institutions both grow their web presence and web driven marketing. BI tools and solutions that can quickly analyze this data both quantitatively and qualitatively will see fast growth and adoption in 2011.

Using BI against Web and social media content has grown in 2011 but it has not been as hot as I was predicting. I have read several articles this year about success stories in this area but I have actually encountered very few first hand. The tools to analyze the unstructured content are good but are still relatively expensive and require a lot of services (more expensive). Maybe that will change in the next year or so. I can only score myself a 1 out of 5 for this one.

So my final grade is a 72% which according to my daughter in High School is only a “C”. Well I will have to do better than that so stand by for my 2012 BI predictions coming in the next few weeks.

I went to dinner with two of my colleagues from InfoSol, Amy and Teresa, who live and work out of Portland. Teresa was halfway through a two week engagement delivering Xcelsius design consulting services at a client in Oakland, California. She loves her weird home town of Portland so much that she flew back for the weekend.

So I asked her how the project was going and she casually answered, “Fine but it has been difficult to eat out some nights and get some sleep”.  Teresa then explained that the hotel she was staying at is less than a block from City Hall, downtown Oakland where the local Occupy Wall Street movement has been camping out and where things got a little out of control this week.

So the night the trouble started, she was walking down the street heading  for a restaurant when she ran into a solid wall of Oakland police officers decked out in full riot gear. She turned back and stopped in at a Subway to get a take-out sandwich to bring back to the hotel.  She tried to hurry the guy making the sandwich but those “sandwich artists” take their work seriously. As she was paying she saw streams of protesters heading past the Subway in the direction of the riot police and then all hell broke loose as she heard explosions (probably flash bang grenades). By the time she got outside, it looked like a war zone and she scurried back to the hotel.

There was little peace there due to the three police helicopters hovering outside her hotel room on the 26^thfloor making sleep almost impossible.  Then, just as she thought she might doze off, there was an earthquake causing the building to both shake and sway.

I sat there, hardly believing what I was hearing. Most people would have just packed up and gone home at that point but Teresa delivered her first week of services and will be back again this week to deliver the rest.

Last month another InfoSol consultant, Simon, was delivering Data Integrator services in Washington DC when an earthquake caused the ventilator in the middle of the room to come crashing down. Fortunately nobody was hurt and he finished the services in another location after the building was evacuated.

Wow – this kind of dedication is nothing short of inspirational. Teresa and Simon – you rock!

Citing examples from companies like Zappos, Dr. McGonigal quite convincingly explained how games create positive emotions like joy, relief, love surprise, pride, curiosity, awe, contentment, creativity and excitement. Judging by my own teenage son’s reaction after playing World of Warcraft or Call for Duty, I might add a couple more emotions to that list.

A recent study estimated that people around the world spend a total of 3 billion hours a week playing online games alone which certainly would indicate that we like playing games. At the same time, the cost for not being positive in the workplace has been estimated to cost businesses around $300 billion a year. McGonigal explained that the opposite of play is not work but depression and that games can help to create “super empowered, hopeful individuals” and make work more fun than fun!

We then played a game of “massively multiple player Thumb Wrestling” to show how playing games gets our oxytocin flowing and makes us feel good and I must admit that I left the session pretty upbeat but with some sore thumbs!

The next day it rained – a rare occurrence for Las Vegas and I got pretty wet running to the Starbucks to get my wakeup fix. The detour made me late for the first keynote so I ran across the bridge from the Starbucks to the Venetian which was not very smart on that slippery surface. About half way across, I saw my feet appearing at the same height as my chest and my butt was the next part of my body to strike the ground. I had but one thought – “Save the Café Mocha”!  It was in my right hand which I held high and upright and despite some nasty bruises and soaking wet pants, the Mocha was saved.

I entered the keynote dripping wet and sore but triumphant (Mocha in hand) as I watched a video of Hasso Plattner declaring once again how SAP has reinvented itself in terms of technology through HANA. The theme was continued with several case studies and video testimonies, including showing how HANA can analyze a boat load of data faster than someone can bake a cake. It was all very similar to Sapphire four months earlier. Interestingly, a quick show of hands in the audience of over 4,000 indicated that less than 2% of attendees were considering HANA in the next 12 months.

There was some mention of Sybase and Sybase IQ with an impressive established install base of customers.

Then there were breakout sessions galore although, like Sapphire, not that many on BusinessObjects.

One session that I did find very interesting was entitled “Pervasive Location Analytics” which was an intriguing look at the growing significance of the location dimension in data and how Google, in particular, have had a big influence on this. There was a fascinating case study shown where the Guardian Newspaper in the UK  (www.Guardian.co.uk) used location analytics to determine if poverty was a factor in the recent riots in the UK. By layering the locations where the riots occurred and arrests were made with the location of the addresses of those arrested with a heat map of the average income level of those areas, they were able to see a correlation.

The presenter mentioned that SAP has recently signed a 3-year deal with Google to use Google Maps and other Google location API’s with its applications and they had also signed a partnership agreement with Centigon Solutions (www.CentigonSolutions.com) to use and resell their Google Maps plug-in for Xcelsius dashboards.

Like Sapphire, TechEd is just too big with too much going for me. It is hit or miss on the sessions (some useful, some not). I am not sure if I will go next year but, if I do, I will definitely avoid playing thumb wars and running on wet slippery bridges.

If you are interested in the idea of gamification, here’s a TED talk from Feb 2010 by Jane McGonigal on how Gaming Can Make a Better World.

As I walked around the showcase showing Xcelsius dashboards running on an iPad, people stopped with looks of disbelief mixed with wonder.

“How are you doing that?”

“Xcelsius doesn’t run on an iPad or an iPhone”

Well, I am happy to report that with MyBI Mobile, not only does Xcelsius run on an iPad and an iPhone, but also on an Android. And it not only runs but it sings too! It has a fabulous simple menu system to serve up different content on the device and that content can also be Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence in addition to Xcelsius. With Web Intelligence you can also create new reports from the mobile device – that’s cool! When viewing and interacting with the content, you can perform a “pinch and zoom” action on any part of the screen to automatically enlarge that area of the dashboard or report.

While many companies have invested in building both dazzling and effective Xcelsius dashboard business intelligence solutions, they have often been challenged when trying to find ways to move these to mobile devices. The operating system for the IPhone and IPad (iOS) does not support Flash and SWF outputs natively but with MyBI mobile the barriers have been lifted. You can now take your key Xcelsius dashboards and just serve them up on iPads, iPhones and Androids without changing them and interact with all the features just the same as on the PC.

I cannot express enough how incredible this is and what it means to the millions of Xcelsius users around the world who want to take their dashboards mobile  - you are free of your shackles and you can now deliver Xcelsius to the most popular mobile smart devices out there.

I recently heard there are an estimated 200 million iOS devices in use today and now all those users can enjoy the full functionality of the amazing data visualization of Xcelsius through MyBI Mobile.

If the excitement at IBIS is anything to go by, you will certainly be hearing and seeing a lot more of this solution in the coming months so stay tuned.

Centigon Solutions – Ryan Goodman and Evan DeLodder (California, USA)

Centigon provides add-on components for Xcelsius dashboards like GMaps for incorporation of Google Maps in your dashboards and a group of neat components know as the Essentials Bundle. InfoSol resells these offerings and includes the Essentials Bundle in our InfoBurst Dash solution. Centigon is an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating their solutions at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.  Ryan Goodman, Centigon Founder and Xcelsius evangelist will be delivering one of the keynote addresses on Inspired Dashboard Solutions on Tuesday morning. He will also be leading two sessions in the “Next Generation of BI” track (Track 7). Evan Delodder the CTO and product architect at Centigon will be delivering the 2-day FleXcelsius boot camp in the IBIS Post-seminar offerings on the Thursday and Friday after IBIS. This boot camp will teach you how to build your own Xcelsius components in Flex.

Keyrus – Klaus Binder and Aurelien Vadi (France)

Keyrus, a large Consulting company based in France has also developed some add-on solutions for BusinessObjects, like Version Manager for version control of universes and reports. We partner together, with Keyrus reselling InfoBurst in Europe, and InfoSol reselling Version Manager in the US.  They are an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating Version Manager at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.

Blueprint Management – David Searro and Mike Saunders (U.K.)

Blueprint  a specialist consultancy that creates business intelligence and data warehouse platforms for improved performance management and financial planning is also one of our partners and an InfoBurst Reseller in the UK.  David Searro is from the senior management team at Blueprint and Mike Saunders is a technical specialist.

Affecto – Jesper Schultz-Pedersen (Denmark)

Affecto is a BI Solutions Company in Denmark covering Scandinavia and the Baltic States.  Jesper is a technical specialist. 

CTTSI – Michael Ward (Michigan, USA)

CTTSI (Creative Technologies and Training Solutions Inc.) is based in Michigan. They offer training and consulting in BusinessObjects and have been a long time partner with InfoSol.   Michael is the President and Owner of the company.

You can find links to other InfoSol partners on our website.

image credit: presentermedia.com

However, a successful IT Director does need to keep abreast of current and new technologies and IT innovations and compare their processes and ideas with their peers in other companies and organizations.  Unfortunately it is often a challenge to find both the time and the forum to do this effectively.

At best, most IT Directors will only have time to attend one or two conferences or technical seminars a year.  Most such forums typically last three days and will run multiple tracks to provide more choice to a wider audience.  Some events try to be more generic in terms of technology but most will be specific to particular applications, software products or technologies.  However, these types of conferences tend to be put on or sponsored by software application or technology companies, resulting in a disproportionate number of marketing oriented sessions to promote products rather than to educate.

It was with these factors and IT managers, directors and executives in mind that InfoSol created a series of highly informative executive seminars at this year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS).

IBIS is well known for its hands-on immersion training boot camps on different BusinessObjects products, but there has been an increasing demand for concentrated and effective seminars on key  new Business Intelligence technologies as well as how to effectively utilize the latest and greatest BusinessObjects solutions.

There are three Executive Seminar tracks at IBIS 2011.  One covers the new and enhanced offerings with the latest release of the SAP BusinessObjects suite, namely XI4.0.  The sessions in this track will both explain and demonstrate live the new capabilities and educate attendees on their key benefits.

A second track (The Next Generation of BI) covers new and emerging BI technologies with particular emphasis on mobile BI which is of great interest to all these days.  There are also sessions in this track on geographic BI solutions, in memory databases for BI and integrating with internet data sources and applications.

The third executive track (Business Intelligence for Executives) is designed for managers and executives to have a better understanding of all the facets involved in planning, managing and executing a successful BI project.

In addition to the information packed seminars, there are case study demonstrations, customer and expert panel discussions, and plenty of opportunity to have real quality one-on-one information exchanges with peers.

The entire event is limited to no more than 250 attendees, ensuring that it remains a productive and quality gathering for everyone.

I hope you will join us at this year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar.

The table next to us was a major airline company and I used them as an example, citing that in the recent economic downturn, airlines had to make some tough choices in terms of reducing costs.  They needed to know which aircraft cost the most to maintain and which routes were the least profitable.   That information allowed them to make informed decisions about reducing aircraft and routes with minimal impact to their business and their customers.

I could see the lights go on in their young faces which encouraged me to tell my current favorite Business Intelligence story.

At last year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS 2010), one of the winners of the prestigious Xcelsius Dashboard Awards was a manufacturing company from the Netherlands.  They explained that they were deploying a new manufacturing execution system and wanted to provide some engaging and compelling business intelligence from this system to both encourage usage and provide useful information that was previously unavailable across the company.  They decided to create a business intelligence user interface using Xcelsius.  It would provide in excess of 120 different metrics, deployed graphically and dynamically, about the different production line processes broken down to individual shift level.  The dashboard was dynamically refreshed through the unique intelligent caching mechanism from InfoSol and the impact of this application exceeded the expectations of this company.  For the first time, production, and issues encountered on the production line, was viewed by the entire company and the results were quite revealing.  The dashboard showed that one particular shift was measurably behind all the other shifts.  Since this was visible throughout the company, the workers on this particular shift felt they needed to do something about this and took it upon themselves to correct the issues and improve productivity so that they were on pace to do better than the other shifts. 

What a totally amazing side effect, but one that truly exemplifies not just the power, but the inspiration that can be derived from Business Intelligence.  It was with this example in mind that the theme of this year’s IBIS event “Inspiring Business Intelligence” was born.  There are so many fascinating and inspiring business intelligence stories like this and IBIS 2011 will be based on sharing some of these stories as well as offering an incredible line up of immersion boot camps, executive seminars, training workshops and specialized certification programs. 

IBIS is unique in so many ways as it goes beyond the regular SAP BusinessObjects training to teach best practices that go beyond the conventional ways of designing, developing and applying business intelligence.  The individuals leading these boot camps, seminars and workshops are not just teachers; they are highly experienced consultants, mentors and gurus in their field.

The knowledge transfer that occurs at IBIS is intense and the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences unparalleled.

IBIS 2011 features hands-on immersion boot camps in Xcelsius, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports and Xcelsius Data Caching.  The executive seminars cover best practices for success in business Intelligence projects, what’s new on BusinessObjects XI 4.0, and emerging business intelligence tools and technologies.  The main seminar is three full days and the registration is fully inclusive of four nights accommodations at the jaw dropping Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel on the southern California coast (inspirational in itself!).

New to IBIS this year are some very special certified boot camps which will be held on the Thursday and Friday directly after the main event.  These include the renowned FleXcelsius course from Centigon Solutions, teaching you how to create your own Flex components for Xcelsius.  The Roambi Black Belt certification and the InfoBurst Certified Expert (ICE) boot camps will also be offered. 

Most importantly, there will be the coveted Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards, which are quickly becoming legendary.  The awards are open to everyone and the deadline for submitting your inspirational dashboard entry is April 15^th.  You can enter your dashboard in one of the following four categories:

-          Best Business Dashboard

-          Most Innovative Dashboard

-          Most Valuable Dashboard

-          Most Xcellent Dashboard

To submit your dashboard entry, click here.

I know that some of the students who stopped by our table left inspired by what they heard about business intelligence just based on the slew of follow-up enquiries.  In fact we have invited two interns to join us starting today. 

I also know that anyone attending IBIS 2011 will undoubtedly leave more inspired about business intelligence than before they came – don’t miss out!

Register today – Early registration discount expires March 31^st.

After spending 20 minutes putting on all the protective equipment and some bright purple pants that my son insisted were an essential part of any serious snowboarder’s attire, we headed for the slopes where he showed me how to strap my boots to the snowboard.  The next part was significantly more challenging, namely how to stand up when attached to your board. After scores of failed attempts that amused the groups of youngsters watching to no end, my son finally showed me that if I rolled on my belly and then pushed myself up while facing up the mountain, I could actually stand up without immediately falling over again! Of course, this made me look like a beached whale, but it did work!

My first run down the slope was not very graceful and ended with a spectacular head first crash into the snow.  On my second run I collided with my son who bravely tried to slow me down and paid the price as I simultaneously wiped us both out.

The third and forth runs were not actually bad as I completed a couple of 50 yard runs at some speed. Amazingly, I survived my first ever 90 minutes of snowboarding with no broken bones or serious bruises but I was so exhausted from all the falls and attempts to stand up, that I could barely move a muscle.

As we sat and ate lunch, my son explained that I did better on a snowboard than I did on skis because my feet were locked in a position on the board and I could not move them like I can with skis.

Sometimes when there are less options or steps involved, we tend to master them quicker.  The same is true in Business Intelligence. If you give a user a Universe or View with access to hundreds of objects in different databases and a tool like Web Intelligence for self-service query and analysis, they will usually struggle to create any type of useful report, get themselves tied up in knots and become frustrated to the point of blaming the tool and not wanting to use it again.

If, on the other hand, you create a small specialized universe or view for a user with just a few relevant objects and a pre-made report that with which they can start, they have less options and directions to choose and they can master the tool a lot easier. They can still add, delete, modify, sort, filter and save in different formats but they are working from an already created report and do not have an overwhelming number of choices to select.

While many Business Intelligence tools have become more powerful, feature-rich and versatile, most users just want information delivered in a simple, easy-to-understand way and do not want to spend time learning products and becoming experts in tools that they may not use that often.

InfoSol has developed many self-service business intelligence solutions using Web Intelligence, Xcelsius Dashboards and InfoBurst and applying best practices to allow users to get immediate benefit from them without weeks of training and usage.

Now, not everyone wants to be a casual user and those individuals should take more advanced training.  But, for the novice snowboarders like me, just standing, staying up and gliding for 50 yards is great!

He has to work on the Saturday so he sets me up in an Italian restaurant /pub with WiFi so I can catch up on a week of being out of the office. So for four hours, I diligently work away as various interesting characters come in and out – mainly to use the bathroom but sometimes for food or a drink.

At about 6 pm, I hear a lot of noise outside in the street; a combination of shouting and honking car horns.  Then suddenly, this man with his pants around his ankles and wearing a thong and a tiger mask bursts into the restaurant shouting in English with a strong French accent, “I am not John Lennon, I am John Lion!”

He continued to repeat this mantra multiple times as people either stood there smiling or made a quick exit in the opposite direction. Since the people in the bar (the smiling ones) offered him a drink and patted him on the back, I figured that this was not an uncommon occurrence.  A few minutes later my son shows up to tell me that it was this guy’s birthday and that before he came into the restaurant, he had run into his shop minus the thong!

When my son finished work, we went to a different restaurant for dinner which also had free WiFi for customers and since I still had my computer, my son wanted to show me a couple of things on Facebook.  We ended up on my Facebook page where I had very little written on my wall so I decided to post a message saying, “Visiting my son in the French Alps and watching naked Frenchmen running around in the streets”.

Now I only have about 15 friends on Facebook who can see my messages but within minutes I had 7 or 8 responses to my posting in addition to several requests to become my friend!

In this tiny little example, I had learned firsthand the power and effectiveness of social networking and viral messaging on the internet. No wonder so many businesses are shifting their sales, marketing and collaboration focus to this medium.

It is no longer sufficient just to have a nice looking web site to promote your business or interact with your customers and prospects. Without an internet social networking presence  through Blogs, Forums, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook and others, many businesses and institutions are simply missing out on marketing, sales, technical, cost savings, recruitment and collaboration (just to name a few) opportunities .

There is no other medium in the world today where information can be disseminated to so many people so quickly.

So get ready to see a lot more from InfoSol in the social networking arena in the coming weeks and months but that will not include video clips of naked Frenchmen running around in the Alps.

Related links: InfoBurst 2009 YouTube channel and 9 ways to use social networking for blog promotion