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.

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.

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.

My most recent opportunity was spending a month in the exciting country of Oman, which, despite the recent unrest in the Middle East, proved to be a welcoming, progressive and abundantly interesting country.  Apart from the opportunity to explore this part of the world, it also proved to be an exciting work project, as the dashboards I developed for my customer there included several innovative solutions. 

Upon arrival, I found that the customer had 52 KPIs that were being tracked weekly & monthly in over 60 different Excel spreadsheets, maintained by dozens of people in various locations.  The solution we put together for the customer allowed them to begin maintaining all the KPIs in a database (as it should be), by using InfoBurst to write back values to a database table.  Using Xcelsius as a data entry tool, we created two different dashboards for entering metric values which, with the push of a button, ran update queries back to our database table, which immediately refreshed and presented the data in the main dashboard for the General Managers to view.  This solution provided a new precedence for accountability and consistency across the board.

 There were two additional innovations to this solution which I am excited about.  Both of these involved automatically emailing a mini dashboard as an Event based Alert.  The first mini dashboard was emailed to the project team if a user modified one of the KPI targets.  Key users were allowed to change a target, but the team wanted to be aware when this happened.  Using InfoBurst, we created a query based event that checked every 30 minutes for a condition to be true (a target change).  Whenever that condition is true, InfoBurst initiates a burst of a mini dashboard (.swf file) to the project team, with the following information:

·         Which KPI target was changed

·         What is the new KPI target value

·         Who changed the target

·         What time did this change occur

The second innovative Alert notification mini dashboard involved the time sensitive nature of getting all the KPIs entered by given dates.  Schedules were created in InfoBurst to query for any KPI’s that had not been entered by noon on the first day of the week.  This initiated an email Alert burst of a mini dashboard to the appropriate person responsible for updating the missing KPIs.  A second schedule ran 4 hrs later and emailed the Alert mini dashboard to BOTH the responsible party AND their manager!  This process ensured accountability for getting these Key Performance Indicators entered in a timely fashion for all the General Managers to be able to review in their meetings the following days.

I foresee exciting possibilities that this solution opens up for other customers as well.  Imagine being able to automatically email a dashboard to the VP of Finance when Sales Revenue  falls below a certain level, or ….  Think of the possibilities!

It’s not just that Xcelsius is going places globally but wherever it goes, it is creating new Business Intelligence applications that are slowly but surely changing the world.  

Last week I received an email from the father of a girl who I used to coach on my soccer team. The email was entitled “Bragging Rights and Thank You” and he explained how his daughter had just been selected for the High School All Regions First Team. She is only a sophomore and helped her high school varsity team to win the State Championship in their division.

Coach Paul with the Desert Elite

I first coached her at our soccer club when she was 10 years old and she transitioned with me from recreational to competitive soccer. She was fast and fearless and it was not difficult to see that she had natural talent on the soccer field. During the 5 years I coached her, I encouraged her simply to do what she loved most which was to play well, be creative and have fun. I just watched from the sidelines and cheered as she improved and dazzled us all with new skills with each game.

Anyway, her father was justifiably proud and the “bragging rights” were in order.

So the day after, I receive an email from a customer who has been troubleshooting an Xcelsius dashboard issue with the help of one of our consultants, Roxanne.

Roxanne had suggested to the customer to create a copy of the dashboard and create new queries and XML cache’s with new names.  The customer was emailing to say that since doing this, he has been unable to recreate his original problem and is happy it is working.  He added a postscript that said,

“ I have to mention I used your name in naming the queries, xml caches etc while recreating. This must have had a positive effect”

 So it appears by naming the dashboard queries and XML caches “Roxanne” something, his problem is solved and his dashboard is running great! Well, I could not let this pass without both sharing it and bragging about it.

Roxanne is one of InfoSol’s top consultants and a true Xcelsius guru. Unlike my soccer player, she was a little more than 10 years-old when she learned BusinessObjects and Xcelsius but , just like my soccer player,  I simply encouraged her to do what she loved most which was to be creative and have fun. The result is a Business Intelligence Superstar whose mere name causes queries to behave and run better!!

If you want to determine if my bragging rights are justified, you can attend the Xcelsius  Master Hands-on Bootcamp at this year’s IBIS2011  which will be taught by Roxanne and witness first hand her amazing talents or you could just rename your dashboard queries after her!

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.

Exactly one week after being in a major snow storm in Philadelphia, I find myself boarding a ferry in Puntarenas, Costa Rica in 97 degree heat.  I am on my way to visit my brother who currently is in the middle of the jungle in the Nicoya Peninsula.

I see a man wearing over 20 hats on his head that he is trying to sell.  I think to myself that this is quite a good way to advertise yourself because he looks ridiculous and people cannot help but stop and look at him.  Of course, I did look and he immediately saw the moment of hesitation in my eyes and pounced.  I had to buy one, it was only $6 – what a bargain!

 It also made me think about the multiple hats that many of us have to wear working in the field of business intelligence which includes so many facets including data warehouse design and creation, ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Load), data quality, universe views, reports and dashboards.  While larger corporations and entities may have different people assigned to the individual tasks, most organizations will expect business intelligence personnel to do many or sometimes all of these tasks.  Some actually have experience that allows them to take on all of the responsibilities but they often end up like the man in Costa Rica, wearing all those hats and looking somewhat strange as they try to do it all.

There are definitely advantages in specializing in the different disciplines, not least of which is that you will need dedicated expertise in them that covers both the business and the technical side of the area.  To be a truly effective business intelligence report designer and developer for the finance department, you need to understand finance processes for finance, the finance data and the business intelligence tools.

As business intelligence becomes more and more significant in every organization, it might be worth thinking about getting more people to wear those different BI hats.

We believe that Business Intelligence is changing our lives in so many amazing ways.  It inspires companies, institutions and people to make timely decisions with confidence and is one of the most exciting happenings on the planet right now.  

InfoSol is inspired to see beyond your data by using Business Intelligence to its ultimate effectiveness.

The SAP BusinessObjects suite of solutions delivers the most leading edge and powerful business intelligence solutions in the marketplace and INFOSOL’S BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR (IBIS),  is the most effective forum for learning how to use these solutions in new and inspirational ways.

IBIS 2011 offers an incredible line-up.  Hands-on  PreSeminar workshops, immersion training boot camps, executive seminars … visit the IBIS 2011 website.  You can view conference details and register.

So the other night, my son decided to chat with me about cars.  This was mainly due to the fact that a girl from his junior class parks in the spot next to him driving a huge black Hummer.  He always seems to arrive at the same time as she does and, as he put it, “It’s just not cool stepping out of a little orange car as she climbs down from her big black Hummer.”

I explained to him that you really should not compare a Hummer with a Fit. They are two very different vehicles with different capabilities. A Hummer would be an ideal vehicle if you were planning some “off-roading” in the desert but for driving to school it is expensive, bad for the environment and not very practical.

Although, in many ways we are conditioned to compare, we often end up comparing items using different criteria and coming to vastly different results.   Comparing the Honda Fit to the Hummer may put the Fit ahead in terms of fuel efficiency, maintenance cost, price and many other areas but many people would still pick a Hummer over a Fit to drive.

So when people come to me and ask me to compare Xcelsius to Qlikview, Dundas, Corda or other BI dashboard solutions, my first response is usually to first ask about the solution they are trying to implement and then ask about what will be their main criteria for selection.

Usually, the bigger issue is the data and metrics that they want to compare. These often do not exist in a form that can easily be used in a dashboard solution and a Data Mart may need to be created first to do any meaningful comparisons. The quantity, quality and frequency of change of the data are also all important factors to be considered.

The dashboard, like most user interface solutions, is usually the tip of the iceberg above the water and the larger and more important consideration is that mass of data under the water. We tend to get caught up in comparing features of dashboard tools and the tool vendors love to show their competitive analysis matrices and reports from “independent” analysts and organizations that they pay to create for them.

Yes, factors like ease of use, dynamic visibility, underlying technology and price are important too but if you focus on the solution itself then the weighting of these items will become more apparent and fall into their rightful place. If the solution is too difficult to use or too expensive, then you can eliminate it from consideration right away.

I have always been a great believer in “try before you buy” but more importantly in doing that “trying” in the context of the solution you want to create. So, in my opinion, the best way to compare dashboard solutions is to set up a meaningful pilot project and see which one truly meets your needs the best.

No, I am not going to encourage my son to test drive a Hummer to see if it is the best vehicle for him to drive to school because there is no way he could ever afford to own and run a vehicle like that so we can eliminate that one right away. Besides, there are better ways to impress the girls.