In-memory
will be a key theme this year as Microsoft will ship Gemini, SAP opens
up BW Accelerator, IBM Cognos increasingly leverages TM1, and
MicroStrategy 9 OLAP Services gains traction. In-memory approaches are
not only key to BI platforms but also to any analysis that involves
both speed and analytic complexity (Spotfire, SAS JMP, QlikView). The
winners in this are the customers; the losers will be the vendors who
have no strategy in this space or where in-memory is their only
differentiator.
Cloud computing and SaaS
will become less niche as both BI heavy weights and vertically-focused
vendors recognize that the infrastructure side of BI offers little
competitive advantage; instead, it's the time-to-value and agility. IT
owners who don't want to give up any control are in for a bruising.
SMBs will embrace BI
but, faced with a myriad of good BI tool choices, these customers will
choose products from vendors who offer better service, clarity of
value, a partnership mentality, and at the least cost.
The enterprise vs. departmental BI debate
will continue but will be tempered with the reality of "best" and
"right" doesn't matter if you get outsourced, laid off, or go bankrupt.
Those burned by over spending on software will look for IT to offer
some enterprise restraint. Those who suffered from the analysis
paralysis of over standardizing, over engineering, and over consensus
building will look enviously at the more nimble departments to deliver
better solutions, faster. The wiser of the industry will find an ideal
balance of having an enterprise focus on those items that bring
economies of scale and synergies, while departmentalizing those aspects
in which differentiation and time to value matter more.
Got dashboards?
This category of tools only keeps getting better. Dashboards will
become as commonplace as reporting and ad hoc query capabilities; but
in 2010, they will be more animated, better integrated, packing more
effective insights, on whatever device users prefer (including the
iPhone and Droid).
Good data, bad decisions
remain BI's biggest problem. I'd like to be optimistic and think that
we will rid the BI industry of all that ails it, but the world economy,
corruption in politics, the epidemic of overweight people while others
starve -- you name it -- tell me that human nature will continue to
sabotage even the best of BI deployments. As Neil Raden blogged this week, even when presented with good data, people make mistakes in decision-making (see this timeless HBR article for some of the classics).
So as Tom Davenport suggests,
it will be the companies with both the smart people, and those who
truly work in an aligned way that make the best of BI. This
"prediction" shouldn't be a downer; instead, it should be just another
voice reminding you that the culture has to be right for BI to really
have a positive impact.
Social networking and sentiment analysis
should be on everyone's radar. Now that it seems every company has a
Facebook presence (maybe for marketing, maybe for customer support),
the need for sentiment analysis grows. So all those tweets, blogs, and
social network updates only add to the data explosion and sense of
information overload.
For many individuals, I know
that 2009 was a tumultuous year. Jobs came and went -- if not yours,
then your spouse's, your colleagues', your friends'. Change can leave
us on edge, waiting for the next calamity. But still, if you are in BI,
it means you are in a flourishing industry. I couldn't think of a more
exciting field to work in.