One of my favorite topics is the very human tendency to misuse and misunderstand the information that is provided by business intelligence systems. Here’s a link to a TED Talk by Peter Donnelly, an Oxford statistician, pointing out some of the common errors that people make, and the serious consequences that can result. Here’s a taste of the …
Putting the ‘Business’ back into Business Intelligence
In the What’s in a Name post, I wrote about an opportunity to update the “business intelligence” term. Gartner has been thinking about the same thing. It’s the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit this week, and in an Intelligent Enterprise article, Bill Hostman talks about the key trends and themes from the event: Bill Hostmann “We’ve …
Continue reading “Putting the ‘Business’ back into Business Intelligence”
Google and Mobile Consumer BI?
According to their 2005 patent filing, Google may be interested in providing information to people’s mobile phones based on their location: “The generating of the dictionary data may also include producing data related to the information indicative of the user location. The generated dictionary data may be associated with places near the user location. Also, the …
What’s in a Name? PM / BI / IM
To successfully provide information in a form that business people can use, you need three types of technology, to: Tame information chaos: Collect, manage, and integrate information, and fix any data quality problems (data quality, data integration, metadata management, etc) Turn information into insight: Analyze the information, gain understanding of what is happening, and communicate it …
BI 2.0?
First, I agree with most of the coverage of business intelligence 2.0 so far: yes, the term is a little tacky — but it’s irresistible (and a great way of finding people blogging about Business Intelligence) An irresistible term A great example is the experience of Gartner’s Andy Bitterer. Despite his criticism of the term, …
Data Integration and Web Mashups on Collision Course?
Here’s an interesting Techcrunch post on “5 Ways to Mix, Rip, and Mash your Data“. It includes Yahoo! pipes that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, but also several other ETL-like technologies. One in particular, called Proto, has the ability to mash together local data with information from the web (e.g. “map my Outlook …
Continue reading “Data Integration and Web Mashups on Collision Course?”
Swivel.com: Flickr for Data Lovers?
After ManyEyes, Swivel is another site that another site that lets users upload and share information. It’s more explicitly modeled after Flickr and other web 2.0 sites, with community building and “fun statistics” (highlights today include chart showing number of people attending the burning man festival and the nationality of cyclists in the 2007 Tour of …
BI Forum Zurich
I presented on the topic of “BI Market Dynamics and the Three Pillars of BI” at the Business Objects Zurich BI Forum on March 1st. A Business Objects customer, Atel Electricity, presented their BI project, and there were around one hundred or so attendees. Here are the slides from the event in pdf format (contact …
Oracle Buys Hyperion
After the months (years?) of consolidation rumors, finally something happened…. Thoughts: Less change than you might expect It doesn’t change the BI market share picture much, based on the latest IDC numbers, from 2005 (2006 figures presumably due out soon, not expecting any huge changes in the relative positions). Hyperion is currently #5, and Oracle …
SAP Buys an EIS Pioneer
SAP just purchased Pilot Software, which first came out with an executive information system (EIS) in 1986. I remember evaluating Pilot Lightship, a windows-based EIS solution, in 1992 or so. Then they had almost no discernable impact on mainstream BI for fifteen years, only to pop up recently as a “company to watch” according to …