{"id":12233,"date":"2012-01-26T17:34:58","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T16:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=3642"},"modified":"2012-01-26T17:34:58","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T16:34:58","slug":"what-mobile-bi-used-to-look-like-and-where-its-going-back-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/what-mobile-bi-used-to-look-like-and-where-its-going-back-to-the-future.html","title":{"rendered":"What Mobile BI Used To Look Like, And Where It’s Going (Back to the Future!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note, this is an adapted, extended version of my post on the SAP Analytics Blog.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Mobile BI has been around for a long time. Starting in the late-1990s, the first SMS-enabled telephones<\/a> became mainstream in Europe, with basic broadcasting of the latest figures available in your BI system (or email, fax, pager, etc.). By the end of the decade, the first telephones with WAP browsers<\/a> were used to provide interactive BI, quickly followed by connected PDAs with basic HTML browsers.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what SAP BusinessObjects<\/a> looked like on the Nokia 7110<\/a> in 1999, on a Compaq PDA running Windows Pocket IE, an AvantGo PDA, and a Japanese DoCoMo i-mode <\/a>phone in 2001:<\/p>\n

\"businessobjects-phones-larger-banner\"<\/p>\n

The arrival of all these new mobile devices was supposed to usher in a new dawn of mobile analytics. Here\u2019s a slide from a presentation a decade ago by then-marketing-VP Dave Kellogg<\/a>, including the heady prediction that \u201c5-25% of companies indicated they already provide or will provide wireless access to BI within 6-12 months\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"mobile-bi-is-real\"<\/p>\n

Business Objects launched a big initiative to go after the mobile market, and managed to sell projects to customers including JP Morgan (Palm Pilots) and Zurich Insurance (a mobile extranet for risk managers).<\/p>\n

\"mobile-bi\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But, clearly, the market didn\u2019t take off \u2013 PDAs became more widely used, and phones got better, but they weren\u2019t used much for BI. The user interfaces were too clunky and connection speeds were too slow. Interest in mobile BI did grow slowly over the decade, notably as RIM blackberry devices became ubiquitous, but it took the wide availability of 3G wireless and modern smartphones\/tablets to provide truly usable interfaces.<\/p>\n

Finally, a decade and a half after the first tentative steps, everybody seems to agree that this is the year that mobile BI will really take off.<\/p>\n

2012 Is the Year of Mobile BI<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s a taste of the mountain of research data that\u2019s been generated about mobile BI in the last few months:<\/p>\n