Came across an interesting post Tom Hudock's Business Intelligence for Business People blog. The post is called 'Explain Why BI 2.0,' and as the title suggests, prods at the idea to tease out the real meaning.
Not being satisfied with the definition in IDC's report, which states "BI 2.0 is for customers interested in providing their employees with advanced decision support that solves specific business problems," Tom goes on:
That's not really descriptive enough, so my BI 2.0 would:
- track business events
- make decisions in close to real-time
- use SOA and Web 2.0 technologies
I agree with Tom that IDC's definition is way too high level. And I generally agree with his additions to the definition. But in my opinion, something crucial is missing.
Whether you like the "2.0" christening trend or not, one thing that is common to all is an increase in user-created content and relationships. I would say whether your 2.0 app is built using XML or JSON, AJAX or Ruby, HTTP or RPC, what matters is that users are more empowered to create.
So I don't know exactly what BI 2.0 is, but seems to me that more power needs to be put in the hands of the users. When it comes to data, that means more power to get data, slice and dice it as needed, then publish and share the analysis.
This is not simple matter, and I can sense the raised hackles of data architects already, but the reality is that unless we can simplify the gathering of relevant data and put it into the hands of the users, we will never have BI 2.0. IMO, we need an Integration 2.0 before we can have a BI 2.0.
Stay tuned for thoughts on that.
