February 1, 2010
Welcome to the seventh annual TDWI's Best of Business Intelligence: A Year in Review. Each year we select a few of TDWI's best, most well-received, hard-hitting articles, research, and information, and present them to you in this publication.
Stephen Swoyer kicks off this issue with a review of recent major BI developments. "2009 in Review: BI's Value Put to the Test" describes 2009 in ups and downs: the year saw more vendor winners than losers, but a down economy and consolidation still claimed others. Swoyer argues that 2009 was "tailor-made to test the very value business intelligence claims to bring to the table."
In "2010 Forecast: Can BI and DW Teams Find Benefits in Recession? Or, the Data Mart and the Pendulum," TDWI Research analysts Wayne Eckerson and Philip Russom share their predictions for the new year. Eckerson predicts that BI will move forward in fits and starts in 2010, and Russom highlights controlled diversification as one of the strongest (and strangest) BI/DW trends to date.
To further represent TDWI Research, we've provided an excerpt from one of the past year's Best Practices Reports. Eckerson's "Beyond Reporting: Delivering Insights with Next-Generation Analytics" explains that it's key to understand your business users, their roles, and the information they need.
This volume's Ten Mistakes to Avoid will help you avoid some common pitfalls in designing and developing operational BI applications. And thanks to articles from TDWI's e-newsletters, you'll learn more about the balanced scorecard, BI in the cloud, advanced analytics, data mining, analytic data warehousing, and master data management.
In "The New Imperative for Business Schools," one of our selections from the Business Intelligence Journal, Mark Conway and Gauthier Vasseur question whether business schools are preparing their students with the new skill sets many organizations need. Our second Journal piece, "Who Are the Business Intelligence Leaders of Tomorrow?" by Jim Gallo, suggests that our rush to cut costs and outsource jobs may be creating a leadership vacuum.
TDWI is committed to providing industry professionals with information that is educational, enlightening, and immediately applicable. Enjoy, and we look forward to your feedback on TDWI's Best of Business Intelligence, Volume 7.
TDWI's Best of Business Intelligence is sponsored by the following vendors:
Acxius
Acxius is a best-in-class consulting firm, serving clients around the globe and providing high-performance, intelligent, user-friendly, and scalable solutions for their big and complex data and information challenges.
Birst
There's no shortage of BI vendors, but there is a shortage of cost-effective, easy-to-use, and fast BI tools available on demand. Birst is making its way to IT's short list. Find out why. Free trial: http://www.birst.com/signup.shtml
Cisco
Tidal Enterprise Scheduler automates complex data flows to ensure that ETL processes feeding your BI systems are completed correctly and reports are delivered on time, every time.
DataFlux
DataFlux enables business agility and IT efficiency by providing innovative data management technology and services that transform data into a strategic asset.
Jaspersoft + Talend
Learn why organizations adopt open source for data integration and BI through selected case studies that illustrate real-life implementations using solutions from Jaspersoft and Talend.
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy, a global leader in business intelligence technology, provides integrated reporting, analysis, and monitoring software that helps leading organizations make better business decisions every day.
Spotfire, TIBCO Software Inc.
Spotfire Analytics is better than BI, smarter than spreadsheets. Learn the top five reasons why and register for a free 30-day trial of Spotfire here: http://spotfire.tibco.com/products/spotfire-analytics.aspx