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EDITOR'S NOTE
Only a few years ago, organisations existed, functioned and competed in an age of information. Today, many of them struggle in an age of information overload!
Information no longer provides a competitive edge. Too much of it in fact leads to indecisiveness, and therefore a lack of competitiveness.
Dynamic and smart organisations no longer chant the information mantra; they practice the intelligence raga insteadbusiness intelligence (BI) to be precise!
Various views of BI exist, but from a functional viewpoint it broadly covers querying, reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) and business analytics (BA). However, in recent times, the BA genre has matured to a greater relevance than other BI functions.
While BI tools are typically more focused on measuring business performance using assigned metrics, BA takes a predictive approach to business performance, using insights gained from a relatively vast set of data. Both, of course, serve as decision making tools.
The good news for enterprises is that IT managers are particularly aware of the need for BI/BA deployments, as evidenced by the ranking assigned by them in the February survey of IT Next. BI/BA was adjudged No. 2 in the survey, second only to Security.
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