Recently Timo Elliot, wrote four top reasons for "What Might Go Wrong in Business Intelligence in 2009". In his reason #2 he cites:
Corporate cutbacks, "thou shalt not buy anything" policies, and new levels of sign-off will encourage some people to attempt to do analysis without extra software investment: hand-coded data extraction in SQL, data manipulation using Excel macros, etc. Over time, the work involved in developing and maintaining these solutions will cost much more than purchased packages.
I couldn't agree more with why it might fail. BI can't succeed without a dedicated data integration fabric that can automate and manage data movement, data synchronization, and data quality. The costs for investing in Data Integration solutions can immediately provide unexpected returns. For example: by implementing ETL/ELT, costs can be saved in custom code and the SQL develepment associated with enterprise-class business intelligence projects.
I'd argue that another reason to think about why BI solutions might fail, is today that they aren't perceived as "actionable" and perceived more as a looking glass. That looking glass is a luxury if it can't immediately provide recourse for action. This goes back to my Data Integration point. If the data is automated already, then acting on it becomes swift, efficient and can lead to greater efficiencies, risk reduction and countless other business benefits.
Nevertheless, there are many smart people out there that can utilize these best practices effectively - or perhaps invent some new ones. BI (thanks to the help of data integration) can definitely succeed in today's gloom and doom markets. I'm definitely more optimistic and hence bullish on BI for 2009.
For more details on why Business Intelligence is on the rise, take a look at what we've identified in our "State of the Data Integration Market" report which outlines the rise of Data Integration and Management and how it's supporting more actionable and real-time BI inititiaves.
