Business Intelligence is a widely used and reasonably mature type of technology, and is based around the capture and use of the data that every organisation generates on a day to day basis. Other Reports, such as DQI, have shown how important it is to make certain that data is clean and accurate if it is to be depended upon as part of important business processes. However, this is only the beginning of using data in a more valuable way ? the organisation also has to be able to delve into its data in order to capture and use intelligence.

One possible objection to this Report is based on the fact that most organisations have become very good at catching and storing the process data that they generate every time they perform a business operation, and they might believe that this is enough ? however, we believe that simply saving details on every customer, for example, does not guarantee access to useful intelligence. Our argument is that saving and storing data is not the same as capturing and retrieving valuable information, as data and information are separate things.

This Report is about the fact that we now see BI as being about how organisations can become more efficient in the way that they exploit the data assets they already have, and we believe that there is intense pressure upon the users and vendors of BI because of this need.

Our view is that over the last two years BI usage has become stagnant. The vendors have failed to address key user requirements. They have focused on bringing new technology on stream, acquiring and integrating complementary products, and building end-to-end BI-based intelligence suites. However, whilst doing all of this, they have fundamentally failed to understand the way that business organisations are utilising their products; and it is this basic failure that is holding back organisations from
working smarter with the data assets that they hold.

Today we have a situation where businesses are strongly inclined ? perhaps we may even go as far as to say that they are desperate ? to find a better, more efficient, and more cost effective approach to utilising the competitive and commercial value of their data assets. The BI industry itself is eager to provide its services at a cross organisation level through the deployment of strategic and enterprise-pervasive BI, but the business community seems somewhat reluctant to acquiesce. A stalemate appears to exist; on the one hand both business users and the industry itself need to improve the way that BI products and services are used; but if we are to move beyond departmentalised tactical deployments of BI, we must understand the critical steps that will be involved in optimising the technology for the benefit of the enterprise. Therefore, on behalf of business users everywhere, there is a need to clearly spell out the incremental value proposition that the extended enterprise use of BI can provide.

The era in which the isolated use of multiple BI tools can be relied upon to support the information needs of business is rapidly drawing to a close. The future value of BI to business organisations will come from the extended use of enterprise intelligence services that incorporate the use of products that have the capacity and the capability to be used as genuine, enterprise wide, intelligence-led, data access, management, and information delivery solutions.

Resulting from this, Butler Group believes that business decision makers should be challenging their technology suppliers to deliver intelligence-lead solutions that can deliver pervasive BI facilities that empower information users at all levels within the organisation to work smarter and in a manner that makes the organisation more efficient, more agile, and ultimately more operationally competitive.

As is always the case with Butler Group Reports, this volume is intended to provide readers with an informative guide to making the most out of BI solutions and strategies. Butler Group recognises that not every factor will be relevant to all situations, and that some organisations will already be utilising some of the components and approaches that make up an effective solution. Therefore, the Report has been divided into segments relating to the different guiding principles of exploiting Business Intelligence, to make it easy for readers to locate the Sections that are of interest.

Key Findings

• The era of the isolated BI tool is drawing to a close. Certainly, most of the latest product releases from the industry?s leading players have been targeted towards the delivery of enterprise BI services, and much of the recent consolidation activity can be attributed to a movement towards an "all-in-one" strategy for BI
• All organisations need to become more efficient in the way that they exploit their data assets.
• In the BI arena data has no intrinsic value unless it can be used to support business decisions.
• It is Butler Group?s opinion that business will only be able to improve its information services, and obtain real value from the ever-increasing data silos that it continues to generate, when it accepts that there are significant advantages to be gained from integrating and standardising its approach to the management of BI services.
• Visible cost savings that come from BI product consolidation will accrue from the simplification of systems management and systems support infrastructures. At the same time Butler Group believes that the real financial benefits to the organisations will come from the better, more consistent, and more competitive use that the business can make of integrated operational intelligence.
• BI has reached a crossroads, and its value to business will only be improved when products are delivered that are capable of being used, as genuine enterprise wide, intelligence-lead, data access, management, and information delivery solutions.
• Any organisation that cannot deal with data quality and consistency issues from within the confines of its BI platform does not have a credible product in place, nor does it have a plausible BI strategy.
• Ultimately there needs to be a high priority set on BI to take first line responsibility for all the data that it services. Accepting poor and unproven data into enterprise decision making systems is in Butler Group?s opinion the ultimate recipe for disaster.
• Within an organisations enterprise BI strategy, Butler Group recommends that each existing BI deployment should be carefully reviewed, to ascertain whether it should be replaced, integrated into another platform solution, or removed due to duplication or redundancy.

Report Structure

Section Two ? Moving To Strategic Business Intelligence

Following on from the Management Summary, this Section of the Report focuses on, and provides an important overview of, the BI market, its existing problems, and the advantages that can be achieved from changing the way that business organisations make use of the technology and its information delivery capabilities. Throughout the Report there are discussions on the merits or otherwise of extending the use of BI from tactical, departmentalised usage to a more pervasive, extended, and strategic use of the technology. This is indeed the vision that Butler Group holds for BI, but not necessarily in the way that many may at first think. This Section of the Report looks at how and why business use of the technology needs to move on; where in Butler Group?s opinion BI technology is at this point in time, and indeed where it should be heading. The Section also sets out the case for a more pervasive use of BI, including our analysis of the benefits and pitfalls that can be expected along the way.

Section Three ? Technology Issues and Features

This Section covers the use of BI platforms and servers and the supporting technology that is used to handle Data Quality, Data Integration, Data Management, and Information Delivery issues. It takes a close look at the main technology components and issues that come into play when considering making more extensive use of BI resources. From a technology standpoint, it takes into account the needs of current and future generations of BI users and provides an analytical view of how the technology can be used to improve the way that users and customers interact with business information. In this respect it covers the platform-based approach to the delivery of BI services. It defines what a BI platform is, what role it fulfils, and its importance to the delivery of cross-enterprise information services. For the majority of BI customers, the information that they use is sourced from relational databases ? Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain, or Customer Relationship Management (CRM)-based source systems, and this Section covers the data quality, Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL), data and metadata management issues. It then proceeds to look at the information delivery challenges as they directly affect all BI users.

Section Four ? Architectures and Models

Throughout the Report a considerable amount of thought has been given to how organisations can make best use of their information assets and, in this context, how organisations should be reviewing (and in many cases consolidating) the use of existing BI products and systems in order to maximise their ongoing value to the enterprise. This Section of the Report is in four parts. The first part looks at the practical issues that surround the business use of BI services and focuses on the Butler Group BI model and its importance to the successful deployment of cross-enterprise BI services. We then consider the key components that are required to deliver an extended and pervasive BI strategy. This is followed by our views on building intelligence solutions that are capable of supporting cross-enterprise applications and their service delivery requirements. Finally this Section looks at the roadmap requirements that are needed to take BI from its current departmentalised approach, to the deployment of enterprise-wide information management and delivery solutions.

Section Five ? Market Analysis

This Section of the Report looks at the dynamics of the BI market, in particular how it is evolving and the directions in which we see it developing. It covers market drivers, market direction, market size, and future potential.

Section Six ? Tables

Whilst we always acknowledge that functionality and the ease with which a particular vendor is able to tick the largest number of boxes is not the ?be-all and end-all? of product selection, the features matrix presented in this Section of the Report is intended to facilitate an initial comparison of the mainstream vendor products that are featured in Section 8 of this Report.

Section Seven ? Vendor Comparisons

This Section summarises the relative strengths and weaknesses of the respective vendors and the solutions that are featured in the Report. It highlights the strategies that they have adopted and how they are approaching a future where end-user organisations will be looking to achieve more functionality from a smaller number of core BI products.

Section Eight ? Technology Audits

Section Eight contains in depth Technology Audit evaluations for 12 of the BI industry?s leading players:

Actuate
Business Objects
Cognos
Hyperion
IBM
Information Builders
Microsoft
Microstrategy
Oracle
SAP
SAS
SPSS

Section Nine ? Vendor Profiles

Section Nine contains brief profiles on a significant number of vendors whose solutions are important to the delivery of end-to-end BI services. In this respect they often fall into a number of distinct groups which can be defined through their individual specialisations. For example, we have included vendor profiles on several vendors that operate in the Corporate Performance Management (CPM) arena and on others that provide infrastructure or information delivery services.

Section Ten ? Glossary

A glossary of commonly used BI terms has been included.