SAS Global Forum 2010

Business Intelligence/Analytics

Paper 040-2010

Business Intelligence 2.0: Are we there yet?
Gregory S. Nelson
ThotWave Technologies, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Abstract
Business intelligence (BI) has been with us for years now, and, we would argue, not much has changed.
Advances in the consumer communications and the entertainment world have dwarfed commercial software
applications. Consumers have unprecedented access to information and tools with which to consume
information. Social media, mobile access, augmented reality and 3D views of pictures and video haveblurred the lines between our private and work personas and have fundamentally changed the way the
consumer utilizes information. Conversely, BI has seemed to lack in any real innovation.
In this paper, we will outline what the next chapter of innovation should contain for business intelligence,
analytics and data integration. Some hints of these features exist today, while others have lagged behind as
the industry has endured a number of mergers and acquisitions. The vendors that have survived theeconomic and industry turmoil can now turn from treading water to making waves.

Table	  of	
  Contents	
  ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................................... 1	  INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................... 2	  TRADITIONAL BI........................................................................................................................................... 2	
  BI 2.0 ............................................................................................................................................................ 3	  
OUTSIDE LOOKING IN.............................................................................................................................. 3	
  THE WEB ...................................................................................................................................................... 3	  MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT ...................................................................................................................... 7	
  SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................................... 8	
  REFERENCES: ............................................................................................................................................. 9	
  BIOGRAPHY: ................................................................................................................................................. 9	
  CONTACT INFORMATION:............................................................................................................................ 10	
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Business Intelligence/Analytics

Introduction
Since the early 1990’s, the Internet has shaped our world. Access to information via email, YouTube, Twitterand Facebook keep us entertained and informed. A fundamental shift has occurred in our ability toresearch, compare, buy and interact with each other and with information, resulting in the elevatedexpectations of the consumer.
As the web evolved from static pages, to dynamic/ database driven content to online collaboration and web
properties as destinations, we have seen the Business Intelligence (BI) vendor community slowly evolve theirproducts to take advantage of this changing landscape. At first, HTML and PDF were utilized as output
destinations, and then came portals and alternative devices such as WAP on mobile phones. Unfortunately,
the contributions from the software community have simply evolved the way that we use the same
information, but have not revolutionized the decision-making paradigm. While many vendors were engaged
in survival and/or integrating the latest acquisition, true innovation in business intelligence was kept at bay.
The silver lining appears to be just on the horizon. New products are beginning to emerge and R&D
organizations are beginning to be infused with money and excitement. This paper presents our vision of an
idealized BI. This is less about what interface engines and portal integrations vendors offer and more about
how our expectations are influenced by lessons from the web and rich media. Just as Star Trek gave us avision for transportation, communication and cultural diversity, the world of BI is shaped by the web, social
media and entertainment television. Let’s see what we can imagine!

Traditional BI
While this is not a primer on business intelligence, it might be helpful to talk about what we mean by BI.
Business intelligence is a management strategy used to create a more structured and effective approach todecision making. The cornerstone of this “fact-based” decisioning framework is technology that allows us toaccess, analyze and present information. BI includes those common elements of reporting, querying, OLAP,
dashboards, scorecards and even analytics. The umbrella term “BI” also can refer to the processes ofacquiring, cleansing, integrating and storing data. Terms such as master data management (MDM), data
quality, data enrichment and, the ever present, data warehouse, data mart and operational data store all fit
somewhat neatly into this package we call BI.
There are several types of BI that include strategic, tactical and operational BI that can be differentiatedbased on the currency and scope of data under scrutiny. Technologies range from relational, star-schemas,
in-memory models and MOLAP, ROLAP and Hybrid OLAP.
This focus on technology is part of the problem. Take look at most BI vendor web sites: they describe theirtechnology as the differentiator. The secret sauce that makes them yummier than others is their ability tointegrate with other technologies, the way they compress data, and the speed with which their hashalgorithms slice through data or their new rich graphics and keeping up with Tufte and Few’s mandates for
information visualization (Few, 2006). Contrast that with social networking: Nielson Online, which monitors
the top social networking sites, reported an 82% growth – Worldwide – in social networking use(http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0589146.htm) and reported the year before
that Twitter had grown by 2500%!

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Twitter is certainly not alone. Properties like Bebo, Ning, LinkedIn and Facebook dominate the Internet as
the “the next wave”. Few users know or care about the web servers they use or the database that capturesinformation. End user adoption did not require a work-breakdown-structure describing the software
installation, verification, testing or training plan. Users liked it because it served a purpose, was easy to use
and required no formal training. Gartner cites the lack of adoption as one of the most common and visible
signs of failure in delivering tangible results for BI initiatives (Gartner Research Note:
http://www.gartner.com/it/content/660400/660408/key_issues_bi_research.pdf).

BI 2.0
While there are precious few references that paint a vision for the future of business intelligence, there havebeen some authors that describe BI 2.0 using the following terms:•

Proactive alerts and notifications•

Event driven/ real time/ instant access to information•

Advanced analytics•

Enterprise Integration•

Mashups and portal integration•

Mobile/ Ubiquitous access•

Improved visualization, Rich Interfaces (RIA)•

BI as a service (SOA and SaaS)•

In-memory analytics•

and even Open Source BI

Instead of characterizing features that evolve current state, let us take a lesson from Star Trek and create thefuture of BI in our imaginations. We’ll do that by exploring what we can learn from the web, social media
and entertainment.

Outside Looking In
The Web
There is little doubt that the web has evolved. It is not only a marketplace for buyers and sellers,
entertainers and voyeurs, educators and students; it is a palette for our creativity and serves as a destinationfor our lives, our relationships and our minds.
In the true spirit of the Web, let’s take a look at some of its most popular features and see what lessons we
can apply to BI. Whether we use Twitter, Facebook or texting (SMS), at the end of the day, this is how many
people make decisions. Whether you are searching for nearby restaurants or trying to track down yourcousin Sally – there is an app for that! The table below outlines some of the most popular features gather
from the Inter-webs and our take on what lessons we can borrow for our vision of BI 2.0.
Web 2.0/ Social Networking

Key Concepts

Lesson for BI

Feature3

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Web 2.0/ Social Networking

Business Intelligence/Analytics

Key Concepts

Lesson for BI

Destination web property that allows

Destination naturally forces people topeople to stay connected. What am I

login and participate. Continuous

doing now? Allows for participation

flow of information. Provides

in a continuum of passivity.

environment for developers to create

FeatureFacebooktheir own applications. Post things ofinterest (reports, graphics,
interpretations) to my personal page
(things I have discovered.)
Twitter

Short, concise updates. Information

Real-time, continuous flow offlows continuously and people can pay

decisions, status about the business,

attention and re-tweet and encode ascomplex event processing. Platformneeded. Twitter users have evolved the

evolves through unplanned usage/

platform to make it more usable (e.g.,organic evolution of capabilities.

hash tags). Informality leads to quick

Succinct explanation of the state of thedissemination.

business. Search commentary;generate word clouds that provide a
visualization of the “vibe” orsentiment of the business. Tags andusers comments.
Submit note-worthy information(anything on the web you think is
newsworthy) – associate it with data
or objects.

Wikis, Google Earth, GeoCommons

Community developed content (Crowd

Collective knowledge is greater thansourcing). Allows for user

creator. Allow contributors to enrichcontributions to create, evolve andinformation. Comment on a concept

innovate.

contained within the context of theapplication, page, widget or data
element – or sentiment that is derived
from the content.

YouTube/ FlickR

User contributed media. Does one

Interesting relationships, patterns,

thing well. New outlet for media;

findings published. Ratings of findings

removed barriers to entry forhelp generate a “vibe” or sentimentvideographers; users determine

within an organization.

rankings.
LinkedIn

Digg, Delicious, Share-this, Add-thisConnecting people through linkages.

“Mechanical Turk” – how to findPeople are just links/ nodes away frompeople or data/ systems that caneach other. Creating professional

provide the answer to something in

networks.

your organization.

Create links to content of interest.

Facts can be quickly disseminatedTell other people what is interesting

throughout an organization. Content

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Web 2.0/ Social Networking

Business Intelligence/Analytics

Key Concepts

Lesson for BI

through voting or sharing.

can be rated on quality or utility.

FeatureTagging a data element to enrich its
content. Digg style adder to digg agraph/ data representation, report,
page (number of hits/ views on an
object; number of diggs (interest
versus activity) (digg, bury, who dugg
this, share, bookmark).
Bookmark (to my bookmarks, myhome page, my department, mymetrics).
Allow for metrics to be tagged or“watched” so they can see how thingschange over time
Blogs

Users create content and attract

Information can be interpreted andfollowers. Can be a one-way

informally published to a group of

conversation. Allows for conversationinterested parties.

via comments.
Email/ Xobni

Formal or informal communication.

Natural way of getting and imparting

Implicit decision-making cycle orinformation. Decisions become

information distribution. Createssearchable. Information can belinkages between people and theirretrieved quickly. A record is created.

communication with you and others.
Forums, Discussion Groups, eRooms

Creates a topic/ project based

Environment for creating andenvironment for capturingarchiving knowledge. Discuss theinformation and decisions. Ability tomeaning of a metric/ problem.

create synergies across a diverse groupof people (geographic, organizational,etc.)
Semantic Web, Search, Word

The meaning (semantics) of

Allow people to modify the semantic

Clouds, Wordles

information and services on the web

layer over the data, and try to

can be defined as it is contributed,

encourage the use of existing semantic

making it possible for the web toterms to avoid fragmentation. Create"understand" and satisfy the requests

an intersection of the organizationalof people and machines to use the web

layer with the semantic – maybe

content.

create some word cloud visualizations

Search becomes more usable.
Associations between words/ concepts
are linked visually.

that show *who* is interested in whatterms (re: data) over time. Ourinternal auto-generated semantic
terms should be included, based on
structured data elements.
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Web 2.0/ Social Networking

Business Intelligence/Analytics

Key Concepts

Lesson for BI

Featurecommentary – it also should support
adding context by linking measuresand visualizations together –associating them in a ‘you may also beinterested in’ way.
Word lookup – define a word,
measure, metric, lineage, dataset orconcept. Hover over a word andpopup menu allows for additional
information.
Reddit/ erqqvg

http://erqqvg.com/ or

Rate the quality of a data element or

http://erqqvg.com/popreddits/interpretation (e.g., see what is rising

Nice visualization of how Reddit's
stories change over time, with "yellow-

to the top throughout theorganization.

fade" indications when new comments
and votes and registered.
Slideshare/ DocsTOC

Upload, link and share your content

Slide and documenting sharing witheither publicly or privately.

user contributed content (upload
supporting docs, reference from web
addressable content) –See also
YouTube above.

Glue (FireFox Plugin)

Tell me what the crowd thinks. The

What data/ reports/ information

firefox plugin connects you withpeople are looking at or interested in.

friends around things you visit. Show

Quickly spreads information

your friends who looked at the same

throughout the organization. Seethings and tells you what they

related metrics/ data displays related

thought.

events. Show word cloud ofcomments, tags, diggs by all, by
departments and users.

SlashdotContent web site where content is

Detection of new issues/ themes for

moved up or down in the web site

decision making.

based on the points scored (visits,
ratings). Users are given a number ofpoints of influence to play with andyou can moderate things up and
down.
RSS

Provides for a dynamic feed forCommentary should be available as ancontent used to publish frequently

RSS feed. Reports or data updates

updated works—such as blog entries,

could be delivered via RSS feed.

news headlines, audio, and video—in astandardized format.

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Web 2.0/ Social Networking

Business Intelligence/Analytics

Key Concepts

Lesson for BI

User contributed data, data

Crowd-source analysis - add

visualizations and analysis.

supporting materials, point to new

FeatureDataVerse/ ManyEyes/ Swivel

thedata.org; swivel.com;
manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com

dataset or derived works, create acustom graphic/ data representation
and add a link to a page or object.

There is little doubt that the web will continue to evolve – even faster than companies will respond to thisevolution with products, services and even models for monetizing the advances. The opportunity for those ofus that live and work “BI” will continue to grow, as will the opportunities for vendors to take these lessons
and apply them judiciously to their product portfolios.

Media and Entertainment
Television and movie directors have long since evaporated disbelief in what is likely with flying cars, “transmorph-portation”, and three-course meals in a pill. And while they continue to tease our imaginations,Apple has long since transformed the possible into the now. They have shaped the way that we want toengage with computers for over two decades (even before we knew that we wanted to!) As an “i-everything”
fan, I’ve enjoyed watching them lead the way in how we interact with devices and information. With “places”
and “faces” delivered with every Mac, we’ve seen facial recognition and geo-tagging become real with devices
that sell for less than $500.
Not that Apple is the only innovator in technology, but they seem to do a really good job making it usable.
There exist a range of vendors that have nourished our love of mobility, visualization, touch and interaction.
With 3D television and touch/ gesture devices on the shelves today, we will no doubt have more lessons instore for us as we think about the art of the possibility with data, visualization, analysis and communicationof results.
If we were to make our predictions about the future based on watching CSI, NCIS and 24, then we’ll haveclarity of purpose and laser sharp background for our every business decision. Here is what we could expect
if Cameron, Spielberg and Crichton designed our next generation of BI:•

Data will come at us in every form imaginable. Video, text, email, conversations, photos will
dominant our databases in the future. Systems that force us to structure information in rows andcolumns will be outdated.

•

We should be able to integrate data whether or not we have keys or indexes or even if the data exists
in a database. There will be no one “enterprise data warehouse” where everything is dumped. Timeand information flow too quickly for a refresh.

•

Patterns will be plucked quickly from limited data. Images (moving or otherwise) but will accessed,
sharpened and shaped from any device in any location.

•

Data will come equipped with context and everything (including us) will be geo-tagged.

•

Predictive analytics will allow us to arrest people before they commit the crime.

•

We will spend more time visualizing and interacting with data, than collecting and beating data into
submission.

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Business Intelligence/Analytics

Touch screens will be replaced by touch-less gestures, gyroscopes, eyesight and augmented reality!
(for example, http://crackberry.com/and-you-thought-touchscreens-were-cool-enter-touchless)

Summary
So what does this mean for us in the world of business intelligence? My belief is that there will be a slow, but
responsive shift among people in organizations (and the vendors that support them)to fundamentally change the way that we make decisions – or more accurately, the waythat we use computers and software and data to make decisions.
In 2009, Colin White developed a white paper for organizations that wanted to develop acomprehensive, enterprise strategy for business intelligence. (White, 2009) Here, Colindescribed a model for decision-making he referred to as “closed-loop decision
workflow.” Key to that model of decision making are those applications that
support the collaborations between individuals to improve the business. Thismodel illustrates the importance of tacit methods of decision making that often
involve those methods that exist outside of the formal BI frameworks. This is key
to understanding how decisions are made and where collaborative technologies found in social networking
sites and business intelligence can fit together.
The state of the art in business intelligence is evolving. In-memory analytics, rich interfaces, visualizations
and emerging technologies around the storage and access of information are challenging the status quo. If
we were to craft the future of business intelligence, here are a few things that we would want to include in
our episode of BI 2.0.
1.

Decisions, facts and context will be developed through “crowdsourcing.” No longer will reports (orhow data is structured) be left up to the designer, the environment will evolve as users make thedata and derived insights work better through contributions of many.

2.

Similarly, data and reports will incorporate narrative context information supplied by users. For
example, data points and graphs annotated with descriptive insight directly along side the results.
This concept of collaborative business intelligence is essential to using BI as a competitive/ strategic
tool.

3.

Data will have a more direct linkage with action. When you see something wrong, the data will tell
you where it is going wrong and why. Exceptions, alerts and notifications will be based on dynamic
business rules that learn about your business and what you are interested in.

4.

People will be able to directly act on information. Interactions with operational systems, requests
for information, comments, “start a discussion”, provide supporting information, “become afollower” of the metric, and “rate or report a problem” will reside alongside the data.

5.

Business decisions shall be monitored so that interventions and our hypotheses about businesstactics will be tagged in the context of the data that measures its effect. Our ability to test ahypothesis will be integrated into our decision support systems. Say, for example, we see something
in the data; we explore it; we understand its root cause; and design an intervention to deal with it.
We will be able to tag interventions or events that have happened and have that appear in thecontext of the reporting of the data so that over time our collective knowledge about the world will
be captured along side the data and artifacts.

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Business Intelligence/Analytics

Visualizing data and complex relationships will be easier and more intuitive models of info-graphics
will become mainstream. Tools will have the ability to create graphic representations of the data
based on what it “sees” and displays the best visual display given what it has. Furthermore, thetools will learn what visualizations work best for you and your environment.

7.

The ability to detect complex patterns in data through automated analytic routines or intelligent
helper models will be built into analytic applications.

8.

Finding information will be easier and search results will provide context so that we know when we
have the right results. Users will have the ability to tag specific data elements at various levels(page, widget, some aspect of the data presentation – row, column, cell, line, point) or an abstract
interpretation of the results. Anyone looking at the same data will see that context when viewed.

9.

Linkages with unstructured contents such as documents, discussions and commentary as well as aknowledge base of previously answered requests will be key to ensuring collective knowledge andcollaboration.

10. Technical, process and business event monitoring will allow streamlined operational processes(Business Process Engineering, Business Activity Monitoring, Business Rules Engineering) andlearning models will be applied to organizational flow of data.

Our vision is that collaboration should be more than just displaying a chart and a wiki in the same screen –commentary should be tied to relevant dimensions of the information being displayed. Textual insights
should go well beyond “word clouds” that shows associations between content.

The BI community has the ability to learn from and harness the incredible expansion of technology in social,media, and the entertainment industry and find ways to integrate those possibilities into our decisionmaking paradigm. The first step is to imagine something different.

References:
Few (2006) “Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data” O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Gartner Research Note: http://www.gartner.com/it/content/660400/660408/key_issues_bi_research.pdf
White, Colin (2009) An Enterprise Framework for Business Intelligence . Published article on the B-Eye-Network.
May 18, 2009. http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/10472

Biography:
Greg Nelson, President and CEO

Greg is a certified practitioner with over two decades of broad Business Intelligence and Analytics
experience. This has been gained across several life sciences and global healthcare organizations as well as
government and academic settings. He has extensive software development life cycle experience andknowledge of clinical informatics and regulatory requirements and has been responsible for the delivery ofnumerous projects in clinical and business environments. Greg’s passion begins and ends with helping

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organizations create thinking data® – data which is more predictive, more accessible, more useable andmore coherent.
Mr. Nelson holds a B.A. in Psychology and PhD level work in Social Psychology and Quantitative Methods
and certifications in project management, six sigma, balanced scorecard and healthcare IT.

Contact information:
Your comments and questions are valued and encouraged. Contact the authors at:
Greg Nelson

greg@thotwave.com

ThotWave Technologies, LLC
1289 Fordham Boulevard #241
Chapel Hill, NC 27514 (800) 584 2819
http://www.thotwave.com

thinking data® is registered trademark of ThotWave Technologies, LLC.
Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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