VideoThe proposed solutions to such real-time BI problems vary. A company called Appfluent Technologies, for example, has come up with what it calls a "report server," a self-contained appliance that maintains a fresh copy of just those portions of the production database that analysts plumb with BI tools at any given moment. By monitoring the queries those BI users are posing, the appliance keeps its local copy of the data in perfect sync with the production database, yet doesn't overtax it.
Celequest (formerly Viewceler) and Iteration Software have taken a different tack, each creating software that near-instantly performs complex analyses of incoming transaction data related to any business event and, if necessary, automatically alerts specified employees by instant message, phone, E-mail, or fax.
Earlier this year, Certive launched a product designed to help IT staff manage distributed data as if it existed in a centralized location, and lower the development and maintenance costs of analytic applications, while Juice Software developed technology that provides Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with continuous live connections to virtually any source of data.
2004: Suite Dreams
Companies have tended to buy BI products individually to solve a perceived pain point, be it a need to speed the budgeting process, generate reports, understand sales trends, or assess some specific facet of operations. Makers of BI software are retooling and expanding their offerings in the hope that companies will buy entire suites of products that, in a best-case scenario, provide a complete system for performance management. Prices for such systems can run to six and even seven figures, although a company can buy one product to solve a problem today and build over time.
Nonetheless, expect to see a more-is-better sales pitch from nearly every BI company, most of which will add products (often thanks to acquisitions) and tout the degree to which their suites are integrated. Also expect a blurring of the lines between companies that sell tools for developing BI systems and those that sell packaged applications. The time may indeed be at hand for a top-down reassessment of BI usage and strategy, lest the ad hoc buying across business units hampers potential benefits of the suite approach. Even if the budget isn't there, a plan probably should be.
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