The Changing Nature of BI Applications

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

Through the history of the business intelligence space, we have evolved our analytical capabilities. Prior to the DW revolution of the mid-90s, we utilized standard canned reporting where users were presented a static report on a periodic basis. These reports were either generated from COBOL code on the mainframe or through a non-intuitive report writer like SQR.

Once data warehouses began to be built and Microsoft Windows really took over on the desktop, we began to see much more "ad-hoc" reporting. Tools such as Business Objects, Brio and Cognos emerged, allowing users to query data warehouses or other databases. We evolved even further in the late '90s as we entered the analytical era of OLAP, where users could slice and dice the data across dimensions using tools such as MicroStrategy, Information Advantage, Holos and Essbase.  

From the analytical era, the focus really shifted to the Web. Every analytical software company wanted to be dot-something and deploy its application over the Web. Web-based business intelligence tools are standard today with the usage of fat desktop clients becoming increasingly limited as more emphasis is placed on a server-centric architecture. The Web-era brings us to the present.   Post dot-bust, post OLAP, we have entered the era of the analytical application.

Business intelligence has never quite been aligned with …

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