Climbing the BI Ladder: Microsoft Dynamics in a Two-Tier Market

Business Intelligence (BI) is now a common buzzword among IT pros at enterprise, midsize and even small businesses; the rise of Big Data has made a means for sifting through the information a company generates not simply "nice to have", but a must to retain profitability. Recent studies - including Dresner Advisory Services' third annual Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study® - report that not only is the BI market changing, but the way the market's perception of the technology is also undergoing a transition.

Multiple Lanes

According to the Dresner report, two "markets" have emerged for BI:

• classic
• user-driven

The classic market is dominated by IT pros focused on warehousing data and making sure it is accessible as needed, while the emerging user-driven market deals with aspects of BI like social media, mobile devices and the cloud. This line-of-business market is causing not only a shift in perception but also in budget; the study found that while adoption of BI technology is almost evenly split among these two groups, money is now starting to flow toward "end-user departments".

Of course, multiple lanes doesn't mean race-track speeds - Dresner also discovered that 20 percent or fewer users in most organizations had access to BI tools, and only 41 percent of those asked said they "completely agreed" that their Intelligence initiatives have been successful. This should not be seen as a sign of weakness in the technology, however, as 2012 has shown a significant increase of BI adoption in the some verticals like retail, especially as it applies to mobile devices. Infrastructure, application and device aspects of ...