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Technological evolution will make Business Intelligence (BI) an irreplaceable part of any IT infrastructure, says Atul Sareen, VP-Platforms, SAP India. He spoke to S Raghotham on why BI is becoming a ‘must have’ application for enterprises.
 How has BI evolved in these years? How have enterprises evolved in deploying and using BI? Do enterprises today have a different understanding of BI than they had some 3-4 years ago?
Over the years a lot of progress has been made in the field of BI. The technology advancement has been very significant and after more than a decade long evolution today BI is much more usable and much more sophisticated than one would have imagined it to be. The current generation of BI is much more evolved and it has been adequately supported by the much advanced infrastructure that we have had about a decade ago.
For example today as a component of the SAP NetWeaver platform, SAP BI brings together a powerful business intelligence platform, a comprehensive set of tools, planning and simulation capabilities, and data-warehousing functionality – delivered through sophisticated and user-centric enterprise portal technology to provide a coherent, comprehensive solution. That means a company can use SAP BI to integrate data from across the enterprise and beyond, and transform it into practical, timely business information to drive sound decision making, targeted action, and solid business results.
Apart from the technological advancements there is also there is a sea change in the attitude of companies towards BI. Today they are increasingly broadening their use of BI tools in an attempt to get more use out of the huge stores of data they're sitting on. Our technologies like BI accelerator for accelerated access to BI content and BI Broadcast for quick dissemination of BI content is making huge difference.
BI has become one of the top five items on the applications priority list for CIOs, which was not case five years ago. What has changed?
Timely access to relevant information has always been critical to business success. Now it is even more important, with the widespread use of the Internet, wired and wireless data collection technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID), and the subsequent increase in new data sources. These developments are forcing the CIO to realize that they need to turn data into insight, and insight into improved operations in every area of your business. For that, they need tightly focused, accurate and up to date information – but all too often, what they get is information overload.
All too often it's hard to find out what's really happening in the business, and how this relates to what's happening outside. And that's precisely what Business Intelligence can deliver. Therefore if today BI is becoming the top priority in the list of the CIO’s, it is only because times are changing and they (CIOs) are realizing the greater role that they have to play in making the company more agile and adoptive.
Has BI implementation become more complex or less so? Have costs gone up or down? Has usage become easier, and if it has what factors have made it so?
BI implementation has become more widespread and better understood. Specialist professionals now have a better understanding of the benefits of BI, and the costs involved in the deployment. The complexities mainly arise from multiple sources of data, and as there is now more data coming from more sources, the implementations can be complex.
Although some complexities can be reduced by standardization and commoditization of technology and toolsets, the real cost is in the ability to bring the right analysis of the right data to bear on the right decisions. And as more organizations come to understand the immense transformational value of BI, there is much greater demand for seasoned professionals with real track record in this area.
Usage has become easier mainly due to the use of analysis closer to the business decisions. Before, BI was treated very much as a separate project, away from the normal daily business decisions. And so combining the two sides to make a meaningful impact could be difficult and inconsistent. Today, more organizations are bringing the analysis closer to the decisions where it can make the most impact. It is this combination of making analysis available within every day decision making processes, which makes BI more usable. BI solutions have been around for quite a while, and there are always going to be claims of new features providing better usability - but in reality it is the usability and context that is driving ease of use for the mass market.
SAP has done its bit to reduce the complexities in BI implementations by delivering pre-build role based content analytical content in terms of out-of the box OLAP cubes which can then be fine tuned to deliver business critical analysis over the ERP data.
What is the evolution that has taken place in terms of BI infrastructure? What are the requirements today from an IT maturity angle?
SAP BI today can provide analytical services as part of the SAP SOA offering. This services-based approach allows for the embedding of analysis into services-based processes, such as SAP ERP 2005, and services-based usability software such as Duet with Microsoft Office.
The other part of the evolution is the use of technology such as in-memory query processing and blade technology, to drive reliable and fast analysis. The combination of the two - both the ability to embed analysis closer to business decisions, and the performance to provide that analysis at transactional speeds - is now enabling organizations to make unprecedented use of analysis throughout their whole business.
From an IT maturity angle, the usual caveats still hold. Clear focus must be given as always to ensuring that the IT projects are business-driven, focused on how to use IT as a driver for improved profitability. The technology choices will then be clearer.
What would next generation BI solutions look like?
Technological evolution will continue to make BI more and more effective and in the process it would become an irreplaceable part of any IT infrastructure. The next generation BI solution will in all probability will not remain reactive and focused on transactions and static data. It will evolve to become more dynamic in order to respond to the changing market demands in real time.
I feel BI will become much more intelligent in understanding customer behavior and linking that information into every decision-making process from the supplier to manufacturer to retailer and to the consumer.
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