Business Intelligence
From OLAP
The term business intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information and also sometimes to the information itself. The purpose of business intelligence is to support better business decision making.
BI describes a set of concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems. BI is sometimes used interchangeably with briefing books, report and query tools and executive information systems. Business Intelligence systems are data-driven DSS. BI systems provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations, most often using data that has been gathered into a data warehouse or a data mart and occasionally working from operational data. Software elements support reporting, interactive "slice-and-dice" pivot-table analyses, visualization, and statistical data mining. Applications tackle sales, production, financial, and many other sources of business data for purposes that include, notably, business performance management. Information is often gathered about other companies in the same industry which is known as benchmarking. Trends: Currently organizations are starting to see that data and content should not be considered separate aspects of information management, but instead should be managed in an integrated enterprise approach. Enterprise information management brings Business Intelligence and Enterprise Content Management together. Interesting signs in this direction are recent acquisitions by Oracle, SAP, IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the Business Intelligence Area. IBM for example earlier bought a market-leading ECM vendor, Oracle bought Hyperion and HP bought Knightsbridge -- a leader in the BI industry. During late 2007 further consolidation was undertaken with Business Objects (who had acquired Crystal Decisions) being purchased by SAP and Cognos being acquired by IBM. This has lead to a rationalisation in the market and the emergence of vendors who sell ERP, BI, Data Management/Transportation and Integration technologies. Currently organizations are moving towards Operational Business Intelligence which is currently under served and uncontested by vendors. All BI vendors are targeting only top the pyramid but now there is a paradigm shift moving toward taking BI to the bottom of the pyramid with Operational Business Intelligence. Vendors have realized it and are moving towards the same. Democratization of Business Intelligence taking aways the power from experts few to masses.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence)