Saleforce acquired Radian6

When I reviewed the future of the BI at the end of last year I expected that social network layer will begin to trickle into the BI layer.

While SAP has already begun to develop products that integrates the organization social network data,

Saleforce is one of the first companies to make significant step towards implemeting social networks by purchasing Radian6which  is the leading supplier of social media monitoring.

Here is the link for the original article:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/salesforce-buys-social-media-monitoring-company-radian6-for-326-million/

SAP and IBM Test SAP In-Memory Appliance

The innovation war continues:

SAP will collaborate with IBM (which bought Cognos) in order to integrate the in memory technologies.

Currently DB2 is beeing tested .

If we wll also consider the replication server of SAP the and intention to replace the usual load services, we have a more immediate view on the future of the BI and technological environment

that awaits us:

http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/press.epx?pressid=14906

http://it.themarker.com/tmit/article/14603

HANA is here

If you have not heard about the new project of Sap,Hana - High-Performance Analytic Appliance - a project which should bring the best of bread in terms of performance.

I think that there is no doubt that the future of BI has to grow through the in memory capabilities

and SAP is getting us close to that place.

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2010/12/sap-introduces-first-hana-enabled-application-links-and-screen-shots.html

Here is a quick review written about HANA in the http://biscorecard.typepad.com/biscorecard/ :

"Queries that the customer used to run in two to three hours now run in two to three seconds. The data volumes were not that big – 9 million customer records. But it’s the complexity of customer segmentation and that the queries were running directly in the transactional source system that made for the slow queries. Christian Ritter, head of Reporting and Global IT at Hilti, explained that with HANA, they would skip building a data warehouse altogether. Data is replicated in near real time from the SAP transaction systems into HANA."

Xcelsius version X4.0

In the new version of SAP Business Objects , Xcelsius presentation can be built (say SAP Dashboard from now ...) directly on a universe without the necessity to use an Excel sheet.

Watch this video that demonstrates how to easily build an Xcelsius dashboard in the new version :

BI trends for 2011

What awaits for us this year?

Read here the article by Cindi Howson from BI scorecard:

http://biscorecard.typepad.com/biscorecard/2011/01/big-themes-in-bi-for-2011.html

And here is the Gartner forecast for 2011:
http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/qliktech/article3/article3.html

Xcelsius 2011: Direct query binding

In the next version of  Xcelsius you will be able to built a presentation without the use of a spreadsheet.
Here's a short video from the recent User conference that demonstrates the new capabilities :

BI Trends - 2010/2011

In general we can see similarities between the struggle of the main BI leading companies like Cognos (IBM) BI and Sap Business Objects and Microstrategy On The future of the BI, to the battle between Apple and Google on the future of computer media and Smart Phones.

My expectation for the next year or two:

• BI companies will bring new heights of innovation in the struggle between them.
• Visuality will continue to be a major break through for the BI companies, expect many innovations here.
• The BI Smart Phone and BI-pad will be introduced as leading products for managers, field personnel, sales managers, etc.
• Geographic applications (like places / Foursquare) will get inside the BI layer, in the organizations network you will find check-in reports on the goals / objectives / Reports goals.
• Social networks will get inside the data layer; reports ,data, BI and DWH processes will get outside into the organizations social networks
• Generally, the BI field starts to follow the main struggle in computer world: Facebook-Google-Apple, - the need to innovate, to lead a technological revolution and to bring the sexiest BI tool is pulling the BI vendors goald forward.
• Client applications will continue to disappear.

• BI cloud application will become available for medium sized companies and will include social networking functions and Information On demand capabilities.

• DWH - more and more processes which are based on complex methodology will become built in applications with GUI.
• The qualities of the security will be upgraded: Permissions will be given at both the viewing data

         (and not just the level of access to the DB)

• Bi Apps - BI portals will obtain the look and feel of smart-pones.

Further reading:

Read here the sum of Timo Elliot talked-about trends in BI in 2010 and forecast for 2011

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2010/11/top-bi-events-in-2010-top-bi-trends-in-2011.html

Deski Vs Webi - Another round

Anyone looking for information that compares the two components along the history read here:

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Deski+and+Webi+-+scope+of+features

SAP BI4

In the following link you can find presentations for all the new components in the latest version of SAP Business Objects:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/bi-suite-tutorials?refer=marketing

SAP BO Exploration Dashboards

Looks like the next version (Release 4) is going to changethe look and feel of data and upgrade them far ahead.

You can see that SAP is finally taking the products of Business Objects and trying to connect them in a much more efficient way

Watch the next clip that shows an upgrade in the SAP Explorer (previously known as Polsetar ...)