Hot from SAP: Business Intelligence is Dead.
In what I can only understand as a bunch of doublespeak, hand waving and magical unicorn rides, SAP has unanimously decided that they are no longer in the “Business Intelligence” industry, and are now young, cool, and Google-y with their “Business Analytics” products.
Can someone explain this maneuver to me, PLEASE?
“I don’t believe (business intelligence is) where the future is,” said Jim Davis. “The future is in business analytics.”
Classic business intelligence questions, said Davis, “support reactive decision-making that doesn’t work in this economy” because it can only provide historical information that can’t drive organizations forward. Business intelligence, he said, doesn’t make a difference to the top or bottom line, and is merely a productivity tool like e-mail.
“SAS is bucking the trend because analytics has come of age,” said Davis.
Congratulations SAP. You have just invalidated the entire reason why anyone would pay you millions of dollars for a BusinessObjects deployment. I guess it’s time to up-sell your customers again?
Here’s the issue, and I’m amazed that SAP, which are one of the leaders in the market, would miss this:
Business Intelligence is a concept where you take your historical data and external factors you can come up with, and identify trends or opportunities to increase profits, decrease costs, increase efficiency, or refine your products and services. You know, those things that improve the bottom line.
Unlike what SAP wants you to believe, business intelligence it is a FORWARD looking method, driven by statistical data.
Business Analytics in the exact same thing as Business Intelligence. Look at all the historical data you can get, parse and organize it, and use it to predict probabilities of what could happen in the future. You’re looking for those things that will improve your bottom line, and cut out the things that are not paying off.
Business Analytics = Business Intelligence. Different terms, same definition.
Rather than just make up definitions for things so that you can seem interesting and fresh, why not actually do something valuable for a change: Educate your potential users on WHAT business intelligence/analytics can do for them, rather than just throwing out another term for some poor sucker to hang their hat on?
Rant over. Whew…
-Kris