Analyst Perspectives

In my last rant, on business analytics and the pathetic state of dashboards, I pointed out significant flaws in business intelligence software created by technology providers and in how it is being deployed by business and IT. Now I want to follow up with some insight on disconnects to a critical asset that is essential to the success of business analytics. I mean key performance indicators (KPIs), a term used in inaccurate ways that have diminished the value of the concept for business.

Over the years Tibco has provided infrastructure for enterprise data integration and has built a substantial installed base. Now the company positions itself as supplying next-generation analytics for big data through service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA has been around for a while; Ventana Research has been tracking it since 2006 and conducted benchmark research on SOA. But it remains a vaguely understood technology. Our research shows that SOA is not clearly defined in the market and that...

In this second in a blog series on business analytics I focus on the increasingly important area of predictive analytics. Our benchmark research into predictive analytics shows that while the vast majority of companies see this technology as important or very important for the future of their organizations, most are not taking full advantage of it. This finding suggests that there is an opportunity for companies to gain competitive advantage by implementing predictive analytics in the near term.

I’ve challenged a lot of the hype about the social enterprise, because I feel “social” gives the wrong impression. For most people, social media is predominately about socializing. While everyone likes to feel that going to work is partly about interacting with friends, when it comes down to it running a business is about winning customers, selling them your products and services, and providing customer service when needed. In today’s competitive markets, none of these are easy tasks. As I look...

Our benchmark research on business analytics suggests that it is counterproductive to take a general approach to the topic. A better approach is to focus on particular use cases and lines of business (LOB). For this reason, in a series of upcoming articles, I will look at our business analytics research in the context of different industries and different functional areas of an organization, and illustrate how analytics are being applied to solve real business problems.

MicroStrategy, announced version 9.3. The announcement came out of Amsterdam this month just in front of MicroStrategy World, the company’s annual conference for the European market. Release 9.3 delivers significant updates in four main areas: big data, advanced analytics, automated administration and visual data discovery.

Our research agenda for 2012 in human capital management outlined the importance of workforce management for all organizations. One provider, WorkForce Software, provides systems that support scheduling, time and attendance, leave and absence and fatigue management. As I noted in my last analysis on WorkForce Software, the company’s focus on the fatigue aspect of workforce management, especially in white-collar environments such as transportation, utilities and healthcare, has provided them...

Actuate, the driving force behind the open source Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project, is positioning itself in the center of the big-data world through multiple partnerships with companies such as Cloudera, Hortonworks, KXEN, Pervasive and a number of OEMs. These agreements, following on its acquisition of Xenos a couple of years ago, help Actuate address some big issues in big data, involving enterprise integration and closed-loop operational systems that provide...

As volumes of data grow in organizations, so do the number of deployments of Hadoop, and as Hadoop becomes widespread, more organizations demand data analysis, ease of use and visualization of large data sets. In our benchmark research on Hadoop, 88 percent of organizations said analyzing Hadoop data is important, and in our research on business analytics 89 percent said it is important to make it simpler to provide analytics and metrics to all users who need them. As my colleague Mark Smith...

Risk has always been an integral part of business, but our recent Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) benchmark research shows that companies deal with risk with varying degrees of effectiveness – especially operational risk. A majority of companies lag in their overall GRC maturity, as I covered in a recent blog post. Operational risk management should be of greater interest to executives today because they can have greater control of it than before. The expansion of IT systems to automate...