by Vishal Daga - Netezza, Director of Partner Marketing

"You have a little bit of talent, a certain amount of good fortune and a lot of hard work in pursuit of whatever truth you can find in it, and if you are really lucky, a terrific partner and I have that and those four things worked out for me."
- Donald Sutherland, film and television actor and star in such hits as The Dirty Dozen, M*A*S*H, Cold Mountain and Pride and Prejudice (1935-)

Netezza was a sponsor of the recent Business Objects Insight User Conference in Orlando, and I wanted to share some of my quick impressions of the event.

In listening to the executive keynotes and various track sessions, what crystallized for me was a new level of appreciation for Business Objects’ (and in general the BI industry’s) drive towards improving the BI user experience. I refer to ‘user experience’ in a very broad sense here encompassing themes such as functionality (e.g. allowing users easy access to unstructured data alongside structured data), ease-of-use (e.g. interface design and adoption of data visualization techniques), flexibility (e.g. better integration with other desktop tools such as Adobe, new business models to consume BI as a service) and performance (e.g. use of smart caching). This to me, more than anything else, marks the impending arrival of mainstream operational BI. As BI adoption and penetration in organizations increases, there is real demand/need to expand the use cases that the BI tools can address, while minimizing the level of user expertise required to operate the tools.

And the SAP acquisition of Business Objects also provides a glimpse into the future of operational BI. With Business Object’s BI expertise, and SAP’s know-how of the world of business processes, these companies have the opportunity to accelerate the creation of an entirely new functional experience for the organization that combines their areas of expertise in one seamless user experience, and renders BI truly operational.

Something else also struck home for me. This is more of an observation of what I thought wasn’t said, or better put, wasn’t underscored with enough emphasis. While it’s really exciting to see some of the new functionality that is in development and think through the possibilities, BI users today are hindered by significant challenges. These manifest themselves in several forms – slow running reports and queries, inability to access data at the right depth to run analyses that are of interest and long delays associated in waiting for the technical infrastructure to be adapted to changing business needs. Across the Netezza customer and prospect base, and regardless of BI tools in use, these are themes that we hear over and over again. As I sat there and listened to the demos and presentations of what’s coming tomorrow, I could not help but think about how much more powerful the message could be, if users weren’t stuck struggling to use what they had access to today.

The point above may seem a bit Netezza or database-centric, but I had the chance to talk to several people who attended the conference and they all shared the same feeling on one level or another. At the end of the day, the BI tool sits on top of a database, and if the foundation is weak – i.e. the database cannot keep up with the user – it becomes the choke-point. The only options at the tool level then are for the BI tool to work around the database (drives complexity and cost), and or impose analytic limitations on the user (dilutes the value of BI). The tradeoffs inherent to these approaches are very limiting and/or in-efficient and cannot scale effectively.

Looking forward on the BI horizon, the mainstream arrival of operational BI will add to the existing challenges that organizations face as the number of users increases. Therefore it will become even more imperative for organizations to think through their end-to-end BI infrastructure, database to user BI tools and ensure that the right pieces are in place to capitalize on the true promise of BI.

Vishal Daga