There were a few interesting outcomes from the TDWI conference last week in Orlando, Fl. Noticeably it had a much higher attendance than the spring conference – a sure sign organizations are looking at BI to guide them out of the recession and manage in the new normal. Judging from the number of visitors we had at the PivotLink booth, I’d say that people are eager to learn about new ways to deploy analytic capabilities more broadly in their organizations; either leveraging existing data warehouse initiatives or rapidly adding business analytic tools without the traditional overhead and costs.
Cindi Howson gave a keynote on the Secrets to BI Success with insights from her book Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making a Killer App.The “secrets” are based on exclusive surveys as well as in-depth customer case studies. Cindi emphasized how simply establishing a data warehouse and deploying BI tools is not enough. BI success hinges on how the technology is deployed and on organizational aspects companies often fail to tackle. This is similar to a key theme in Howard Dresner’s new book Profiles in Performance. Cindi also lead two courses on the latest innovations in BI, where PivotLink was highlighted as a company to watch in the SaaS BI category. For companies intending to deploy a SaaS BI solution she recommends checking references and looking into a solution’s security and scalability features. Having earned SAS 70 Type II certification this summer, PivotLink offers its customers the highest levels of security. On the data warehousing and SaaS BI fronts, I think this was a great show. There was a lot to learn from the various vendors in the exhibit hall as well as through all the networking going on while die-hard fans (and conference participants) watched the Yankees win the World Series. From my perspective two things were really clear:
- SaaS BI is growing in mind-share and demand.
- The BI industry is ripe for transformation and the SaaS delivery model will help drive wide scale use and reduce the overall cost and complexity of BI to the organization.
