What is business intelligence? Where have we been, where are we now, and where are we going? These slides provide a brief history of business intelligence, enjoy.

1. What is Business Intelligence?
A brief history of Business Intelligence

2. Where have we been?

3. Where are we now?

4. Where are we going?

5. Why should you care?

6. What is Business Intelligence?

7. According to

8. The Definition of
Business Intelligence is…
Skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, quality, risks, security issues and
practices used to help a business to acquire a better understanding of market
behavior and commercial context. For this purpose it undertakes the collection,
integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information. By
extension, quot;business intelligencequot; may refer to the collected information itself or
the explicit knowledge developed from the information.

9. WHAT?

10. The Definition of
Business Intelligence is…
Skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, quality, risks, security issues and
practices used to help a business to acquire a better understanding of market
behavior and commercial context. For this purpose it undertakes the collection,
integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information. By
extension, quot;business intelligencequot; may refer to the collected information itself or
the explicit knowledge developed from the information.

11. Still confused?

12. BI seems hard

13. Is that what it took

14. for a business to be intelligent?

15. What is intelligence?

16. Knowledge and understanding?

17. Meaning and context?

18. Foresight?

19. Solve complex problems

20. to make decisions?

21. Who makes decisions?

24. How do people make decisions?

25. We make decisions all the time

26. Go all-in or fold?

27. Hold, sell, or buy?

28. Sometimes people make poor decisions

35. Intelligence = decisions

36. Decisions = people

37. What makes a good decision?

38. How about information?

39. Intelligence + information
= the right decision?

40. What is information?

41. Throughout history information was used

42. To share stories

43. To learn

44. Johannes Gutenberg

45. Printing Press, 1439

46. And discover things

47. Christopher Columbus

48. Use this

49. North America, 1492

50. It kept track of things

51. In these situations
(jail cell, chalk count)

52. Or here
(castaway)

53. Over time

54. Information helped provide answers

55. To unlock secrets
E= MC
2

56. Which allowed for innovation

57. From something big

58. To small

59. To smaller

60. To help build
something big again

61. Information provided answers

62. Answers allowed people

63. To make decisions.

64. How did business people get answers?

65. They had something called data

66. Business data

67. about people

68. about products

69. And about places

70. And they had questions

71. Which products are best?

72. How are my sales?

73. How are my people?

74. But before they could get answers

75. They needed insight into the data

76. Otherwise it was guess work

77. Except you’re the Donkey

78. Data had value

79. It was precious

80. Where do you put something precious?

81. It needed to be stored.

82. Before the 1960s

83. Data was stored here

84. When computers arrived

85. It went places

86. Like here

87. And then here

88. But storing something precious that way was

89. Risky Business

90. And difficult to manage

91. Eventually data would be stored

92. In something like this

93. called a database
Invented by Edgar Codd, 1969

95. The database provided

96. A way to store

97. Business data

98. about the people

99. about products

100. And places

101. But it wasn’t that straight forward

102. To get the data in here

103. required a lot of expertise

104. The business needed a way

105. To enter data

106. 1970s

107. Business applications were created
founded in 1972 founded in 1977

108. And improve business process

109. Why business applications?

110. Business applications provided a better way

111. to collect data

112. Database = data storage

113. Business applications + Database
=
Ease of data entry

114. And more data.

115. What about access?

116. Data + Access = Answers?

117. access wasn’t easy

118. For example

119. Can I have some data? Please?

120. It wasn’t that easy

121. Data was coming
from multiple locations

122. from business applications

123. And in the database

124. Why not access one-at-a-time?

125. They tried with Reports

126. But they were one-dimensional

127. And could only provide access in

128. Silos

129. Which meant the data was

130. Fragmented

131. They needed more insightful access

132. Across multiple locations

133. So they moved the data

134. Into a data warehouse

135. Which was made popular in the early 1980s
Ralph Kimball
Bill Inmon

138. Now the data could be organized

139. And could come from multiple locations

140. To be managed

141. and accessed

142. Now data could be served

143. Data access + management = consumption

144. Business Intelligence 1.0

145. BI tools could

146. Report Analyze

147. In 1989 term BI was born
Howard Dresner, coined the term 'business intelligence' in 1989

148. BI vendors started to pop up
1990
1993
1985
1989

149. BI vendors promised more access

150. Across multiple locations

151. To report and analyze the data

152. Why?

154. more data = more demand

155. The business wanted

156. Data faster

157. BI was about performance.

158. What happened next?

159. The data didn’t stop

161. Things began to move quickly

162. The business needed more answers, fast

163. The 90s brought more BI tools

164. And there were lots

165. BI tools were everywhere

166. But it still didn’t work

167. The data usually wound up here

168. Which became

169. Which eventually became

172. There was no

173. single

174. version

175. of the

176. Truth

177. In summary

178. BI tools created more access

179. More access = Multiple versions of the truth

181. New challenge of data management.

182. What about cost?

185. Hard to maintain

186. BI vendors needed a way

187. To offer more functionality

189. The first BI platforms emerged

190. Acquisitions

193. Business Intelligence 2.0

194. More BI tools

195. More BI functionality

196. Offline and online

197. Market consolidation

198. At this point

199. BI was a top priority
(top priority for CIOs)

200. It was Bigtime

201. Bigger than Lebron James

202. But it still didn’t work

203. Something was broken

204. Business people were still

205. CONFUSED

206. Business Intelligence has not changed
The definition of BI is…
Skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, quality, risks, security issues and
practices used to help a business to acquire a better understanding of market
behavior and commercial context. For this purpose it undertakes the collection,
integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information. By
extension, quot;business intelligencequot; may refer to the collected information itself or
the explicit knowledge developed from the information.

207. What wasn’t working?

208. The business still couldn’t get the answers
Access to BI (20%)
No access to BI (80%)

209. It wasn’t about people

210. It was still about

211. Systems

212. What wrong with that?

213. It required access

214. Who provided access?

215. Typically it was IT

216. What happens when

217. 80% of the people call IT for data

219. Why not go around IT?

220. BI tools were not

221. intuitive

222. Business people didn’t have

223. Time

224. It was about

225. Intuitive access

226. And timeliness of data

227. BI was about usability

228. To turn data

229. Into the right format

230. And be easily consumed by more people

231. And be easily managed by IT.

232. But it wasn’t just about the data in here

233. There was unstructured data

234. What’s the difference?

235. Unstructured came from places

236. Like blogs

237. Wiki’s

238. emails

239. Documents

240. Presentations

241. Videos

242. And there was lots
“80 percent of business is conducted
on unstructured information.“

243. BI = Right Data + Right Time + Right Person

244. BI needed to be people centric

246. Oldschool BI didn’t work

247. Because people make decisions

248. Not systems

249. It was time for a change

250. The BI of the 90s

251. was “Iced” out

252. The business needed to do more

253. To collaborate

254. Search

255. And communicate

256. About their questions

257. and their answers

258. To drive innovation.

259. Today, there are new pressures

260. An economic crisis

261. But times are changing

262. BI can work the way you do

263. To provide better insight

264. and better decisions

265. for more people

266. and drive innovation

267. How can you get it?

268. You already have it.

269. Follow the new BI conversation
http://blogs.msdn.com/bi

270. Follow the conversation
http://blogs.msdn.com/bi
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This presentation style was influenced by
Dick Hardt