This is the first article in a series that explores elements critical to an effective BI solution, and highlights what we believe Pyramid Analytics offers related to these trends and forecasts. This first article examines governed data discovery, and the value it brings.

1. Susan Joly
@e2valpo
March 4, 2015

2. Creating a Vision for Governed Data Discovery 2
Overview ................................................................................................................................................................................3
A key differentiator..............................................................................................................................................................3
A balancing act.....................................................................................................................................................................3
Meeting market needs .......................................................................................................................................................4
Prediction related to governed self service ..................................................................................................................4
Old world, current world, and next generation ...........................................................................................................5
BI Office fills the gap: architected for governance......................................................................................................5
Addressing the power shifts..............................................................................................................................................6

3. Creating a Vision for Governed Data Discovery 3
Overview
Central to every solid business intelligence (BI) solution is a platform with easy-to-use functionality that meets vast user needs,
along with the governance, security, and scalability that enterprises require. Ultimately, it is the voice and testimonial of the
customers who are using a given platform that speak volumes.
The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, conducted annually, was recently published on February 23,
2015. In this research, BI and analytics platform vendors were evaluated based on key customer-survey metrics from 2,083 BI
platform users. The research also highlights marketplace trends, innovations, and forecasts.
This series of articles explores elements that are critical to an effective BI solution, and highlights what we believe Pyramid
Analytics offers in this regard. We heard input from our customers about strengths in Pyramid Analytics’ BI Office platform for
large-scale, governed BI related to the following areas:
 Enterprise-grade, end-to-end BI platform—for instance, ability to quickly create a vast range of reports and dashboards,
governed data discovery, analysis capabilities, ease of use, platform integration, metadata management
 Successful, large-scale, governed BI programs—for instance, versatile range of dashboards, reporting, and analysis
capabilities, mobile BI
 Users at ease with practical business gains— high customer satisfaction, high degree of business benefits achieved
For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.
A key differentiator
The need for governed data discovery is mentioned frequently in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics
Platforms. Vendors are assessed on how well they support four central use cases, one of which is governed data discovery. The
need for governed data discovery is greater than ever, but many vendors aren’t currently filling this gap.
As confirmed in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms:
“Gartner inquiries and survey data suggest that, increasingly, companies would like to expand use and even standardize
on data discovery platforms for their larger enterprise BI deployments but find that in many cases these platforms lack
the necessary enterprise features in relation to governance, administration and scalability, among other things.”
For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.
A balancing act
First, let’s look at an example of governed data discovery to better understand this element that’s such a core differentiator
among BI platform vendors. In short, it could be defined as meeting the demands of both enterprise IT and business users.
In a typical organization of business users and an IT department, each has its own valuable mission. Business users want easy
access to data, whether they are consuming it, interacting with it, performing data modeling or calculations, analyzing it, or other
tasks. The IT department needs to makes sure, however, that chaos doesn’t ensue, particularly given the increasing numbers of
users who regularly depend on BI in some fashion in a typical organization. Namely, IT ensures that the data is secure, consistent,
accurate, and that there aren’t multiple versions of it, which would dilute the integrity of the data that is such a valuable asset to
the business.
Although the needs of IT and the business are sometimes viewed as conflicting, in actuality, both IT and the business essentially
want the same things in the end: a successful, scalable BI program without data silos, where they can make solid decisions in a
safe, governed environment—with confidence that their decisions are based on data that is trustworthy. Any perceived conflict is
really a result of existing tools that don’t meet the needs of both IT and the business user.

4. Creating a Vision for Governed Data Discovery 4
Governed data discovery is a bridge between these two overarching needs: easy access to—and interaction with—data, while still
being managed and secured. With true governed data discovery, business users and IT don’t merely coexist; rather, they work
together to solve business problems.
Meeting market needs
When it comes to standardizing on a BI platform, it isn’t enough to choose a platform that only offers user-centered benefits such
as solid functionality, ease of use, where the innovation of data usage is readily in the hands of end users. Although there’s
certainly no denying the value of these benefits, without a way to govern this data, many issues can arise: siloed data, lack of data
security, maintainability, data integrity, among other problems.
In the following excerpt, the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms assesses market needs for
2015:
“It is very likely that 2015 will be a critical year in which democratizing access to analytics will continue to dominate
market requirements and stress the need for governance.”
Yet, at the same time, research from the report seems to indicate that some buyers are holding off:
“Right now, the majority of buyers seem to be waiting to see if their enterprise standard BI platform will deliver on the
business user oriented capabilities they prefer to meet new analytics requirements beyond production reporting. The
existence of separate systems-of-record reporting platforms and data discovery platforms can pose challenges for
organizations attempting to govern, scale and support these different environments…”
For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.
With BI making its way deeper and deeper into an organization and becoming increasingly indispensable to making informed,
data-driven decisions, governed data discovery has a key spot at the table.
Pyramid Analytics is already there. It serves both business users and IT. Business users have agility, while IT is able to
provide security, performance, and scalability.
Having achieved this balance, we believe Pyramid Analytics is a strong performer on the governed data discovery stage.
Prediction related to governed self service
BI leaders who are planning and making decisions related to platform selection can face significant pressure to deliver the best
solution for their organization.
The BI goal of providing governed self-service in an organization can be a noble—if seemingly elusive—mission. When it comes to
governed self-service, in fact, research from Gartner’s report Predicts 2015: Power Shifts in Business Intelligence and Analytics Will
Fuel Disruption offers the following prediction:
"Through 2016, less than 10% of self-service BI initiatives will be governed sufficiently to prevent inconsistencies that
adversely affect the business."*
We believe that some of the reasons for this low predicted percentage are related to the inherent difficulty in governing, scaling,
and supporting disparate platforms for reporting and data discovery.
Although the prediction looks dire, there’s ample opportunity to have positive influence and control in this area—to look ahead
and ensure that an organization doesn’t suffer these consequences, through a fully governed solution.

5. Creating a Vision for Governed Data Discovery 5
We believe that Pyramid Analytics not only fills a gap through its fully governed, self-service BI, but is
especially strong here.
Also, data models don’t exist on desktop machines or other users’ computing devices. Rather, there are
centralized, shared content repositories to ensure content integrity and prevent data silos. The processing of
data models that users create is maintained on the server, which ensures security, redundancy, and backup.
Old world, current world, and next generation
Old world
Once upon a time, IT used to have to build a data warehouse model and refine user access to the data. Data was highly centralized
and in the domain of the IT department, not the user, to provide the security and maintainability that’s crucial to the enterprise.
If you were a user, however, and you needed a report, you had to schedule time with someone in IT to tell them what you
wanted. This also added to the workload of IT.
Later, in the shift from a centralized to a decentralized model, many of the benefits of governance were lost. Without governance,
given all the users, there could be numerous versions of reports, spreadsheets, or other types of content, where all were different
from each other. Once a model moves to a desktop, in-memory model, there’s no assumption or assurance of consistency or
transparency. You don’t know how the data is being used, or who’s making decisions with the data. There’s no visibility to senior
leadership of the process that’s happening.
Current world
In the current BI arena, the trend is for there to be more balance between the centralized and decentralized model. Business users
have access to desktop tools and productivity tools and have license to interact with the data. IT and the business can work
together, however, to solve business problems. For instance, a developer might work with a business analyst to gather business
requirements for creating a report.
Next generation
Next-generation BI consists of tools with a strong set of features that meet criteria to analyze data. However, they also give an
organization the comfort and ability to manage the enterprise BI platform, so that the data is controlled and secured.
A business analyst or scorecard project manager might use BI Office’s wizards to build complicated content in a simple manner.
Rather than spending time copying information from various scorecards and pasting into slides for management reviews, for
instance, they can use the Publisher module in BI Office and spend more time on analyzing data rather than on manual processes.
This person uses IT-provisioned data and reporting, but needs the freedom to perform tasks such as merging data sources,
creating hierarchies, creating custom calculations, and controlling the format.
With governed BI, this type of scenario is possible, and both IT and the business user can have confidence in the security of the
data.
BI Office fills the gap: architected for governance
Through its BI Office Suite, Pyramid Analytics provides a centralized administrative toolset for governing, yet meets user needs. As
such, it fills the gap in providing a balanced BI solution that many other vendors still aren’t sufficiently providing.
From an IT standpoint
Architected for governance from the get-go, the administrative backend of BI Office provides security and access to data from a
single, unified interface.
BI Office is a server-based solution; data isn’t stored on the end-user system. As mentioned earlier, rather than data models just
existing on desktop machines, instead there are centralized, shared content repositories to ensure content integrity and avoid
data silos.

6. Creating a Vision for Governed Data Discovery 6
Everything is managed behind the scenes on a central server with server/cloud security and redundancy. It also manages the
backup process, which is invisible to the end user.
Any calculation that’s built is stored on the backend, and can be shared. Anything that someone creates can be shared broadly by
changing the security. There’s no need to copy or migrate anything; just change the check boxes on a security dialog box.
An IT manager, BI developer, or analyst, for instance, have the ability to see what someone else has created, validate it, expand it,
change the security setting, and publish broadly to an enterprise.
Data is secure from the external public, but it’s also kept confidential internally as needed. Among the features included are
integrated security, content security, multi-tenancy, user profiles, user licensing, and authentication.
From the users’ standpoint
BI Office has a familiar Microsoft Office-like interface with point-and-click wizards that help users such as business analysts quickly
create sophisticated data sets and data models, without any need for code.
Other users can take advantage of easily accessible, quality information and reports from across the organization, and use them to
ask questions, and to develop and share valuable insights, all within a safe, governed framework.
Addressing the power shifts
A solid BI platform delivers impressive performance, speed, functionality, and ease of use for end users, developers, BI program
leaders, and others in your organization. In today’s BI world where data volume and user numbers continue to increase, a platform
with enterprise features such as data governance, security, scalability, administration, and metadata management are also vital.
Companies that want to standardize on a data discovery platform need such enterprise capabilities, particularly for larger
deployments. A platform that can combine these necessary elements becomes a distinguished player on the stage, set apart from
its competitors.
Pyramid Analytics is unique in that has already successfully met the need for governance.
This balance yields not only governed data discovery, but reaches a high note to foster governed data modeling, visualization,
analytics, and dissemination.
For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.
*Gartner, Predicts 2015: Power Shifts in Business Intelligence and Analytics Will Fuel Disruption. Josh Parenteau, Neil Chandler, Rita
L. Sallam, Douglas Laney, Alan D. Duncan, 21 Nov. 2014
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