If you’re like me, you’re probably receiving Webinar invites and other marketing materials from the leading Industry Analysts predicting the “next big thing” in BI, Information Management & DW (data warehousing). At Emtec, we take a slightly different perspective; we pay attention to what’s on our Clients’ radar in 2012 and provide pragmatic recommendations & direction.

Following is a list of the strategic directions we anticipate our Clients to be taking in 2012. We’ve broken the list down by Macro-trends that are industry-wide. In related Blog postings, we’ll comment on Micro-trends because they tend to be more vendor / product specific.

Macro-trends – Information Management, BI & Analytics:  It always takes some time to absorb the impacts of the Macro-trends, and then place them in the context of how & when Clients will choose to adopt the underlying technologies.

In 2012 we anticipate;

1. Business Intelligence & Social Media – Is feedback from social media sites just “noise” or does the data truly reveal buying trends and patterns of behavior? The larger question is, how will organizations mine the data in order to make better decisions?
2. Time to decision – Every large organization is challenged with increasing data volumes, squeezed into a shrinking Load (ETL) window. The envelope for ETL processing continues to be pushed by business demands for more accurate, timely & complete data.
3. Predictive Analytics – Historically, BI has been as good as the underlying data infrastructure at reporting past performance. BI is moving out of this rear-facing view of the organization’s performance, towards a forward-looking (predictive) view.
4. Big Data & In-memory Analytics – The MapReduce functionality permits BI vendors to scan through large datasets in near realtime Analytical & Data Mining applications. E.g. an ERP transaction could invoke an Analytical function for fraud detection, it has many uses across a broad range of verticals. Arguably the next big step forward for the BI vendors.
5. Data Infrastructure – “DW or DM in a box” has been tried before, stumbled badly and is back again in a different format. One of the benefits of improved ERP & BI integration (I’m thinking of SAP & Oracle) brings tighter integration of Industry Data Models, ETL & Master Data.
6. Cloud, SAAS & onDemand BI Services – For small, medium sized business (SMB) Clients, the costs of ownership (TCO) of a BI or Analytics platform continue to decline. All the leading vendors have an onDemand offering, and a Cloud IT infrastructure can dramatically lower operational costs.

The Micro-trends describe the tactical implementation options the leading vendors are able to offer Clients. We’ll comment on these in additional postings that are more vendor / product specific.

We’re interested in your feedback on how these trends resonate with your organization.

With that, we wish you a happy and successful 2012.

Information Management Practice, Leadership team