The next generation of Business Intelligence (BI 2.0)

After the Web 2.0, it's time of BI 2.0. Everyone of BI area agrees that a lot of changes are happening, although several important analysts and professionals of industry try to resist the use of the name Business Intelligence 2.0.

Although Business Intelligence 2.0 is a buzzword, with a convenient marketing of the version number, the concepts proposed are quite interesting. By the way, there is nothing new about most of the concepts, what is changing is how to integrate with BI, through new approaches. The BI 2.0 is an extension of the traditional BI, not replacing it only complementing. Some concepts of new BI are based on the concepts of Web 2.0.

The BI 2.0 includes the concepts and technologies of data mining, statistical analysis, advanced visualization, mobile technology, alert notifications, rich reports, predictive analytics, BI search, text analytics and semantic data model.

The BI 2.0 also takes advantage with the concepts, processes, architectures and technologies that improve business process and event processing, as Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA), Business Process Management(BPM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Complex Event Processing(CEP) and Event Stream Processing(ESP).

While the main function of traditional BI (sometimes called BI 1.0) is to analyze the past, the BI 2.0 is to predict the future, using the concepts of traditional BI together the concepts of BI 2.0 to build a smart picture. The BI 2.0 is more pro-active than reactive. The traditional BI is closed loop, unable outside input data, because it occurs after the events, and BI 2.0 is open loop because enable input data when the events occur, and its real time analysis.

The BI 2.0 is more intuitive, interactive, pervasive, collaborative and process-driven.

The main effects of BI 2.0 in the companies are: Data integration and comprehension (using Master Data Management), roles (people with many roles at the same time), lower cost of BI licensing (many people using BI), convergence of structured and unstructured data, convergence with the rest of operations.

But one of the most important concepts of BI 2.0 is not about technology, is about people. The technical innovation is the easy part, the hard is to align the organization. It is important to focus on people, remember that with the continuous technical innovation, people are taking cultural shifts, and people will use insights, a new way of thinking and the concepts of social networking and collaboration to work more effectively.

The BI 2.0 allows a BI for everyone, not only for executives, power users or information workers, and extends beyond corporate boundaries, to suppliers and customers.

The traditional BI makes the deal, is useful and keeps alive, but BI 2.0 will provide a new way for the companies improve their results.