Could the ground be shifting under BI’s feet? The traditional database wars are still raging with the large vendors but the quiet momentum is building with demand for high scale analytic technologies. Ventana Research’s recent benchmark research on Optimizing BI and Data Warehouse Performance found that many organizations are struggling with the performance of complex analytics critical for customer analysis, business forecasting and operational reporting. Our research found that a significant number of organizations are seeking alternative technologies to improve the performance of complex analytics.

The current data warehouse renaissance, manifesting itself in data appliances, column-oriented systems, MapReduce programming models among others could ultimately break the BI mold and open the door to business innovation through high-powered analytics. Organizations need to evaluate whether new technologies could enable them to exploit emerging information sources such as social networking behavioral, Web traffic, sensor, location and event data.

While implementations differ, the core breakthrough of the new technology is parallel processing. True, parallel processing is not new; but as with many database innovations, it has taken a while for software developers and data architects to understand how to employ it fully. Organizations should also evaluate whether the new technologies could enable them to overhaul antiquated extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) processes.

Technological explanations for what differentiates the vendors can be dense; often, the vendors don’t help themselves when they aim their marketing guns at each other rather than clearly explaining business advantages. However, we recommend that organizations increase their focus on the potential of what they have to offer for improving the performance of analytics.

Let me know your thoughts or come and collaborate with us on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Regards,

David Stodder - Research Director and Fellow