Business Intelligence

Executive summary

Business Intelligence

The origin and evolution of what is now called Business Intelligence are not as recent as the development of networking technologies and the computer itself. The origins are almost as old as the history of human civilization. Data has always needed to be collected for various purposes. Ancient civilizations required information about taxes, armies, population, and many more issues, requiring data to generate this information to be collected and stored. The first examples of written language is in fact data storage. The Roman Empire was exceptionally fond of bureaucracy of any kind and record-keeping, especially after the invention of better forms of paper. The challenge of storing more data and then retrieving it to generate information continues to the present day.

With the growth of electronic computing power, came the development of increased data and information storage and retrieval capability. Decks of punched cards, reels of paper tape, high speed and high density magnetic tapes, magnetic disk drives, and solid state storage units was the progression of technology to increase capacity and reduce space – several of the technologies are still being used today. Programmers had to develop increasingly complex Database Management Systems to manage the continuously growing stored data. The first revolution in data maintenance and retrieval was relational database technology where data was organized and stored in similar “business related” components – allowing a more organized and efficient way to access data according to known business rules and relationships. With the continuing advance of more robust networks, managing the everyday business transactions turned from batch processing to taking advantage of real time events – and with that an increasing demand on data capture and information generation quality. Unfortunately, the transactional data collection systems and tools of that era were inappropriate for the job of conducting business research and compiling usable information – as their primary purpose was to speed along the data capture process.

Business Intelligence began coming of age in the late 1980s as the potential value of the massive amounts of data began to be recognized as a business asset instead of expense. Business Intelligence began comprising a wide array of technologies, practices, and protocols required to produce quality and achievable business insights. The actual meaning of Business Intelligence may differ from company to company, depending on their business model and competitive position in the market. Nevertheless, even though there may not be a universal definition of Business Intelligence, the common theme meets four basic requirements – to produce timely, high-value, accurate, and actionable fact based insights to business challenges.

Business Intelligence is constantly evolving and increasing its importance to corporate and governmental entities. Business Intelligence has historically been associated with technologies of data warehousing, however recent technological advances are making business insight capable of finding and extracting data from fluid and unstructured source systems, such as social media, and then transform it into whatever will be needed for business analysis.

Service Methodology

Business Intelligence today is an integrated hardware, software, and network solution designed to facilitate the efficient and effective use of data and information within an organization. Although Business Intelligence requirements can vary in different business sectors, and many tools are industry-specific, most Business Intelligence environments provide a similar core suite of capabilities. The data gathered for Business Intelligence usage originates in various “sources of truth”, from Enterprise