When Business Intelligence (BI) software first became available 10 years ago, vendors promised companies that these tools could provide a competitive edge by helping them leverage untapped analytic and operational data to make better decisions, more quickly. Many confidently predicted mass deployment within organizations that would empower a wide range of employees and other stakeholders and contribute to a greater understanding of the business. A decade later, Business Intelligence tools have indeed proven value to a small set of highly trained business analysts and power users, but still fall far short of ubiquitous enterprise-wide adoption. As Keith Gile, senior analyst at Forrester, pointed out in April 2003, “Business Intelligence has not grown at nearly the rate anticipated or to the levels predicted. ...The fact remains that Business Intelligence has not lived up to its promise of delivering analytics to the enterprise.”

Companies that have considered—or attempted—large deployments say one of the biggest barriers to adoption is that Business Intelligence tools are hard to use. Cost is another factor: purchasing, implementing, and maintaining Business Intelligence solutions were cost-prohibitive for large-scale enterprise deployments, especially during the era of client/server and then Web-enabled products. Infrastructure issues also made Business Intelligence solutions difficult to deploy, maintain or scale. And finally, Business Intelligence products are only as reliable as the data driving them. Many vendors fail to provide adequate data integration features and timely delivery of information. In order for large-scale deployment of Business Intelligence to take place, vendors must address these issues—and some are beginning to do so.

1) Geared toward “power users,” not ease of use