Business Intelligence View

I am a long time practitioner of business intelligence methods. In this week's Information Week a fairly good overview of the big players (SAP, MS, Oracle and SAP) in BI. The expense and sometimes narrow views of the big players is outlined. Its important to note that just because you have an ERP vendor buying a BI vendor, it does not mean you have the best way to deliver valuable BI. SAP comes to mind. Yes, data integration is important, but also valuable is to be able to deliver useful solutions, initially solutions that are fundamentally convincing, that can then be continually leveraged to more value. Business intelligence comes from first understanding an industry, then understanding the application of the simplest possible methods to improve it.