Business intelligence (BI) has - according to the Gartner CIO Survey - ranked as the number one priority for CIOs in both 2006 and 2007.
A major reason for BI's escalating level of importance over the past couple of years is that BI is moving into what experts refer to as a new phase in its life cycle.
This was one of the core messages at ITWeb's Business Intelligence 2007 Conference, held last week in Johannesburg.
Analyst and research group IDC sees the BI market moving in 15-year cycles, delegates heard.
BI in its early years (1975 to 1990) was predominantly concerned with the simple analysis and reporting of data, as businesses began to gather and automate more information.
Its use, in this era, was often severely restricted to long-term strategic decision-making.
The years 1990 to 2005, noted events programme director Mariette du Plessis, saw easier-to-use client-server based BI tools hit the market as companies saw BI's growing importance.
Between 2005 and 2020, BI is in its third wave of evolution, she noted.
The characteristics of this stage include an emphasis on expanding the reach of BI to various members of an organisation, increasing its use in smaller companies, and being able to generate real-time and predictive data.
It has also become clear, she stated, that BI is no longer something one can only use for strategic decision-making, as it can be useful at an operational level.
"BI is the central way that IT can add value to a business," asserted Martin Vipond, KPMG's director of information risk management, "this is why it's currently such an area of focus.
"It has a critical role to play when it comes to financial data. In this area, more than any other in the business, it is so essential that the information is highly accurate."
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