The road to pervasive BI is not a simple one, however, technologies such as wireless devices are making it slightly easier to get there. Willie Bezuidenhout, business technologist: information management at Computer Associates Africa, discusses pervasive computing and its link to BI, highlighting key trends and their subsequent challenges.
Cult movies, The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded have given us an eerie glimpse into an artificial world created by computers.
Although just Sci-Fi, this is exactly what we should steer clear of. Computing should "invisibly" enhance our world, rather than creating a new one.
The concept is to design technology that seamlessly integrates into the physical world in ways that extend human capabilities to create a ubiquitous computing environment.
It is also this concept that has sparked pervasive computing and the subsequent - researched - technologies that are part of our everyday environments.
Essentially, pervasive computing enables people to access and interact with information any place and any time, using the seamless integration of technologies.
The increasing prevalence of multimedia and wireless communications also presents many opportunities for pervasive computing. Some visionary - but not farfetched - ideas include embedded technologies in clothes, known as "wearable computing" or "wearables".
Jewellery, head-mounted caps, glasses, shoes and jackets have been experimented with, all to provide the user with a means of interacting with digital information while on the move in the physical world.
Retail systems have been the front-runners of pervasive computing for years. Almost every retail item today uses the UPC bar code - also known as a coded tag.
Linking BI and pervasive computing
It may not be immediately apparent how BI (business intelligence) and pervasive computing are linked - but linked, they definitely are.
BI is essentially a component of most pervasive computing environments, but is also driven by it, for example enabling people to make decisions anywhere, anytime.
Already these pervasive BI systems come in various forms such as Web interfaces and portals.
However, BI is now moving to the HCI (human computer interface) and is increasingly pushed down to mobile devices, handhelds, tablet PCs, your LG refrigerator and the navigational interface in your car such as BMW`s iDrive and Mercedes Benz`s COMAND.
In fact, navigational systems have been extended to the Internet to feature personalised Web sites and information such as service intervals and bookings, which can all be accessed from your car.
Challenges for pervasive BI
There are still a number of challenges to overcome before pervasive BI becomes part of our daily lives.
BI has been successfully integrated into real-time enterprise integration architectures, which is proven to be extremely valuable to organisations around the world.
But, what it really boils down to is data integration, something that has not been achieved yet.
Another challenge faced by pervasive BI is to enable user familiarity with real-time information, therefore, offering accurate interpretation in order to achieve that elusive business advantage.
The future
In the near future alternative devices such as cellphones will become critical interfaces to real-time decision-making, as there`s no guarantee that a prospective customer or partner is sitting in front of PC that is connected to a network/backend system.
Also, with the next-generation Internet protocol, IPv6 moving from 32-bit to 128-bit, it will have enough naming and address capacity to uniquely identify every square meter of the earth`s surface.
Imagine that, a VLDB (very large database) storing the earth`s data that can (securely) be accessed anywhere and anytime - a truly pervasive computing system.
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