April - 2013 - issue > CIO Insights

Top 10 BI Predictions for 2013 and Beyond

Boris Evelson

Vice President & Principal Analyst-Forrester Research

Monday, April 1, 2013

Forward

It is that time of year again – time for the BI predictions for next year. Fortunately, last year’s predictions were pretty spot on so there are only a few reasons to update them. So, using 2012's predictions are a base, here’s a look at what we expect to see in BI this year:

1. The best tool for each BI job trumps IT standards

BI has traditionally been ruled by over insistence on enterprise wide standards and a single version of the truth. These will continue to be important, but they won’t be the Holy Grail. In 2013, expect IT to start embracing agile BI tools, such as ones based on flexible in-memory models, in addition to enterprise-grade BI tools and standards. For information workers who need information anytime and anywhere, agility concerns will trump standards.

2. Ready or not, information workers will demand more BI control

The current BI approach — a never-ending stream of business requests that IT cannot keep up with — has become unsustainable. Information workers get frustrated with the time lag between when they make requests and when IT fulfills those requests, so they demand more control over BI. End user self-service features of BI tools, such as semantic layers and search capabilities, will become increasingly critical when selecting and deploying BI tools and solutions.