Present BI Architecture

The way of you deal with your information will determine whether you win of loose! It is simple and it is true. Information is one of the most valuable assets in today’s dynamic business environment. In order to deal with these changes organizations must leverage their business objectives recognition, definition and achievement on information assets. Consequently, the business intelligence strategy in the organization becomes more significant.

There are two approaches of driving business intelligence in the organization:

• TACTICAL (distributed data repository)– driving solutions as problem appears
  • Advantages: solving current  problems, less expensive for particular problem, quick implementation
  • Disadvantages: no leveraging opportunities, highly  integration costs, inadequacy of information caused by integration problems
• STRATEGICALLY (centralized data repository) – leveraging business intelligence on technical and organizational foundation
  • Advantages: “single truth for all”, lower TCO, increased ROI, easy response to changes leveraging on existing infrastructure
  • Disadvantages: initially more expensive then tactical solutions, requires more discipline and formal approach in the  implementation (strategically driven) 

Therefore, strategically approach has considered as preferable in order to respond to the dynamic business requirement is to drive business intelligence strategically. However, many of   strategically driven BI projects are failed in terms of lack of tangible benefits for the organization. The situation would be worse if we consider amount of many spent in BI for the last few years. Therefore BI professionals start to criticize strategically approach (with centralized   data repository) as inadequate in terms of price/performance ratio. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

 BI Survival

There is no doubt - information will remain as one of the key inputs in decision making process. And that fact will remain. Consequently, BI intelligence as information provider will keep the focus. However, something has to be changed. Here will be considered architectural changes. So, how we should change BI architecture in order to make efficient and effective response to those changes?

Centralized data repository will survive. There is impossible to provide “single version of truth” without central repository of data. However the major changes are required:

Central data repository should be treated as INFRACTRUCTURE investment. Focus must be on data integration which must result with data foundation - not on report delivery. A new trends and tools, like excel 2010 Power Pivot promote reporting as a self service for business users. Central data repository should be considered as approach only for qualified organizations (qualified means that they are mature enough in terms of business processes, organization and existing IT infrastructure).

Tactical solutions will remain as valid option in two scenarios. The first one is only choice for organization which is immature to drive successfully centralized data repository. The second one is usage of tactical solutions as addon business reporting and analytical modules leveraging   on centralized data repository – applicable for organizations that owns centralized data repository.

In general, existing architectural components will remain in the future, but with slightly changing in approach as well as clear differentiating between organizations in terms of maturity for centralized data approach. That would decrease number of failed projects caused by wrong selection of BI approach (tactical or strategically).