In this great article on BeyeNetwork, Rick van der Lans looks at Operational (or real-time) Business Intelligence. This is a long read but well worth your time as Rick provides definitions, addresses approaches, references survey materials, and looks at problems, concerns and opportunities for Operational Business Intelligence.
Some of the problems, concerns, opportunities that Rick examines in his piece include:
Two definitions of Operations (real-time) Business Intelligence. One that looks at Business Intelligence for operational managers as opposed to tactical and strategic managers and another definition that looks at operational business intelligence as the means where users get access to very timely (almost real-time) data. Very interesting concepts and Rick references some very timely survey data to support what folks are doing in the field today.
- The possibilities surrounding refreshing of data warehouses architectures to support Operational Business Intelligence.
- The realities of transforming a data warehouse to support an Operational Business Intelligence environment
- The possibility of running an Operational Business Intelligence environment on production databases (yikes)
- User awareness. Do users even understand what Operational Business Intelligence is and why they need it or for the end-user is it “just give me my reports.”
So, what’s your take. Do you understand Operations Business Intelligence? Do you need it? Is it on the radar as an actionable item for 2010 or a nice to have?
