It was only a few years ago that business professionals were forced to rely on IT staff to provide them access to data and generate reports for them. It was a time-consuming and disconnected process that prevented business users from exploring real-time data and other data types in the moment to support instantaneous decision-making.
Today, business users are able to do much of this on their own through the use of self-service analytics and data discovery tools. Knowledge workers are able to achieve significantly faster and deeper insights from full-scale analytics that draw from a broad set of data sources, including real-time market and customer data. Meanwhile, analytics tools and dashboards have become much easier for all types of users, regardless of skill level.
So what does the future hold for knowledge workers? And how will analytics continue to evolve to meet their changing needs?
One certainty is that data will continue to grow, creating new opportunities–and challenges–for business users to respond to emerging trends. The digital universe is doubling in size every two years, according to a report by EMC and IDC. In light of this data expansion, the ascent of more powerful data discovery tools, access to multi-structured data, data preparation tools, and “smart” capabilities will further democratize access among business users to analytics, according to Gartner.
One of the ways TIBCO is enabling business users to collect and act more quickly on the full spectrum of data available to them is through the TIBCO Live Datamart. The industry’s first live data mart for Fast Data, it provides a push-based real-time analytics solution that allows knowledge workers to receive alerts on key events as they occur and to anticipate, analyze, and act on opportunities and threats while they matter.
Unlike traditional business intelligence that provide periodic batch updates, TIBCO Live Datamart enables business users to conduct ad-hoc queries against tens of millions of live streaming records each day. This allows users to interact with live data and visualize continuous updates that are generated in milliseconds.
Going forward, data visualization capabilities will also continue to progress. Visualizations will expand beyond the rigors of traditional graphic design where rules-based design will usher in new forms of geometric abstractions that more closely align the relationship between the topics and trends that are represented in the data with the goals of the end user.
It’s capabilities like these that will help organizations to truly become data-driven by having analytics embedded into daily workflows and operational processes.
