Gartner Business Intelligence Summit

Please find below some interesting predictions from Gartner for BI:

Prediction	My comment
1. By 2013, 33% of BI functionality will be consumed via handheld devices.	Microsoft has already started working on this direction. Windows Phone 7 consumes Silverlight content, and there are many Silverlight controls for BI (SQL Reporting Services or pure WP7 implementation) from Microsoft and partners
2. By 2014, 30% of analytic applications will use in-memory functions to add scale and computational speed. By 2014, 30% of analytic applications will use proactive, predictive and forecasting capabilities.	Microsoft provides in-memory capabilities through PowerPivot for SharePoint and Vertipaq. In addition, SQL Server Analysis Services already supports proactive caching and predictive analysis through data mining support.
3. By 2014, 40% of business analytics expenditure will go to system integrators, not software vendors.	In terms of Services delivery this might be true. Microsoft has recently announced additional appliances for BI (i.e. HP Business Decision Appliance) that refer to this point. However, the BI platform, implemented by the known or promising BI SW vendors, will still have a key role in BI projects.
4. By 2013, 15% of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environments	This is already implemented in Microsoft’s BI stack, through the native integration of SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server (BI features through Analysis, Integration and Reporting Services)

To conclude, I strongly believe that Microsoft is on the right track, and in particular, in several cases we drive the BI market to new areas/functionality i.e. “BI for the masses”, Excel Services and PowerPivot, project ‘Crescent’, SQL Server Analysis Services capabilities and so on.

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