My speech at IDC BI Roadshow

I did opening speech at IDC BI Roadshow in Kiev a week ago. Here is my presentation with some remarks.

• SQL was initially designed as tool for business analysts as well, but it quickly became too complex so it was clear that special tools are needed
• In 90s BI wasn't like a platform but rather like a set of tools for data retrieval and visualization
• Lots of M&A on BI market in 2000s led to formation of Enterprise BI platforms
• Low user adoption is the main BI problem which is still not resolved; complexity and traditional pricing models are among main obstacles
• World goes mobile and social, so should BI
• Traditional OLTP databases for analytical workload? No more
• BI standardization has failed -- there is no perfect BI suite under the moon
• There were many attempts to overcome low user adoption (Pervasive BI, Operational BI, etc.) but all of them failed. Let's see if Data Discovery will succeed or it is just a new hot buzzword
• Finally BI vendors started to pay attention to good data visualization, no more silly 3D bar charts. Small BI vendors lead the race here.
• Business users need data manipulation capabilities, whether IT like it or not
• Collaborative and social features in BI suites are greatly underestimated and underdeveloped by vendors, however they might have the key to dramatically higher user adoption
• Data warehouses will not disappear, despite hasty statements of some BI vendors, because DWH is not about databases, it's about abstraction layer that transforms data models of many diverse transactional systems into single business data model