Next-Gen BI: Not Your Father's Intelligence

The next generation of business intelligence will look a lot different from today's BI. That was the takeaway we came away with from a recent eWEEK article that outlined an expert's four BI "megatrends."
  
   It wil be more sophisticated, more useful and, in a nod to Web 2.0, "mashed up" with some other fast-growing technologies.
  
   For instance, more folks will pair BI with geospatial technologies for added insight into their corporate data. Indeed, some folks are already doing it, as evidenced by this Bank Systems & Technology article that describes how KeyBank is using a modeling tool from MapInfo to help predict the impact of changes on its 13-state branch network.
  
   As video becomes more popular on the Internet and elsewhere, companies will need to figure out how to tweak their BI tools to mine and analyze such data. Yahoo, Google and others are already trying to refine video search; their efforts will no doubt benefit businesses down the road.
  
   To better leverage the benefits of BI, companies must also strive to facilitate collaboration among employees, customers, partners and others. Microsoft seems to have a firm grasp on this idea, as it is beefing up both analysis and reporting capabilities and the ability to share information in its upcoming releases of PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Office 2007.