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Cloud-based business intelligence (BI) and Software as a Service (SaaS) BI technologies offer users the potential for faster deployments, increased flexibility, and reduced costs compared with traditional on-premise BI software. But cloud BI, SaaS BI tools and cloud-based data warehousing also raise numerous issues for organizations to consider, including possible performance, scalability, and data security concerns.

In this interview with Craig Stedman of TechTarget, I discuss the maturity and possible uses of cloud BI tools and data warehouses. I also talk about the benefits and challenges of cloud business intelligence. Finally, I offer project management tips, including advice on as well as the questions that companies weighing the cloud approach should ask themselves as well as SaaS BI vendors.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

I have worked with BI tools since the late 1990s and they can do some pretty amazing things. It’s just a cool technology with far-reaching implications.

Who better to discuss BI than Jill Dyché, partner at Baseline Consulting and author of -Data, The CRM Handbook, and Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth.

In this extremely informative podcast, Jill and I discuss the evolution of BI, whether organizations can have too many BI tools, data governance, MDM, and the business-IT relationship.

To listen to the podcast, click here or visit iTunes.

• how they’re being used
• the effects they’re having on people

So, it was with great interest that I stumbled upon three thought-provoking posts yesterday. Trust me…I’m going somewhere with the Vince Vaughn reference.

Will Enterprise 2.0 technologies eliminate middle management?

In, Middle Management: The Importance of Being Michael Scott, Andrew McAfee takes a look at whether the days of the middle manager are numbered.

I had a hard time initially buying McAfee’s early contention that “Enterprise 2.0 overtakes the last vestige of the middle manager’s value — understanding the local culture.” However, later in the piece, he backs off this claim.

Can technology improve others’ view of local markets and, to some extent, obviate the need for some go-betweens? I don’t see why not, especially with collaborative tools and Business Intelligence applications.

Easier said than done, though. A few practical questions:

• Is the data from local markets accurate?
• Is it complete?
• Is it accessible without a bunch of manual manipulation?
• Are organizations and senior people going to trust technology to make decisions traditionally made by people?

I’m not sure that many organizations are ready to axe their middle ranks and replace them with dashboards and BI apps. I suspect that more will get there with the further adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

How will Enterprise 2.0 affect traditional CRM applications and mindsets?

In Social CRM: Ground zero for Enterprise 2.0 in 2010, Dion Hinchcliffe discusses how traditional CRM is becoming more social. Hinchcliffe writes, “Traditional methods for staying in touch with customers don’t hold a candle to true social engagement.”

Amen.

As he has pointed out in this post and others, a few things need to happen before the true power of Social CRM can be unleashed. For one, organizations need to understand that it’s a two way street and, to that end, they cannot control the entire message. Also, from a technology standpoint, I would think that many “Enterprise 1.0″ apps may not be sufficient for storing, accessing, and analyzing much of the unstructured data generated by the very tools that he describes. Whether that means new apps, new architectures such as SaaS, data marts or data warehouses, or some combination of each is probably a company-specific decision.

Is the Twitter genie out of the bottle?

Ah, one of the big questions these days. In The Twitter Train Has Left the Station, Nick Bilton of the NY Times questions those who doubt Twitter’s effect on traditional medial. Are you “old school” if you refuse to acknowledge that Twitter’s a game changer? Can one opt not to live in a 140 character world? Even if you do, does that mean that you’re ultimately not affected by it?

Simon Says

These are really lofty questions that I can’t possibly answer in a blog post. I will say this. To quote Vince Vaughn’s Ricky Slade in the criminally underrated move Made, “A lot going on. But, of course, there always is, isn’t there? A lot going on.”

The rules seem to be evolving as we speak. Quite frankly, there’s no agreement among talking heads like me about Enterprise 2.0 technologies now, much less where they’re going.

Stay tuned. Enterprise 2.0 (or whatever you want to call it) is going to be one hell of a ride. There’s plenty of room for debate.

Excerpt

A few months after I published Why New Systems Fail, Vinnie was kind enough to review my book on his site. In a post entitled ERP Déjà vu, Vinnie praised the content of the book while offering a few mild criticisms. To paraphrase Vinnie, the book looked backward more than it looked forward. ERP issues have been well documented but not as much is understood about emerging technologies or, as some would call it, Enterprise 2.0.

To read the entire post, click here.

Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.

Since happening upon this law, I have been noticing it more and more.

With that as a backdrop, consider the recent story on CNN: Dating site for beautiful people expels ‘fatties’ after holiday weight gain. I found the following quote particularly fascinating:

As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld,” said Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Hintze seems to contradict himself. He clearly doesn’t mourn the loss of certain members, especially the portly.

On a different level, much like a bad pick in a fantasy football draft, perhaps the best response to this story is simply, “Wow.”

Fundamental Questions

Yes, Web 2.0 enables sites to cater to every possible desire. I suppose that, if there’s sufficient demand, one can set up a site for agnostic single 48 year old curators of large mammals in Massachusetts. Business Intelligence (BI) technology will only improve the ability to mine data and isolate groups and individuals from the masses. In a way, a site like BeautifulPeople.com is inevitable.

With that in mind, I still have many more questions than answers. I barely know where to begin here.

• What are the moral and ethical ramifications of letting sites openly discriminate against a group of people?
• What constitutes being a “fatty” and how can they possibly control for this? Do they use the Body Mass Index?
• Are being overweight and beautiful mutually exclusive?
• What–if any–laws apply in situations like this?
• What–if any–laws should apply in situations like this?
• At what point will BeautifulPeople.com find itself in court?
• Is this merely capitalism at its finest?
• Where does all of this end?

Perhaps I am more acutely aware of things like this after reading The Cult of the Amateur, a fascinating and controversial book by Andrew Keen about the normative limits of technology (among other topics).

Feedback

What do you think? Am I showing my curmudgeonly side? Are these legitimate issues?

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1. Things not possible even five years ago that are now possible
2. Things previously possible but now augmented by the first category

My second book, The Next Wave of Technologies, strikes a nice balance between the two. The possibilities of improving existing technologies via new ones just make me giddy.

For example, check out this short video by Rob Ashe, former CEO of Cognos before IBM acquired the company. Ashe discusses an excellent example of the confluence between a relatively new technology (social networking) and a more established one (BI).  (Incidentally, there are chapters on both topics in The Next Wave.) This is a perfect example of the whole exceeding the sum of its parts.

How one technology extends another

I first worked with BI tools back in 1998, in particular Cognos PowerPlay and Impromptu. I was impressed way back then and these tools are a far cry from what they are today. There was always the opportunity for someone to “share” feedback with IT and other end-users. To this end, social networking changes nothing.

Except that it changes everything. As Ashe correctly points out, social networking vastly improves the ease with which data can be exchanged, synthesized, and even improved. By allowing for much greater collaboration, social networking enables better BI. It is for this reason that I consider both technologies part of Enterprise 2.0.

Feedback

Talk to me.

• What else is possible?
• Can you see other connections and possibilities?
• Which are the most exciting?
• Which are over-hyped?

Background

Author, speaker, and research scientist Andrew McAfee coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0″ in 2006. He currently defines it as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.” McAfee goes on to define several related terms:

• Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities. (Wikipedia).
• Platforms are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time.
• Emergent means that the software is freeform, and that it contains mechanisms to let the patterns and structure inherent in people’s interactions become visible over time.
• Freeform means that the software is most or all of the following:

• Optional
• Free of up-front workflow
• Egalitarian, or indifferent to formal organizational identities
• Accepting of many types of data

Many have taken issue with this definition for different reasons, including author Tom Graves.

In the new book, I define “Enterprise 2.0″ a bit more broadly than McAfee. Enterprise 2.0 encompasses emerging technologies, not just social networking and other collaborative tools. I use the term to include technologies such as:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Mobility
• Enterprise Search and Retrieval (ESR)
• Social Networking
• Business Intelligence (BI)

Some of these technologies are hardly “new” but, as a percentage, few organizations have attempted to utilize these tools for all sorts of reasons. Many of those that have ventured into these largely uncharted waters have met with, at best, mixed results. (I could quote a whole bunch of statistics here since I’ve been doing a great deal of research but, for now, trust me.)

What does this mean for organizations?

Enterprise 2.0 is all about extending the capabilities of core applications. A few examples will shed light on what I mean:

• ESR is essentially the googling of enterprise data, applications, reports, spreadsheets, and other documents. Isn’t it silly that we can search 18 billion web pages in 0.2 seconds but cannot find a key document?
• Mobile technologies extend the capabilities of ERP applications, particularly in manufacturing and inventory-related environments. Many vendors have introduced Mobile Supply Chain Management (MSCM) applications that allow end-users access their systems via cell phones and other portable devices. One need not be chained to a desktop to access key enterprise information.
• Cloud Computing allows end-users to access key information from wherever they are. Data “in the clouds” is simply more accessible than data stored in a single location. While there are security implications related to “de-perimeterizing” the enterprise, clouds are gaining momentum as organizations look to improve accessibility of information and reduce costs.
• Open Source (OS) alternatives to traditional offerings are gaining ground. Companies such as Compiere are making strides in the market. While I know of personally no organization that has made the switch from a proprietary app to an OS one, mark my words: it’s only a matter of time before more organizations give serious consideration to this option. Cost and an ability to “control” versions of an application are merely two benefits of OS applications.
• Business Intelligence allows organizations to do simply amazing things with their data. Recently, I have been reading about Sentiment Analysis and IBM’s new SNAzzy tool. Both allow organizations and end-users to make sense out of unstructured data, spot trends, and take steps to minimize potentially inimical impacts.

Now is an exciting–some would say chaotic–time in the technology world. I’d be lying if I wrote that I could predict the future, but I’m hardly going out on a limb by stating that the technology landscape now will look quite a bit different in five years compared to today. The ways that people use technology–and the technologies themselves–are changing as fast as I can write.

Stay tuned. What Enterprise 2.0 turns out to be will be one hell of a ride.

“We are not done,” hinting that acquisitions could be forthcoming. But even Monster’s architects see the writing on the wall. Bill Warren, the founder of an early job board that morphed into Monster, is now executive director of the Direct Employers Assn., a consortium of corporate employers. He’s partnering with the owner of the “.jobs” domain and will launch job sites under that domain later this year. Says Warren: “The days of the big, expensive job boards are over.”

Wow.  How the time flies. Didn’t monster.com and its ilk just replace newspapers a short while ago?

Other questions popped into my mind:

• What’s going to replace LinkedIn or, more broadly, social networking sites?
• Is any technology here to stay?
• Is monster.com grasping for salvation? (Yes, I just read Jim Collins’ How the Mighty Fall.)

Particularly interesting is LinkedIn’s use of push technology:

Push technology, or server push, describes a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull technology, where the request for the transmission of information is initiated by the receiver or client. (Source: Wikipedia)

As it relates to job searches, push technology allows recruiters and hiring managers to receive the profiles of job candidates without having to actively “pull” them via searches. If I’m searching for a new IT Manager, for example, LinkedIn will find and send me the profiles of qualified candidates without my having to wade through the backgrounds of hundreds of potentially underqualified applicants. This saves me time and makes the entire process less costly and cumbersome. While it cannot guarantee a good hire, I’d love to see metrics assessing that very question. I suppose that that’s a question for business intelligence gurus.

I suppose that my main point is that no organization–not even a successful one founded during the dot com boom–can rest on its laurels. New technologies can be used quickly to displace industry leaders.