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1、 Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard White Paper ? Why Business Objects is the Best Choice Business Objects Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard Author: Timo Elliott () Contributors: Lance Walter, Darren Cunningham, Paul Clark, Sagarika Jaganathan Audience: This paper is intended for info
2、rmation technology and business-line executives who are in the process of selecting a business intelligence standard for their organization.Business Objects Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard i Contents Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard.3 Functional Capabilities .4 Infrastructure Requ
3、irements.9 Vendor Criteria.13 Conclusion.15 ii Business Objects Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard Business Objects Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard 3 Business intelligence (BI) technology allows organizations to track, understand, and manage
4、 vital business information. BI is assuming an increasingly strategic role as more organizations look for ways to tap into the valuable data stored in their operational systems. A typical BI project has an average return on investment (ROI) of over 430%1, but due to the fragmented implementation of
5、these projects, organizations are unable to fully benefit from global, cross-functional information analysis. BI standardization ensures strong ROI by reducing BI tool purchase, implementation, and training costs. These benefits are detailed in a companion white paper entitled “Reduced Costs Through
6、 Business Intelligence Standardization.”2 This white paper focuses on an important aspect of BI standardization: the criteria you should use to choose your BI standard. Each organizations needs are different, but the criteria for a BI standard can typically be grouped into three main areas of requir
7、ements: Functional capabilities. The ability of a product to address the identified BI user needs. Infrastructure requirements. The extent to which the product meets the infrastructure needs of the organization in terms of fit with existing architecture, scalability, and extensibility. Vendor criter
8、ia. The ability of the chosen vendor to support your current and future projects in terms of stability, resources, and experience. The following sections cover each of these areas in more detail, and explain why Business Objects is the best choice as your BI standard. 1 International Data Corporatio
9、n, The Financial Impact of Business Analytics. 2 Business Objects, 2004. Available at http:/ Functional Capabilities 4 Business Objects Choosing a Business Intelligence Standards In order to be chosen as a standard a BI suite of tools must cover as many of the identified BI needs as possible. These
10、needs can be categorized into several areas, all of which should be weighed in order to make your final choice. ? Functional Coverage It may not be possible to find any one suite of products that covers all your BI needs. Your goal should be to reduce the number of BI standards that you support, wit
11、h as little overlap between different types of usage as possible. An illustration of this is given below. In this example, five products with overlapping functionality can be consolidated into three separate standards: one for data warehousing; one for BI uses ranging from operational reporting thro
12、ugh to dashboards; and another for more sophisticated data mining. The BI industry is a complex one, and industry experts differ on how exactly to draw the lines between different types of BI functionality, but there is a broad consensus about the following BI software categories: ? ? Figure 1: A se
13、t of unambiguous criteria should be used to reduce BI functional overlap. Database management and data warehousing software. These products provide the functionality to store information efficiently for end-user access. Although they are sometimes viewed as separate from the rest of the BI product c
14、hoice, they are clearly a foundation of the overall BI system. Business Objects Choosing a Business Intelligence Standard 5 Data integration software. These products are also known as extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) software. They are designed to combine information from multiple sources to feed a database or data warehouse. Operational or embedded reporting software. These products provide the reports for the systems used to run the organization on a daily basis. They are often seamlessly embed
