While Yahoogle et al. shape the next revolution in computing and the techies and application designers discuss whether future web applications will replace desktop applications as we know them today (recommended reading via Helge by mail: GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS? by Jason Kottke), the reletively small community of Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Performance Management (BPM) vendors still bets on proprietary formats and other protective measures to gain exclusivity within client organisations. Unlike the more innovative web – companies mentioned above the vendors in the BI / BPM segment fail to beat Microsoft partly by not cooperating on standards. For years, while Microsoft was still learning what BI was all about, Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion et al. have not managed to spread their applications to the masses of computer workers who were hungry for valuable information and analysis. Prices and complexity were high and interoperability low. This gave Microsoft the time they needed to define the standards both in terms of formats and interfaces as well as in functionality and performance. What is missing is the sort of innovative power we can see unfolding in an industry, which was formerly known as “a bunch of Search Engines” and today are highly profitable giants who are constantly reinventing themselves. John Doe does not even understand why they are still in business. After all, he is not paying for their services.
Therfore I would be interested to see a similar discussion to the Web 2.0 or YahoogleOS movements in respect to the Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management sector .
After the evolvement of OLAP systems (which were a real technical and functional advancement) and the coining of such important acronyms as BPM or C(orporate)PM (which were Gartner / Meta Group hype – terms for cohesive performance management platforms and processes that never existed in practice (but would be great to have), we could have the “Performance Management 3.0 Discussion”.
So what are the developments that could revolutionize our way to work with BI and BPM apps? Before they will really happen, I believe there will have to be another standardization drive that enables seamless interoperability between platforms, applications and - front ends. Standards, standards, standards. For interfaces, technology, procedures, meta data and what ever else makes sense to standardize. Some of them of course have to be the same standards as for any other application (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI…) and some of them will have to be specific (i.e. IFRS 2.0?). The most revolutionizing standards are yet to be defined I guess.
Will the democratization of information finally happen? Will Knowledge Management, Document Management and Performance Management at last grow together? Will we be able to use any piece of BI / BPM software and ask any question against data from different source systems and get meaningful and consistent results? Or will corporates continue to spend loads of budget on their individual requirements only to discover that the use of the systems is restricted to certain data, processes and people and that any organizational, structural or system changes trigger further effort to keep the system working.
Will we be able to cover the full Performance Management Cycle across disparate transactional systems with best of breed software from different vendors working together with intelligent interfaces? Or will SAP or one of the big BI players outpace the others and make us all happy users of one vendor platforms and themselfes rich?
What is it that will make us arrive at the next level of PMH (Performance Management Happiness)? I’d be interested in your views!
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