Business users demand simpler, mobile BI tools

Business intelligence (BI) technology needs to be "easy, fun and mobile" for it to fulfil its true potential in future, according to analyst firm Gartner, which predicts the BI market will grow by 9.7 per cent to reach £6.7bn in 2011.

"It's a sign of the strategic importance of BI that investment remains strong," said Ian Bertram, managing vice-president at Gartner.

"End-user organisations largely continued their BI projects, hoping that resulting transparency and insight will enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line."

However, Gartner said that business users are increasingly demanding BI tools that are simple to use and mobile.

"With ease of use now surpassing functionality for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion, vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms – with or without IT's consent," said Bertram.

Gartner also argued that for the BI market to continue growing, the focus of products had to shift from information delivery to decision support based on the analysis of large, volatile and diverse data.