Beautiful Evidence

Ok, this isn't directly related to the purpose of this blog, but I've been a fan of Edward Tufte's work for some time now, and this warrants a post.

For those of you punters out there looking for light in the visual display of data darkness, Tufte's new book, Beautiful Evidence is the answer to your problems.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tufte's work, he's a Professor at Yale University, specialising in graphic design, political economy, and statistics. He coined the term 'chartjunk', referring to meaningless, and non-informative elements of graphical displays. In my mind, however, he is most famous for his harsh criticism of Microsoft's Powerpoint presentation software, in his essay 'The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint', where he gives Powerpoint's emergent properties a good ribbing.

So, what's the relevance to BI? Well, the way that we present data to information consumers is crucial. At the extreme, we can present the same data in two different formats, which could lead to two different decisions! The way we frame our data, and present it to users should be of the utmost importance to developers. The way we present, or 'frame' our information should be an extremely important consideration for those developing DSS, BI and information systems in general, as it concerns the impact of the structure of information displayed on human information processing.

Please, someone, explain to me the benefit of a 3-dimensional doughnut-shaped pie chart?! We need to be clear, to the point, and avoid confusion. The decision making process in complex enough.

The more we can learn on effectively presenting data, the better placed information consumers will be to make better decisions.

More can be found on his website.

Business Objects and IBM Strike Strategic Alliance

Good news for those companies with both platforms - two of the largest software vendors, Business Objects (BO) and IBM have just announced a global strategic alliance. So what does this mean? The word is that the new agreement will provide enhanced support for those companies with both bits of software. What the agreement really means is that it will put BO and IBM in the position to capture even greater market share.

Both companies have announced they will be upping their spending in joint development areas, and product integration. The two companies have, in fact, been working together for over a decade.

Although some segments of the software industry are doing it tough, adoption in BI continues to go up. Gartner recently listed it as a top priority for this year. Forrester Research predicts that the BI software and systems segment will top US$7.3 billion by 2008. Underlying a lot of this growth are changes in the way BI software is being packaged and delivered. The monopoly a handful of BI vendors once held by selling premium, high priced tools to a small number businesses might be drawing to an end. BI is getting more affordable, and the market more competitive.

Read more here, and here.

The next 12 months will be interesting. Open source BI is starting to gain some momentum, and the major players are getting bigger. Where do you see BI in the next 12 months? 5 years? Will Oracle own everything?

(Not so incidental, Oracle has just purchased Stellent and SPL, in the most expensive buy-out since they took Siebel for around US$6 bill. earlier this year)