Tanubhrt.This.Side

Data is valuable and we have been storing data since a very long time. Before computers arrived, data was stored manually in registers or any other files and kept in the file cabinets. But with the arrival of computers, data started getting stored in disks, floppies etc. But storing data this way was quite risky. Chances were high that these memory devices get corrupt or maybe get lost. So, the point is, if something is too valuable, you are not going to take any risk and you want to store it safe.

It was in the year 1969, that Edgar Codd invented database for storing data. But storing data in databases was not easy, it required expertise and so in 1970s came business applications like SAP which was founded in 1972 and JDEdwards founded in 1977. But, then okay fine, okay you need business application but why? Simple, you need business application to collect data in a simple way.

Now, database is about collecting data and business applications are about collecting data in a simple way. So, business application + database is about ease of data entry. So, now you have collected data, right?? Now what?

Collecting data is not enough. The simple reason why we collected data was because we wanted to access it. But data was coming from multiple locations and the problem with the traditional databases was that, they provided results in one dimensional form. So, that means you entered some query and the results were in the form of table. Often it so happened that lot of results were fetched by a single query and in those times, it was not easy to understand these results. So, what happened next?

Well, it was in the early 1980sthat Ralph Kinball and Bil Inmon came up with the idea of data warehouses. So, the data coming from various locations was getting stored in data warehouses. So, now you had data and it could be stored and managed. And this was the beginning of Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence 1.0 where BI tools could be analyze and report on data. It was in the year 1989 that the term BI was born and it was by Howard Dresner.

Now, with time came more data and with the coming of WWW brought along with it lots of data and things started moving faster. With this came along lots of tools, tools to access data. But the point was that with more tools accessing data, there were multiple versions of truth because at the end of the data was getting wound up in excel files and with more excel files came more issues.

Now, to solve the issue came business platform, so there was single platform of BI and all the vendors started acquiring others. So, now we have four major BI vendors –

1. ORACLE
2. SAP
3. MICROSOFT
4. IBM

And this is called Business Intelligence 2.0

This was the time when there were more PI functionality, more online and offline access and market consolidation. But, even after all of it, there was something that was going wrong. We had the tools, the platform, but something was wrong. The point was that business was not getting answers, they were not able to predict and find out and analyze their data.

And this time, the problem was with access. Yes, there were people and they wanted to access data and it was not easy to access data. You required expertise and so you needed IT people. But, BI is about usability, so that people could use the data and find out the results. But nothing like that was happening. On top of it, there are different types of data and it is difficult to use it. The point being, most of it is unstructured i.e. the data coming from sources such as blogs, wikis, emails etc.

Well, things are better now. Unlike the 90s where decisions were made by system, it is the person that makes the decision based on BI, making it lot more efficient. And with this present scenario, we are hoping to take it to a step further.

Happy Learning 🙂