Gartner says ... "Business Intelligence" is top CIO technology priority in 2007
Interesting press release from Gartner summarising the results of their latest large survey of CIOs (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=501189).
Typical self fulfilling stuff from Gartner - they write it, CIOs read it and do it, and as a result it becomes real. I've always worried about the power Gartner and other analyst firms have, they never really give much detail about their research method - I know I'm only reading their press release but what does surveying more than 1400 CIOs mean? Did they get 1400 odd replies or did they just stuff 1400 envelopes and get back a much smaller sample ... they often don't tell. Anyway, no CIO ever got sacked for aligning their strategy with what Gartner tells them their strategy should be, so we all need to know about it, as this report is going to be read and regurgitated again and again (especially by the BI vendors!).
2 comments:
What's funny about this list is that emerging technologies that companies do not have yet, such as SOA and virtualization, are low on the list. But a technology that companies already have is number 1.
Most companies already have Business Intelligence, in fact most have implemented it dozens of times and have several data warehouses. So if it is a number one priority for 2007 it suggests that despite years of effort and millions of dollars of spending very few CIOs are happy with the current state of their BI.
Items 2 and 3 (ERP/CRM and legacy modernization) go together. A lot of companies are refreshing core IT systems and spending up big on new core system implementations.
I share Peter's view of the self-fulfilling nature of these kinds of reports, but your point about CIOs being unhappy with their BI deployment even after spending millions of dollars on it is interesting. I'd argue that CIOs should always be dissatisfied with the current state of BI: BI systems must be organic, always evolving to answer new questions, new business challenges. On top of that is the regular structural changes to organisations that mean every five years or so, the business model is so different that a given BI system is no longer appropriate. If the system doesn't change, adapt and get updated on a regular basis, it probably means the system isn't being used - certainly not for important, strategic business decisions. I might be biased, but I think BI (or more generally, managerial decision support) should be pretty high on any CIOs list of priorities.
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