The world is changing. The traditional lines of demarcation between IT and business, developers and end users, producers and consumers of info no longer work. But every time I attempted to create a matrix of BI personas in the new world, I ended up with so many dimensions (business vs. IT, consumers vs producers, strategic vs tactical vs operational decisions, departmental vs. line of business vs enterprise cross functional roles, running canned reports vs. ad-hoc queries, and many others, i ended up with something quite unreadable. But there still has to be something that on the one hand shows the realities of the new BI world, yet something that fits onto a single PPT. Here's my first attempt at it (click on the small image to see the full one).

In this diagram I attempt to show

• Who's consuming vs. producing the information, how heavy or light that task is. What's interesting is that all our research shows is that most of the BI personas now are both consumers and producers of info.
• Who's using what style of BI as in reports, queries, dashboards and OLAP
• Who is using BI only as reports and dashboards embedded in enterprise apps (such as ERP, CRM, others), which usually means canned reports and prebuilt dashboards, vs BI as a standalone app
• Who's using non traditional BI apps, such as the ones allow you to explore (vs just report and analyze) and allow you to perform that analysis without limitations of an underlying data model
• Who's a producer and a consumer of advanced analytics
• And finally show the level of reliance on IT by every group

As always, all comments, suggestions and criticism are very welcome! HD

SaaS has long promised the concept of usage-based pricing, elimination of shelfware, and long-term commitment to value and total cost of ownership  (TCO). But some clients have questioned how true this is in practice. With more and more clients signing longer deals of 3-5 years in length and sometimes struggling to get an exit clause, clients question whether they can truly pay for what they use – and eliminate or redeploy unused subscriptions.  

Are you a wondering how to get the most out of your SAP investment? Are you trying to figure out SAP’s long-term strategy? Do you want to make better use of SAP’s BI platforms and services ecosystem? If so you have a lot in common with other Forrester clients.

Forrester has answered hundreds of inquiries about SAP in the last year or so. And the volume of inquiries is increasing as our clients roll out SAP solutions to the furthest reaches of their global domains and use white space partners to cover an ever broader footprint.

At the same time, you ask us questions about deployment best practices, SAP’s pricing and licensing, its middleware approach, the strategic significance of its acquisitions, and the implications of changes in the top management team.

We decided to pull together all our experts to discuss their SAP research in a series of jam sessions (teleconferences) to help you make the best informed decisions with the minimum investment of time. Each teleconference looks at a specific dilemma for which we’ve fielded client inquiries.

If you are an Application Development & Program Management professional, or a CIOs, or a Business Process & Applications professional looking for guidance then there is a session in this week long series of one hour Webex sessions just for you. Or if your dilemmas cover all the topics you can attend all the sessions or download them later and follow at your leisure.

We’ll start by looking at SAP’s Product Strategy. We will explain just how SAP's product portfolios and technology strategy for enterprises and SMB clients is evolving. You will hear Forrester analysts debate the merits of SAP's product offerings, technology architecture innovations, and its likely success in providing software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.

Over the last 25 years in the business I heard my share of BI horror stories: “we have over 20 different BI tools”, or “we have a few thousand reports in our BI application”. BI is very much a self fulfilling prophecy – “build it, and they will come”. As we popularize BI, and as technology becomes more scalable, more stable, more function rich and user-friendly  - BI spreads like wildfire and often becomes uncontrollable.

I can’t help but to quote from one of my favorite books by a British author Jerome K. Jerome “Three Men In A Boat, To Say Nothing Of A Dog”. One of the reasons I love the book, in addition to it being one of the funniest novels I ever read, is that I can almost always find a very relevant humorous quote to just about any life or business situation. At the beginning of the book three British gentlemen are planning a vacation on a river boat. As they plan for how much food and supplies they should carry, they quickly realize that there isn’t a boat big enough to fit the dimensions of the Thames river to carry all that junk.

“How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!