As I have in previous years, I had planned to catalog 2009 predictions for the BI and performance management markets to get a sense of how the general consensus might be changing. The new year is nearly a month old and, since I’ve made almost no progress, I was pleased to discover that Timo Elliott beat me to the punch. In “The Complete List of 2009 BI Predictions” and “The More Complete List of 2009 BI Predictions“, Timo catalogs nearly 150 predictions from more than 20 sources. Last year I counted 75 predictions from 12 sources so Timo was either more careful or more people are prognosticating about the BI market.
Not only are there more predictions but there appears to be more consensus. Last year I noted that only SaaS BI, open source BI, and predictive analytics got mentioned more than twice. Once again, I was beat to the punch on this analysis as Vincent McBurney created this nifty analysis with overly-colorful graph:
Based on his summary, several topics got more than 6 mentions: SaaS BI, cloud BI, reducing costs, analytics, packaged applications, and collaborative/social networks. Compared to last year, open source BI seems to no longer be top of mind.
What does this all mean? I, for one, still don’t put much faith in market predictions. Many of these predictions are self-serving or worded so vaguely as to be impossible to prove whether they come true or not. It makes for fun reading but, not unlike using on-line information to pick stocks, the reader is strongly encouraged to use their own judgement.
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