Categoría: ENGLISH

You could call it a tool that helps the Data Analytics allowing users to access and work with corporate information to perform their own queries and reports without dependence on IT department.

It is widely known the conflict that occurs between an IT department and end users, primarily with respect to the report requirements of the end users requested to the IT department and the slow response received, which conduct to long waiting lists to satisfice such requirements. For long time end users have resolved to use some tools to at least solve their needs in a self-sufficient fashion. In this sense, the widespread use of Excel is the clearest example of how many users have substituted the slow or no response of the IT department to such requirements.

This conflict has been characterized by the term Shadow IT or Shadow Systems, to indicate that non-IT departments begin to produce their own solutions supported by end-user oriented tools that end up in some cases to build these systems in the shadows which are characterized to be out of the control and management of the IT department.

In the area of Business Intelligence also we can see this conflict, clearly intensified by the time we live, where requests for information and analysis are very changeable and requiring information now, because tomorrow could be too late to take an important business decision.

In the evolution of BI systems, always has been end-user tools that allow to create their analysis reports, however, the continuous change that we are facing has made the original DWH and DataMart cannot respond the current demand for information analysis, which is not only based on data stored in these DWH and DataMart, but also in other types of external data and / or subject to continuous change.

In that way has born the approach and trend of the SSBI. The idea, in general of many tools available in the market, is that both the IT department and end users may take benefit of such technology.

Thus, a good SSBI solution should offer easy to use features for the end user, in order to create reports and graphs analysis of corporate data sources and other ad-hoc data sources which are external data and/or with very special features.

In such scenario, the IT department focuses on maintaining a good infrastructure and service access to their DWH, DataMart, and OLAP cubes, allowing end users to develop their reports with data controlled by IT and the external data manipulated by the user. At the same time, IT can provide facilities to maintain a centralized repository with user-generated reports, and have under control security and confidentiality aspects.

No less important in this approach would be the collaboration of IT to educate end users about the content and structure of DWH, DataMart, and OLAP Cubes, so the end user is clear about the available information and the levels of details that can be analized.

Thus, a SSBI solution seems to be the happy world for IT and End Users: IT does not feel that the reports created by users are Shadow Systems, as they depend on the databases maintained by IT, while the long list of reporting requirements decrease, the end users with the SSBI tool can iterate several times to get what they need (no requirements are not understood or misunderstood by IT). Of course, IT will have to monitor closely their databases so that any query created by a user does not produce a degradation of services, and thus help create new database objects that allow optimal implementation of those more complex queries.

Finally, nothing more to add, just to say that the trend today with the adoption of SSBI approach is illustrated by the interest of companies and their wide range of products offered, for example, we have Microsoft (PowerPivot), SAP (BusinessObjects Explorer), IBM (Cognos Express), Information Builders (WebFOCUS Visual Discovery), and Targit, MicroStrategy and SAS Institute, representing the segment of pure BI system providers.