Microsoft, Fortude forum dissects Business Intelligence

By Shannon Jayawardena

Business Intelligence (BI) is all about giving the right information to the right people at the right time, according to the speakers at a forum on driving profitability through BI, organised by Microsoft and Fortude yesterday. 

Fortude Technology Senior Vice President Niranjan Vaidyakularatne said: “We’ve seen the growth and hunger for information and the requirements were so strong; so we saw the need for a strong business intelligence system.”

He noted that the common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics. 

“Another important aspect of IT is the implementation of it. There is a formal process that has to be followed. Initiate, design and develop, deliver and support are the key steps that should be implemented so that the results are apparent to the users as soon as possible,” added Vaidyakularatne.

BI supports the handling of large amounts of structured and unstructured data to help identify, develop and create new strategic business opportunities. Hence it is aimed at creating an easy interpretation of such data within the organisation or business. 

Fortude Data Analytics Senior Architect Gogula Aryalingam said: “BI is more of a journey and is something that evolves. Any organisation has to have a direction and in order to go in that particular direction you have to make decisions with insights. Getting a picture of your business at a glance could be difficult and this is where BI comes into play.” It can be used by enterprises to support a wide range of business decisions ranging from operational to strategic. Its basic operating decisions include product positioning or pricing. Strategic business decisions involve priorities, goals and directions at the broadest level, the forum was told. 

Aryalingam stated: “When other departments see more data, they too will want it. So that is the next step; you have to grow more data while strategising. There are two important aspects when it comes to BI and they are to grow and to strategise. You also need to look at new technology to grow more efficiently.”  He stressed the fact that all of the data could not be accommodated by one data tool and that was where Cloud comes into place. Cloud has many tools that can store all the data from one specific centre. Likewise Microsoft Azure comes in handy as it is an open, flexible and enterprise graded cloud computing platform that constantly updates the latest BI technologies.  Microsoft Could Solution Architect Wellington Perera noted: “Azure is a massive infrastructure with 50 regions. Our approach to Cloud is quite different. We want our customers to have access to Could at the nearest area.” He also said that the Microsoft data platform was focused on building and providing a peripheral tool to give an experienced data system to all its customers. 

Pix by Lasantha Kumara