Last month, I blogged about Predixion's predictive analytics product, Insight.  Despite being very impressed with its extensive and powerful function as well as its price point, I mentioned my concerns about unleashing such power in an uncontrolled BI environment where users share dirty data like junkies share needles.  And I pointed to two white papers I wrote in 2008 and 2009 sponsored by Lyzasoft, where I described their collaborative analytic environment as the type of control and management that would be needed.  I'd love to think that the announcement this week that Predixion and Lyzasoft are partnering in delivering some of Predixion's analytic function through Lyza Commons is a result of that, but I suspect otherwise...

In any case, the link-up is a step in exactly the right direction.  BI departments' reaction to spreadsheets over the years has ranged from trying to rein them in to ignoring them.  Neither approach works.  Users love and, indeed, need to have control of their data when they are experimenting and sandboxing.  PC-based data, particularly spreadsheets, gave them that control--and they are unlikely to relinquish it any time soon.  Data in the Cloud is just another phase of distributed data.  The old IT approach of ignoring it or damning it is not going to work here either.

It's wonderful to see two small BI software companies showing how to technologically address this rapidly growing data management/governance issue.