Sorry for the delay in posting the link to the BeyeNetwork/Actuate Webinar:

BIRT: Transforming Business Intelligence to Rich Information Applications

On Thursday November 19th at 11am PT/2pm ET I will be participating in a Webinar with Actuate. The presentation will discuss the importance of this new way of applying BI through:

• an overview of traditional BI and the drivers that are shifting the way BI is applied within organizations
• trends in the industry that support these changes
• how this affects end users
• how newer applications are being used within the organization (i.e. RIA, expansion of open source, diversity in deployment and interaction)
• what this means in terms of scalability and overall end user experience
• how organizations are applying these changing technologies

Here is the link to register:

BIRT: Transforming Business Intelligence to Rich Information Applications

Here is a link to the recording of yesterday’s beyeconnect chat that took place to discuss the costs associated with free BI:

• Recorded presentation and chat

Luckily organizations can take advantage of free software offerings and get their feet wet and explore different business intelligence solutions.   However, when looking at free solutions it becomes important to remember that depending on the type of solution,   internal infrastructure and development are required to get the system up and running.   For the purpose of the presentation, I used five examples of solutions that are offering different types of free BI offerings (in alphabetical order!):

• InetSoft
• Jaspersoft
• Microstrategy
• Pentaho
• QlikView

Each offers something different and depending on what the business goals of the organization, it might make sense to try a free solution, or compare them, to help identify what works for the company.

On Monday November 9th at 12pm ET, there will be a chat hosted by BeyeConnect regarding the real cost of free BI. I will be conducting a brief presentation based on the fact that:

After the general presentation, we will have a discussion and interactive chat – I hope to see you there.

The topic of TCO is always one that generates a lot of discussion within companies.   When dealing with mid-market companies specifically, it can be even harder to evaluate overall TCO for BI.   Aside from fixed expenses such as software costs, maintenance, support, licensing, and potential hardware requirements, organizations also face a lot of unknowns. What will the real value of the solution be in terms of saving costs, people hour reduction, and overall gains to the organization? How can decision makers identify potential drawbacks based on type of solution choice?   The list of possible questions are endless, but the places to go for answers aren’t always available for smaller organizations looking at BI for the first time.

There are many mid-market companies that have taken the plunge and that have fairly mature business intelligence environments.   However, other organizations are confused in terms of where to begin.   Hopefully over the next several months, we will start to uncover how small and mid-sized companies can get the most out of BI and analytics.   Whether this means looking at initial costs or expenses overtime, or looking at actual business benefits and how to sell those benefits to colleagues within the organization.