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Each year, HP uses its experience in business intelligence to identify the industry trends that will help shape companies’ BI plans in the coming year. Some of trends for 2008 are an evolution of those from previous years, such as the broader use of technology, the importance of data governance, and the demand to have BI applications access and analyse more types of information.

But we also uncovered new trends that need to be considered when implementing your BI strategy. These include the growing role of the Internet cloud as the conduit for BI delivery, and the rise of the data warehouse appliance as a short-term fix for system performance issues.

“2008 Top 10 BI Trends” is a three-part article series that will shed more light on these and other pressing BI issues.

As BI is deployed from the executive suite to the plant floor, the growing demand for employees with BI skills may exceed supply. Broader and deeper BI deployments require senior BI practitioners with a unique skill set who understand not only statistics and data analysis, but also business processes and their specific industry.

This growing need, alongside pressure to reduce costs, is causing companies to reconsider offshore outsourcing. Offshore firms stand at the ready, building up sophisticated BI and analytic offerings.

Your employees are all over the Internet during their off hours, and it shapes the way they expect to use and manage information. Portals and other technology, when integrated into BI, emulate the Internet experience, empowering employees to make better decisions with more information at hand.

In 2008, a combination of Web 2.0 technologies will become part of that BI delivery mechanism. Web 2.0 tools mean increasingly interactive reports, with analysis sharpened by blogs and delivered by wikis. It’s a whole new world out there, and these Web 2.0 applications accessed through the cloud will reshape how BI is experienced.

How will all of this work? Via a service-oriented architecture. SOA has moved from a blip on the radar into companies’ long-term plans, providing the foundation necessary to successfully leverage the potential of Web 2.0, the Internet cloud and operational BI.

The Excel spreadsheet has long been the source of a love-hate relationship in BI. Many users have refused to give up their familiar spreadsheets for modern BI tools, leaving important data unmanaged and unaccounted for.

Improved integration of back-end BI systems and Excel spreadsheets as the user interface will provide “managed spreadsheets.” Workers can use Excel to analyse and view data after BI tools are employed to assemble and integrate the data.

This compromise is an example of the increasing emphasis on how users want to see information. Your IT departments need to realise that BI will only be successful if it seamlessly integrates into the way your users work, leveraging the desktop tools they prefer.

Next month’s Technology at Work newsletter will count down more of the top 10 BI trends for 2008. Until then, find out how HP’s business intelligence services can provide proven expertise and technology support over the entire lifecycle of your BI solution.