It is January 1st, 2010 [at least still here in Silicon Valley in California] - the perfect date to publish on the topic. What follows are neither predictions (because I do not have defined probability of occurance next to each point) nor trends (because I do not have statistic data to support my statements). Below are very subjective and based on observations opinions of mine. Opinions of one person by definition cannot be comprehensive and thorough, therefore they are nothing else, but speculations. Yet I am publishing them in a hope of getting your valuable feedback and hearing your thoughts.
Let me start with repeat of a general statement that everyone knows: BI is still on
CIO issue list and still
a hot project to be. So, let's wait and see. In the meantime, here are my thoughts.
Besides the magic of the "round" year and many new software releases expected, I see 2010 to be
more an evolution than a revolution. (On the other hand: that's the nature of revolution to come unexpected.) The current barrier for BI in my opinion is not in the lack of tools, IT resources, methodologies or data availability, but in the very
Is it BI or HI that Intelligence has divorced? (of business users, let me be forgiven calling this by name) to turn all of those into pervasive BI.
Not only business users will be challenged. We witness big change in SAP. Seen as slow and rigid, the company now tries to show its new innovative face. Sounds nice, but will be interesting to see how we - technical community - will cope with that pace of innovaition, which means shorter lifecycles of ideas, software and ... our expertise. How to pick what to invest our time into? How to make sure that expertise in particular area that we are building today will not be obsolete already tomorrow? Will we come to the moment when "years of experience" will be ballast? Like how much of your experience with BW 2.0 is applicable to BW 7.0 (especially with BW Accelerator)?
- I mentioned that 2010 will not be revolutionary, but it will be the year of many new releases. In just a little bit more than 1 month long expected release 7.2 of BW is going into Ramp-up. This release will enable as well many exciting features of BW Accelerator 7.2. 2010 will be a year of the first release of new OLAP tool code-named Pioneer. Then closer to the end of the year we should expect Main Release (known as 7.3) of NetWeaver platform that supposes to fix some of the missing configuration options of BW 7.2 like SEM on BW or Dual-stack installations. Those people lucky enough to get into early implementation projects will probably face some frustration, multiple customer messages to SAP, lots of OSS notes and frequent SPs; but those who survive will clearly be in demand in 2011, when all these new stuff will go into mainstream.
We (coming from BW world) used to be one-guy-fits-all specialists. Unlike most of other classic specialists broken by BI/DW/ETL/Architecture areas and tools, we used to be involved into every aspect of BW implementation and support, be this data extraction, InfoProviders modeling, Query authoring, planning applications, APD, ABAP programming (including OO ;-), automation, security, performance tuning etc. Same way we want to jump now on BusinessObjects and get
How many skills does BW consultant need? in full spectrum of BO products. I think 2010 will be the beginning of the end of this I-be-it-all culture and we will start
moving into areas of specializations or generalizations.
As we will progress into specializations,
our own real professional network (not number of connections in LinkedIn, but number of people you know, you can ask, and you can be sure to get answer - ideally proper answer) will start playing important role of supplemental knowledge. You will need support from other people as they will need support from you. Role of virtual and local BI Communities will further rise. [Using this chance I would like to invite those of you located in Silicon Valley to SAP BI Community Day. Please check
Community Events page or get in touch with me]
You might have heard about coming
explosion of Data stored in data warehouses. Well, again, I am of the opinion that it is just continuation of known trend. This trend was nicely described by Richard Winter in his article for BeyeNETWORK already 2 years ago. It is just we are getting into the area of tangible exponential grow. One BW specialist who I talked to during 2009 TechEd told me that their BW is expected to grow from 4TB to 50TB within a year. Specifically for demands like this SAP together with
HP NeoView and Teradata is developing solutions to run BW 7.2 on MPP databases.
But as data volumes and hardware possibilities grow, there is another IM discipline that is gaining importance: Data Federation approach as an alternative to a single [aka "Enterprise"] Data Warehouse. SAP is already providing the tool called Data Federator coming from SBO IM portfolio. And although some DW veterans are trying to criticize federation concept, it is an area that we need to watch closely and be ready for some radical shifts (including our skills and career) in even the nearest feature.
As I am looking at SAP activities around positioning and development of their BI portfolio and offer, I would like to rise a question about the future of BW product in SAP's long-term portfolio strategy. No doubt BW will not go away immediately, but if ECC datasources will natively work with SBO DI, BEx will get replaced with SBO BI and BW OLAP Engine will become universal BI Engine as part the future Accelerator version, then what role will be left for BW? What will be its value proposition? I have no answer for this, but it is something I, as SAP BI specialist, am going to watch.
Last, but not least. During last year of 2009 I saw great people moving from SAP BW space into completely different areas, outside IT: one into green energy, another one into digital marketing, yet another into health and wellness. Is it a new trend or just a coincidence? I hope 2010 will help to clarify each of us if we are utilizing our skills, brain, heart and time in the best way for ourselves, our families, communities, society and our planet Earth.
Happy New Year!
P.S. from 2010 Jan 21: I am very glad to share that this blog was selected for BO Community home page (
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc) and as well was published in shorter version by Australian "Inside SAP" magazine (
http://insidesap.com.au/january/, p.36).
