This is an interesting time of year because there are many articles predicting the business intelligence (BI) trends for the New Year. Analysts from the top industry research firms, consultants, writers and other industry pundits proclaim what they think the new trends are, and what they expect will become mainstream in the year ahead.

This year, all the trend talk has got me thinking about what really matters to real businesses and real people trying to implement BI. So many trends aren’t realistic for so many businesses.

So, with that in mind, here are  three topics I’ll be writing about this year:

BI Trends: Best Value

These trends may have been around for years without many enterprises successfully implementing them, or they might be emerging trends. Either way,  they are what enterprises should do if they want to get the best business value from their existing or new BI investments.

BI Trends: Tale of 2 Worlds

We are always hearing industry pundits and vendors pitching the latest trend as something all the enlightened folks are doing, but even in the enterprises that are breaking this new ground there is another world were business and IT folks are simply doing the best they can. Let’s get realistic.

BI Trends: The Grinch

Have you gotten hype overload on the latest and greatest trends? Has your boss used the hype buzzwords to show you he is smart and said he thinks you’d be successful if you only implemented the latest hyped trend? In this series I’ll try to bring a little reality into the hype and maybe burst the bubble just a little bit.