As we load the bubbly into the fridge and get ready to celebrate the beginning of a new year, we thought it might be an opportune moment to reflect on the past year and compile some thoughts on emerging trends in Business Intelligence.

So, here's our view of the Top 5 BI trends.

1) BI is an "Every Unit Item"

If you're a CEO or other "CxO" level executive and you're not involved in a BI initiative of any kind, then it's time to "get with the programme"! We know your competitors are committing to BI so it's only a matter of time before they start grabbing your market share. Just give us a call and we can help you put things back on track in no time.

2) Mobility is all the rage

Adoption of mobile BI is happening at light speed in New Zealand. Top level executives at several of our customers have ditched their A4 documents and are using active BI reports on tablets at "the big table". Our customers are rolling out mobile BI apps to their customers so you'll be seeing some of them on your phone or tablet soon. The men and women in white coats at Stellar's R&D labs have done some amazing things with BI mobility tools and this is just the tip of the iceberg: we will see the death of paper reports in our lifetime.

3) Technology lock-in is dead

In "the old days" a commitment to a single vendor often meant a lifetime of lock-in misery. Now you can say goodbye to vendor lock-in forever! We work with all the major technology stacks and have delivered solutions using pretty much every combination of technology platform so we know that tools from disparate vendors work together. If your techies say "we're committed to vendor ABC's architecture so we need to buy their XYZ BI products" you can tell them that's just a load of bollocks! :-)

4) The cloud is real

You've no doubt heard all sorts of buzz about cloud computing, and we're happy to report that the cloud works! At Stellar, we run our business on "the cloud"; our accounting, time-sheeting, resource planning, payroll processing, email, document management, and helpdesk are subscription-based software services based somewhere in the ether. We also know how to implement BI on the cloud. We are very excited about the Ultra Fast Broadband initiatives in play in New Zealand and have recently hooked up to a fibre local loop "fat pipe" so we can host BI applications that run at the speed of light. Just watch this space!

5) BI has never been less expensive

Back in the day, the entry level cost for BI was expressed in 7 or 8 digits. These days we are delivering discrete, robust, fully acceptance-tested, documented and supported solutions to delighted users for ridiculously small fees. When you know what you're doing, you know what your customer really wants and you do it right the first time. We are now able to deliver BI solutions for much less than you'd think.

So that's our take on the BI scene at the end of a successful 2011, and here's
to an even better 2012!

Happy New Year from the team at Stellar!

Photo credits:
Boardroom The River Club on Flickr
iPad liewcf on Flickr
Padlock außerirdische sind gesund on Flickr
Cloud fifikins on Flickr
Coins Cosmic_Flurk on Flickr

It's been a busy year at Stellar's world headquarters. It seems we've barely got into our stride for 2011 and all of a sudden it's the 23rd of December!

So we'd like to take this opportunity to thank our customers, partners and our team members for their support and offer our hearty 'Compliments of the Season' to you.

Whatever your religious persuasion, Christmas is a great time to kick back and relax, spend a bit of quality time with your family and close friends and reflect on the year that was. The team at Stellar is going to take time out to do exactly that and we'll be re-opening the office on the 9th of January to kick off our new year with a hiss and a roar.

So regardless of your plan for the holidays remember to drive carefully, be nice, wear sunscreen and most importantly, chill out and don't think about work too much!

Merry Christmas!

Grant, Travis, John & Grant