IBM has added Cognos Insight to its line of business analytics solutions, providing a new solution for business users that increasingly seek to access, explore, analyze, visualize, and share data quickly and easily without the assistance of enterprise IT. With data discovery and visualization emerging as one of the fastest-growing segments of the business analytics market, IBM Cognos Insight aims to responsibly place more power in the hands of enterprise business users.
Both business users and IT face large but different challenges with regards to big data analytics at the enterprise level, according to IBM. "Business users are frustrated in their inability to get out the information that they need to make decisions," Dan Potter, product marketing executive for IBM Business Analytics, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "IT is challenged because the business user demands are much higher, the expectations are higher, and the kind of information that the business user wants to be able to analyze is more." Consequently, the big data analytics market has witnessed a growing demand for business user solutions that can be deployed and used independent of IT.
Today's business user wants fast access to information as well as sophisticated but easy-to-use data analytics tools to help them make informed business decisions. IBM Cognos Insight is intended to satisfy these demands, providing greater productivity for business users while simultaneously reducing the burden on enterprise IT. "A business user can take Cognos Insight and they can install and run it themselves on their desktop with no other infrastructure required. And we've provided the power of Cognos in-memory analytics technology but really simplified it so a business user can very simply drag and drop like a spreadsheet onto Cognos Insight and immediately start slicing and dicing and analyzing data," Potter explains.
Although IBM Cognos Insight aims to help business users increase productivity, developers emphasize that it must be done in a responsible manner that does not interfere with goals and objectives of IT. Data discovery and visualization has emerged as one of the fastest growing areas in business analytics, and this has changed expectations. Not only has the business user expectation changed, but the number of end users consuming business analytics content is going to double over the next few years, Potter states. With Cognos Insight, IBM says, it is supporting the so-called "rise of the business user" at a responsible pace that keeps IT departments happy.
For more information, go to www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/business-insight.