I was in New York a few weeks ago and took the family to the Empire State Building. It's opening in 1931 coincided with the great depression. In fact, so much of its space remained unoccupied that it became known, for a while, as the Empty State Building. Today, no one can argue with its fame or its success. Even if it is now only the 15th tallest building in the world, it stands as an encouraging reminder that many successful projects span economic cycles.
It would be foolish to argue that, a BI project, started today, will still be in place in eight decades. Indeed, many will be replaced in as many years. However, many BI competency centres or departments have been initiated in similar circumstances. Many evolved during the last economic downturn to help businesses identify less profitable parts of the business or simply those areas that could withstand cutbacks without reducing the businesses ability to react when the economic cycle reversed. Accurate insights helps business navigate through a recessionary market and then, once through, help them identify the products, markets and geographies that show signs of growth first.
This goes some way into explaining why last month's Gartner report, 'Market Share:Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management' found that BI continues to outgrow other enterprise software. Year on year, 2008 to 2009, BI grew at a little over 4% to $9.3billion. I am not convinced that anything can be called 'recession proof' but three decades of growth in a market now dominated by SAP (BO) IBM (Cognos) Oracle, Microsoft and the global SAS campus doesn't appear to be over yet. My own view is that the most significant reason for consistent growth in the BI market is rooted in something a colleague of mine reminds me of from time to time. BI, he asserts, is a process not a project. BI as a market continues to grow precisely because its organisational adoption continues to grow. Successful BI implementations satisfy one set of requirements but new ones emerge.
One final parallel between the famous New York landmark and BI projects. Apparently the famous art deco spire of the Empire State was intended to be a mooring mast for dirigibles but this proved wildly impractical once the building was completed. The broadcast tower that replaced the dirigible mooring is a spectacular example of adapting a project as the business around it changed and more about the environment became known rather than theoretical.
