A brief history of business intelligence
Eighties and nineties
The arrival of the electronic spreadsheet in the early 80s (Dan Bricklin's Visicalc) was an inflection point in user computing and may have been the biggest driver of sales of PCs over many years. Analysts and other data users were suddenly empowered to create highly formatted reports and graphs using data, usually re-keyed from slabs of green bar printouts, produced by mainframe and mid-range computers, now often called legacy systems. Not surprisingly the re-keying was arduous and error-prone, but the practice continued well into the 90s and facilitated data analysis and creation of reports suitable for business users and executives. It also by-passed, to some extent and for better or worse, the IT department log-jam of report building.
The early 90s saw the release of 3-D spreadsheet software Lotus 1-2-3 R3, introducing the concept of dimensionality into spreadsheet models. Linked spreadsheets (so slow to update) accommodated additional (i.e. more than 3) dimensions after a fashion. But this stretched spreadsheets, never intended as a central data repository, to their limits. The dual role played by spreadsheets, of database layer and presentation/report layer was not an effective combination. Inserting a new dimension member (e.g. inserting a budget version into a model built for actual historical data) or pivoting data (switching rows with columns or even sheets) was challenging at best.
On a parallel track, a niche group of software vendors were selling software referred to as executive information systems ("EIS"). Here the objective was to provide executives with a graphical presentation such as a map of sales territories that could display on each territory, key metrics, with an option to click-drill to more detailed data for one territory. These EIS systems were very expensive and consulting-intensive to maintain and customize.
However, on a third track, in the late 80s and through the 90s, business intelligence ("BI") software, then referred to by the more descriptive term decision support systems ("DSS"), started to appear. Cognos PowerPlay and Sinper Corp's TM1 (now both owned by IBM) were early entrants in this arena, which broadened rapidly in the late 90s. DSS software was commonly built upon multi-dimensional database technology which acquired the mnemonic OLAP (for on-line analytical processing). The term OLAP helped define this genre of software in the marketplace, though it still was regarded with suspicion by IT managers who were unconvinced of the need for another processing system on top of the traditional on-line transaction processing systems.
Another inflection point occurred in 1998 when Microsoft released SQL Server 7 which included OLAP Services, a separate OLAP database management server. This was priced very cheaply with the stated objective of delivering OLAP to the masses. SQL Server 2000, released two years later, and the accompanying Analysis Services, was the first serious version of Microsoft's OLAP platform and rapidly gained market share being effectively free to an organization already using SQL Server. This ultimately led to lowering of prices of OLAP software, many implementations of which had been in 6 or 7 figures (US$) for enterprise systems. It led to the demise of many OLAP tool vendors and in the mid 00s to the acquisition of most of the smaller independent vendors by IBM, Oracle, and SAP.
Noughties
In 2007 Microsoft released PerformancePoint Server 2007 targeting the business performance management space. During that year a flurry of acquisitions took place:
- Oracle acquired Hyperion Solutions
- IBM acquired Cognos (a few months after Cognos acquired TM1)
- SAP acquired Outlooksoft and Business Objects
Excel-friendly OLAP
This term was coined by Charley Kyd who runs a superb site for Excel users, called, fittingly called exceluser.com. Software that falls into this category includes TM1 (now owned by IBM), PowerOLAP, PALO Server (an open-source platform that can be downloaded free at www.jedox.com), and XLCubed.
XLCubed is an Excel add-in that greatly enhances Excel's ability to perform ad-hoc analysis, planning, modeling, reporting and more. Users of Excel Pivot Tables will appreciate the greater flexibility, functionality, and control that is afforded by XLCubed. XLCubed acquired Bona Vista Systems, the developer of MicrosCharts, that provides in-cell charting capabilities such as spark-lines; some of this functionality is included in XLCubed; additional functionality is available by purchasing a MicroCharts license.
XLCubed also enables users to create what it calls "formula reports" that use functions, added to the regular Excel battery of functions, for retrieving data and meta-data from an OLAP database, based upon parameters in the worksheet cells. Some of this functionality has been available by Microsoft in earlier versions of Excel through a free, downloadable add-in and natively in Excel 2007. However XLCubed presents a much richer and more powerful interface. Formula reports provide enormous flexibility for creating multiple "reportlets" on a host report worksheet where the overall layout of the report is known ahead of time, such as summary reports or dashboards.
It is the ability of an OLAP tool to retrieve data cell-by-cell (as with XLCubed formula reports) that categorizes XLCubed as an Excel-friendly OLAP tool.