I, Business.

Well, this post was always going to be the first one, logically speaking. So let us take a look at this tag phrase, "Business Intelligence". that's been doing the rounds lately.

Lately? Well, maybe that's exactly true.

Accroding to Wikipedia, the term Business Intelligence (henceforth referred to as BI) was first coined back in the late 1950's.

To put it simply, intelligence that is acquired through reliable data, information that can be used to analyze market trends, customer behavior, sales forecasts - all can be coined under BI.

Notice that I use the word "reliable" in front of data. 

With the boom in Information Technology, we are seeing vast amounts of data floating around, both online and off. It is becoming easier (less expensive) to carry increasingly more data, in increasingly smaller hardware devices. Add to that the explosion of Cloud services, and we witness, one of the most exciting (and volatile) eras of information management ever.

So why did I say "reliable"? When we have so much data lying around, it only makes sense to realize that not all of it is useful. Nor is all of it true. Data Governance and Data Quality management are the new keywords that business want to associate with. Everyone wants to make sure that the best information is obtained, that can be obtained by the best analysts, to prepare for the most optimal business strategies. 

Information Security is another hot trend. Though it's always been around, the highly publicized (and probably chastised) Wikileaks is probably the best example, of millions of sensitive documents getting leaked without a trace. 2011 may well be regarded the stepping stone to better security measures. Firms are increasingly more secretive, with utmost care being taken of, when it comes to sensitive information.

We shall look into all these trends (and more!), along with an eye on the current happenings in the Information field, about Data Warehousing and Data Mining, and Cloud Computing.