With the exponential growth of data in today's world, organizations face an ever-increasing demand to tap into the value of enterprise data. To achieve greater business value and mission effectiveness, they're seeking innovative ways to transform their data into valuable insights.

Fortunately, modernizing business intelligence (BI) doesn't require a complete overhaul of existing systems. By investing in a modern BI platform that complements current infrastructure, businesses can expand their range of insight-driven capabilities and foster a shift in data ownership from IT to business groups.

This empowerment allows more users to answer critical questions, leverage data at any time, and derive economic benefits for their organization.

Traditional Business Intelligence Platforms

Over the past two decades, traditional BI platforms have primarily provided users with comprehensive historical reporting and user-friendly ad-hoc analysis tools.

While these platforms have delivered significant value in historical reporting, the evolving landscape demands more. Users now require direct access to data without depending on IT specialists.

Federal agencies in particular have highlighted challenges associated with traditional BI solutions in the analytics space:

1. Lack of On-Demand Analysis Capabilities: Advanced BI users expect real-time access to data, enabling self-service capabilities to analyze specific data sets based on their own understanding, at any time, and for any purpose.

2. Need for Predictive Analyses: Historical reporting offers insights into the past, but businesses strive to be data-driven and forward-thinking. Predictive analytics, providing insight into the future, enables organizations to make informed decisions and take actionable steps based on patterns and forecasting.

3. Analysis of Mixed Data Types: In the modern era of data, structured data is no longer enough. Users require the ability to analyze semi-structured, unstructured, and third-party data. Access to untapped data in various formats empowers data scientists and advanced BI users to create their own algorithms, blend data types, and make rapid and accurate decisions.

These challenges require an analytics platform and strategy that goes beyond the breadth of traditional BI platforms, as seen in Figure 1:

Modern Business Intelligence Platform

While traditional BI platforms excel in answering the question "What happened?" from a historical perspective, modern platforms go further by answering "What is happening, what will happen, and why?"

Modern BI platforms provide continuous pulse monitoring of the organization through rapid analytics and empower businesses to accomplish mission objectives through predictive analytics.

Our recent white paper explores this in depth, as well as four opportunities to leverage modern BI and how these elevate everyone to a decision-maker.

Integrating Traditional and Modern BI Platforms

Organizations understand the importance of shaping a strong foundation for enterprise-wide data transformation, but completely revamping IT architecture raises concerns.

Data Warehouses continue to play a vital role, offering thoroughly cleansed, organized, and governed data for businesses to derive insights.

However, the challenges associated with traditional BI have fueled the need to augment existing infrastructure with another architecture optimized for quick access to ever-changing data: the Hadoop Data Lake.

Data Lakes have emerged as a solution for modernizing analytics platforms. They store data in its raw and unfiltered form, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.

Unlike stand-alone data warehouses, data lakes prioritize efficiency over automated cleansing and transformation. This allows for greater flexibility in ingesting data while shifting the responsibility of data preparation and analysis to business users.

By combining a data lake that leverages Hadoop's distributed file system (HDFS), with a data warehouse, organizations define the next generation of BI. This hybrid approach provides an optimal foundation for data analysis and ensures comprehensive data-driven decision-making, as shown in Figure 2.

Conclusion

In this era of data abundance, modernizing business intelligence is essential for organizations seeking to maximize revenue and minimize costs. By adopting a modern BI platform, businesses can harness the power of data, enable self-service analytics, and embrace predictive capabilities. Integrating traditional and modern BI platforms

Take the first step towards unlocking the full potential of your data-driven future. Book a free data strategy session with our expert team at Joon Solutions. Together, we'll explore your current business intelligence infrastructure, identify opportunities for improvement, and chart a course towards a modern, insight-driven approach. Don't let valuable insights slip through the cracks. Schedule your session today and pave the way for data-driven success.