Information Architecture: View of BI

The accompanying diagram is one of hundreds of views that can add value as part of an Information Architecture. This diagram shows the current landscape of enablers that support Business Intelligence (BI) in an organisation. It shows the various enablers used for BI, according to the layers of a framework similar to one that I introduced in previous blogs. The top layer is about presentation of BI to the users and the bottom layer is about infrastructure, i.e. the hardware on which the reporting is run. This view illustrates the variety of enablers used in this organisation – a picture that is obviously not ideal as it clearly shows the competing BI tools, e.g. Oracle, SAS, MSRS. However, this view allows the organisation to focus on simplifying its BI landscape if it wishes to reduce its IT costs in this area.