Overheard – The IT department decides what data you get to see?

“We had the data, but we did not have the information.” Forrester analyst Boris Evelson, quoting a bank CIO

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is predictive analytics. It’s the crystal ball part of business intelligence.

Pam Baker has a two-part overview on the issues facing Business Intelligence. Now that we’re in this economic mess, everyone is looking around saying “With all this data we’re collecting, why didn’t we see this coming?”

Ummm…maybe it’s because 20% of the CIOs and IT managers that Forrester polled last August said they are running six or more BI tools running on disparate systems?  Yikes!

And even worse — 75% of them said most of their reports and dashboards are created by their IT departments?  DOUBLE and TRIPLE yikes!  (See one of my favorite Paul Graham quotes.)

I’m thinking this economic downturn might be a good time to be a startup BI company — a vendor who can help business analysts connect the dots, see relationships more clearly and identify areas for growth. Definitely a vendor who makes the application simple enough that the end user can create his own reports or dashboards.  One who can bring the mythical self-service BI to life.

Maybe even a vendor who offers services on-demand, like Birst or Cloud9 Analytics. If I were a VC, it’d be something I’d be watching.