Storage technology has evolved and matured to the point where it has started to approach commodity status in many data centers. Nevertheless, today's enterprises are faced with evolving needs that can strain storage technologies -- a case in point is the push for big data analytics, an initiative that brings business intelligence (BI) capabilities to large data sets.

Following Gartner’s BIIM Summit in Sydney, Conrad Bates and Cameron Wall, managing partners of C3 Business Solutions, share the top six business intelligence trends they believe will drive the industry in 2012.

Just as historical reports alone aren't sufficient for making corporate decisions— executives want business intelligence to identify current and future trends—IT staffers need to know more about BI than how to run a data warehouse or build a dashboard. That puts CIOs in a bind, according to industry experts, who have raised alarms about a data analytics skills deficit.

Advances in analytic technologies and business intelligence are allowing CIOs to go big, go fast, go deep, go cheap and go mobile with business data.

As Super Bowl XLVI approached this year, Cars.com was facing a thorny issue. For the third year in a row it was running a big-budget ad during the game. In 2010 and 2011 the high-profile ads drew huge numbers of car shoppers to its site--a definite win--but the spike also slowed performance to a crawl.

Business intelligence (BI) is frequently among the top prioroties for CIOs and finding the right software to do the job is always a challenge. Cloud-based software may be all the rage, but CIOs must still manage in-house information and make better use of it through analytics and reporting tools. The big four software companies have all made strategic investments in the BI space over recent years and the options have dimnished, but there are alternative tools popping up and snatching a lot of customers in the process. This installment of '5 open source things to watch' is all about BI that doesn't scar the annual report.

Australian CIOs may be thankful this year’s flu season was relatively sparing on their employees, but many have themselves become the source of another form of infection within their business - the ever growing call for more robust business intelligence.

The saying goes something like this: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The statement is, of course, embraced as dogma by those fearful of change and by automobile owners praying for a reasonable bill of charge while waiting at the mechanic's garage.

Most businesses today have more data than they know how to use. And getting at that data and then presenting it in a useful manner for cogent analysis are two tasks that typically haunt organizations.

For any business today, purchasing enterprise software -- ERP, CRM, BI and supply chain -- apps is probably unlike any other corporate activity.