Challenging market conditions, competitive pressures and new technologies are leading many companies to re-evaluate the way they purchase, deploy, manage and use business applications. Software buyers want applications that will leverage their existing investments. Customers demand solutions that provide quantifiable performance improvement. These forces are driving the software industry to deliver breakthrough technology, with many of these breakthroughs at the foundation layer. Service-oriented architectures (SOAs), specifically, are at the cusp of change.
Business intelligence (BI) is one software market where these changes are most rapidly adopted. The next generation of BI applications will meet the demands of a broad and diverse user group around the globe through a single architecture that leverages existing infrastructures. Further, it will bridge the gaps between relational and multidimensional sources and will use standard protocols to connect platforms, servers, information and people.
