Business Intelligence: An Open Source Approach

Abstract

Business Intelligence (BI) systems permits managers and other business users to monitor their organizational information, analyze market trends, introduction of new products, retain the existing and attract new customers and make effective decisions in order to have competitive edge in a global market. Therefore, the significance of using BI tools is vital for the success of organizations. Business Intelligence (BI) systems utilize operational and historical data with analytical tools to present valuable information to business planners and decision makers for effective decision making which results in attaining competitive advantage. One of the biggest problems with traditional proprietary BI solutions is the huge investment needed before the organization achieves any value. This has become one of the main drivers for the growth and popularity of the open source BI solutions.  Another reason which attracts many business organizations to open source BI software is their flexibility as it allows an organization's developers to embed BI tools into the application being developed. That flexibility to open source BI software allows not just IT workers or developers but a variety of users, to use its analysis and reporting tools. The best open source platforms use internet applications to increase the level of interactivity in the report creation process to be used by all types ofbusiness users. In this paper, an attempt has been made to sensitize the researchers, academicians and practitioners about the BI, its framework and various open source BI tools that are available.