BI-Phone

There have been some recent press releases from Pentaho and Oracle announcing their support of the iPhone as a client for BI. This got me thinking about the role that mobile devices play in business intelligence, and business in general.

The reason to have a BlackBerry, Palm, Pocket PC, iPhone is to keep informed when away from your desk. Think of receiving urgent emails while in a meeting.

Apply this idea to BI, and it makes sense to be notified proactively about certain exceptions via email, or maybe view a scorecard (raw numbers, and a traffic light). It does not seem efficient to view reports, interact with dashboards (charts and gauges), or analyze data on a 3.5" screen.

I like gadgets as much as the next geek, but let's be practical.