Software > Business IntelligenceEssentials

For the third year in a row, business intelligence (BI) applications have been ranked the top technology priority in the 2008 Gartner Executive Programs survey of 1500 chief information officers (CIOs). According to Gartner, this is because CIOs know they must implement a BI strategy properly if they want to accomplish many other priorities, such as customer service improvement and legacy application modernisation.

SQL Server may be one of the most popular databases among corporate users, but Microsoft is a relative laggard in the business intelligence market. It ranked just fifth among BI vendors last year, according to market research firm IDC.

After migration to Linux on the desktop, New Zealand national plumbing products supplier Plumbing World also switched its business intelligence application from SAP's Business Objects to the Australian Yellowfin BI for compatibility.

Making quantitative sense of unstructured data has blossomed into a niche industry for Melbourne-based software company QSR International, which now supports multimedia content.

Pizza delivery seems simple. You call and someone takes your order and tells you, say, "20 minutes" -- which is what you tell your stomach and anyone else you may be sharing the pizza with.

Telstra's multi-billion dollar network and IT transformation project is being driven by the successful implementation of an enterprise program management application that even has the marketing department using it for campaign management, according to the company.

JasperSoft, the open-source business intelligence vendor, is claiming that it is now the world's most widely deployed BI product.

Nokia Australia has replaced the core management system used at its customer care centres across Australia with a solution built entirely on open source technology.