The Rise of Centralized BI:IT & The Business

There is a clear trend happening: The death of federated BI. Thismodel of Business Intelligence is failing because allowing individualdepartments to have their own IT systems and services is creating silosand is not helping organizations meet their goals and objectives.

Centralized BI is going to replace federated BI because when donecorrectly, it can simplify administrative tasks, improve data security,make data management and sharing a lot easier, and save the company alot of money. There is a growing sense of urgency to abandon federatedBI and deploy centralized BI.

The Rise of Centralized BI

Combined “Centralized & State of the Art BI”

To achieve the best results possible, we need to combine centralized and stateof the art BI. Centralized is about governability. It provides a solution that is justone environment, both power users and business users can log in to the sameenvironment. Line managers keep the decision rights over what services should bedelivered, but IT has the authority over how the services are delivered. This alignsthe organization.

Centralized BI is critical, but enterprises also need state of the art BI. Thismeans getting the most advanced technology possible. Nowadays we see this inautomation of dashboards, automatic insights and exceptions, plus the ability of theusers to define their own thresholds, data anomalies, etc. Businesses needsolutions that will notify them while monitoring KPIs and distribute reportsautomatically.

When comparing centralized and federated BI there are key points thatcome to light. First, centralized BI is about connection, all users workconnected. In federated BI, users work in silos. This means that the findingsor insights they get stay in their desktop, instead of sharing the knowledge. Acentralized environment strives to achieve a single version of the truth. Thisis impossible in a federated environment; there are thousands of excels thatare going across tables and being edited in different desktops, then they getshared and edited again. It is really complicated to merge this data.

When referring to the ability to maintain the system and scaling it with aspecialized BI/IT team, there is no point of comparison. In federated BI thereare too many desktops, too many different solutions, tech savvy businessesthat don’t know how to scale BI to the whole enterprise. With centralized BI,organizations can keep costs down, because they are not overlapping staff,servers, licenses, and other things that are not necessary. Centralized BIpushes high usage because it is catered. And it keeps the security on thedomain of the experts of IT in a central and smart analytic platform. In termsof deployment, centralized BI is easier and simple. It allows users to draw aweb deployment, there’s no scripting or installation on desktops, and itremains open to new users all the time because it can be scaled easily.

Centralized Federated

One version of the truth is about the organization being aligned. Theknowledge should not stay in just one department or get lost in excelsacross the organization. It should aggregate multiple areas to enable thecompany to get ahead of trends. The organization as a whole getssmarter as people work together.

One Version of The Truth

It is critical for enterprises to be able to determine who has access to whichdata and define private folders or public dashboards. To maintain security, it isimportant that IT should govern the tool in order to standardize it. When thesame tool is used across the organization, different departments can allocateresources to help another department in need. It incentives people to use thesolution and they know that they will be able to use it also in other departmentsin the organization.

Secure and Governed BI

Centralized BI ensures one versionof the truth: with accurate data in theright context. It is also easier toconnect people in a centralized BIsolution, rather than havingdisconnected desktops around theorganization. Everyone will see thesame insights, the same numbers anddata; instead of having the data stay inonly one domain.

Centralized BI works at its bestwhen using a fully web based solutionthat is easy for deployment andscalability and is going to help theorganization transfer knowledge fromdomain to domain.

Centralized Ensures Veracity

With Centralized BI there is no need to maintain hundreds of systems, instead,the organization can allocate resources for only one environment. If theenvironment is a web solution, then it has great scalability and can be easilydeployed and expanded as more departments want to use BI. As moredepartments start using the solution, IT does not have to do complicated desktopinstallations that can be time and resource consuming. With centralization you canmove resources from one department to the other to help when needed. WithFederated BI, departments are disconnected so there is no knowledge or resourcesharing.

Centralized Ensures Economy of Scale

The law in organizations regarding allocating decision rights should be thatbusiness managers should have authority over what services are delivered.

i.e. Need beautiful dashboards for the executives.i.e. Need KPI alerts for sales people.

And IT should have authority over how the services are delivered.

i.e. Whether the system should be federated or centralized.i.e. Whether to have the system on premise or on Azure.

Decision Rights: IT or Business?

Actually, centralized BI makes everyone’s lives easier. Business gets to take careof business, not wasting time on technical skills that are not in their area ofexpertise. And IT stops wasting time creating time consuming reports, andfocuses on the correct implementation of services, the development of policies tomake sure that things run smoothly as the organization adopts more and moretechnology. If they were driving a car, business would be behind the wheel and ITwould be the copilot holding the GPS. Without a GPS, the driver would getcompletely lost and would waste a lot of time. Without a driver, even the mostaccurate GPS doesn’t get you there. Both are crucial and both are doing whatthey are best at.

When it comes to security, centralized BI is the betteroption. Federated BI has low security and a lot ofpointing fingers. If there is a data leak everybodyblames IT. But then IT claims they did not know therewere desktops in certain departments using data. Thisis why centralization is so important. The system mustbe managed by IT. It allows the organization tomaintain control. IT can oversee the security of dataon the organization’s servers, computers, andnetworks. It won’t allow data leaks. Clear datapermissions are defined, and information can only beseen and shared with the people that are allowed to doso.

Responsibility and Security

To understand the actual BI market, we can take a look at the following tableof comparison. Most BI tools, like Tableau and QlikView, are federated ordecentralized. They need to be installed on individual desktops and thisrequires special knowledge, a lot of time, and a lot of resources. They are notIT governed or maintained. Users work in silos, so data is not really securedand one version of the truth cannot be guaranteed.

Secured

Governed & Maintain by IT

Fully Web Based

Work in Silos (disconnected

desktops)

One Version of the Truth

CENTRALIZED FEDERATED

The Competitive Landscape

A good BI solution must provide an easy deployment, beautiful dashboards,top of the line analytics, automatic insights and KPI alerts; all in a centrallymanaged system. Users need to connect multiple data sources, consolidate andmashup all the data. They need to scale and deploy in a secure manner, in acentrally administered environment that does not require scripting. Usersneed to be able to automatically receive KPI alerts and notifications all the timeto be aware of what is happening in the business.

Necto offers all that, enhanced in a platform that allows you to collaborate,share, and discuss your findings. It uncovers the hidden insights in your dataand presents them in beautiful dashboards with infographics that users canunderstand better. It is an on premise solution with a web deployment, that iscentrally managed and secured.

Why Necto?