Chapter 1-Introduction

by the end of 2009, the amount of digital information was estimated to have grown to almost 800,000 petabytes (or 800,000,000,000 gigabytes), with an expectation that by the end of 2010 that amount would total approximately 1.2 million petabytes! At this rate, the amount of digital data could grow to 35 zettabytes (1 zettabyte= 1 trillion gigabytes) by 2020
(Gantz, John and Reinsel, David, 2010)

Identify who your companys best customers were, predict the amount of money they would be willing to spend over the next three months, and engage your best sales people to contact those customers; Predict energy consumption over the next two weeks based on average demand over similar time periods modulated by the different weather patterns so as to best negotiate energy generation, acquisition, and delivery contracts; Automatically assess global commodity prices and dynamically balance high net worth client investment portfolios to reduce risk while maintaining a high rate of return;

Analyzing data suggest actions for specific individual roles that can lead to business advantage

Benefit of BI: Financial value associated with increased profitability Productivity value associated with increased throughput with decreased workloads, diminished time for executing end-to-end processes Trust value, such as greater customer, employee, or supplier satisfaction Risk value associated with improved visibility into credit exposure,

The processes, technologies, and tools needed to turn data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into plans that drive profitable business action. Business intelligence encompasses data warehousing, business analytic tools, and content/knowledge management.