Data Discovery is the New Black

Business Intelligence solutions have long required a team of experts and a hefty investment in IT to yield actionable results from data. However, the old way of doing analytics is quickly changing, and new technologies are emerging which are putting data in the hands of more people, enabling faster time-to-insight. Data Discovery capabilities are the prime example, and essentially provide a less structured approach to data exploration. In this way, business end-users, not just data scientists and analysts, can work with large data sets and get answers quickly. Data Discovery is helping the enterprise lose some of the bulk when it comes to running analytics.

Data Discovery is increasingly being referred to as “modern Business Intelligence” by many of the top experts in enterprise IT, even the folks at Gartner. In their most recent Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Platforms, the technology research giant explains: “The evolution and sophistication of the self-service data preparation and data discovery capabilities available in the market has shifted the focus of buyers in the BI and analytics platform market — toward easy-to-use tools that support a full range of analytic workflow capabilities and do not require significant involvement from IT to predefine data models upfront as a prerequisite to analysis.” Gartner goes on to add that the deployment of Data Discovery capabilities will begin to outweigh traditional Business Intelligence in the near term.

Data Discovery is a vital link in the facilitation of self-service Business Intelligence, providing organizations with the ease of use they desire to run swift analysis. This allows companies to free up financial resources and their data experts to focus on other important initiatives. In this way, enterprises now have the chance to empower their end-users, providing them with the tools they need to take advantage of data as it is necessary, as opposed to waiting on permissions from the IT department. The end result of Data Discovery is that data-driven companies become the main driver of their Business Intelligence frameworks, not a vendor or specific group of highly-paid experts.

Data Discovery has been the driving force behind the evolution of the modern Business Intelligence tool. Traditionally, analytics capabilities ended at reporting on historical data. Now, modern solutions are turning organizations into little crystal balls, providing them with the features that are necessary to run Predictive Analytics. In addition, modern platforms are beginning to act as a window for organizations to adopt more forward-thinking technologies, like the Data Lake. Thus, organizations are sometimes able to skip the ETL process altogether and relax their Data Integration requirements. This is where Data Discovery shines, providing agility in the uncovering of mysteries through data.

The Business Intelligence market has certainly reached a point where legacy solutions, though still being used by the vast majority of business users, are becoming too clunky to deal with exploding data volumes. Data Discovery is quickly becoming the new black in a world where business practices are much faster-paced, solving the needs of organizations that want to run analytics on the fly.