The battle for balance: Data Discovery vs Enterprise IT

Recently, Gartner indicated that the inevitable collision of Data Discovery and traditional Business Intelligence (BI) approaches is set to form the major battle in the BI and analytics space over the coming years. This battle pits the up-and-comers against the mega-vendors in a winner-takes-all contest for the end-users’ mindshare.

Whilst Gartner’s compelling prediction implies a tantalizing prospect, those embarking onto this new battlefield need to learn from past mistakes to avoid user alienation.

The rise of Data Discovery

Firstly, lets address the rise of Data Discovery. This came about as a reaction to the woeful usability and highly technical nature of the mega-vendor products. As the mega-vendors grew their enterprise accounts, they re-architected their desktop-centric products to meet the needs of Enterprise IT. This process saw the simultaneously abandonment of the elements that drove users to embrace and adopt their products in the first place. The needs of the user were forgotten and discarded! The subsequent emergence of Data Discovery filled the void that had been created.

Now, the challenge for Data Discovery vendors is to avoid making the same mistakes – layering on Enterprise IT features to the detriment of their existing user base.

A balancing act

This need for a balanced approach is at the forefront of Yellowfin’s product strategy.

On the one hand, you need certain levels of security and data governance to scale Data Discovery and self-service analysis throughout the enterprise. But, those requirements must be weighed against the need to make software that’s quick and simple for end-users to leverage – without IT becoming a blocker.

In our latest release, we’ve risen to this challenge of balance. Not only have we made it infinitely easier for our users to conduct amazing analysis on their data, we’ve also streamlined the entire administration process. Now, you can access all your administration features, and even access critical success and management metrics, within a click. User management, default report themes, data security, usage statistics, scheduling, licensing and more – it’s all easily accessible and manageable.

As a result of our changes, we hope to significantly reduce the cost of administering a Yellowfin deployment. Research from IDC indicates that staffing costs make up 60 – 86% of BI TCO, with the software itself only representing around seven percent of total costs. Therefore, minimizing the time and IT resources necessary for ongoing BI maintenance and administration is vitally important.

Additionally, we’ve worked hard to produce an administration function that’s pleasurable to use. BI management and administration is a perpetual task – so why should it be tiresome and thankless?

We believe that BI and analytics should be easy. Yellowfin 7 is doing just that – making it easy for IT and end-users. We’re providing a fine balance between the needs of Enterprise IT and the self-serve Data Discovery user.

So why not register for our series of launch Webinars and find out just how awesome Yellowfin 7 really is for yourself? You’ll be amazed by what you can do with your data! REGISTER NOW >