SAP BusinessObjects : in the vanguard of 'business intelligence'

'Business Intelligence' (BI) consists of gathering, stocking and analysing countless data produced by a company and making it accessible to all those who need it in order to make decisions, either on a strategic or an operational level. Originally, BI was focused on the exploitation of 'structured' data (in other words, data presented in the form of databases), which came from within the company. However, BI is increasingly concerned with non-structured data (in the form of texts, emails and multimedia documents), which is external to the company (such as the Internet, and partners). It is intended for increasingly broad categories of users who want interfaces which are both ergonomic and collaborative, but also require the data to remain unchanged and that they are reliable and secure, factors without which the provided information would have no value. To rise to these challenges, SAP BusinessObjects, a leading player in this sector, has equipped itself with its own 'Innovation Center' which allows it to develop prototypes very quickly and to test them on the Internet before creating the finished product.