Welcome to Merv Adrian's Expert Channel on Next Generation Analytic Business Applications for the BeyeNETWORK. Today's "analytic applications" are misnamed. They are actually analytics applications: programs that perform analysis and deliver results to people for making business decisions. In this channel, I'll look at newly emerging business applications that have incorporated business intelligence (BI) to make and execute processing decisions within confidence levels set by policymakers. I'll also discuss data management innovations like analytic databases (ADBMSs) and related technologies.

Three kinds of large software companies are converging on new analytic applications. Packaged business apps players like SAP and Oracle have purchased leading BI firms in order to add analytics to their business applications. BI tool vendors like SAS, who sell "horizontal" BI tools to companies in many industries, have added business process applications within specific industries to their portfolios. Finally, "software platform" vendors such as IBM and Teradata, who provide additional software components on which BI solutions are built, such as databases, ETL tools and portals, are adding BI tools, process models, industry models and services into the mix to deliver packaged offerings of their own.

In this channel, I will track the emergence of these new solutions, document case studies of their implementation and success, highlight emerging trends and best practices, and describe the industries and business processes that are among the early targets for these vendors.

I welcome comments, pointers to early successes and failures, questions and challenges. Please contact me at merv@itmarketstrategy.com to share your thoughts.