What's New in Business Intelligence ?
 On November 18th. 2010 USA Today contained an interesting report on current developments in BI and how BI software was becoming very user-friendly.
This is a big step forward when it is combined with the availablility of large amounts of free data from places like Google and Microsoft and the US and UK Governments
It presents some exciting new wpossibilities for imaginatuive application of BI.
For example, a Children's Care Home in Las Vegas was able to quality for a $7 million Grant from 
the US Federal Government by using IBM Cognos BI software to keep track of money spent on people in their care.
Major vendors include :-
IBM who spent $14 billion on making 24 BI acquisitions
The IBM flagship product is Cognos.


Niche vendors include :-
Kalido - suppliers of  an INformation Engine for BI Data Integration. 
Tableau Software - its Desktop is good for visualisation.
Tibco Spotfire - "Publish on iPad within minutes".


Free Data includes Bing's Bird's Eye View Images from Microsoft.