Real-time business intelligence (RTBI) is a concept describing the process of delivering

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

(BI) or information about business operations as they occur. Real time means near to zero latency and

access to information Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access Healthcare, an Indian BPO se ...

whenever it is required. The speed of today's processing systems has allowed typical

data warehousing In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...

to work in real-time. The result is real-time business intelligence. Business transactions as they occur are fed to a real-time BI system that maintains the current state of the enterprise. The RTBI system not only supports the classic strategic functions of data warehousing for deriving information and knowledge from past enterprise activity, but it also provides real-time tactical support to drive enterprise actions that react immediately to events as they occur. As such, it replaces both the classic data warehouse and the

enterprise application integration Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of software and computer systems' architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications. Overview Enterprise application integration is an integration framework comp ...

(EAI) functions. Such event-driven processing is a basic tenet of real-time business intelligence. In this context, "real-time" means a range from

milliseconds A millisecond (from ''milli-'' and second; symbol: ms) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one thousandth (0.001 or 10−3 or 1/1000) of a second and to 1000 microseconds. A unit of 10 milliseconds may be called ...

to a few seconds (5s) after the business event has occurred. While traditional BI presents historical data for manual analysis, RTBI compares current business events with historical patterns to detect problems or opportunities automatically. This automated analysis capability enables corrective actions to be initiated and/or business rules to be adjusted to optimize

business process A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

es. RTBI is an approach in which up-to-a-minute data is analyzed, either directly from operational sources or feeding business transactions into a real time

data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business reporting, reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central Repos ...

and Business Intelligence system.

Latency

All real-time business intelligence systems have some latency, but the goal is to minimize the time from the business event happening to a corrective action or notification being initiated. Analyst Richard Hackathorn describes three types of latency: * Data latency; the time taken to collect and store the data * Analysis latency; the time taken to analyze the data and turn it into actionable information * Action latency; the time taken to react to the information and take action Real-time business intelligence technologies are designed to reduce all three latencies to as close to zero as possible, whereas traditional business intelligence only seeks to reduce data latency and does not address analysis latency or action latency since both are governed by manual processes. Some commentators have introduced the concept of ''right time business intelligence'' which proposes that information should be delivered just before it is required, and not necessarily in real-time.

Architectures

Event-based

Real-time Business Intelligence systems are event driven, and may use

Complex Event Processing Event processing is a method of tracking and analyzing (processing) streams of information (data) about things that happen (events), and deriving a conclusion from them. Complex event processing, or CEP, consists of a set of concepts and techniques ...

Event Stream Processing In computer science, stream processing (also known as event stream processing, data stream processing, or distributed stream processing) is a programming paradigm which views data streams, or sequences of events in time, as the central input and o ...

and

Mashup (web application hybrid) A mashup (computer industry jargon), in web development, is a web page or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. For example, a user could combine the ...

techniques to enable events to be analysed without being first transformed and stored in a database. These

in-memory database An in-memory database (IMDB, or main memory database system (MMDB) or memory resident database) is a database management system that primarily relies on main memory for computer data storage. It is contrasted with database management systems that e ...

techniques have the advantage that high rates of events can be monitored, and since data does not have to be written into databases data latency can be reduced to milliseconds.

Data warehouse

An alternative approach to event driven architectures is to increase the refresh cycle of an existing data warehouse to update the data more frequently. These real-time data warehouse systems can achieve near real-time update of data, where the data latency typically is in the range from minutes to hours. The analysis of the data is still usually manual, so the total latency is significantly different from event driven architectural approaches.

Server-less technology

The latest alternative innovation to "real-time" event driven and/or "real-time" data warehouse architectures is MSSO Technology (Multiple Source Simple Output) which removes the need for the data warehouse and intermediary servers altogether since it is able to access live data directly from the source (even from multiple, disparate sources). Because live data is accessed directly by server-less means, it provides the potential for zero-latency, real-time data in the truest sense.

Process-aware

This is sometimes considered a subset of

operational intelligence Operational intelligence (OI) is a category of real-time dynamic, business analytics that delivers visibility and insight into data, streaming events and business operations. OI solutions run queries against streaming data feeds and event data t ...

and is also identified with

Business Activity Monitoring Business activity monitoring (BAM) is software that aids the monitoring of business activities which are implemented in computer systems. The term was originally coined by analysts at Gartner, Inc. and refers to the aggregation, analysis, and pr ...

. It allows entire processes (transactions, steps) to be monitored, metrics (latency, completion/failed ratios, etc.) to be viewed, compared with warehoused historic data, and trended in real-time. Advanced implementations allow threshold detection, alerting and providing feedback to the process execution systems themselves, thereby 'closing the loop'.

Technologies that support real-time analytics

Technologies that can be supported to enable real-time business intelligence are

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

data federation In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

, enterprise information integration, enterprise application integration and

service oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...

Complex event processing Event processing is a method of tracking and analyzing (processing) streams of information (data) about things that happen (events), and deriving a conclusion from them. Complex event processing, or CEP, consists of a set of concepts and techniques ...

tools can be used to analyze data streams in real time and either trigger automated actions or alert workers to patterns and trends. ;Data warehouse appliance: Data warehouse appliance is a combination of hardware and software product which was designed exclusively for analytical processing. In data warehouse implementation, tasks that involve tuning, adding or editing structure around the data,

data migration Data migration is the process of selecting, preparing, extracting, and transforming data and permanently transferring it from one computer storage system to another. Additionally, the validation of migrated data for completeness and the decommis ...

from other databases, reconciliation of data are done by DBA. Another task for DBA was to make the database to perform well for large sets of users. Whereas with data warehouse appliances, it is the vendor responsibility of the physical design and tuning the software as per hardware requirements. Data warehouse appliance package comes with its own operating system, storage, DBMS, software, and required hardware. If required data warehouse appliances can be easily integrated with other tools. ;Mobile technology: There are very limited vendors for providing

Mobile business intelligence Mobile Business Intelligence (Mobile BI or Mobile Intelligence) is defined as “Mobile BI is a system comprising both technical and organizational elements that present historical and/or real-time information to its users for analysis on mobile dev ...

; MBI is integrated with existing BI architecture. MBI is a package that uses existing BI applications so people can use on their mobile phone and make informed decision in real time.

Application areas

Fraud detection In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensa ...

Systems monitoring A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and expresse ...

* Application performance monitoring *

Customer Relationship Management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a ra ...

* Demand sensing * Dynamic pricing and

yield management Yield management is a variable pricing strategy, based on understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue or profits from a fixed, time-limited resource (such as airline seats or hotel room reservation ...

Data validation In computer science, data validation is the process of ensuring data has undergone data cleansing to ensure they have data quality, that is, that they are both correct and useful. It uses routines, often called "validation rules", "validation cons ...

Operational intelligence Operational intelligence (OI) is a category of real-time dynamic, business analytics that delivers visibility and insight into data, streaming events and business operations. OI solutions run queries against streaming data feeds and event data t ...

and risk management * Payments & cash monitoring * Data security monitoring *

Supply chain optimization Supply-chain optimization (SCO) aims to ensure the optimal operation of a manufacturing and distribution of supply chain. This includes the optimal placement of inventory within the supply chain, minimizing operating costs including manufacturin ...

RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...

sensor network Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental c ...

data analysis * Workstreaming * Call center optimization * Enterprise Mashups and Mashup Dashboards * Transportation

References

External links

Complex Event Processing & Real Time Intelligence
- Introduction to Real-Time Intelligence {{DEFAULTSORT:Real-Time Business Intelligence Business intelligence Real-time computing