Vendors

Business Intelligence infrastructures rely on technology to turn data into intelligence. Vendor innovations are the heart of innovation. The rate of innovation has continued to rise since the 1990's. Not only do vendors create new products and improve on existing ones but immitation means technology diffuses quite quickly between companies.

At the same time vendor products are becoming more advanced ease-of-use is also increasing. These seemingly counterveilling forces are actually complementary. This is because there is general agreement the needs of the user has not changed substantially. For instance, as Poe et al. note "While the products and technologies surrounding and complementing data warehouse implementation have become much more refined, the process of actually building a data warehouse has not significantly changed". The same can be said of most Business Intelligence system components. User needs and architecture changes much slower than technology but technology must be tailored to the needs of the user. Therefore, the focus should always be on the enduring parts of the BI system without focusing on any one vendor or technology.