Constellation ShortList™ Augmented Business Intelligence and Analytics

The next generation of business intelligence (BI) and analytics products are harnessing heuristics, machine learning (ML), other forms of data science and automation to improve data access and data quality, suggest data sources and analyses, uncover previously hidden insights, and serve up predictions and suggest actions. Natural language (NL) query interfaces and NL generation features are making it easier for users without knowledge of query languages to develop insights and make better decisions based on data.

These emerging ML-, automation- and NL-based features are best known as “augmented analytics” capabilities. Constellation sees augmented analytics as the next step for these products, bringing analytics to more users and closer to driving human decisions and automated actions.

With this Q3 2022 update, TIBCO Spotfire has been added to this ShortList on the strength of multiple upgrades including the addition of pretrained models for prediction, anomaly detection and forecasting, performance improvements for Python functions, and the introduction of Workflow Mods that can be used to guide business users on advanced capabilities. IBM Cognos Analytics has been removed from this ShortList for lack of progress on augmented capabilities.

Threshold Criteria

Constellation considers the following criteria for these solutions:

• Smart data-prep capabilities, including data profiling, cleansing and formatting, data-join recommendations, data enrichment and publishing, and governance capabilities
• Smart data discovery and analysis capabilities, including automated discovery, recommended ta- bles and sources, and recommended visualizations
• Intent-driven recommendations based on behav- ior patterns by user, group, role, permissions, item popularity and data source
• Native or third-party natural language generation capabilities providing supporting textual descrip- tions around analyses for context and improved understanding
• Natural language query capabilities that support data exploration and analysis through typed in (or speech-to-text translated) conversational language rather than SQL code
• Smart predictive capabilities, including simple trending and more advanced automated forecasting and predictive modeling