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BI adoption trends are lagging marketing hype according to research conducted by Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson. Evelson's latest research finds the "three Bs" (business process management, business intelligence and business rules engines) are too often pursued in isolation. "When Cognos or Microsoft or anyone else talks about pervasive BI, they typically mean putting it on every desktop or embedding it in certain apps," says the analyst. "BI will become pervasive when, no matter what you do or what kind of process step you run, you're going to be forced to use BI to make decisions."

BI does not mesh well with modern workplace tools for content, portals, collaboration or productivity. "Say I'm about to make a sales call, and there I am with four applications open for search, contacts, reports and a dashboard," says Evelson. "People are literally writing things down on a piece of paper because they can't carry content from one app to another. We've got a long way to go."

Sounds to us like fodder for a chat on what kind of productivity integrates well (and why) going forward at the Web, client, server or back end.

Jim Ericson is editorial director of  Information Management, a SourceMedia publication. You can reach him at Jim.Ericson@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jimericson.