Last word: Operational BI is the trend for 2008 for the simple and crucial reason that it brings relevant information to employees as it is needed, allowing them to respond to problems or opportunities.

3. Open source and SaaS tools will become more attractive.

Last year's wave of BI vendor consolidations has left room for smaller vendors to innovate. Customers looking for less expensive, easier to manage BI solutions may turn to open-source BI and software-as-a-service tools. "Companies are focused on BI's total cost of ownership, and they want to know how they can acquire BI capabilities without the high prices," says Aberdeen Group's David Hatch.

He and other analysts think that more companies will turn to open-source BI, and in turn, vendors will be likely to respond by increasing the number of offerings. (Currently JasperSoft and Pentaho are the main open-source BI vendors.) In addition, BI offered via software as a service can help IT respond quickly to business needs and requires less IT manpower than in-house BI, though costs may add up over time.

Last word: Look for pockets of business needs that may be served by newer, more targeted BI tools. Keep in mind that while many experts think open-source BI will become a greater force, some consider it not adequately tested as a complete business solution. With software-as-a-service tools, carefully evaluate and monitor the costs that may accumulate long-term.

4. Structured and unstructured data will be needed for BI.

Face it: Your company doesn't have to deal with just more data, but more data in many more places. Consider these types of information: Comment fields, customer comments left on voice mail, competitors' prices listed on the Internet, blogs that mention your product, wikis that contain instructions, and customer complaint e-mails are all potentially valuable sources. This data can help your company price, operate, stock, sell and serve customers more effectively. A car company that conducts automated searches to scan blogs for discussion of problems can use the information to spot patterns that may point to manufacturing flaws.

White says the idea of folding such information into BI may pose a problem for those whose idea of business intelligence is the "gold standard" of data, similar to those people who see Wikipedia as inferior to traditional encyclopedias. White recommends viewing these new sources as a valuable way to better inform business decisions. Companies will still need to make choices about how they use different kinds of information, of course.