From the introduction:

We live in real time, minute by minute. News is no longer delayed by days but is streamed in real time. We bank online, and check our real time balances. We book flights with real time visibility of seat availability, and we select the seat we want, on line, in real time.

All these transactions generate data. Supporting our real time world is the microprocessor. They are everywhere, in almost every electrically powered device you can buy; from domestic appliances, cell phones, and cars, to the infrastructure we rely on for modern life. The next wave of miniaturization is already creating an ‘internet of things’ where devices and appliances are connected to the world over wireless networks, by RFID, each one constantly reporting their status. This too generates data – lots of data.

And to allow us to adapt our business models to today’s real time world, software applications are now built using event driven technologies. Data moves around in real time over Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), using loosely coupled and highly interoperable services that promote standardized application integration.

And yet Business Intelligence (BI) today has not changed in concept since the invention of the relational database and the SQL query. Until now.