[baconner]

I think the big issue with "bi" is that the term is just too broadly applied to be meaningful anymore. Every piece of software with a chart in it somewhere is billed as BI these days and moreover if you ask 10 business users what they want out of their BI system you'll get descriptions of several very different tools which all happen to produce charts. I'm sorry to say I've seen countless businesses deeply disappointed in their BI tools simply because they assumed since "it's a BI tool" it will do X,Y,Z when in reality there are a bunch of different classes of tools to choose from with very different features. The few options that really cover the spectrum are extremely complex and costly to really get value from over the long term. There's a reason why the analyst industry exists - it's just too much damn work to suss out what all these tools actually do on your own.

I make BI tools for a living and I am still struggling to really do a great job classifying all these types of functionality and communicating it well enough to lead customers to the tools they really need.