Top 10 Trends for Business Intelligence: Our Outlook on 2013

As the world prepares to turn over another year, people often take the opportunity to stop and think about what's next. Trend lists and recaps proliferate. We at Tableau love a top 10 list as much as the next guy and we thought we would share with you our vision for what the next year holds: the Top 10 Trends for Business Intelligence in 2013.

The good news? The trends are BIG - as in it's going to be a big year for Business Intelligence Growth.

These business intelligence trends build upon the amazing developments of 2012. Databases proliferated, startups formed, visualization and data discovery became increasingly recognized as their own categories. Web-based analytics tools are connecting to web-based data. And everything’s mobile.

At the beginning of the year it would've been unimaginable, but it's clear to us now that 2012 was merely a warmup for the deluge of new developments coming next year. Here are some of the changes we see coming:

• Unstructured data will grow from a promising test into a mainstream analytical tool
• BI will, finally, find a happy home in the cloud.
• Visual analytics will move from a polishing-prerogative to a business-imperative.
• Finally, and most importantly, we believe 2013 will usher in a new age of analytics - an age where anyone anywhere with a question can use data and BI.

Check out our slideshare - it's a quick, visually interesting way to get our read on next year. If you want to see a high-res version, just download the business intelligence trends PDF!