Mobile Business Intelligence in Big Data

Mobile Business Intelligence:

Mobile Business Intelligence (MBI) is defined as the capability that enables the mobile workforce to gain business insights through information analysis using application optimized for mobile devices. It is the ability to access BI-related data such as KPIs, business metrics, and dashboards on mobile devices. The concept of mobile BI dates back to the early 1990s when mobile phone use first began to become widespread. Early advocates of mobile BI immediately grasped the potential of mobile phones to simplify the distribution of business-critical data to mobile or remote workers. However, it wasn’t until the advent of the smartphone that mobile BI began to generate widespread attention.

Applications of Mobile Business Intelligence:

Mobile BI applications can be defined as follows:
1. Mobile Browser Rendered App: Almost any mobile device enables Web-based, thin client, HTML only BI applications. However, these apps are static and provide little data interactivity. Data is viewed just as it would be over a browser from a personal computer. Little additional effort is required to display data but mobile browsers can typically only a small subset of the interactivity of a web browser.

2. Customized App: A step up from this approach is to render each reports and dashboards in device-specific format. In other words, provide information specific to the screen size, optimize usage of screen real estate and enable device-specific navigation controls.

3. Mobile Client App: The most advanced client app provides full interactivity with the BI content viewed on the device. In addition, this approach provides periodic caching of data which can be viewed and analyzed even offline to use the mobile browser to access data. Similar to desktop computer, it creates a native application designed specifically for the mobile device.