These days Business Intelligence is a term familiar to everyone from C.E.Os to developers and marketers… It’s a buzz word and a catch-all solution ranging from software implementation to teams of consultants.  But here are a few things you may not know about the history of B.I.

1. The man who coined the phrase “Business Intelligence” was born when people still believed in ether. That’s right, ether: the lumniferous, light transmitting substance that filled space.  Hans Peter Luhn, born in 1896, first used the term Business Intelligence in 1958, defining B.I. as “the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal.”

2. Data storage is ancient. It goes back even further than Luhn.  Sumerian cuneiform, one of the earliest forms of written language, emerged as a way  to record transactions.  Imagine trying to merge a stone tablet and an Excel sheet…

3. Back in the 90s, Business Intelligence success by way of ERP Applications was a rare albino wilder-beast. According to Alan Simon and Steven Shaffer, “…studies in the 1992-1993 time frame proclaimed the failure rate for client/server projects to be anywhere from 70 to 85%, and for a brief period of time there was such a backlash directed at client/server computing that the entire distributed systems approach to computing was branded by many as a failure,” (Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence for e-Commerce).

Okay, you may know that last point, but it’s worth repeating.  Business Intelligence has come a long way from clay tablets, and partnering with the right B.I. company doesn’t involve the 85% chance of failure.

(For Part One, check out this earlier post from August.)