3D is hot right now. Just look around: 3D printers are sold at Home Depot. Twice as many 3D movies were released this year compared with 2013. Minecraft has sold some 54 million copies and was acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion a few months ago.
What drives this popularity? In part, the human hunger for knowledge. We get more information when we see something in three dimensions. Think about it: It’s difficult for most of us to imagine how a room looks from 2D floor plans, but build a 3D model (even a virtual one) and we can visualize ourselves walking around in it.
We understand enterprise technology better when we look at it from multiple dimensions, too. Analysts sometimes place software on a two-dimensional maturity curve; the more capabilities and utility the software has, the farther up and to the right it appears on the curve.
But a generic 2D maturity curve doesn’t serve buyers of analytics software well, says James Taylor, CEO and Principal Consultant of Decision Management Solutions. “Value is not equal to advanced or complex,” Taylor says. “One has to be careful with the idea that moving up the curve is necessarily better.”
To overcome the shortcomings of the generic maturity curve, Taylor is creating a three-dimensional tool, called the Analytic Capabilities Landscape, to help buyers of analytics software understand their needs and choose the best solutions. Taylor introduced the Analytic Capabilities Landscape in a recent webinar, Analytics Maturity Curve or Landscape? Your Questions Answered, co-sponsored by Actuate’s BIRT Analytics and available for free replay.
Taylor’s new approach looks at analytics software from three dimensions, each with multiple aspects:
- Decision-led: Analytics software can be used to make strategic, tactical or operational decisions, each with specific requirements for data and software.
- Role-centric: Users of analytics software fall into one of four roles: business decision-maker, business analyst, IT data professional, or analytic professional. Understanding those roles is key to the success of an analytics software implementation.
- Style-based: The term “style” in this case applies to three things when discussing analytics software: the way the user interacts with data (an explorer vs. a settler, borrowing terms from the classic videogame Civilization); the way the data is presented (visual vs. numeric); and the way the analysis is created and used (do-it-yourself vs. factory-made).
The goal of Taylor’s three-dimensional landscape is to help technology buyers find the best analytics software for their specific requirements. Taylor believes his tool will enable analytic software buyers to say, “I can use this approach to rapidly and effectively decide what kind of analytic capabilities I need – when, where and what.”
Taylor and his colleagues at Decision Management Solutions will soon publish a detailed paper about the Analytic Capability Landscape. It will explore the business need for analytics, detail the three dimensions of the Analytic Capability Landscape, and delve into how companies can adopt and implement analytics. Publication is expected by the end of 2014, so register and view the replay of Analytics Maturity Curve or Landscape? Your Questions Answered to reserve your free copy of the final report.
3D Glasses image by Rachel Johnson.