Pyramid Analytics’ strategic collaboration agreement with Microsoft in various BI initiatives exemplifies its ongoing dedication to building strong trust and credibility with customers. See how "We BI" rather than "Me BI" is a huge win for customers. (You can also view this article at http://www.pyramidanalytics.com/Pages/Blog/2015/08/we-bi-not-me-bi.aspx.)

1. Omri Kohl
@omrikohl
September 24, 2015

2. “We BI,” Not “Me BI” 2
Strategic collaboration with Microsoft ..................................................................................................................................3
Coming full circle with “We BI”................................................................................................................................................3
My next post ................................................................................................................................................................................3
Related resources .......................................................................................................................................................................4

3. “We BI,” Not “Me BI” 3
Strategic collaboration with Microsoft
The recent announcement of Pyramid Analytics’ strategic collaboration agreement with Microsoft in various BI initiatives is just
one more example of how Pyramid Analytics continues to build strong trust and credibility with customers, and how it’s daringly
executing on its vision.
Rather than being a competitor of Microsoft, we are instead aligning with a giant industry vendor in the competitive BI space, and
working to provide a better BI solution for our joint customers, based on what we know customers and the market need.
Coming full circle with “We BI”
And with this strategic alliance, we’ve come full circle, making our original company vision of a governed, sophisticated,
enterprise-ready solution combined with agile BI, a reality.
To illustrate what I mean by coming full circle, let’s flash back to when we founded Pyramid Analytics in 2009, and also look at the
evolution of the BI market. As the founders of the company, we all knew firsthand the pain points of implementing some of the IT-
centric, mega vendor solutions: the unintuitive experience, a lack of flexibility, simplicity, and agility for users, and a poor return
on investment (ROI).
Around 15 or 20 years ago, when BI and analytics were all about being IT-centric, there were lots of developers and, sure, the data
warehouses and data modeling were quite sophisticated. The front end, however, was cumbersome and unwieldy for business
users. They couldn’t do what they wanted with the data, and didn’t even readily access the data. Instead, the IT organization
would have to provide whatever reports or content they needed, on top of performing their regular IT job duties, and users were
totally dependent.
Later, when BI and analytics trends shifted toward productivity tools that were geared toward the user, it was easy for anyone to
download these tools from the Internet to their personal desktops. Suddenly, BI was all about me, me, me, and users had the
agility and flexibility they lacked before.
The issue, however, is that this more individualistic approach to BI and analytics—Me BI—leads to disjointed, inconsistent, siloed
data. It misses out on all the benefits that IT makes possible in an enterprise-ready BI solution that has broad reach across an
organization: for instance, security, governance, scalability, and the ability to collaborate and share data that you can trust—We
BI.
Without governance, all these elements go out the window, defeating the very purpose and essence of meaningful BI. When
you’ve spent a full day in the kitchen preparing a giant feast, the ingredients that go into the meal should be of quality, or the final
product will have unexpected and poor results, not to mention time and money that are lost.
It’s the middle ground between an IT-centric and user-centric approach where Pyramid Analytics has had its base of operations
from its inception: tackling ease of use, with governed, secure, scalable, enterprise architecture at the very foundation. This was—
and is—our mission and modus operandi.
Starting with our strategic alliance with mega vendors like Microsoft, we are adding value to BI solutions by offering ease of use
and scaling out, by putting complex analytics in the hands of a broad range of users, thereby maximizing return on investment.
Moving from Me BI to the single truth of We BI, we are “BI that scales.”
My next post
In my next post, I’ll talk more about trust and credibility, as validated by customer voice heard through market analysts like
Gartner, Dresner, and BARC. For instance, we were noted as being #1 in credibility in a recent report from Dresner Advisory
Services, and Gartner Magic Quadrant we are recognized as making quick gains in terms of vision and execution. Stay tuned!

4. “We BI,” Not “Me BI” 4
Related resources
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