This document provides a roundup of 1Q08 (and some earlier) research and toolkits for IT leaders on the topic of business intelligence (BI) and information management.

Key Findings:

• BI and information management initiatives can contribute to improved business process agility and enable decisions that drive strategic business transformation. But organizations often struggle to build an effective business case for these investments.
• IT leaders must factor potential cost-cutting measures into their plans, to reflect business imperatives that increasingly include cost-cutting measures.
• Organizations are increasingly incorporating and using more Internet-based information from outside the firewall. This information may not always be reliable or qualified, and may, in fact, be hostile.
• New cross-functional organizational models, practices and skills are required to address the variety, volume and velocity of information in practical and innovative ways.
• Hosted e-mail has been around for at least a decade. However, we are seeing a significantly changed hosted e-mail market--one that is poised for explosive growth.
• Open-source technology and products are often asked about; while some products are seeing adoption, the markets for and capabilities of many open-source BI- and information-management-related products are still in the early stages of development and are evolving.
• SAP's acquisition of Business Objects is causing many SAP customers to re-examine their product portfolios and, in some cases, change their architecture and product deployment strategy.