Digital insights are the new currency of business

Take advantage of new insights technologies as they mature.

A robust digital insights platform is far from a packaged solution; it is a mesh of old and new components with many evolving technologies and practices that will drive new business capabilities and applications over the next five years. Forrester has analyzed many of those technologies already. Beyond them, we have identified four new insights technologies that will underpin systems of insight:

• A composable insights fabric will arise from federation, caching and API technologies. By 2018, composable insights fabrics will combine those technologies through API management and data grids to deliver information and insight no matter where it is.
• Big data management infrastructure simplifies complex environments. Ultimately, vendors will develop an open source, pluggable “data operating system” to simplify the process of matching analytics and needs to the best technology options.
• Cloud-hosted, insights-driven services help small teams quickly find meaning in data. Firms will ultimately plug analytics infrastructure, platform and insights cloud services into their fabrics.
• Machine learning and cognitive computing make insights easier to find, test and implement. Today, vendors like Paxata, Wise.io and Persado use machine learning in their software to help with everything from complex data preparation to customer behavior prediction and content generation. While IBM is pioneering the application of machine learning to cognitive computing, emerging deep learning systems from Google and Microsoft also will help firms find meaningful patterns—digital insights—in even bigger and less structured data with far less human assistance.

As firms and vendors begin to master systems of insight, they will find digital insights—not just data—to be a currency of business leverage and success, hence a new asset to manage and monetize.