Beginning in the early to mid-40s, many adults may start to have problems seeing clearly at close distances, especially when reading and working on the computer. This normal change in the eye's focusing ability, called presbyopia, will continue to progress over time. Something similar happens with our minds. We visualised all objects based on our learning when we were 40 or below. I know this out of my experience. For years after I turned 40 and the world turned mobile, I kept seeing, conceiving and designing anything which is about information and sharing for a desktop. It could be a simple presentation, but if I visualise the other guy seeing my presentation on a desktop or a large screen, I will have ten bullet points on a slide. If I see him looking at this on a mobile, I will have 4. Just an example, so do not get into a debate in your head about how effectively the presentation software is responsive in this current age.

Business Intelligence has presbyopia. It starts with desktop and spreadsheets. Explaining the presbyopia with spreadsheets is simple. If you make a spreadsheet or dash board in a spreadsheet, you expect it to be analysed further in a similar environment of a desktop. There is no way you can make a mobile ready spreadsheet. Say you have ten graphs and five tabs, the creator of the sheet does not make these thinking, will I be able to edit it on my cell phone. Responsive and adaptive design eases the challenge of BI presbyopia a little

bit…or does it? I personally, with more than 25 years of working with spreadsheets tucked under my belt which has increased in size with more powerful features and online experience by major search giants, I still use spreadsheets only when I have a proper 14 inch and above screen with me. What do you do? Have you ever created or done a drill down on an excel dashboard on a cell phone?

Straightforward and simple, as you search for your personal health issue in a search engine in a browser, you check your customer data or machines past performance before you get your tools ready!

The spreadsheet is not the way ahead for analytics; it is the presbyopia which we have accepted as a way of life.

The second point will be debated. It has a presbyopia of the newly inducted in the Business Intelligence and analytics community. It is called the APP or the Mobile App culture. The challenge in mobile applications is that it is just not one application, Andriod, iOS, Windows and the infinite versions of their OS. Also, this is exactly like the client server architecture which the browser was expected to do away. And here we are as people, have accepted this culture of infinite updates on the client, and worst the interface is dramatically different from what you get in your browser when using your laptop.

A true form of democratisation which is “Analytics Har Hath Mein, Jawab Sabke Pas Mein!”

This is one of ourlines in an advertisement campaign. The reason for having the campaign in Hindi was not that it would appear different, which I am happy it does, the intention was to remove the concept that Business Intelligence is meant for a few senior managers and IT professionals. This puts the field sale person or a warehouse operator and field mechanic also having the power of analytics with them.

Straight forward and simple, as you search for your personal health issue in a search engine in a browser, you check your customer data or machines past performance before you get your tools ready!

“Analytics har hath mein, jawab sabke pas mein!” can only happen when you design once and use any where. Negligble deployment cost and nil tarining. Designing and deployment in the browser is a key critera to making the interface ubiquitous.