BI 2
Business Intelligence (BI)
Richard Miller Devens introduced the term “Business Intelligence” in 1865 for the first time
when he was working on ‘Cyclopaedia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes’. He made use of
this term to describe the intelligence of Sir Henry Furnese, a banker, who made profit by
gathering information and by taking proper actions on it before his competitors. Furnese had the
complete knowledge and understanding of instabilities, political issues, and the market before
any of his competitors (Heinze, 2014). Till 20th century, advancement in technology is not up to
that level where it can be considered as business intelligence’s agent. In 1958, a computer
scientist of IBM named Hans Peter Luhn wrote an article which described the potential of
Business Intelligence. The title of this article was “A Business Intelligence System” describing
development of an automatic system which is capable of spreading information to the various
sections of any scientific, industrial, or government organization (Foote, 2017). Hence, BI can be
defined as a method of gathering and understanding large amounts of information very quickly in
order to make best possible decisions. Today Luhn is considered as a father of Business
Intelligence because of his contribution in not only introducing and expanding the concept but
also establishing methods through his research on which most of the analytical systems of IBM
are built (Foote, 2017).
Invention of computers provided an alternative to the organizations for storing data. In 1956,
IBM invented hard disc which brought revolution in data storage. Further development of laser
discs, floppy discs, and other storage technologies created more and more space for the data
storage (Heinze, 2014). This resulted in creation of first data management systems which
together known as Decision Support Systems (DSS). It is believed by many historians that the
modern version of BI has evolved from DSS database (Sauter, 2014). This technology was new,
clumsy, and very difficult to use. A conference held in 1988 to streamline data processes and
soon after this conference, modern phase of business intelligence initiated (Turban, et al., 2010).
In 1989, A Gartner analyst, Howard Dresner, again used the term business intelligence in order
to describe the terms used for data storage and data analysis methods such as DSS and Executive
Information System (EIS). In 1980s many vendors come into market developing a tool for
accessing and organizing data in simplified form. Some of the tools for that purpose include EIS,

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