IBM estimates that “90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.” While I can’t imagine how they came up with that number, the point is clear: We’re now creating more data than ever before.

At the same time, we’re seeing a fundamental shift in technology itself. In just a few short years, smartphones and tablets have become mainstream. We’ve seen consumer technology and software catch, and surpass traditional business technology. We’ve become an always-connected, mobile society that requires instant answers.

At the intersection of these technology shifts and data output lies some fascinating changes in the world of BI. Like what? I’ve compiled what I believe to be some of the biggest BI trends of the near future, and listed them below:

1. Mobile BI will explode

Mobile BI has slowly picked up steam over the past few years, but now we’re on the verge of a mobile BI explosion. Why?

It’s driven largely by two factors: First, adoption rates are rising. According to a recent study, over 50% of U.S. adults now own a smartphone. As more business leaders and executives adopt smartphones (and they are), mobile BI will suddenly become a top priority.

Secondly, ever-improving web technologies dramatically lowers the cost of mobile BI. These days, a company doesn’t need to go through the time and expense of building native mobile applications, as the web offers more than enough capabilities for most companies. A single mobile web BI application works across all platforms and automatically adapts to the device on which it’s viewed. This shatters the “high-cost” barrier associated with native mobile apps, and opens the door for a mobile BI explosion.

2. Self-Service BI will take off (really)

Just like mobile BI, self-service BI has been building steam over the past few years. Tired of depending on IT for BI and reporting, end users are bypassing IT altogether and opting for third-party cloud services.

If IT hopes to control this growing Shadow IT issue, they must deliver self-service BI tools that let end users create their own reports and BI apps. In this way, IT can give end users what they want, yet maintain control over the company data and user access.

3. Integration will become a critical aspect of BI

In the past, businesses largely housed their data on their own databases. These days, I regularly speak with companies running on a combination of cloud-based solutions. With the rise of SaaS offerings and cheap hosting solutions, a modern business will likely have data in many different places.

For instance, the sales department might use a third-party CRM system, while HR uses a completely different cloud provider, and most of the business still runs on an old ERP system. As a result of this growing trend, data integration will become a critical component of BI. More and more BI tools will include messaging and integration features for connecting multiple data sources.

4. BI will move from passive to proactive

As it stands now, Business Intelligence is largely a passive practice. BI software organizes past data in a readable format with nice charts/graphs, but the user must ultimately open the application to access and analyze the data.

Now, we’re seeing a growing shift in demand for a proactive approach to BI. What does that mean? In short, it takes real-time data to the next level. As illustrated below, proactive BI actively alerts the appropriate user (via email or sms) to important changes in the business. For instance, if your business experiences a sharp decrease in sales on any given day, a proactive BI application could automatically alert the CEO and let them fix the issue before it gets worse.

5. Embedded BI will gain popularity

Despite its recent growth, BI still suffers from a crippling problem: Low user adoption. Recent studies place the user adoption rate of most BI deployments at only 25 percent. According to past estimations from Gartner, 70 to 80 percent of BI projects fail or do not meet expectations.

Now, there’s no single problem that causes all user adoption issues. Sometimes it’s difficult software. Other times it’s poor management or stubborn users. I could go on.

That being said, we’re seeing more and more companies address the user adoption issue with embedded BI. They’re building BI applications directly into their current software, effectively adding BI to the user’s daily routine.

This is noteworthy because BI usually takes the opposite approach–adding yet another step to the user’s already full daily routine. BI software typically makes users open a separate program to build/run their BI apps and reports. With the growing push towards embedded BI, businesses are bringing BI to the users (not the other way around).

6. BI will (finally) become social

For whatever reason, BI has remained largely “un-social,” with little built-in collaboration. How do people typically collaborate with BI? According to a BI study from last year, most BI collaboration still occurs via email.

Think about that fact for a second: Collaboration, commenting, and social interaction are near universal aspects of the web, but most people still can’t collaborate within a BI application. I’ve seen lively discussions online over cat photos and pictures of food…but we still collaborate on BI using email?

That’s slowly changing. I’ve seen an increased push towards integrating social aspects into BI. The advantages are clear: What if you could add comments to a report? What if you could share your thoughts and ideas directly in a BI application? It would dramatically improve collaboration, along with the usefulness of the BI application overall. In the near future, we’ll see more and more social features integrated into BI.

7. BI will predict the future

Business Intelligence has always answered the question: “What has happened in my business.” Now, it’s shifting towards, “What will most likely happen in my business based on past data?” The use of predictive analytics is already growing in some industries, but it will become more commonplace in the coming years.

There you go. While I’m sure BI will undergo additional changes, I believe the trends mentioned above are some of the most important areas to watch in the near future. Did I miss anything? What would you add? Feel free to share in the comments.