IT Career Glossary

Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and technologies used for accessing, gathering and analyzing business data to help organizations make smarter decisions. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include data-mining, reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, performance management, benchmarking and predictive analysis.

Big Data refers to data sets that are so large and complex they surpass the storage and analysis threshold of typical database software. The business advantage of big data analysis lies in an organization's ability to identify complex trends and actionable intelligence for smarter decision-making.