Visual discovery tools have skyrocketed in popularity because they meet the needs of both business analysts and departmental users. As self-service tools, they enable business analysts to connect, blend, visualize and analyze data without IT assistance. In addition, business analysts or BI developers can create attractive interactive dashboards for departmental users. Consequently, business units no longer need to wait for corporate BI teams to meet their needs—they get the data they want, when they want it, and how they want it. In other words, visual discovery tools span both top-down and bottom-up BI or multiple modes of BI, as Gartner calls it, meeting a large swath of business requirements. (See figure above.) The only thing these tools don’t do is pixel-perfect reporting and workflow-driven analytic applications, but expect those capabilities soon.

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