Ease of Use versus Power

Very interesting read (here is the link)

“With ‘ease of use’ now surpassing ‘functionality’ for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion, vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms — with or without IT's consent,” said Mr. Bertram.

I like how they are starting to realize that ease of use is better to have than a whole lot of bells and whistles that no one uses. What does scare me is the with or without the IT consent.  I have been, and will continue to go through this, given that all this can do is lead to the infamous 'spreadmarts', which can lead to more than one version of the truth.  Its a catch 22, make it simple enough for anyone to install and you get a propagation of data all over the enterprise, or make it so IT has to support it and you get a stable, but much less agile solution.  It is a tough choice.