Bernard Liautaud, founder, chairman and chief strategy officer at Business Objects, said the labs hope to deliver the software that will make up BI 2.0. That will include components of BI on the desktop, BI availability on mobile devices and the creation of new collaborative applications that can, for instance, link BI and instant messaging.

"We're seeing the changes from the re-emergence of the Web as a platform," Liautaud said. "BI is going through as fundamental a change as the Web is going through right now. Instead of focusing on transaction-centric applications like sales force automation ... companies will shift their attention to applications that leverage their information [and] optimize their business processes."