Business Intelligence (BI) has been on a logical progression path towards the cloud computing model of service-based virtualization for some months now. Recent product releases within this space include Indicee Analytics for Salesforce Chatter on salesforce.com's AppExchange.

Where this trend may filter back down to the software application development space is the current push towards a so-called "next cloud computing paradigm," which is inherently social, mobile, and open.

This is not Business Intelligence (BI) as you knew it then. This is Social Business Intelligence (SBI), where user conversations are tracked and interactions are measured to highlight key contributors. Identified trends are then shown within the Salesforce user dashboard.

Indicee CEO Mark Cunningham insists that "chatter" (and the Salesforce Chatter private social network) driven scenarios will transform the workplace as we know it, but he recognizes that creating open, mobile, and socially driven environments is still new and challenging for many.

Indicee Analytics for Salesforce Chatter is a purpose-built analytics application that is designed to extract, report, and visualize all key metrics within an enterprise's social network and deliver them into the salesforce.com user dashboard. Indicee hopes to bring a new level of ROI in Chatter by tracking adoption, group engagement, influencers, power users, and trends.