I caught up with Andrew Fields of Intel, a co-sponsor of the Competing on Analytics Symposium in January, and asked him why Intel decided to join the business intelligence conversation. Here's what he told me:

"Intel wants to establish a leadership position in business intelligence."

Intel, he said, defines enterprise BI "as a solution that spans multiple data sources, from transactional data to legacy databases to operational data."

Viewed from that perspective, enterprise BI has a huge impact on IT infrastructure, "and that is the heart of our concern," he explained. "That's why we are working with SAS to define enterprise business intelligence in that manner," rather than simply as the capability to query and report or to have graphical interfaces.