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Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, research vice president at Gartner Andreas Bitterer said that tablets enabled people and businesses to do things that could never have been done before. He said there was a lot more that could be expected from tablet use in the future, having moved away from a nice to have device. "We are only scratching the surface," he said.

According to Gartner, by 2013, 33% of business Intelligence functionality would be consumed via a handheld device.

Business intelligence mainly referred to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analysing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes.

Bitterer said that device usage was evolving, from "cool" and fascinating, to more than "nice to have", to being ubiquitous.

He said that where BlackBerry had changed the way people emailed, its screen size had inhibited its ability for business intelligence usage. He said that the advent of the tablet device, led by the iPad had meant a total shift in the way we consumed information. The benefits of mobile business intelligence included faster decision cycles, decision making on location and uninterrupted workflow.

The business benefits of mobile devices also added positioning, visualisation and the ability to deliver and collect data.

Such capabilities could help to foster new business models, according to Bitterer who cited an example of where context awareness came into play. Bitterer said that if you were near Starbucks and decided you wanted a coffee, your device could recognise where you were and download a promotion/coupon for Starbucks. He said that context awareness was used for locating hospitals, restaurants, bars and the like, "so why not use that in a business context," he said.

He did highlight some challenges within this framework, namely the "big brother" factor. "Not everything that is technically possible is necessarily desirable or even allowed," he said.

The research analyst said that safety, security, privacy and ethics were also potential pitfalls.

Gartner added that electronic medical records were one such case of where mobile business intelligence was being used outside of traditional use. "It's not just a consumption device," Bitterer said of the tablets.

Looking ahead, Gartner forecast that mobile BIs would move beyond visualisation, to workflow, to run algorithms, provide image recognition, sense and alert, respond to voice commands, initiate back-office demands, and provide write-back capabilities, which all then opened up new business possibilities.

Bitterer warned however, that mobile BIs did not reduce the need for proper BI infrastructure.

• Gareth Vorster was invited to attend the symposium by Gartner, a global technology research provider.