Business intelligence and analytics (BIA) is one of the most rapidly growing branches of information and communications technology (ICT), playing an increasingly fundamental role in business, government, healthcare, and traffic, among many other areas. The authors of this paper are leaders in their respective organizations, recognized in different application fields within the domain of knowledge discovery and BIA. Because they have a special perspective on the state of the art of BIA, it is interesting to read their opinions about its status, open problems, and fruitful directions for future research.

In the first part of the paper, the authors summarize their views on BIA, both its history and the current emerging industry, and on related data (kind, source, and use) and platform technology trends.

The main part of the paper focuses on research directions. These are grouped into three areas--big data, text, and network analytics--and are investigated for possible solutions and important problems for future consideration. Each group is described from different aspects and then relevant research questions are enumerated. I do not think that any overview of the needed research directions can be complete, but this one highlights many essential open problems.

The paper is application oriented and informal, without mentioning theoretical methods. It is quite readable, with a simple structure and clear phrasing.

I recommend this paper for those who want to find real theoretical and practical problems to solve in this important application field.