The term "operational BI" has been identified with several terms within various industry and market vernaculars, including "transactional BI, real-time analytics, near-real-time analytics, operational reporting, business activity monitoring" and "decision management." Some of the terms have been coined to differentiate between the time frames within which data collection, reporting and analysis occur. Other terms describe differences in the methods and calculations that take place as data is captured, manipulated, and delivered.
No matter what flavor or definition is used, at the heart of the matter, organizations are beginning to focus their attention on leveraging existing data to enable and optimize daily, hourly, minute-to-minute, or even up-to-the-second actions. While traditional business intelligence solutions continue to address the strategic information needs of decision makers with analysis of historical data, organizations are starting to realize the potential of applying BI technology and approaches to more immediate information. Several new vendors and solutions are marketed and targeted at operational requirements, and are focused on real-time and near-real-time data sources.
Source: Intelligent Enterprise, http://www.intelligententerprise.com