Abstract:

The development of web applications and the recent evolution of mobile devices and infrastructure have change dramatically the course of the decision making field. Although the DSS (Decision Support Systems) and BI (Business Intelligence) products are influenced by these two factors above, they are just made to interact over the internet and they do not entirely run within the Internet, benefiting or not from the advantage of using the mobile technologies. The main implication of the second factor previously mentioned is related to the fact that in terms of technology any decision will become easier to be made when thinking of the mobile devices available nowadays giving the advantage of the extra time spent to use such technology almost anywhere and under any conditions, especially when traveling. Anyway the use of the mobile applications makes any decision scenario more flexible and more adapted to the day-by-day life. After testing some on-line applications varying from office on-line tools (Google spreadsheets/docs, Skydrive) to on-line analytical products (Nesstar) in different mobile environments as Java-based or WP7 (Windows Phone 7), we have reasons to believe that these applications are still in incipient stages when thinking of the DSS functionalities, even simple ones as building filters, solvers and trend charts. In fact the only way to benefit even form these simple functionalities is to use mobile remote desktop applications that bring to the tiny smart phone screen the user interface of the fully functional desktop / laptop running any requested features.