According to Wikipedia, Business intelligence (BI) refers to skills, technologies, applications and practices used to help a business acquire a better understanding of its commercial context. Business intelligence may also refer to the collected information itself.

BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, OLAP, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.

Business intelligence often aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS).

According to Wikipedia, Competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing Intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.

 Key points of this definition:

1. Competitive intelligence is an ethical and legal business practice, as opposed to industrial espionage which is illegal.
2. The focus is on the external business environment.
3. There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intelligence and then utilizing this in business decision making. CI professionals emphasize that if the intelligence gathered is not usable (or actionable) then it is not intelligence.

A more focused definition of CI regards it as the organizational function responsible for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market before they become obvious. Experts also call this process the early signal analysis. This definition focuses attention on the difference between dissemination of widely available factual information (such as market statistics, financial reports, newspaper clippings) performed by functions such as libraries and information centers, and competitive intelligence which is a perspective on developments and events aimed at yielding a competitive edge.

The term CI is often viewed as synonymous with competitor analysis, but competitive intelligence is more than analyzing competitors — it is about making the organization more competitive relative to its entire environment and stakeholder: customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, macro-economic data etc..

While relatively new, social media monitoring is simply a new form of media monitoring. It focuses on monitoring what is said on blogs, social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn) and other social media websites. Both individuals and businesses are likely to use social media monitoring software. Individuals are likely to use it for monitoring their own reputation (especially well-known people). Most social media monitoring tools include dashboards and email notifications which enable one to know who wrote about them on the Web, when and where. As a result, one can take action if need be.

Organizations can get even more benefits. Using a social media monitoring tool, an organization can monitor its brand reputation and even customer behaviour and feedback. These tools let one track positive and negative comments on their products, foresee potential damage to their brand or reputation, take action should a hoax or scandal occur or simply gather relevant marketing data. Social media monitoring software are also great business intelligence and competitive intelligence tools as an organization can decide to monitor its own brand as well as its competitors’.

Network monitoring is usually more infrastructure-centered while server monitoring is usually more hardware-oriented. However, some products combine both aspects.

Network monitoring tools can be used to monitor the performance, usage or reliability of a home or office network (an intranet, for instance). Using such tools, IT resources can get notified when the network experiences downtime or gets hacked. It can be used for network maintenance as well, among other things.

On the other hand, server monitoring tools usually empowers one to monitor the machines, per se. There are tools for monitoring server temperature, hard drive health, cooling, CPU, RAM, etc.

Server monitoring tools are useful when one owns servers or has full access to them. Otherwise, they are either overkill or useless. Network or website monitoring tools are more suitable to their needs in that case.

Employee monitoring software is deployed for several reasons. With the Internet available in most offices, workers in remote locations, theft, fraud and other concerns, the need for employee monitoring solutions has been increasing dramatically over the last few years.

Depending on an organization’s needs, an employee monitoring product’s features vary from one product to another. There are solutions for monitoring keystrokes (aka “Keyloggers”), history of websites visited, Internet behaviour, data theft prevention (e.g. monitoring downloads or USB-key use), instant messaging, email, printer usage and many other things.

Unlike Spy Software, employee monitoring software is more office/work oriented. Spy software is suitable for spying on anyone (employees of course, but also children, husband, wife or friends).

Website monitoring tools are useful to website owners and webmasters, but some are also useful to marketing personnel as well. Basically, a website monitoring tool lets one know when their website is down, either by email, sms or otherwise. Furthermore, depending on their needs, one can choose a product with advanced security or maintenance features such as intrusion detection, log tracking or database management tools. Unlike network or server monitoring tools, website monitoring tools focus on the website itself rather than on the infrastructure that host it.

Unlike other monitoring software categories on ActivityMonitoringSoftware.com, video surveillance focuses on recording human activity using a webcam or a security camera systemVideo surveillance systems used to be for commercial and industrial use only, but time have changed. Since webcams are cheaper than ever, more people set up video surveillance at home. Of course, home, commercial and industrial use is quite different. This is why most tools are made for a specific use.

Video surveillance for home use is useful for motion detection and hidden cameras. Motion detection is popular in homes as it uses disk space and/or bandwidth only when motion is detected (e.g. if someone breaks into your house or your kids or babysitter enter a room they’re not allowed in). Of course, one might need to record continuously during a specific event (e.g. a party) for personal reasons. This usually requires a lot of disk space.

Video surveillance for commercial and industrial use is more complex, as it often requires specific devices and features. Usually, a video surveillance system comes with both the software and the equipment (cameras, monitors and other devices). Most of the time, commercial and industrial video surveillance systems require CCTV or IP cameras. Unlike home surveillance, a video surveillance system for a store, a parking lot or a warehouse requires many cameras, which are networked.

Spy software is usually installed when one wishes to monitor another’s computer usage or behaviour, for various reasons (parental control, gambling, gaming, cheating, adult content, etc.). Furthermore, there are spy software products for cell phones that empower one to monitor text messaging, among other things.

Unlike employee monitoring software, spy software is for general use. It can be used for parental control (content filtering, restrict access during certain hours, etc.), for wife or husband computer activity monitoring (if one suspects cheating, dating, gambling or adult content viewing, for instance) among other things.