Hewlett-Packard, it seems, typifies the type of enthusiasm prevalent at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit here in Chicago.

"We're on the road to world domination in BI," said Rod Walker, vice president of information management practices for HP Services, during an interview at the BI Summit.

Walker, I think, was only half joking. BI is on the upswing and the major vendors in the space plan to follow the trajectory. Gartner analysts said March 31 that despite economic hurdles in the U.S. economy that are slowly seeping into some tech sectors, spending on BI software is expected to rise 11 percent this year, to $5.8 billion.

The reason: BI platforms are a high priority amongst the CIO set. Gartner said that in a survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide, BI beat out all other technologies in terms of priorities.

Stephen Wetzel, chief technology officer for Maricopa County in Phoenix, is a BI evangelist from the word go--and a convincing one at that. I met Wetzel today at a luncheon hosted by Microsoft (Maricopa County is using Microsoft's BI tools) and what he had to say about the impact of BI really is nothing short of astounding, especially if you remember that the goal for BI vendors--to push BI past the 10 to 15 percent of users in an organization--really hasn't gotten much traction. (It still remains a big goal for Microsoft, but that's a separate post.)

"BI has transformed local government," said Wetzel, who fields calls almost daily from other municipalities, as well as state and federal agencies, looking to follow Wetzel's BI model. When I asked how it is that BI has been so transformational (since the public sector is not usually in the IT leader quadrant), Wetzel explained that Maricopa County now has visibility--and transparency--with every aspect of its budget.

"We have demand, output, efficiency and results all tied to the budget," Wetzel said.

His program has been so successful that he is working with representatives from local, county, state and federal government agencies to develop a Collaboration Solution Center in Phoenix (along with Microsoft, HP and Cisco Systems) that will launch next year. The Center's goal? No less than using BI to get "a deep dive to determine social justice transformational issues."

That's a pretty cool mission for functionality that's barely made its way out of the CFO's office--until recently, that is.