Traditional business intelligence applications (reporting, ad-hoc querying, OLAP) are great at answering questions like “what happened”, “why it happened”, etc, but they do not help you with answers to questions like “what may happen”. This is the realm of advanced analytics, predictive data modeling, statistical analysis, etc.
The Supply Chain blog
The Death of the Supply Chain
Five Requirements for Breaking the Supply Chain Barrier: B2B Integration, Business Process Management, Exception and Event Management, Business Intelligence, Operations Management.
Megavendors Look Smart in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence
Megavendors look smart in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” for Business Intelligence, however, there are still challenges:
- IBM (Cognos): Is reporting-centric and have more of an “information versus an applications agenda.”
- Information Builders: Is behind with self-service, ad-hoc analysis, and OLAP capabilities. Due to this weakness, customers often have to build multivendor BI strategies.
- Microsoft: Their weakness is in delivering a clear roadmap for its BI acquisitions. The analysts also note that the company’s product vision is somewhat limited and less operational than that of its peers, such as Oracle.
- MicroStrategy: The vendor’s development environment is robust and flexible, the analysts say, but includes a steep learning curve.
- Oracle: Report suggests that Oracle lags behind in terms of innovation and emerging technologies.
- SAP: “SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects forces its SAP NetWeaver BI customers, who have implemented the BEx BI tools, to re-examine their BI strategy.”
- SAS: The company’s products, however, still have a reputation for being more difficult to use than those of other vendors, and the Gartner analysts further blame SAS for an absence of true Web reporting.
2009 Readers’ Choice Survey: Business Intelligence
In 2009 and beyond, Bambridge says that the majors will be challenged to quickly embed acquired BI capabilities as inherent parts of existing and new applications.
Business Intelligence Market Trends for 2009
Last year was another busy one for business intelligence (BI). After the previous year’s slew of acquisitions, 2008 saw the mega-vendors integrate their new BI technologies, while operational and on-demand BI saw gains in adoption. What does 2009 hold in store for BI? Three industry watchers share their 2009 BI forecasts.
Making Sense of Business Intelligence Market Mayhem
Making sense of business intelligence market mayhem
The only agreement is that until “mega-vendors” SAP, IBM and Oracle announce integration strategies for their recently acquired BI technologies — expected to happen sometime in the next six to 12 months — customers have little more to rely on than their wits when making BI buying decisions. Even then, the only sure bet is that they will have to make some difficult choices.
SAP, Microsoft Make BI Acquisitions
SAP, Microsoft Make BI Acquisitions
Big day in BI as SAP buys OutlookSoft, Microsoft buys OfficeWriter.
The business intelligence buying frenzy continued Wednesday, with software giants SAP (NYSE:SAP) and Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) unveiling acquisitions.
