The Dashboard Spy

Dashboard Spy readers will remember that I like to provide faithful readers a glimpse now and then at the full text of the business intelligence dashboarding articles that I come across while doing my research for the Dashboard Spy blog. What’s the big deal you may ask - I can just find those business intelligence articles myself on the web.

Well, actually, Dashboard Spy readers have found, now and then, these news articles can indeed be a big deal. I tend to do my BI research on some big-name, high-cost databases such as l*xisNex*s and F@ctiv@. The beauty of these databases is that the include sources not commonly found on the general web.

Today I will share 3 business intelligence articles of note:

1. Big-end tools for small fry - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - SPECIAL REPORT
2. Website gathers project resources - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - SPECIAL REPORT
3. IDC Reports on BI Sales; Which Vendors Are Hot, Which Are Not?

Enjoy reading these business intelligence news articles.

On a more personal note, welcome back from your vacations and long weekends. We’ll all buckle down together now on our dashboard projects and business intelligence applications. Work hard and enjoy!

Here are the articles:

The Australian (Australia)

July 10, 2007 Tuesday
IT Broadsheet Edition

Big-end tools for small fry - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - SPECIAL REPORT

BYLINE: Ian Grayson

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 1097 words
The software giants are pitching into a ready small business market with easy-to-use software, Ian Grayson reports
BUSINESS intelligence software vendors are sharpening their swords ahead of a battle for the hearts and budgets of Australia’s legions of small and mid-sized companies.

Having sated much of the demand at the big end of town, heavyweight vendors are focusing on smaller firms.

Lured by the prospect of thousands of prospective customers with little or no BI capabilities, vendors are devising new products and warming up their marketing machines.

Software giant Oracle recently upped the ante by releasing a $US1000 ($1167) per seat BI package designed specifically for organisations with between five and 50 users.

The company’s Business Intelligence Standard Edition comprises Oracle’s 10g database, together with a bunch of analysis and reporting tools.

Part of Oracle’s Fusion middleware portfolio, the new package comes preconfigured and ready to use.

Oracle Australia-New Zealand business intelligence sales manager Simon Hill says the new offering is not a cut-down version of his company’s enterprise BI product.

Rather, he describes it as a full-strength package that provides customers with the BI tools they need to improve performance.

The only major difference between the BI enterprise and standard editions is that the latter don’t include a module providing workflow and real-time alert capabilities, Hill says.

These features are complex and relevant only to large organisations.

”We tried to assess what parts of the package people would need to have something that was useful from day one and give them all the capabilities they require to build datamarts and create reports and dashboards,” he says.

The package includes a licence for Oracle’s 10g database, but users are free to use alternative databases.

By pricing the new offering at $US1000 per user, Oracle is making a determined effort to shrug off the image that its products are only suited to, and affordable by, large organisations.

Last month, the company also made changes to its partner model. Authorised value-added distributors can sell Oracle’s small and medium business product line to new resellers without requiring them to first join the official Oracle partner network.

The company says this will result in products being made available to a larger number of small and medium businesss through a wider variety of outlets.

Such initiatives are supported by industry research that shows the market for BI software is strong and expected to continue to enjoy robust growth for the foreseeable future.

According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms report, BI has evolved from being a tool for senior executives to something that is permeating organisations.

Gartner predicts BI software revenues will show compound annual growth of 9.5 per cent through to 2010.

Gartner BI analyst Ian Bertram says the sector is looking very healthy, with a lot of activity among the vendors.

Large software companies such as Oracle and SAP are pursuing small and medium business customers, and Bertram points to Microsoft as a player making big moves in the space.

”A lot of small and mid-sized companies know Microsoft and are comfortable with it,” he says.

”Many already have BI capabilities in their existing Microsoft infrastructure, and just don’t know it.”

Microsoft Australia server tools and platform strategy director Martin Gregory says BI has raced up the priority lists of many small and mid-sized firms as they look for ways to make themselves more efficient.

”BI is white-hot in the market at the moment,” he says. ”From our own research, it’s a top-three item for this size of customer.”

Microsoft’s BI strategy has been to build capabilities into its existing product offerings such as SQL Server and Office.

Indeed, the company admits many of its customers may already have the software they need to use BI but just not be aware of it.

”Our strategy is to let customers pull all their data together, and then use the power of something like Office to manipulate and present that data in any way they want,” Gregory says.

”It’s finally a time when customers can get enterprise-class technology at a price that suits them. When a customer asks what they need to buy to have BI, quite often they find they already have a lot of the components.”

Later this year Microsoft will launch its new PerformancePoint Server 2007.

Gregory says this will increase the options for small and medium businesss wanting to use BI techniques. Designed to sit between a company’s database and client applications such as Office, PerformancePoint offers score-carding, analytics and planning capabilities.

The product is built on technology acquired with BI specialist ProClarity last year.

To make BI even more relevant and useful to small organisations, Gregory says, Microsoft is focusing on key areas such as search, data access and client-side tools.

While the software giants are busy with their BI plans, specialist providers are also taking aim at the small and medium business space.

With the experience gained from providing large companies with capable BI tools, they say they’re well placed to offer similar benefits to small and medium businesss.

Cognos Australia-New Zealand vice-president Lesley French says her company has always been aware of the demand for business intelligence capabilities in small firms. ”We have always offered a small and medium business pricelist for our Cognos 8 offering,” she says. ”This works out at $1100 per user, which is very competitive.”

Like Oracle, Cognos has chosen to provide a fully featured product for small and medium businesses rather than trying to design a cut-down version at a lower price. Cognos 8 offers everything from dashboards and ad-hoc query tools to complex analysis and reporting tools.

”Although a firm might be small in size, it doesn’t mean it’s not facing the same challenges as large companies,” French says.

This is why similar BI tools are required. ”For example, there are very few clients who have their data in a single repository.”

”It might just be a case of having multiple Excel spreadsheets they need to combine to create the reports they need, but we can help with that.”

Cognos is about to start offering a BI appliance designed to be easily connected to a small firm’s existing IT infrastructure.

French says the product, called Cognos Now, is designed for companies with at least 50 users, and is easy to get up and running.

”It gives small and medium businesses the ability to be up and running in just days,” she says.

The Australian (Australia)

July 10, 2007 Tuesday
IT Broadsheet Edition

Website gathers project resources - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - SPECIAL REPORT

BYLINE: Barbara Gengler

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 611 words
Skills

A NEW website is designed as a collaborative community and interactive forum to advance the business intelligence and data warehousing sector.

For the challenges and complexities of BI/DW projects, BI-BestPractices.com will provide articles, case studies, podcasts, blogs and message boards.

The vendor-neutral environment will tackle customer intelligence, dashboards and scorecards, data governance, enterprise BI, enterprise DW, predictive analytics and unstructured data integrated in BI/DW.

Information about professional advancement courses can be found at the website.

BI-BestPractices.com was launched by the Data Warehousing Institute and the Business Intelligence Network to generate and distribute industry-specific content.

The Data Warehousing Institute provides business intelligence and data warehousing education, training, certification and news and research, while the Business Intelligence Network provides horizontal technology coverage in areas such as business intelligence, business performance management, data warehousing and data integration.

Data Warehousing Institute general manager Richard Zbylut says in the partnership’s initial podcast that people facing the challenges of BI/DW projects often didn’t often know where to turn for advice and mentoring.

”This partnership with the Business Intelligence Network will enable us to share best practices and provide a venue for peer-to-peer connection, advancing the practice of BI/DW,” he says.

Zbylut says there was an obvious need for education and research content for both groups, and for both groups to work together.

”It’s a platform to host the conversation that takes place around resources and access to knowledge and it will benefit the community,” he says.

Shawn Rogers, co-founder and executive vice-president of the Business Intelligence Network, says the site put mechanisms in place, large numbers of articles, case studies, and access to a lot of information.

”We already have a blog going with highly respected individuals participating in conversations there,” he says.

”It’s a one-stop shop for information on these challenges. Whether it’s for getting started or for an advanced practitioner, they’ll find the information for their needs.”

An example on the site’s blog included the question: is it possible to be directed or to ask for information related to becoming a better BI project leader or project manager?

One of the respondents said of resources for BI project leaders: ”I wanted to mention that TDWI offers some courses on BI project and program management and there is a track of BI leadership and management courses at the upcoming conference in San Diego, which may be a good place to start.”

In addition, the website features Best Practices Award winners’ systems for in development, deployment and maintenance applications for business intelligence, data warehousing and related data management areas.

The company has been involved in the best practices awards since about 1999. The awards honour companies for best practice.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy, was selected as one of the 2007 Best Practices Award winners.

LLNL’s data warehouse is now a portal-based Java and Oracle RDBMS application, which is considered highly successful in delivering accurate and timely information.

According to Zbylut and Rogers, all the work was done in short order, about four to five weeks, ”making it happen pretty quick”.

”The growth in this space has been fantastic, up-curve, and we saw an opportunity in the space to learn more about best practices,” Rogers says.
TECHWEB

July 1, 2007 Sunday 5:03 PM GMT

IDC Reports on BI Sales;
Which Vendors Are Hot, Which Are Not?

LENGTH: 718 words
HIGHLIGHT: Business intelligence software sales are growing at a double-digit pace, according to a new IDC report, and rising demand lifted sales for nearly every vendor. Microsoft and SAS led the way among the top-five vendors while one up-and-coming company racked up a near triple-digit sales gain. Despite all the “BI for everyone” marketing hype, IDC says the technology is still out of reach for mainstream business users.
The BI market grew 11.5 percent in 2006 to reach $6.25 billion in worldwidesoftwarerevenue. That’s healthy growth, but there’s little evidence that BI is spreading to a broader base of business users. These are just two of the headline conclusions of IDC’s WorldwideBusiness IntelligenceTools 2006 Vendor Share report, released June 29.

IDC’s study examines the BI tools market from 2004 to 2006, and it includes revenue, marketshare and sales growth figures for more than 20 leading vendors. The top-five vendors in BI tools revenue in 2006 were, in order, Business Objects ($894 million),SAS($679 million), Cognos ($622 million), Hyperion/Oracle ($529 million, combining their revenue) and Microsoft ($480 million). The growth leader among these players was Microsoft, which had a 28.1-percent revenue increase in 2006. The second-fastest-growing company among the top five was SAS, with a 16.6 percent revenue increase.

IDC breaks the BI tools market into two segments: query, reporting and analysis (QRA) tools, and advanced analytics. QRA software covers ad hocqueryand multidimensional analysis as well as dashboards and reporting tools. The top-five vendors in QRA, as measured by 2006 revenue, were Business Objects, Cognos, Microsoft, Hyperion and SAS. Among these top-five vendors, Microsoft and SAS again had the fastest growth rates, at 27.7 percent and 23.0 percent, respectively.

Advanced analytics software includesdata miningand statistical software, and the top-five vendors, by 2006 revenue, were SAS, SPSS, Visual Numerics,Oracleand Teradata. Microsoft and SPSS had the highest growth rates in this group, at 40.0 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively. SAS dominates the advanced analytics category with more than twice the revenue of its nearest rival (at $382 million versus $174 million for SPSS).

The report concluded that “IDC does not yet see a substantial impact on the market from the strategy and marketing messages of most BI vendors seeking to reach a broader use base.” But could revenue-based calculations be misleading given that pricing is getting more competitive?

“If BI vendors were reaching beyond the 15 to 20 percent of users they’re currently reaching, the revenue numbers would reflect a faster growth rate,” report coauthor Dan Vesset told <em>Intelligent Enterprise</em>. “The average price per user will come down to some extent, but that’s a long-term trend.”

Which vendors are poised to reach a broader audience? “I would put Microsoft and Business Objects ahead of the pack,” said Vesset. “Microsoft partly because of its [aggressive] pricing and partly because of its reach. With its base of Crystal users, Business Objects also has a good opportunity to penetrate a broader audience.”

Vesset said most of Microsoft’s growth is still ahead. “Microsoft has been selling primarilySQLServerwith Analysis Services and Reporting Services,” he explained. “They’re really pushing hard on Excel 2007 as the front end and deploying it all through SharePoint. When people start actually doing that, I think you’ll start seeing broader use of BI within Microsoft shops.”

Two notable up-and-comers in the combined BI Tools ranks were QlikTech and Panorama, which scored 97-percent and 67-percent growth rates in 2006, respectively, though neither company was in the top ten in terms of total revenue. The slowest growth rate in 2006 was Business Objects’, at 7 percent.

“Business Objects was transitioning to its XIplatformin 2006, so that hurt its revenue during the first two quarters,” said Vesset. “With its Crystal base, Business Objects is also much more exposed to Microsoft.”

IDC observed that the advanced analytics category is growing with demand for forecasting, optimization and other decision-support techniques. “There’s so much data available, and companies understand that they need to do something more advanced with it,” said Vesset. “Many companies are trying to predict which customers may be churning and which customers may be open to cross selling or up selling. Other companies are using advanced analytics to optimize supply chains and pricing, both online and in-store retail.”

An excerpt of IDC’s original report isavailable for downloadat SAS’s site, and it includes extensive detail on sales, marketshare and company-by-company performance.

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