SaaS – the next frontier for buying activity in BI?

Having successfully established itself in CRM, software as a service (SaaS) has now surfaced as the delivery model du jour in the business intelligence (BI) sector. The number of vendors offering some type of BI or BI-related hosted service is now in the double digits, up from less than a handful last year. Consolidation is still at an early stage with Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ) and Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN) leading acquisition activity. Business Objects acquired SaaS platform provider Nsite Software in a deal we valued at $8m last November. Two months later, Cognos picked up Celequest for $12m (based on our estimate), which provided the company with – among other capabilities – a hosted real-time dashboard service.

Possible acquirers

Company Cash and short-term investments Microsoft $28.2bn (as of March 31) Oracle $6.4bn (as of February 28) SAP $5.1bn (as of March 31) HP $12.3bn (as of April 30) IBM $10.8bn (as of March 31)

Possible targets

Company Recent funding/total funding Verix $12.75m (February 2006)/$18.9m Oco $14.5m (January 2007)/Not disclosed SeaTab Software $3.5m (February 2007)/$4.5m Adaptive Planning $7.5m (December 2006)/$19m

Conclusion

Verix, SeaTab, Adaptive Planning and Oco are by no means the only attractive acquisition candidates with hosted BI-related services. LucidEra, probably the best-known startup in this space, is another. Several consulting companies including OnDemandIQ, which has a hosted dashboard and reporting service and Certica Solutions, which has a hosted data quality service, are also possible acquisition candidates. It remains to be seen which of these players will remain independent. But what is clear to us is that the sector in which all these vendors play will see more M&A action. And if it's not led by Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, then HP (NYSE: HPQ) or IBM (NYSE: IBM) – given both players' BI ambitions – could well be the ones in the M&A driving seat.

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Microsoft announces Microsoft Office Performance Point Server PPS 2007 CTP 3 Release

PPS 2007 CTP 3 release is available on microsoft connect website

Whats New in CTP 3?

• Planning Server functionality, features, and documentation are the same as in our April CTP2 release.
• Monitoring Server has updated functionality, features, and documentation for this release.

Microsoft has announced two new CTP programs:

1. Management Reporter is a reporting application designed to enable information workers to take control of their business by creating and analyzing feature rich reports. It is an application tailored to general users for creating, maintaining, deploying and viewing boardroom quality financial statements. Users can easily monitor the health of the business and quickly understand what’s happening at any point in time. Management Reporter integrates with the General Ledger (GL) system or Financial Data Mart (FDM) allowing users to run financial statements within minutes after installing the application.

2. The Data Integration Toolkit is a set of software, documentation, and samples designed to enable partners and customers to expose data from financial source systems in a standardized, contextual format for use in reporting, planning, monitoring and analytics scenarios.

Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP2 available for download

Download PPS 2007 CTP2 Release here

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007
What’s New for CTP2
Copyright © 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Monitoring and Analytics
The following Monitoring and Analytics features have been added in Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP2:

Dashboards
• Thin Dashboard Consumer. Provides the user experience of thin analytic dashboards created in Dashboard Designer.
• Publish to SharePoint. Allows users to publish dashboards to Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
• Preview. Provides dashboard preview capabilities from Dashboard Designer before publishing to SharePoint.

Dashboard Designer
• Dashboard Designer. Allows users to assemble views and filters from the catalog into a dashboard.
• Filters (parameterization). Provides a definition and framework for accepting and passing filters among the scorecards and views within dashboards.
• Analytic View Designer. Provides create and configure capabilities inside Dashboard Designer for analytic chart and grid views. For CTP2, this is limited to an MDX text box with preview and filter capabilities.
• Scorecard Editor. Provides an enhanced scorecard build experience, including cut, copy and paste, right click, hide rows, and MDX expression capabilities.

Report Types
• Strategy Maps. Provides an enhanced strategy map build experience, including additional stencils and shapes.
• Thin OLAP Charts. Provides space‐efficient bar and line charts of Analysis Services 2005 queries for dashboards.
• Thin OLAP Grids. Provides space‐efficient HTML tables of Analysis Services 2005 queries for dashboards.

What’s New for CTP2
Planning
The following Planning features have been added in Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP2.

Planning Business Modeler
New features have been included to complete the data integration scenario with jobs, access the operational Reporting Services reports in Planning Business Modeler, and provide support for measures in Planning Business Modeler. The Planning Administration Console in CTP2 offers improved accessibility and user interface.

The following list describes the new and improved features in the Planning Business Modeler for CTP2:

• Planning Administration Console
• Basic user interface accessibility
• Additional security for managing data sources and destinations (new)
• Planning Business Modeler
• Basic user interface accessibility
• Improved user interface (based on usability and design reviews)
• Improved rule authoring, validation and deployment in the formula editor
• Added ability to run workflow jobs outside normal process cycles (new)
• Enhanced permission editor updates for metadata changes
• Ability to access operational financial and workflow process reports (new)
• Dimension Editor support for viewing measures (new)
• Process control editor support for metadata updates (including delete)
• Leaf or non-leaf option writeback support (new)

PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel (Client)
CTP2 offers improved usability for the Microsoft Office Excel client. The default behavior for an assignment is set to Offline through a local cube. New features have been included to support worksheet renaming and optional writeback to non-leaf members.

The following list describes the new and improved features in the Excel client for CTP2:

• Default Offline mode support
• Worksheet renaming support (new)
• Improved user interface (based on usability and design reviews)
• Improved Member Picker performance
• Leaf or non-leaf option writeback support (new)
• Large-dimension support (in the job wizard)

Report Wizard
CTP2 offers improved wizard usability and creation of matrix to support writeback that is consistent with the regular form matrix. A new feature supports reports based on properties in addition to specific members. Additional operational reports, such as intercompany reconciliation and workflow status reports, are included in CTP2.

The following list describes the new and improved features in the Report Wizard for CTP2:

• Enhanced report metadata integrity
• Improved report wizard usability
• Modifications to support SQL Server Reporting Services reports
• Additional support for use of member properties in report creation (new)

Financial Intelligence
CTP2 offers improved business rule performance, integrity, and usability. Business rule validation and integrity features include improved deployment options, complete intercompany reconciliation processes, and additional business rule validations and checks. The main security improvements are for controlling the running of Native SQL-based rules.

The following list describes the new and improved features in Financial Intelligence for CTP2:

• Improved business rule performance, including SQL-based rule execution optimizations
• Enhanced business rule security, including native SQL-based rules
• Enhanced business rule validation and integrity
• Enhanced financial consolidation validation and integrity
• Improved performance in financial intelligence rules
• Business rule auditing and logging

Data Integration
CTP2 offers improved support and maintainability for validation, integrity checks, and error handling and reporting for data loading scenarios. New features introduce security permissions for data integration tasks and provide for automated mapping between like dimension members for model associations.

The following list describes the new and improved features in Data Integration for CTP2:

• Error reporting for data loading (including the scriptable PPSCmd data load)
• Data loading validations (new)
• Additional integrity checks for data movement, updates, and deletions
• Data integration tasks with security permissions (new)
• Data integration operation logging and performance tuning
• Model association validation and automated mapping (new)

Setup and Configuration
CTP2 offers an improved setup and configuration wizard. New features have been added to allow for application migration support and product upgrades.

The following list describes the new and improved features in Setup and Configuration for CTP2:

• Default Offline mode support for the Excel Client (new)
• Enhancement of metadata and process control integrity
• Application migration support (new)
• Improved performance through assigning users to roles in SQL Server Analysis Services cubes
• Enhancement of metadata security, including WebService calls
• Upgrade support (new)
• Enhancement of writeback integrity

Process Administration
CTP2 offers complete workflow and process control items, including the handling of long-running process, priority queues, and support for the running of asynchronous jobs outside normal cycles.

The following list describes the new and improved features in Administration for CTP2:

• Audit identifier support for audit messages and logger updates
• Default Offline mode support for the Excel Client (new)
• Additional runtime performance optimizations
• Enhanced runtime integrity and validations for data writeback
• Additional runtime validation and integrity for workflow tasks, including long-running processes

Data Import Wizard for Microsoft Dynamics AX
CTP2 offers new features that automate the loading of general ledger data from Microsoft Dynamics AX into PerformancePoint Planning Server dimensions and models. The wizard allows users to configure the application and model site by creating models and dimensions, with limited member mapping.

The following list describes the new and improved CTP2 features in the PerformancePoint Server Data Import Wizard for Microsoft Dynamics AX:

• Import wizard user interface (new)
• Import wizard security configurations (new)
• Selective dimension creation and load support (new)
• Limited Member mapping support (new)
• Automated conversion of Microsoft Dynamics AX financial data based on member mapping (new)

BI and PM: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Excerpts from here and here

Historically, corporate performance management can trace its origins to the finance department, and was originally associated with analytic applications for finance, budgeting, statutory reporting, and planning. Simultaneously, BI emerged as the tool of choice for reporting operational metrics for departments such as HR, sales, and operations. It was only a matter of time before vendors and customers alike realized the synergies between the two. John Hagerty, vice president and research fellow at AMR Research says that BI and PM have become two sides of the same coin, and should be executed in one broad strategy. As companies look to put financial data into the hands of departmental managers, and place increased emphasis on embracing operational metrics, they're using BI to bring PM to the masses, he says. "We continue to see the breakdown of the walls separating BI and PM. Customers don't notice such harsh distinctions between the two categories, and are making deployment and purchase decisions accordingly."

Oracle's announcement of its intent to purchase Hyperion on March 1 signifies this growing trend, Hagerty says. "Oracle positioned this acquisition as an extension of its overall BI strategy." The acquisitions won't stop there; Hagerty speculates that SAP, IBM, and HP might be "likely acquirers in this market space," he says. "Business Objects, Cognos, MicroStrategy, and Information Builders are potential targets, among a host of smaller players."

Oracle's $3.3 billion purchase of Hyperion Solutions is an example of the ways in which BI is changing. It merges two distinct areas - business analytics and corporate performance management - that could start a land grab for pure-play vendors by the likes of SAP, IBM and Microsoft, said analysts, who often cite Cognos and Business Objects as targets and IBM as the likely first mover.

The implications of these companies giving BI more attention and development is that the goal of ubiquitous business intelligence could happen more quickly than previous efforts of pure-play vendors.

"[With the goal of BI] becoming part of the fabric of how you get to information about your business, rather than just a tool set, the question is, how do you make that part of what you do to fit into all these places [in the enterprise]?" said John Hagerty, an analyst with AMR Research.

"Putting BI in applications will go the furthest, fastest. This is where the fight is being made between Oracle and SAP."

In acquiring Hyperion, with its expertise in analytics and financial planning and budgeting, Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., is bringing together two distinct areas - BI and corporate performance management. The result is users will be able to manage their planning life-cycles more efficiently, said Rick Schultz, vice president of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

"What customers desire to do is infuse BI into the business processes they use to run their business, and also their financial business processes - planning, budgeting, financial consolidation," he said. "That's what drove the acquisition of Hyperion. Customers are looking to enable the entire cycle of performance management - planning, goal setting, modeling, monitoring and reporting back."

SAP is taking a different approach. While it's working to infuse BI capabilities at the application level, the company has also developed a BI accelerator that marries the appliance concept with analytics, using in-memory technology for much faster query capabilities.Building on its Knightsbridge acquisition, HP plans to announce April 24 a new product, Neoview, a preconfigured bundle of hardware and software from HP and its BI partners, said Ben Barnes, vice president and general manager of BI at HP.

"What's going on out there is equipment that does - BI - is too expensive - and - too hard to upgrade, and maintenance is too expensive," said Barnes, in Palo Alto, Calif.

"Another thing we've found is we've made this too complex. - Neoview - will be pre­configured to an industry or workload and application. We will size the customers' applications - how much data they have to analyze, how many users are accessing - the applications - , what type of querying - then preconfigure - an appliance - , integrate it, test it and ship it to the customer."

Neoview will have capabilities from HP and its ETL (extract, transform and load) partners Informatica, IBM and others. IBM also is working on its own BI initiatives, designed to move the company and its customers into the next wave of BI, beyond analysis and reporting, said Karen Parrish, vice president of Business Intelligence Solutions for IBM, in Armonk, N.Y.

Called the dynamics warehousing strategy, IBM is working to enable users to analyze information - including unstructured data - as part of a business process. "What sits in a repository is relational in nature; you're not able to analyze e-mail, voice and all the other data that's really relevant," said Parrish.

Microsoft has been making a BI market push for several years. The next phase, said AMR's Hagerty, is PerformancePoint Server, an analytic application environment expected to be available midyear that will bring "a whole layer of analytics" that will enable users to build their own BI-based applications through Microsoft technology.

The concept of a bunch of converging factors is bringing about what IBM's Parrish refers to as the cusp of the third generation of BI.

"We're clearly in the second generation now - it's all about query and reporting. It's where we've been for a long time," she said. "We really believe the third generation is upon us. Compliance is one of the reasons it's upon us. Banks, they don't say - compliance - is only relevant for information that sits in a relational database. It's all about data, like e-mail, that's in many forms and we have to look at all the data."

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Implementation Services, North America, 2006

Gartner released the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Services, North America, 2007 report. It is interesting that 5 Indian IT companies are in the Magic quadrant.

Leaders:
IBM Business Consulting Services
Accenture

Challengers:
TCS
Knightsbridge Solutions
BearingPoint

Visionaries
Deloitte
Palladium Group
Wipro
Cognizant Technology Solutions
Satyam Computer Services
Navigator Systems

Niche Players
Capgemini
Hitachi Consulting
Rapidigm
Infosys Technologies
Ciber
Conversion Services International

Read the complete report here.

Gartner BI Summit: Day-One Market Assessment

Excerpt from this blog:

The Hyatt Regency, Chicago is sold out and the ballrooms, breakout sessions and exhibit hall are seeing heavy, heavy traffic here on the first day of the Gartner BI Summit. I would say it's standing room only, but nor are there lots of empty seats available. This conference is clearly well past the hype cycle and rising on Gartner's proverbial "slope of enlightenment" phase of market maturity."

Conference Chair Bill Hostmann's said that things like ETL, reporting, query and analysis and even data mining are well past the hype cycle and are moving up on the "plateau of productivity." Corporate performance management and business application data warehouses are just coming out of the "trough of disillusionment" whereas things like dashboards are just heading into the trough.

"A lot of people got excited about dashboards and scorecards -- kind of like a get-rich-quick scheme," said Hostmann. "Now they're asking, 'do these really help me manage my business and are they tied to our overall strategy.'"

Cresting the "peak of inflated expectations" are data warehousing appliances, while still ascending that slope are technologies including SOA-Enabled BI, business activity monitoring, text mining, master data management and in-memory analytics.

Hostmann put forward at least two predictions. First, he said that by 2009, some 60 percent of organizations will start shifting their attention from just managing structured data in data ware houses to adding unstructured information -- as in content management, search, XML, taxonomies and ontologies. What he's talking about is the "information management" view being cultivated by IBM, Oracle and others providing information infrastructure.

Second, Hostmann said current Gartner surveys show that buyers are still interested in best-of-breed BI, but raising more than a few vendor eyebrows, he predicted that by 2010, "good enough" technologies offered in single, low-priced bundle -- from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP -- will claim the lion's share of the BI market.

"Heterogeneity is still going to rule the enterprise way beyond 2010," later commented Keith Gile, former Forrester analyst and now a senior advisor to Business Objects. "'Good enough' is not good enough for Business Objects or its customers."

Oracle Acquires Hyperion Solutions

Oracle announced a deal today to acquire Hyperion Solutions, which makes software that allows corporations to analyze and track their performance, for about $3.3 billion.

The deal is the latest trophy in a long string of acquisitions by Oracle, the database software giant that has been struggling to grow from within. Under terms of the deal, Oracle will pay $52 a share in cash for each share of Hyperion, a 21 percent premium over Wednesday’s closing price of $42.84. The deal is expected to close in April.

“The acquisition of Hyperion makes Oracle the category leader in the high-growth enterprise performance management market,” Oracle’s chief executive, Lawrence J. Ellison, said in a statement.

Oracle has long been known as one of the most aggressive acquirers of technology companies. Hyperion, which has more than 12,000 customers worldwide, including 91 Fortune 100 companies, sells analytic applications that aggregate data from corporate accounting systems for financial reporting. Such software is crucial in helping CFOs keep in step with federal compliance regulations.

Hyperion also offers planning and budgeting applications, which financial executives use to run businesses every day. The acquisition, which Oracle expects to close in April, will also give the software giant more leverage against SAP, the German applications giant Oracle has been targeting as its chief foe since it began snapping up applications vendors with a vengeance four years ago.

Hyperion is one of the last pieces to complete Oracle’s strategy. Founded in 1981 as IMRS, Hyperion has grown into one of the biggest makers of business analysis software through its Hyperion System 9 suite. Hyperion itself has grown through a series of deals, notably a 1998 merger with Arbor Software that brought the popular Essbase database software program into its fold.

"With Hyperion, we will be adding a leading enterprise planning system, a high-growth, leading financial consolidation solution, a powerful OLAP engine... and a global sales organization with over 1,900 sales and consulting professionals dedicated to business intelligence." Ventana Research CEO Mark Smith said Hyperion thinks the key to the deal is its strength in finance applications. "Oracle did not have a good footing in the office of finance, and this is the bulk of rationale behind it, but obviously some additional BI depth does not hurt,"

BI software, which IDC and Gartner estimate is a multi-billion-dollar market, enables corporations to gain more insight into the way their employees and business processes are performing.

Oracle already sells a complete BI suite, Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10g, but adding Hyperion will give the software giant new corporate performance management tools and a large customer base.

Read complete article here.