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.

SAP Acquires Corporate Performance Software Firm Pilot Software

In a move to enhance its business analytics offerings, enterprise software purveyor SAP AG has acquired Pilot Software, a specialist in corporate performance management technology.
The acquisition of Pilot continues SAP's strategy of acquiring small companies that it can use to strengthen its overall product portfolio.

Microsoft webcasts on PPS 2007 in February 2007

1. Performance Management 101 with PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Level 200)

Shows how Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help corporations improve their business performance process by integrating monitoring, analysis, and planning capabilities into one application.

Presenter: Bruno Aziza, Product Manager for Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Corporation

2. Business Intelligence with Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Level 300)

Join this webcast to learn how Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can enable your corporation to improve business performance processes. Learn how to successfully integrate monitoring, analysis, and planning into one performance management application. In this session, see how Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 and ProClarity Analytics come together in PerformancePoint Server 2007 to support the performance management life cycle.

Presenter: Rex Parker, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation

3. Business Intelligence Using PerformancePoint Server 2007 Business Modeling (Level 200)

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Do you feel that your business spends more time collecting and validating data than analyzing and planning? Join this webcast to see how Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help make planning, budgeting, and forecasting part of a dynamic, ongoing performance management process. PerformancePoint Server 2007 utilizes the stability, security, and scalability of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence. This enables business users to interact with and continuously contribute to business planning, budgeting, and forecasting information using Microsoft Office Excel, a program your users are likely to be familiar with and find easy to use. Attend this session to get an overview of the Business Modeler component of PerformancePoint Server 2007.

Presenter: Lucy Smythe, Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation

For webcasts on other Microsoft products visit here

Best reading material of the day

Demo on Adaptive Planning’s budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analytic solution

Click here to fill a form before watching the demo.

Business Objects Insight Performance Management 2007 User Conference

Business Objects Performance Management User Conference to Spotlight Industry Best Practices, Innovative Products, and Customer Success

Business Objects, the world’s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced details for its annual performance management user conference, Business Objects Insight Performance Management 2007. The event, taking place March 11 – 14 at the Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando, Florida, will address the future of performance management and how companies can leverage Business Objects solutions to improve overall planning, budgeting, and reporting efforts. The conference will allow customers to update their product knowledge, network with others from the finance community, and meet Business Objects executives and technical experts.

General sessions and breakout meetings at Insight Performance Management 2007 will explore three main topic areas: cost and profitability, budgeting and reporting, and strategy and solutions. In addition, dynamic product demonstrations will highlight the latest in performance management technologies from Business Objects.

For Registration click here