In 2007, the business intelligence (business intelligence, hereinafter referred to as BI) market, vendors had set off wave of mergers and acquisitions, in 2008 the soldiers turn to customers to choose will be the election. Currently, the industry's largest four firms have promised to customers: "If you want to meet the business needs of all the BI and data management package of basic facilities? We can do. Want more employees use BI? We still do it. "In short, every manufacturer to sell you their BI platform. The face of their various arguments, you really should be patient and listen, or plug your ears? First look at their own BI strategy, will help you make the right decision.
In the last year Within the past year, Oracle Corporation (Oracle, hereinafter referred to as Oracle) acquisition of Hyperion (Hyperion, hereinafter referred to as Hyperion), SAP software company, the company bought the Boao Jie (Business Objects, hereinafter referred to as Bo oje), IBM (IBM) is annexed Cognos Corporation. According to International Data Corporation (IDC) data, the value of 7 billion U.S. dollars of the BI tools market, including Microsoft (Microsoft, hereinafter referred to as Microsoft), including four BI vendors now account for half of the country, the market is expected to be 11 this year % growth.
Today, four giant is well-built their platform, providing customers across the enterprise-level BI software solutions, all user information associated with IT systems will be incorporated. Their commitment to the traditional BI tools (such as queries, reports and dashboards) and their other software products (including databases, middleware, enterprise applications and collaboration software, etc.) to better integrate. At the same time, they said they will continue to develop and support software with rival manufacturers good BI tool compatible. However, you'd better believe it. Because the vendor for the project development team in the allocation of time and funds would certainly have a choice, and no doubt their product will be the first place.
Oracle, IBM and Microsoft will be encouraging you in the procurement database and BI tools have to choose their products, but you have to be careful, do not rely too much with one supplier. MicroStrategy's chief executive officer (CEO) 杩堝厠灏斿鍕?(Michael Saylor), said: "The Chief Information Officer (CIO) are not willing to be a single vendor's product tangled arms and legs, they are more willing to choose those who left them free space companies. "The company is the only remaining one of several independent BI vendors, Seiler insisted that the" independent BI platform is the most reliable. "
However, the use of a group of major software or database vendor to build a BI platform for the enterprise is also good. These companies can help you to cover a wide range of technology needs spliced together in the establishment of company-wide BI platforms, while minimizing the number of cooperative firms.
In the assessment of the manufacturer, you have to look at their own BI platform on the ideal of what standard. If you think that all depends on the database, then Oracle or IBM might be the best choice. If you want users to have more methods of the company's trading system to analyze the data, then take a look at SAP's products. If the company were used in most BI is chief financial officer (CFO), then the Oracle and SAP are the last choice. If you're more concerned about data quality and data management, and that this is IBM's expertise. If you want to spread in the BI software company, that Microsoft may be more whatever you want.
Select the four BI vendors, whether independent or manufacturer's products, enterprises should adopt a standardized BI tools platform. Gartner Inc. (Gartner, hereinafter referred to Gartner) analyst 姣斿皵闇嶆柉鐗规浖 (Bill Hostmann) said: "In a lot of software with enterprise BI capabilities, which creates a BI chaotic situation." Software used in different a different data model and vocabulary, the final report generated different style, which is a big trouble for managers. Horstman said: "Thus, in order to have the whole enterprise is almost impossible to grasp."
Four companies have shown interest in the BI tools into more types of users, but to do this, Oracle, IBM and SAP have to cut prices, or they can not with open-source vendors such as Pentaho Corporation and Google Docs spreadsheets The increased capabilities to compete with entry-level tool. IBM, Oracle and SAP's BI tools are often the three companies in the USD 1,000 / user above. And Microsoft's pricing model is to allow the cost per user increases with the reduction in the number of users, Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007's base price is 20,000 U.S. dollars, and then each additional user charges 195 U.S. dollars.
To develop a cover database, enterprise applications and BI platform for other systems, first of all you have to choose a vendor to consider. To help you make the right decision, let us learn more about the following about their respective technologies and development strategies.
IBM: Data-based
IBM's view, BI data is better left to experts, issues to resolve. IBM with its powerful database and middleware based on the acquisition by a large number of cleaning the data obtained, management and integration software. This year in January, IBM astronomical 49 billion won to provide data analysis tools to read and Cognos Inc., the acquisition of its peak.
IBM on demand for costly information services (Information On Demand, hereinafter referred to as IOD) strategy is concerned, Cognos is a critical link. IOD was two years ago by the Software Engineering Steve Mills, senior vice president (Steve Mills), launched by the general manager of information management software Anbuyege Royal (Ambuj Goyal) lead the implementation. Prior to the acquisition of Cognos, IBM has previously acquired several companies were integrated into the IOD strategy, including the cost of 1.1 billion acquisition of Ascential's data integration software vendor companies, and 1.6 billion acquisition of content management vendor FileNet. IBM's OmniFind search product developed their own IOD strategy is an important part.
IBM is committed to helping customers build enterprise-wide information architecture to provide application from the desktop to the data repository within the package solution. However, customers purchase BI tools in general focus on when considering the functions of the software, not the BI tools and data management system compatible with the degree. Therefore, IBM's approach will force IT departments to take into account not only the user wishes to receive from the BI tool what function, but also to consider whether the BI tools and search, content management, master data management, data cleansing, data warehouse (data warehouse) and effective data integration system compatible to form a coherent whole.
Gartner's Horstman that, IBM's strategy is focused grasp on the vast majority of companies will depend on the eventual deployment of BI. He said: "Sometimes the arguments would break out within the enterprise: the deployment of BI systems, whether the application should be centered or to the infrastructure-centric."
IBM taking infrastructure strategy, also trying to persuade customers to: BI products to get a professional, do not go to SAP and other application software vendors. Former CEO of Cognos Inc., Cognos, IBM is currently head of the Luobuashi (Rob Ashe), said application software manufacturers are experts in automated processes and transactions, they do not line data processing.
IBM ambitious strategy in the information architecture. In general, enterprise IT and business application software companies rarely buy from a BI tool, which IBM is very favorable terms. In addition, some customers do not like to be a dead bolt, a vendor, they want to use multiple vendors for transaction processing software, Ash that this is IBM's advantage, because IBM has always been a "vendor neutral", it does not tend to any enterprise application.
Ash said that in the coming year, Cognos technology with IBM's capabilities and products more closely together. IBM's plan is to make full use of their own in natural language processing (natural language processing) aspects of the research results to develop for the analysis of e-mail and customer records and other unstructured data, new products and features. In addition, IBM is also working to link the Cognos and Lotus Notes to create more collaboration of BI functionality. Ash said: "We are trying to explore ways to collaborate in an environment where these functions are connected in series, in which we already have a lot of new ideas."
Cognos reporting and analysis tools in marketing is second only to Boao Jie's second-largest maker (according to IDC data, Cognos 2006 sales of 622 million U.S. dollars), which specialized in BI vendors is a very popular welcome to the platform. November 2005, the company announced Cognos 8, which is its first to market integrated BI suite. Compared with the previous version, the version in the integration and scalability are greatly improved. Canadian telecommunications operator Telus's director of business reform Ximenggelan Benton (Simon Gratton), believes that compatibility with older versions of Cognos products is not strong, the lack of a unified style and interface. The annual sales of 90 billion telecommunications company previously used a wide variety of BI tools, and now has the unified company-wide use of the Cognos 8 software for analysis from SAP Business Warehouse (Business Warehouse), IBM DB2 database and Oracle database data. Golan Patton said the new version of Cognos 8 gives the impression that "it is really trying to deal with the enterprise's overall information needs," the software through dashboards and scorecards (SCORecard) for different positions on the staff customize a personalized interface.
But Dayton said the Golan, now he can not say the marriage of Cognos and IBM will certainly benefit the company as TELUS, but he does see the possibility of potential, especially in the Cognos and IBM's middleware and data integration tools (federation tools) used in combination, the data easier to analyze.
This sounds like an information management framework has started sprouting up. If you think IBM will be different levels of data management concept of reasonable series up, especially if you have purchased IBM's database, middleware, tools, or Cognos Inc., IBM's BI platform that is suitable for you may be.
SAP: trade data is the key
SAP on various occasions have Fangchuhualai, that certainly will this year to 6.8 billion U.S. dollars in January to the Boao Jie acquisition as an autonomous sector companies to operate. SAP to take this approach to have a good reason: Boao Jie 60% of customers are using Oracle applications or database. SAP insists that the company compared to other advantages of the three major manufacturers, is that it is not a relational database products (relational database) and multi-dimensional analysis cubes (OLAP Cubes), while the rival portfolio of some of the tools only with its own database combination.
However, SAP business unit to operate independently to Boao Jie promises not fully realized, because the SAP found that Boao Jie tools and integrate their ERP systems will be able to play a great power. The next step will focus on SAP Operational BI (operational BI), which will allow customers low latency or without delay under the conditions of the erp SAP applications to analyze the data and may even be completely bypass the direct analysis of the data warehouse data. As a result, the user can make a timely response to the results immediately on the ERP workflow software to adjust accordingly.
Boao Jie's former CEO, current head of SAP Boao Jie sector 绾︾堪鏂界摝鍏?(John Schwarz), said: "Bo Aojie bond-like role play. We can offer corporate customers business operation and process optimization detailed information on all aspects. "
Operational BI can count is the current cutting-edge areas, SAP now have not come up with a long-term technology development plan. However, the company is technically in the pace of development has not stopped. For example, the company launched two years ago BI accelerator (BI Accelerator), Intel-based tools that use in-memory processing (in-memory processing), to speed up the SAP business data warehouse query performance. Forrester Research Inc. (Forrester Research) analyst Jim Bryant Cornelius (Jim Kobielus) is expected, SAP and other BI vendors will put more energy into complex event processing system (complex event processing) of development, the allow users to access data from the source middleware directly, without first moving the data to the data warehouse.
SAP said that its BI strategy focused on team work rather than personal use, it is committed to the social network and wiki (Wiki) in the deployment of BI tools. But this argument is more a concept than reality, because the majority of SAP BI products are targeted at enterprise level executives. This part of the business has been a lot of profit contribution for the SAP.
SAP in 2006, the compliance software vendors Weier Sa (Virsa) company in the bag and the following year acquired performance management software vendor Outlooksoft companies and Pilotsoft company. These software vendors together with some other software to form a new performance optimization applications (Performance Optimization Applications) unit, the executive vice president of Road gemeh in (Doug Merritt) unified leadership. Merry said that this is the SAP system, rapid development of a class of software. The largest customer of such software is the CFO and its affiliated companies, because they not only strenuous thoughts on the performance tracking, and also had to Sarbanes - Oxley Act (Sarbanes-Oxley) and other laws and regulations dealing with.
Business Intelligence Platform is another newly formed business unit, the executive vice president of 鐜涘悏甯冮浄浜?(Marge Breya) leadership. It includes all of the reports, analysis, dashboards and scorecards and other BI software, coupled with data cleaning, integration and management as the central task of the SAP data management software. Merry and Brea have to report to Schwartz.
Coca-Cola Company (Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola hereinafter) is used by SAP's ERP system, which will be adopted in a few years ago SAP's business warehouse to store financial planning information. The beginning, the system performance there are some problems, but after installing the BI accelerator has been significantly improved. Coca-Cola's global IT director Jeff Owen (Jeff Irwin) said: "We co-operation with SAP has not been easy, but SAP is indeed a trusted partner. Their staff and that we stay for a few weeks at the scene to help We debug the system. "through the efforts, SAP successfully Coca-Cola to improve data warehouse performance by 65%. Owen believes that the acquisition Outlooksoft, and others after the Boao Jie, SAP will do much in the front-end process.
SAP has acquired the need to rationalize and simplify the many products. BPM Partners Inc. analyst 绾︾堪绉戝皵浼壒 (John Colbert), said Bo Aojie and SAP add up to at least a total of six kinds of planning software, three kinds of financial data integration software, as well as various types of scorecards and data visualization tool. Repeated for many products feature long-term support is obviously not realistic, SAP in the road ahead must make a choice.
SAP has identified a number of upcoming phase-out of applications, including business profit management (Business Profitability Management) program, SEM BSC scorecard software, and the Boao Jie performance management software project manager. Boao Jie development projects of several planning tools will also be stopped. In the BI tools, SAP's OLAP analysis tools BEx Web Analyzer and Excel Analyzer will Boao Jie's Voyager OLAP analysis tools integrated into a code-named Pioneer (Pioneer) of new products. Boao Jie's Data Quality will also work with SAP's master data management software into a new data and quality management products. Analysts expect the companies in other areas if there is duplication of functions that will guide customers Boao Jie SAP products as the major BI tool suite, and will gradually make its Netweaver BI suite fade away.
Colbert that, SAP acquisition of Boao Jie will bring benefits to its customers, because then it will be the industry's top developers of BI tools and the company's ERP system integrate more closely together. However, SAP's decision to phase out some of the software may offend some of Boao Jie customers. On integration issues, Colbert on the CIO who's advice is, be sure to let SAP and Boao Jie clearly demonstrate how their products will meet the company's unique needs, "Do not be marketing their stereotyped set of words and product presentations to fooled. "
If you are looking for better ways of using transaction data, SAP may be able to meet your requirements. The company uses a two-pronged approach: on the one hand it is hard to integrate BI closer to their core ERP system; the other hand it continues to expand Boao Jie cross-platform software sales. Of course, in most cases, SAP will definitely give priority to its own ERP system.
Oracle: Strategies to be improved
In the BI tools and enterprise application integration, Oracle, SAP even than the first step. As early as 2005, Oracle acquired Siebel Systems on (Siebel Systems, hereinafter referred to as Siebel), followed by the Siebel Analytics software was renamed as Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition), use it as the company's flagship BI products.
Last year, Oracle spent 3.3 billion U.S. dollars to buy Hyperion, enhanced performance management software capabilities. Taking into account the many companies that use Oracle databases, and Siebel application users is relatively small, so in the "Information Week," the U.S. version of last year's survey, readers voted top Oracle BI vendors is not surprising the.
Currently, Oracle is planning to buy 8.5 billion BEA Systems (BEA Systems), if this is successful, the company's BI strategy that will greatly benefit by its. Although not a BI vendor BEA Systems Inc., but a middleware vendor, but to be in the trading system in real-time BI, middleware is essential. Bryant Cornelius Forrester forecasts, BEA Systems will become Oracle's Complex Event Processing cornerstone.
Oracle's senior vice president of enterprise performance management 绾︾堪绉戞櫘鍏?(John Kopcke) in an e-mail infrastructure on Oracle's BI strategy been described, and BEA Systems acquisition is in line with this strategy seems to content . Kopke said that apart from the database and middleware, Oracle's products are business activity monitoring, identity management, master data management, content management, etc., some products from the company over the past few years, dozens of acquisitions.
Oracle intends to acquire all of each application support, as long as there are customers to use the program. This is a very good gesture, but this way will the company BI Developer work distribution difficult. Forrester analyst 椴嶉噷鏂焹闊?Gilson (Boris Evelson) said: "Oracle has more than 20 kinds of BI products, to a reasonable allocation of development resources will is a very difficult matter."
Acquisition of Hyperion over the past year, Oracle has not made it clear which products will serve as a strategic development focus, which is to provide necessary maintenance and support. Oracle said the company's executives BI department busy, even if an appointment weeks in advance also can not accept our magazine interview, and finally we can only do so by e-mail and Kopke some exchanges.
Kopke on Oracle's BI strategy on a number of familiar topics, such as autonomy, ease of use and integration and so on. Oracle is the biggest question people have is almost like once every month the company acquired, how to coordinate a variety of code library? Kopke said that all of the BI and performance management applications, Oracle Fusion by the middle of pieces of tissue (Oracle Fusion__ middleware organization) focus on the development, strictly follow the company's "hot swap" (hot-pluggable) strategy to work with a variety of databases and enterprise applications compatible. Evelson that Kopke, then too mildly. He pointed out that even with the Oracle Hyperion product integration has not been completed.
Kopke also revealed that Oracle hopes in the next year, new products enable customers to "understand the products and services their true profitability." Oracle is very likely that those who can help companies identify the most valuable customers of software as a selling point, because in today's economic situation, struggling retailers, banks and other companies are all trying to squeeze as much as possible from the customer's hands more profits. However, to achieve this goal, Oracle in the end is based on existing product expand, or re-search for the next takeover target, Kopke did not indicate his position.
All along, Oracle seemed happy as a multi-brand the software company there. However, now it may have to reconsider that strategy was, 鍥犱负 IBM and SAP 宸茬粡 Yongyou the most successful pure BI 鍘傚晢, while Microsoft's BI Celue 涔?made significant progress, not only in the recent release of PerformancePoint Server 2007, Erju market share rapidly. Most analysts will be Microsoft's success due to its organic growth strategy, which Oracle acquired piecemeal approach in stark contrast.
Oracle provides a strategy to establish enterprise-wide BI platform products for all components, including the powerful database, data warehouse, data management software, middleware and BI tools. However, if you prefer to adopt Oracle's BI strategy, you also need to figure out the following questions: What products are planned to the ongoing development of Oracle enhanced? Which products can be reluctant to support and maintenance? Oracle BI Enterprise Edition and Hyperion EPM when these two flagship products to achieve full integration? in addressing these questions, Oracle's BI strategy should be improved.
Microsoft: Expand the scope of BI users
Microsoft, the king of one of the leaders in BI. Among the four BI vendors, upstart company is likely to come from behind.
Microsoft in the BI market, as the years of supporting roles, finally a breakthrough. Last year in May, the company held the first BI Conference, attracted a total of 2,600 celebrities attending. In September, Microsoft issued the PerformancePoint Server 2007, which ended the previous fragmented BI strategy. The software company acquired from ProClarity advanced visualization and analysis techniques, the integration of Microsoft's various products, including Business Scorecard Manager (Scorecard Manager), Excel and the new planning, budgeting and forecasting application procedures. In February of this year, Gartner in a report that will be Microsoft's BI platform as a leader, said it invested in the product, pricing, market response and customer experience in the field of applications has exceeded Cognos and IBM, SAP, Boao Jie. IDC data show that Microsoft's BI revenue in 2005 increased by 25%; increase in 2006 is up 28% of their income jumped to 480 million U.S. dollars, growing faster than any other BI vendor.
Microsoft's goal is to use end-user of the familiar Office software, will bring different types of BI staff. "Everyone's BI" is a noble idea, but this way for advanced users and large enterprise customers probably would not buy it up.
The weakness of a Microsoft product is the data organization and management. In this context, Microsoft's product in size and function can not be compared with competitors. However, this can be improved. To compensate for this shortage, Microsoft acquired in June last year, a small master data management software vendor Stratature company. The company's software can create a single location, to update, maintain and analyze all levels of the specific types of data such as customer and product data.
Office Platform BI general manager, Microsoft distinguished software engineer Bill Baker (Bill Baker) said that while Microsoft's BI tools and IBM's DB2, Oracle and other database with the use, but it is still the cornerstone of SQL Server database. Baker believes that a few months be widely released SQL Server 2008 will further promote the development of Microsoft's BI, because the new version of the performance and integration with the Office of the large degree of upgrading. Microsoft also plans to improve the management and monitoring of large data warehouse capabilities.
However, BI do not think the industry some of the pioneers in the BI market, Microsoft will spend too much energy. For example, MicroStrategy's CEO Seiler on that, BI developers often meet with Oracle or DB2 database, rather than SQL Server, at least in large companies are so.
Microsoft's core product is PerformancePoint BI suite, which includes the company acquired from ProClarity technology, it provides a component-based approach to create customized BI applications. Microsoft PerformancePoint and Excel, and SharePoint will also be collaboration software bundle, which can create the popularity of the BI platform.
Baker said the scorecard such as user-friendly procedures to attract more staff, and facilitate the work for them; while at the same time, the traditional lengthy statements toward its doom. He said: "People want to see too many reports. Just started one or two they might also took aim at the 12, then was thrown into the rubbish bin directly up." Microsoft recognizes that it must strengthen metadata management (metadata management) capacity and corresponding investment has been carried out, but Baker did not disclose any details.
Microsoft's BI strategy, Excel has been placed on a very important position, the move is wise? Excel really has a huge user base, but it is blunt defects are often criticized. However, in BI strategy, Excel may not be a problem. Energizer Inc. (Energizer), CIO Randy Benz (Randy Benz), said: "Excel has never been a problem, the real problem is integration of data from Excel." Energizer's choice of Microsoft's BI platform, is currently PerformancePoint module to integrate the use of data from various sources so that users can use Excel for data analysis.
Microsoft's tactics worked in the Energizer company. In this battery manufacturers, the current total of 1,300 employees use BI tools, Energizer company also hopes to further promote the platform. Sales, logistics, supply chain management, marketing, finance and other departments of the staff can use PerformancePoint to analyze the retailers, while retailers can use scorecards procedures to assess the company's delivery efficiency.
Benz said that the budget analysts and executives for the design of the BI tools can not do this. BI tools from other vendors to meet specific user requirements design, expensive, difficult to promote to the general staff. Benz said: "Over time, some of the BI and Excel functionality will become as common. We believe that we will allow each employee to spend BI tools."
For those who want to promote BI tools within companies, Microsoft's approach, of course appropriate. Whether the choice of Microsoft, depending on you to BI tools as collaborative desktop applications to view, or to use it as professional-grade tools. In addition, SQL Server's size and performance of Oracle and DB2 can ultimately achieve the standard, companies should also be carefully considered. But no matter how, in this full of opportunities, the rapid development of the BI industry, Microsoft is certainly not the post kept the people.
Recent planning
IBM:
Tightly integrated Cognos and Lotus Notes, to create a more collaborative BI. IBM labs using the natural language processing technology to develop more unstructured data retrieval and analysis capabilities.
SAP:
Operational BI helps ERP using real-time analysis of customer transaction data, and modify transactions under analysis.
Of Oracle:
BEA Systems Inc. middleware used to connect to BI tools, and transaction data. Profit management, development of new software features, or through acquisition to achieve this purpose.
Microsoft:
SQL Server 2008 be released. This version of the performance is better, more closely integrate with Office, ability to manage data warehouse has also been enhanced, it will consolidate Microsoft's position in the BI field.
IBM
鈼?Advantages
鈼?Cognos BI tools are widely used
鈼?has a powerful database platform
鈼?in data management, data integration and middleware professional with rich experience in the field
鈼?Disadvantages
鈼?to the information management center, in the purchase and management of BI must be open when the ideas, offbeat
鈼?As the launch of small business applications, Operational BI in the race may be lost to other manufacturers.
SAP
鈼?Advantages
鈼?BI tool in the acquisition of a leading manufacturer of Boao Jie allowed to adhere to the independent operation after
鈼?large for the use of SAP ERP customers more and better BI capabilities, including Operational BI, etc.
鈼?the CFO to provide powerful performance management products
鈼?Disadvantages
鈼?To maintain the Boao Jie autonomous operation, but also it is closely integrated with the SAP ERP system, is extremely difficult
鈼?other manufacturers will be further integration of BI tools and databases; the SAP database product companies do not own
Oracle
鈼?Advantages
鈼?has many BI tools and related products, including enterprise applications, databases, data warehousing, middleware, and data integration tools
鈼?CFO performance management tools currently the leading provider of
鈼?Oracle Fusion Middleware group centralized development model will be better integration of Oracle BI and performance management applications
鈼?Disadvantages
鈼?company after last year's acquisition of Hyperion BI platform has not yet come up with a clear development plan, the system shows signs of disorder
鈼?through several acquisitions have been more than 20 kinds of BI products, each product must be clear prospects for future development
Microsoft
鈼?Advantages
鈼?lowest cost per user
鈼?PerformancePoint and SharePoint is a collaborative enterprise-wide best combination of BI
鈼?SQL Server scalability and performance-enhancing
鈼?Disadvantages
鈼?game BI market over the years, giving a realistic impression of not
鈼?In the large-scale application of BI within the enterprise has limited experience (unless you also count as Excel is a BI tool)
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