Blog: Claudia Imhoff

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January 31, 2006

The Best of the Best Joins the B-EYE-Network!

My friend and cohort for many years, Jean Schauer, has accepted the position of Editor-in-Chief with the B-EYE-Network. It just doesn't get any better than having her back in my professional life again. Jean was my editor at DM Review for many years and I was greatly saddened to read about her departure. I knew she would resurface again and that I would happily work with her wherever that was.

How wonderful that she decided to join the happy B-EYE-Network family. Jean is a superb editor, her good sense and solid ethics will reflect on all of us writers -- you can bet that she will make all of us look good!

Congratulations to Ron and Shawn for getting the best of the best. And thank you, Jean, for accepting their offer. I look forward to seeing your edits in my articles!

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January 26, 2006

Informatica Buys Similarity Systems

Ireland is about $55 million richer today after Informatica announced that it will buy Dublin-based Similarity Systems for that price tag. Similarity is a data quality software company who itself recently (July 2005) purchased Evoke software from CSI.

Yes, indeed -- it has been a busy year already for acquisitions. Consolidations seem to be the name of the game for many BI software companies. This has been the prediction for quite a while -- nice to see some predictions are actually pretty accurate.

Regarding the Informatica purchase, Sohaib Abbasi, chairman and CEO of Informatica says, “Data quality is ranked by our customers as one of their top challenges within their broader data integration projects, such as legacy migration, application consolidation and data hubs. Combining the innovative technology from Similarity Systems with PowerCenter, we will offer distinctive total data quality management to our customers as an integral part of the Informatica enterprise data integration platform.”

So I guess the question remains -- how will the last remaining independent data quality vendors respond to this news? They are running out of independent ETL vendors to partner with, seems like to me.

Your thoughts?

Yours in BI success.

Claudia

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January 23, 2006

Blackberry Usage in US - Denied?

Holy Cow! Those of you addicted to your crack -- er -- Blackberries -- look out! A possible shutdown of US service may be in the wings due to a major patent infringement ruling against Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of the Blackberry.

The US Supreme Court has refused a petition by RIM to review a federal appeals court ruling that upheld infringement charges by a little known patent-holding company -- NTP, Inc. This refusal means that a trial judge in Richmond, VA., could impose an injunction against RIM and block the usage of your Blackberry in the US.

Chief Justice John Roberts originally turned down a request by RIM on October 26 to stay the lower court's patent infringement ruling while the high court considered whether to hear the appeal. In seeking its appeal, RIM questioned whether it should be subject to the patent infringement ruling in the US Courts because it's main email switching facility is located outside the US (RIM is a Canadian company).

A little history may be useful here. The original fight began in 2001 when NTP sued RIM for infringement. Apparently the infringement is not at issue here. A jury in Richmond did determine that RIM had infringed on NTP's patents and awarded NTP a percentage of RIM's US BLackberry sales. The tally of damages -- at last count -- exceeded $200 million.

Since then, RIM and NTP had reached a tentative -- and eye-popping -- $450 million settlement in March of this year but the deal fell apart in June when the Virginia judge, James Spencer, disapproved of the settlement. Man, sure sounds like a pretty decent settlement to me for a "little-known patent-holding company"...

In briefs given to the trial judge in Virginia, RIM lawyers argued that the judge should remove the injunction for several reasons including an "exceptional public interest" in maintaining uninterrupted service ... Not being one of the millions of Blackberry users in the US, I don't have a lot to say about the effect the disruption will have. So, what do you say, Blackberry users? Will you go through withdrawal pains if your lifeline to the office is suddenly chopped off? I'd love to hear from you.

Yours in BI success,

Claudia

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January 18, 2006

Businesses Declare "ABC" - Anywhere But California

The readers of Chief Executive have voted on the best states to do business in and -- for the second year in a row -- California came in as worst in the nation. Look out Arnie -- your motorcycle accident was nothing compared to this...

The article's results came from 339 readers who responded to an email survey on the best and worst states in which to do business. Before I get to the best states, let's round out the bottom of the barrel:

1. Of the respondents, California received 227 votes for the worst state.
2. This was followed by a very distant New York state which received 142 votes for worst.
3. Massachusetts garnered third worst state.
4. Fourth place goes to Michigan.
5. Next came poor Louisiana. The article authors state that Louisiana got this "honor" not because it was necessarily one of the worst state to do business in but rather because of the impact of hurricane Katrina and the perfectly horrible recovery efforts. I guess we will have to see if Louisiana gets a low ranking next year too to see if it is the hurricane of something else.

Others in the bottom 10 were Oregon, Missouri. West Virginia, Vermont and New Jersey.

Why are these states considered the worst? According to the article, these states tend to over-regulate, will continue to lose jobs as more CEOs move their corporations and other economic activities to more "friendly" states. According to one reader, "The Northeast and Midwest continue to isolate themselves from the world's manufacturing. They will continue to lose manufacturing jobs.

Seems to me that a large part of these loses though could and probably should be attributed to outsourcing. So much of Massachusetts' and California's economy was dependent on high tech jobs and so many of those now reside in Bangalore...

But on to the best states to do business in. The story here is interesting. The voting was not nearly as dramatic. Here are the results:

1. The readers chose Texas once again as the best state with 124 votes. Over a hundred less than California got for worst...
2. Nevada was a somewhat distant second with 73 votes.
3. Third place for best state was my birth state -- North Carolina.
4. Next came Florida and...
5. Fifth best state goes to Georgia.

Other states in the top 10 "best" category included Colorado (my current home state), Arizona, Illinois, Indiana and Virginia.

So, why are these states considered the best for business? Over 20% of the respondents put work force quality at the top of the list, about 18% said that labor costs were the main reason, and 15% declared that low taxes were what made the states good for businesses.

On a side note of interest -- CEO confidence rose to 182.4 points in January, the highest since the magazine started polling its readership (October 2002). Seems like 2006 is off to a very good start. I certainly hope these indicators do portend a terrific year for all of us.

Yours in BI Success,

Claudia

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January 6, 2006

2005 - That was the year that was

I'm back from the holidays, somewhat refreshed, probably a couple pounds heavier (gotta get back to the exercise regiment), and looking forward to what 2006 will bring. Hopefully you also had a good holiday.

But before I completely leave 2005 to the history books, I thought it would be interesting to take one last look at what happened -- maybe even learn a thing or two from it. So -- here is my rendition of "That was the year that was"...

I could not list everything that happened last year -- there was just too much -- so here is a sampling. See how many of these you remember:

New acronyms:

MDM, CDI, EII, VODS, BIRT

Words of importance:

Katrina, Rita, service-oriented BI, next-gen BI suites, in-sourcing, performance management

New Product launches galore (just a sample here -- what a year of innovation!):

SQL Server 2005, Business Objects XI, Cognos 8.0, MicroStrategy 8, Hyperion 9, IBI's WebFOCUS 7, Informatica PowerCenter 8, Actuate 8 update, SPSS 14, SAS' revamped Enterprise Miner and Text Miner, HyperRoll 4.2, DataMirror Dynamic ODS, KALIDO 8 R2, Microsoft Maestro

And where was Oracle's long- awaited Warehouse Builder 10?

Acquisitions like crazy:

The prize for most spectacular purchase has to be a tie between Oracle and IBM. Oracle went on a rampage last year, snapping up first PeopleSoft which closed in June. Then Seibel's purchase was announced in September. In addition to these big ticket items, Oracle also acquired Retek, TimesTen, and ProfitLogic, and others.

IBM capped its voracious appetite with its $1.1 billion purchase of Ascential but still continued to buy like there was no tomorrow. For example, DWL and Bowstreet were bought to further round out IBM's BI and data integration offerings. IBM has definitely put a stake in the ground when it comes to BI and the integration of data.

Let's not forget that Business Objects (Infommersion, Medience, and SRC Software), Teradata (Decision POint Software), Hyperion (Razza), Cognos (Optima Analytical Solutions), Similarity Systems (Evoke), Embarcadero (Ambeo), and others added acquired IP to their tool belts.

And then there was the acquisition that wasn't -- Pitney Bowes' attempt at buying FirstLogic. Still scratching my head over that one.

New and sometimes confusing partnerships:

Microsoft with SAP (Mendicino), Business Objects with MySQL, Informatica with Composite, IBM with Google, Netezza with SPSS, Teradata with Seibel, IBM with SAS, Cognos Inc., SPSS Inc, and others, Informatica with Trillium (and a revamped partnership with FirstLogic), Unisys with Hyperion, Business Objects with Ipedo and Edgar Online, Teradata with i2, Cognos with Composite

Finally, technologies that had a big impact on our BI industry:

And the winners are: Data warehouse appliances. Yes, I have to say, I think these technologies have had a profound effect on BI. They have certainly shaken up the big boys in terms of their pricing, flexibility, performance, and the in-roads they made last year into the Fortune 500 customer space. Two years ago, no one had heard of Netezza or DATAllegro. Now, even they have competitors (think Calpont and Green Plum). Congratulations to these companies for truly impacting the BI space.

Unfortunately I don't have time to discuss the impact of open source on BI, the significant executive (CEOs on down) changes in many of our favorite BI vendors, the push toward a real time BI environment. Maybe other blogs this year...

Well, that's my take on 2005. It was a year of great upheaval, innovation, and changes. All leading to the conclusion that BI is undergoing a profound change. I look forward to 2006 with great anticipation -- Who will buy whom? What new acronyms will pop up? How will new technology change BI? I hope that 2006 leverages the innovation and interest that 2005 started. If it does, we will have a wild ride ahead of us.

Yours in BI success.

Claudia

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