Blog: William McKnight

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Should I go with proven technology or the best fit?

I was speaking with a sales associate in the BI vendor community recently. He had a sales experience where the client actually went with a technology that the client admitted was of a lesser fit and price/performance that his, but the comforts of selecting a bigger “name” vendor and how that name would look on the resume won out.

I call this the Resume Factor. Unlike the example above, the Resume Factor is usually subconscious and denied, but it comes into play when the person choosing the technology considers how the choice will have a positive impact on their resume.

Though I advocate that there are just a few reasonable business intelligence “frameworks” in the market to choose from today, some are newer than others and there is still serious movement happening as vendors joust to round out their complete BI set. From time to time, I'll review the frameworks here in the blog.

While the Resume factor can be consciously avoided, the real consideration is trying to determine what framework the product you are selecting will belong to, if you agree with it (i.e., philosophically, skill-set and system compatibility wise) and if that framework will be a winning framework.

Remember that today’s riskier vendor selection may be part of one of tomorrow’s frameworks, by virtue of acquisition or otherwise, that will lack needed market resources – and there you are, more marketable. There’s still a little room for this to happen, selectively, in the market.

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