Blog: Craig Schiff

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January 24, 2006

10 Core Performance Management Vendors

Every year around this time we hold our annual Beyond the Hype webcast - 'an unbiased look at BPM vendors and trends'. One eagerly anticipated aspect of the presentation is the naming of the 'core' vendors for the year. These are the vendors that we believe have the most comprehensive, capable, and proven solutions for performance management. The webcast took place on January 19th and this is the list of 10 that we revealed (in alphabetical order): Applix, Business Objects, Cartesis, Clarity, Cognos, Geac, Hyperion, Longview, OutlookSoft, SAS. To hear the reasons behind each one you can view the webcast replay. I would be interested in your opinion on the list and any suggested additions and deletions.

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January 15, 2006

Actuate Acquires performancesoft

Performancesoft (the former PBViews) has just been acquired by Actuate. Yet another BI vendor has seen the BPM (business performance management) light. Actuate is strong in enterprise financial reporting and has dabbled in other areas of BPM in the past, but this move clearly demonstrates a commitment to performance management. I think its a good move for both companies. Customers have demonstrated to us in the field as well as in our latest BPM Pulse survey that they prefer a vendor that offers both applications and BI tools. Actuate has primarily been a tools vendor and performancesoft, while focused on dashboards, has delivered performance dashboard applications, not just a raw tool. I'm surprised I haven't seen more coverage of this announcement, but I think it's newsworthy. You can read the details here.

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January 9, 2006

The State of the Industry - So Far

Our annual BPM Pulse survey is in full swing and we now have enough data to begin identifying some trends. This survey looks at plans, results, and satisfaction around business performance management, and its related BI components. By the way, its not too late to share your opinions and receive the full survey results (and perhaps win an iPod). The survey will remain open until the end of January. Now on to the early findings. Budgeting and Operational Analytics lead the pack, as they did in last year's survey, when it comes to the areas of BPM most companies are focused on. This was not unexpected. The next few findings however were surprising, and bode well for the industry.

Overall vendor satisfaction, which was somewhat disappointing last year, has improved significantly. In addition, when you delve into the details the vendor attribute with the highest score turns out to be 'price/value'. I find that to be truly amazing. In my experience no matter how happy people are with their software they usually complain that it's overpriced. Has the functionality finally caught up with the price, or are BPM vendors discounting significantly due to market pressures? The lowest rated area, as I would expect, is product documentation. Whether online or hardcopy users still struggle to find the answers they need. On the service provider side, according to the survey, the use of consulting is expanding from just basic implementation help to assistance with project/deployment management and requirements definition. There are many other interesting findings we'll share when the results are final. As we continue to receive more survey responses the results presented here may change. It's more likely however that while the percentages will change somewhat, the fundamental trends we now see will remain.

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