Blog: Craig Schiff

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

September 18, 2006

Hyperion vs. OutlookSoft Lawsuit Settled

The patent infringement lawsuit brought by Hyperion against OutlookSoft almost two years ago has been settled. It appears that the verdict was in OutlookSoft's favor and there are no product changes to be made or penalties to be paid. The good news for customers is that the cloud hanging over both companies heads because of this (there was a countersuit as well) has been lifted. No longer having to worry about potential future legal fall out, these firms and their products can be evaluated based solely on their individual merits. With their legal issues behind them these vendors can focus on their marketplace competitors: Cognos, Microsoft, the ERP vendors and the BI vendors (as well as each other).

Share:

September 12, 2006

Business Objects to Acquire ALG Software

I just read this announcement and the first thought that comes to mind is: why? ALG is known for planning applications built around activity-based costing (ABC) methodologies. More recently vendors of this type of application have marketed it as 'profit optimization' or 'profitability management'. The reason is that ABC has gone in and out of favor, mainly because it requires the collection of detailed costing data that many companies find difficult to accomplish, although once you make the effort there is significant payback. ALG is a niche player in the business performance management (BPM)market dominated by the likes of Hyperion and Cognos. Business Objects entered this market with the acquisition of SRC Software last year. Combining SRCs performance applications with its own BI tools Business Objects had the opportunity to join the top ranks of BPM vendors. However, that hasn't quite happened.

Business Objects has focused its marketing efforts around its enterprise information management story (data quality, meta data management, data integration, etc.). These capabilities are essential to prep the data for BPM, but aren't BPM in and of themselves. The SRC applications which had been fairly successful in the marketplace towards the end of their independent life have virtually disappeared. I do believe that Business Objects is focused on selling them to existing customers, which is why they are not showing up in competes with the other BPM vendors. On a positive note the ALG acquisition does seem to reinforce their commitment to the performance management space, but it extends their capabilities in that space only in a minor way. Maybe they are getting ready to face the BPM leaders head on and see it as a differentiator. Of the largest BPM vendors only SAS has strong ABC functionality coupled with the rest of the core components of performance management. Cartesis partners with Acorn Systems for the same type of functionality. Our recent conversations with them indicate they are waiting to see the real demand for these capabilities before they make a larger investment in it. ALG does focus on a select group of verticals and this is compatible with both SRCs and Business Objects approach. For ALG this would appear to be a great deal. The BPM market has clearly shown a preference for larger vendors with more complete offerings and small independent BPM vendors are an endangered species. Its just not obvious to me how this will truly benefit Business Objects.

Share: