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Colin White

I like the various blogs associated with my many hobbies and even those to do with work. I find them very useful and I was excited when the Business Intelligence Network invited me to write my very own blog. At last I now have somewhere to park all the various tidbits that I know are useful, but I am not sure what to do with. I am interested in a wide range of information technologies and so you might find my thoughts will bounce around a bit. I hope these thoughts will provoke some interesting discussions.

About the author >

Colin White is the founder of BI Research and president of DataBase Associates Inc. As an analyst, educator and writer, he is well known for his in-depth knowledge of data management, information integration, and business intelligence technologies and how they can be used for building the smart and agile business. With many years of IT experience, he has consulted for dozens of companies throughout the world and is a frequent speaker at leading IT events. Colin has written numerous articles and papers on deploying new and evolving information technologies for business benefit and is a regular contributor to several leading print- and web-based industry journals. For ten years he was the conference chair of the Shared Insights Portals, Content Management, and Collaboration conference. He was also the conference director of the DB/EXPO trade show and conference.

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BI Suites: Let the Battle Begin

This quarter is going to be a hectic one for BI announcements. Cognos announced its new Cognos 8 suite a few weeks ago and today Business Objects announced Business Objects XI Release 2. Next up will be Hyperion System 9. All three vendors are trying to provide one-stop shopping for business intelligence. The key distinguishing factors between vendors are going to be the level of integration between the various components of the suites and pricing.

Another key direction for these vendors is integration with SAP (who are getting ready a new release of SAP NetWeaver) and Microsoft Office. Again, the level of integration here will be an important factor.

In early November Microsoft will launch SQL Server 2005, which could do some significant damage to customer base of other BI vendors. Worthy of note here is the Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) 2005, which is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office. It offers a very competitive alternative to the scorecard and dashboard solutions of other leading BI vendors. It is also considerably cheaper. Both Panorama Software and ProClarity will be offering some interesting extensions to BSM.

All in all it's going to be an interesting to watch the vendors battle it out. Hopefully the customer will be the winner!


Posted October 3, 2005 7:07 PM
Permalink | 2 Comments |

2 Comments

Vipin Samar, Extensio Software | October 3, 2005 11:17 PM | Reply

I am a bit intrigued by your comment that a key direction for these vendors would be integration with SAP (netweaver) and Office. SAP and Microsoft are themselves integrating SAP stack with Office (project mendocino), which would most likely be much broader than just BI.

And as a customer, I would most likely stick with the Project Mendocino, unless these BI vendors offer me something that Mendocino cannot. Perhaps support for Office 2000 and later, or full flexibility, or support for non-SAP data sources. But on the other hand, if their solution requires a full blown DW, I wonder whether they will be forced to stick to their current customer base.

Fayu Zhang | October 7, 2005 11:40 AM | Reply

SQL Server 2005's comprehensive data mininig using OLE DB for DM is very interesting to watch as well.

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