Last week I spent most of my time at TDWI in San Diego getting caught up on the latest from vendors attending the show. Aside from a lot of information (most of which is under NDA, making the details I can share fairly vague!), I was impressed with the increasing focus on the mid-market companies - and a realistic one at that. Meaning that as vendors continue to target mid-market companies (generally those with revenues under 1B but with Teradata targeting companies from between 1B to 5B within their mid-market portfolio) there is an increased focus on identifying the unique requirements of these companies - whether this means differing IT infrastructures or the benefits of having a more agile environment based on corporate structure.

Aside from the larger vendors such as SAS with special pricing packages, SAP with their targeted solutions, and Information Builders with their natural ability to accommodate large numbers of users, smaller vendors and newer entrants are starting to see success with small and mid-sized organizations because of their various value propositions whether or not their initial intention was to target that market.  In addition to lower price points, many newer entrants base their solutions on making the whole process of deploying BI easier.  For instance, whether WhereScape's focus on automating the data warehousing process, or Birst with their SaaS model, many organizations are looking for alternatives to the traditional full-scale BI solutions.

This increased focus on the mid-market will actually benefit all organizations moving forward as organizations look for diverse ways to add value to their current BI infrastructure or alternatively start implementing BI solutions/components for the first time.