Hyperion Planning—System 9

Business Intelligence BI Software : Performance Management Application : Oracle Hyperion Planning—System 9 Software

view image
Hyperion Planning—System 9 (Planning) software is a centralized, Excel and Web-based planning, budgeting and forecasting solution that integrates financial and operational planning processes. Planning provides an in-depth look at business operations and its related impact on financials, by tightly integrating financial and operational planning models. With Planning you can meet your immediate financial planning needs while enabling a platform for future cross-functional expansion and automated process integration.

BENEFITS

• Ensure accuracy—Validate forecasts with integrated, best-in-class analytics
  Reduce budgeting time—Improve cycles by weeks or months
• Align the organization—Combine financial and operational planning in one system
• Address finance needs quickly—Meet immediate finance needs while enabling operations-specific budgeting processes
• Maximize modeling capabilities—Support advanced, power user modeling capabilities with nearly seamless Microsoft Excel integration
• Gain mass user acceptance—Appeal to a wider user community through a simplified Web interface
• Reduce implementation time—Add quick-to-implement, packaged functional planning modules

Source: http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-planning-system9.html

Hyperion Financial Management—System 9

Business Intelligence BI Software : Performance Management Application : Oracle Hyperion Financial Management—System 9

Hyperion Financial Management—System 9 (Financial Management) software is a comprehensive, Web-based financial systems software application that delivers global collection reporting and analysis in a single, highly scalable financial management software solution. Financial Management utilizes today's most advanced technology, yet is built to be owned and maintained by the enterprise's finance team.

BENEFITS

• Accelerate reporting cycles—Reduce closing cycles by days, deliver more timely results to internal and external stakeholders
• Improve confidence and compliance—Helps reduce the cost of compliance (as stipulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, BASEL II, and other regulatory requirements) and build a sustainable compliance framework
• Perform strategic analysis—Spend less time on processing and more time on value-added analysis
• Deliver a single truth—Provide a single version of the truth to support financial management and statutory reporting
• Easily integrate—Integrate not only with Hyperion products but also with your existing infrastructure

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-financial-management-system9.html

Hyperion Performance Management Applications

Business Intelligence Software : Hyperion Performance Management Applications

Oracle's Hyperion Performance Management Applications are a modular suite of integrated applications that support the entire financial management cycle of goal-setting, modeling, planning, monitoring, analysis, and reporting. This comprehensive suite drives profitable growth by delivering predictable results, increasing business velocity, improving confidence and enhancing compliance.

In addition, Hyperion Performance Management Applications leverage Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation and Tools to integrate data from multiple sources and provide dashboards, reporting, and analysis. The suite offers powerful, integrated reporting and analysis tools, including production reporting, graphical analysis, and a MS Office interface built for use by end-users. A common workspace, common security and metadata management enable a single point of maintenance for reduced cost of administration and ownership vs. non-integrated point solutions.

To learn more about our Enterprise Performance Management solution, take a look at the new EPM SolutionSpace.

HYPERION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRODUCTS
Hyperion Financial Management—System 9
Hyperion Planning—System 9
Hyperion Performance Scorecard—System 9
Hyperion Strategic Finance
Hyperion Capital Expense Planning
Hyperion Workforce Planning
Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management
Oracle Strategic Operational Planning

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-financial-performance-management.html

Oracle Marketing Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application Software : Oracle Marketing Analytics

Get Maximum Results from Your Marketing Investment
Oracle Marketing Analytics allows your organization to obtain maximum results from your marketing investments by providing your entire marketing team with a complete, up-to-the-minute picture of customer preferences, buying behavior, and profitability. Oracle Marketing Analytics helps you to develop closer, more valuable customer and prospect relationships and improve marketing effectiveness.

BENEFITS

• Marketing Planning—achieve better campaign response rates, profile customers for more effective event-based promotion, and allocate resources more effectively by identifying what drives campaign results
• Campaign Performance—track and measure campaign effectiveness in real time, understand factors that drive campaign results and lead conversion rates, and compare individual campaign results to target metrics
• Customer Insight—understand product affinity for targeted promotions, profile customers' buying behavior for more effective promotions, and gain better insight into segmentation characteristics

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/marketing-analytics.html

Oracle Contact Center Telephony Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application Software : Oracle Contact Center Telephony Analytics

Provide Better Customer Service While Keeping Costs Down
Oracle Contact Center Telephony Analytics helps companies run contact centers with more satisfied customers, lower operating costs, and higher revenue per customer. Oracle Contact Center Telephony Analytics provides organizations with powerful insight that enables them to analyze all aspects of contact center performance. The solution provides more than 72 reports in five interactive dashboards with hundreds of best-practice metrics, alerts, and key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling companies to take targeted action to improve employee productivity, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction.

BENEFITS

• Customer Service—Optimize performance across multiple service channels to achieve greater process efficiency and maximize service effectiveness and customer satisfaction
• Agent Performance—Increase service effectiveness while minimizing costs; optimize staffing levels for anticipated call volumes and service request types; and gain insight into how training, tenure, and rewards impact agent performance
• Service and Delivery Cost—Track and measure initial incident-to-issue resolution rates; measure service costs by customer, channel, and product type to reduce overall service costs; and maximize customer satisfaction
• Contact Center Sales—Increase revenue per agent; maximize cross-sell and up-sell rates; and maximize revenue performance across customer, product, service, and regions

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/contact-center-analytics.html

Oracle Service Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application Software : Oracle Service Analytics

Provide Better Customer Service While Keeping Costs Down
To compete more effectively, organizations are compelled to provide better customer service while keeping service costs low. Oracle Service Analytics provides a comprehensive customer service solution for your entire organization, with hundreds of key performance indicators and more than 102 reports delivered in eight interactive dashboards. This consolidated view of your customer service effectiveness leads to improved service levels while lowering service costs, and increased customer satisfaction that translates into higher revenue per customer.

BENEFITS

• Service Effectiveness—Monitor, analyze, and manage the service center based on key performance metrics such as service request aging and average resolution time, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing costs
• Employee Effectiveness—Understand Customer Service Rep (CSR) performance to enable improvements in employee productivity, effectiveness, training programs, and retention
• Customer Insight—Provide CSRs a more complete view of a customer?s account, potential value, and propensity to buy more products, enabling faster resolution of issues and increased cross-selling rates

Source: http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/service-analytics.html

Oracle Sales Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application Software : Oracle Sales Analytics

Dramatically Improve the Effectiveness of Your Sales People
Oracle Sales Analytics provides hundreds of key performance indicators and more than 130 reports in five customizable dashboards. These analytics solutions dramatically improve the effectiveness of your sales people by providing real-time, actionable insight into every sales opportunity at the point of customer contact. With more accurate sales forecasts and enhanced identification of potential problems and opportunities, Oracle Sales Analytics helps close business faster and increase overall sales revenue.

BENEFITS

• Analyze pipeline opportunities to determine actions required to meet sales targets
• Determine which products and customer segments generate the most revenue
• Understand which competitors are faced most often and how to win against them
• Identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/sales-analytics.html

Oracle Supply Chain Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application Software : Oracle Supply Chain Analytics

Better Manage the Complexities of Your Supply Chain
Manage the complexities of your organization's supply chain more effectively with Oracle Supply Chain Analytics. Gain up-to-the-minute insight into inventory, procurement and spend, sourcing, and supplier performance to better manage customer commitments while optimizing inventory and supplier spending. More than 150 prebuilt reports and three dashboards deliver comprehensive insight across your sales, logistics, procurement, manufacturing, and quality assurance departments.

BENEFITS

• Procurement and Spend—Gain detailed visibility into direct and indirect spending, and identify opportunities to consolidate spending and reduce costs
• Supplier Performance—Monitor price, delivery, and product quality to determine best - and worst - performing suppliers
• Inventory—Gain visibility into inventory activities to minimize unnecessary expenditures and optimize inventory to conserve working capital

Source: http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/supply-chain-analytics.html

Oracle Order Management and Fulfillment Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application Software : Oracle Order Management and Fulfillment Analytics

Monitor and Fine-Tune Your Entire Process—from Order to Cash
Oracle Order Management and Fulfillment Analytics enables companies to monitor the entire business process controls from Order to Cash, and allows for detailed operational and financial backlog analysis. It provides key information such as order status, order changes, and shipment tracking, as well as a comprehensive set of real-time analytics to analyze order-to-fulfillment performance. Oracle Order Management and Fulfillment Analytics also leverages trends in purchase patterns so companies can serve and cross-sell more successfully.

BENEFITS

• Business Performance— Improve revenue recognition with faster order to booking conversion and by eliminating bottlenecks in the order to cash cycle
• Billing—Enhance cash collections with a quicker "ship to invoice" cycle, by identifying slow-paying customers, and by reducing days sales outstanding (DSO)
• Order Fulfillment—Improve inventory management for products that consistently fall into backlog due to a lack of appropriate stock levels

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/order-management-fulfillment-analytics.html

Oracle HR Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application - Oracle HR Analytics

Improve Productivity, Manage Compensation and Improve RetentionOracle HR Analytics helps organizations improve overall workforce performance and managerial effectiveness while reducing costs. With numerous key performance indicators, more than 85 reports, and four dashboards, Oracle HR Analytics provides your human resources (HR) professionals and front-line managers with the tools to gain up-to-the-minute insight into productivity levels across your organization. The resulting benefits help reduce workforce costs, increase employee productivity, effectively manage employee compensation, improve retention, and reduce voluntary turnover.

BENEFITS

• Compensation—understand how compensation impacts performance, ensure compensation is equitable and consistent across roles, and align incentive compensation with objectives and company goals
• HR Performance—assess HR performance against recruitment and retention goals, monitor and improve employee productivity, and assess compensation competitiveness to attract top talent
• Retention—understand drivers of employee turnover, proactively identify top performers who are likely being recruited by competitors, and reduce recruiting and involuntary termination costs
• Workforce Profile and Compliance—reduce time and cost of compliance reporting, increase employee satisfaction and retention, and manage overall profile and background of workforce

Source: http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hr-analytics.html

Oracle Financial Analytics

Business Intelligence BI Application - Oracle Financial Analytics

Get Accurate, Timely, Transparent Reporting and Better ComplianceUnderstand and manage the key drivers of shareholder value and profitability. Oracle Financial Analytics helps front-line managers improve financial performance with complete, up-to-the-minute information on their department's expenses and revenue contributions. Hundreds of key performance indicators and more than 200 reports enable financial managers to improve cash flow, lower costs, and increase profitability while maintaining more accurate, timely, and transparent financial reporting that helps ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

BENEFITS

• Payables—Assess cash-management and monitor operational effectiveness of the payables department to ensure lowest transaction costs
• Receivables—Monitor DSOs and cash cycles to manage working capital, manage collections, and control receivables risk
• General Ledger—Manage financial performance across locations, customers, products, and territories, and receive real-time alerts on events that may impact financial condition
• Profitability—Identify most profitable customers, products, and channels, and understand profitability drivers across regions, divisions, and profit centers

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/financial-analytics.html

Oracle Business Intelligence BI Applications

Oracle Business Intelligence Applications

Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications are complete, prebuilt BI solutions that deliver intuitive, role-based intelligence for everyone in an organization—from front line employees to senior management—that enable better decisions, actions, and business processes. Based on best practices, these solutions enable organizations to gain greater insight and value from a range of data sources and applications including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and third party systems such as SAP.

Oracle BI Applications are built on the Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition, a comprehensive, innovative, and leading BI platform. This enables organizations to realize the value of a packaged BI Application, such as rapid deployment, lower TCO, and built-in best practices, while also being able to easily extend those solutions to meet their specific needs, or build completely custom BI applications?all on one common BI foundation.

ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS

Oracle Financial Analytics
Oracle HR Analytics
Oracle Order Management and Fulfillment Analytics
Oracle Supply Chain Analytics
Oracle Sales Analytics
Oracle Service Analytics
Oracle Contact Center Analytics
Oracle Marketing Analytics
Oracle Usage Accelerator Analytics for CRM

Source: http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/bi-applications.html

Hyperion Planning—System 9 (Planning) software

Hyperion Planning—System 9 (Planning) software is a centralized, Excel and Web-based planning, budgeting and forecasting solution that integrates financial and operational planning processes. Planning provides an in-depth look at business operations and its related impact on financials, by tightly integrating financial and operational planning models. With Planning you can meet your immediate financial planning needs while enabling a platform for future cross-functional expansion and automated process integration.

BENEFITS

• Ensure accuracy—Validate forecasts with integrated, best-in-class analytics
• Reduce budgeting time—Improve cycles by weeks or months
• Align the organization—Combine financial and operational planning in one system
• Address finance needs quickly—Meet immediate finance needs while enabling operations-specific budgeting processes
• Maximize modeling capabilities—Support advanced, power user modeling capabilities with nearly seamless Microsoft Excel integration
• Gain mass user acceptance—Appeal to a wider user community through a simplified Web interface
• Reduce implementation time—Add quick-to-implement, packaged functional planning modules

Source: http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-planning-system9.html

James Kobielus - Business Intelligence Market Trends 2008

James Kobielus

Principal analyst of data management at Washington, D.C.-based Current Analysis.

• BI is quickly becoming SOA's crown jewel. The past year has seen a rash of headline-grabbing mergers and acquisitions in the BI arena. What's driving this recent industry consolidation -- which is sure to continue in 2008 --is growing vendor recognition that SOA suites cannot be considered feature-complete unless they incorporate a comprehensive range of BI features.
• BI is evolving into tailored business analytics. Performance management (PM) is rapidly becoming a key competitive front in the BI wars. Without a doubt, we'll see further verticalization of product and service offerings by PM vendors in 2008, which will provide a necessary hedge against the inevitable creep of commoditization into such horizontal analytics segments as financial, human resources, sales and marketing, and supply chain management.
• BI going truly real-time through complex event processing. Complex event processing (CEP) promises business agility through continuous correlation and visualization of multiple event-streams. However, CEP has heretofore been conspicuously missing from the mainstream BI arena. That will change in 2008, as most leading BI vendors start to partner with CEP pure-plays, or acquire them outright, in order to strengthen their support for real-time event-driven applications.
• BI tools will be increasingly bundled with data warehouse appliances. More and more data warehouse vendors will pre-integrate BI solutions -- their own and/or those of their partners -- into appliances. Increasingly, data warehouse/BI appliances will be tailored, packaged, and priced for many market segments and deployment scenarios.
• BI goes collaborative. In 2008 and beyond, we expect to see the BI, collaboration, and knowledge management segments converge. Likewise, we expect to see such interactive Web 2.0 technologies as AJAX, blogs, wikis, and social networking revolutionize the BI experience.

Source: For more information, please visit http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid91_gci1286652,00.html

Wayne Eckerson and Cindi Howson - Business Intelligence Market Trends 2008

Wayne Eckerson and Cindi Howson

Director of research for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), and founder of BIScorecard.com, respectively. The following is excerpted with permission from their recent coauthored report on business intelligence for TDWI.

• As BI becomes more pervasive and is deployed on an inter-enterprise basis, vendors who currently offer only per-user pricing will also offer per-server pricing. Many BI vendors have begun to shift their pricing, but start-ups are using simplified, all-you-can-use pricing as a competitive differentiator.
• Near-real-time dashboards will be in demand. Users want fresher data faster to gain insight into core operations and business processes and make faster, better decisions. This movement toward operational BI puts a premium on BI and data warehouse tools that capture and deliver data in near-real time. This opens up a whole new range of applications to BI and gives further momentum to dashboards as a primary vehicle for delivering information to an undertapped segment of users.
• Event-driven analytic platforms come of age, as there are many analytic applications that require real-time monitoring and process execution. To date, organizations have custom-built these applications, but there is an emerging class of tools, event-driven analytic platforms, that capture business events in real time off messaging backbones, filter, calculate, and aggregate events, apply rules, and trigger alerts, queries, updates, or other actions when predefined thresholds have been exceeded.
• System and usage monitoring will take precedence. Monitoring capabilities, currently lacking in most BI platforms, will reach show-stopper status as the number of BI users in any given deployment escalates, and as BI becomes mission critical. IT will rely on niche vendors (such as Teleran and Appfluent) that currently provide better monitoring capabili¬ties than many BI vendors.
• Mission-critical infrastructures supporting BI solutions will become much more industrial strength in the next 12 months. A majority of enterprise BI customers will deploy BI solutions on clustered servers with failover and disaster recovery host sites. Many will also parallelize their ETL processes and load data warehouses in near-real time using "micro batches" or event-driven messaging feeds to overcome the limitations of shrinking batch windows, expanding data volumes, and 24x7 user access.

Source: http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid91_gci1286652,00.html

John Hagerty - Business Intelligence Market Trends 2008

John Hagerty - Vice president and research fellow at Boston-based advisory firm AMR Research.

The year that was ...
Check out last year's expert BI predictions and see if they were on the mark
Check out the business intelligence All-In-One-Guide
Listen to this podcast to for BI-related career advice

• Analytic applications will significantly increase in prominence. Historically, most of the attention in this market sector has focused on BI tools. Buyers increasingly demand information delivered to business users in the context of their role and job function within the organization. This will lead vendors to develop more and richer analytic applications either as standalone products or as dedicated parts of business process software.
• Recent mergers and acquisitions will further force the standardization issue. 2007 brought a sea change to BI and performance management (PM) markets, as Oracle bought Hyperion, SAP added Business Objects to the family, and IBM snagged Cognos. With power quickly moving into the hands of large application and platform providers, expect a flurry of activities that will resurrect the BI/PM standardization discussion as companies evaluate investments in strategic technology platforms.
• BI and PM will go pervasive. It's no longer an option to report and analyze metrics in isolation. Companies recognize the connections between operational performance and financial results, leading to an enterprise-wide as well as enterprise-deep plan of attack. But BI and PM also play important roles outside the four walls of the firm. We'll see the start of connecting the nodes in the extended value chain, applying analytics and intelligence from customers through suppliers.

Source: http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid91_gci1286652,00.html

William McKnight - Business intelligence market trends and expert forecasts for 2008

Business intelligence market trends and expert forecasts for 2008 By Jeff Kelly, News Editor

The business intelligence (BI) market underwent some major changes in 2007: A slew of big-time acquisitions altered the vendor landscape dramatically; Microsoft claimed it was "changing the economics" of BI; and one city police department even used BI to fight crime. Here, our experts make sense of all the recent BI market action and predict what 2008 holds so you can better plan for the New Year.

William McKnight
Senior vice president of information management at East Hanover, New Jersey-based consulting firm Conversion Services International.

• As organizations round out their technology stack, most will chiefly consider business intelligence (BI) offerings from one of the mega-vendors already in their shop, such as SAP, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. Each is approaching or already offers complete stacks not just for BI, but enterprise software as a whole. Expect to see a push by vendors to cross-sell their offerings with discounts and the lure of tool integration.
• Mastering master data in the operational environment will become a needed part of information management, starting in Fortune companies. The value proposition for MDM/CDI will become clearer as organizations begin using it to address problems with customers, products, parts, and other "lists" they struggle with having too many of and having too little data integrity with.
• Operational BI will continue to grow. Some of the most critical decisions are made in the operations of the business and need to be made as soon as possible. In some cases, this is programmatic change and in other cases it means facilitating the information flow to decision makers, and sometimes both.

Source: For more information, please visit http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid91_gci1286652,00.html

Hyperion Financial Management—System 9

Orcle Business Intelligence Software - Hyperion Financial Management—System 9
view imageHyperion Financial Management—System 9 (Financial Management) software is a comprehensive, Web-based financial systems software application that delivers global collection reporting and analysis in a single, highly scalable financial management software solution. Financial Management utilizes today's most advanced technology, yet is built to be owned and maintained by the enterprise's finance team.

BENEFITS

• Accelerate reporting cycles—Reduce closing cycles by days, deliver more timely results to internal and external stakeholders
• Improve confidence and compliance—Helps reduce the cost of compliance (as stipulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, BASEL II, and other regulatory requirements) and build a sustainable compliance framework
• Perform strategic analysis—Spend less time on processing and more time on value-added analysis
• Deliver a single truth—Provide a single version of the truth to support financial management and statutory reporting
• Easily integrate—Integrate not only with Hyperion products but also with your existing infrastructure

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-financial-management-system9.html

Hyperion Performance Management Applications

Oracle Business Intelligence Software - Hyperion Performance Management Applications

Hyperion Performance Management Applications are a modular suite of integrated applications that support the entire financial management cycle of goal-setting, modeling, planning, monitoring, analysis, and reporting. This comprehensive suite drives profitable growth by delivering predictable results, increasing business velocity, improving confidence and enhancing compliance.

In addition, Hyperion Performance Management Applications leverage Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation and Tools to integrate data from multiple sources and provide dashboards, reporting, and analysis. The suite offers powerful, integrated reporting and analysis tools, including production reporting, graphical analysis, and a MS Office interface built for use by end-users. A common workspace, common security and metadata management enable a single point of maintenance for reduced cost of administration and ownership vs. non-integrated point solutions.

HYPERION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRODUCTS

Hyperion Financial Management—System 9
Hyperion Planning—System 9
Hyperion Performance Scorecard—System 9
Hyperion Strategic Finance
Hyperion Capital Expense Planning
Hyperion Workforce Planning
Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management
Oracle Strategic Operational Planning

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-financial-performance-management.html

SAP to Acquire Business Objects in Friendly Takeover

Business Intelligence Software - SAP to Acquire Business Objects in Friendly Takeover

WALLDORF, Germany & PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) and Business Objects S.A. (Nasdaq:BOBJ) (Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 – BOB) today announced that the companies have reached an agreement that will bring together two of the information technology industry’s leaders, resulting in an unmatched offering for Business Users, enabling timely and accurate decision-making. Under the terms and conditions of the tender offer agreement, SAP will make a cash offer of € 42.00 per ordinary share and for American Depositary Shares (ADS) at the US$ equivalent based on the EUR/US$ exchange rate as of the settlement of the tender offers. The transaction volume taking into account the transaction costs will be slightly above €4.8 billion. The Business Objects board of directors has approved the tender offer agreement between the two companies and anticipates recommending the offer to its shareholders subject to fulfillment of certain regulatory requirements.

Together, SAP and Business Objects intend to offer high-value solutions for process- and business-oriented professionals. The solutions will be designed to enable companies to strengthen decision processes, increase customer value and create sustainable competitive advantage through real-time, multi-dimensional business intelligence. SAP and Business Objects believe that customers will gain significant business benefits through the combination of new, innovative offerings of enterprise-wide business intelligence solutions along with embedded analytics in transactional applications. Additionally, the joint partner ecosystems will be fueled by the industry’s most powerful business process platform providing customers with the best enterprise information management platform available for SAP and non-SAP environments.

SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software with more than 41,200 customers in more than 120 countries running SAP applications—from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite offerings for global organizations. A key component of SAP’s growth strategy is to significantly increase its revenues from new products including addressing the growing demands of Business Users.

“We are highly committed to the next generation of applications serving Business Users,” said Henning Kagermann, CEO of SAP AG. “The combination of SAP and Business Objects in their respective domains will benefit customers, prospects, partners, employees and shareholders. At SAP, we are excited about the prospect of having Business Objects join the SAP Group.”

“The acquisition of Business Objects is in keeping with SAP’s stated strategy to double our addressable market by 2010 as announced in 2005,” said Kagermann. “SAP will accelerate its growth in the Business User segment, while complementing the company’s successful organic growth strategy. With the delivery of the first business process platform; the rapid adoption of our enterprise SOA platform, SAP NetWeaver; and the successful launch of the first complete on-demand business solution for midsized companies, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP can now take the opportunity to focus on the industry’s next high-growth opportunity, by accelerating and enhancing our efforts for the Business User category,” Kagermann, said.

Headquartered in Paris, France Business Objects is widely recognized as the pioneer of the business intelligence (BI) software category. Today, Business Objects is the world’s leading BI software company with solutions spanning the information discovery and delivery, information management, analysis and performance management categories for more than 44,000 customers around the globe.

“Business Objects helps companies transform the way they work through the use of intelligent information,” said Bernard Liautaud, Chairman and Founder of Business Objects. “The combination of Business Objects and SAP means that we can truly amplify the reach of Business Intelligence – from the C-suite to Main Street. John Schwarz and I are excited to see the innovation and hard work of our employees and partners validated and soon extended by the portfolio, domain expertise and presence of SAP.”

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.businessobjects.com/news/press_release.asp?id=20071007_005046

Oracle Acquires Hyperion

Business Intelligence Software - Oracle and Hyperion

Oracle has acquired Hyperion, a leading provider of performance management software. The transaction extends Oracle's business intelligence capabilities to offer the most comprehensive system for enterprise performance management.

A year ago, Oracle significantly reoriented our business intelligence product suite, shifting our focus from offering a solution that works for Oracle-only environments towards offering a best-of-breed business intelligence product family that will work with heterogeneous information sources in an enterprise, both Oracle and non-Oracle. We introduced a new product family called Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. This integrated suite includes Business Intelligence Tools, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, and Oracle Data Integrator.

The acquisition of Hyperion extends our business intelligence product strategy. Customers are increasingly using performance management and business intelligence together. Hyperion provides best-in-class performance management software to over 12,000 customers worldwide, including 91 of the Fortune 100. Hyperion will add complementary products to Oracle's business intelligence offerings including a leading open enterprise planning system, financial consolidation products, and a powerful multi-source OLAP server. Coupled with Oracle's BI tools and pre-packaged analytic applications, the combination redefines business intelligence and performance management by providing the first integrated, end-to-end Enterprise Performance Management System that spans planning, consolidation, operational analytic applications, BI tools, reporting, and data integration, all on a unified BI platform.

Read the press release: Oracle Buys Hyperion
To learn more about Hyperion, visit www.hyperion.com
Support for Hyperion Products

Source: http://www.oracle.com/hyperion/index.html

IBM to Acquire Cognos to Accelerate Information on Demand Business Initiative

Business Intelligence Software - IBM to Acquire Cognos to Accelerate Information on Demand Business Initiative

ARMONK, N.Y. & OTTAWA, Ontario - 12 Nov 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cognos® (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN) today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Cognos, a publicly-held company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately $5 billion USD or $58 USD per share, with a net transaction value of $4.9 billion USD. The acquisition is subject to Cognos shareholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.

The acquisition of Cognos supports IBM's Information on Demand strategy, a cross-company initiative announced on February 16, 2006 that combines IBM's strength in information integration, content and data management and business consulting services to unlock the business value of information. Integrating Cognos, the 23rd IBM acquisition in support of its Information on Demand strategy, will enable new business insights to be delivered to a broader set of people across an organization, beyond the traditional users of business intelligence.

IBM said the acquisition fits squarely within both its acquisition strategy and capital allocation model, and that it will contribute to the achievement of the company’s objective for earnings-per-share growth through 2010.

“Customers are demanding complete solutions, not piece parts, to enable real-time decision making," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group. "IBM has been providing Business Intelligence solutions for decades. Our broad set of capabilities – from data warehousing to information integration and analytics – together with Cognos, position us well for the changing Business Intelligence and Performance Management industry. We chose Cognos because of its industry-leading technology that is based on open standards, which complements IBM's Service Oriented Architecture strategy.”

Together, IBM and Cognos will become the leading provider of technology and services for Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management, delivering the industry’s most complete, open standards-based platform with the broadest range of expertise to help companies expand the value of their information, optimize their business processes and maximize performance across their enterprises.

The acquisition of Cognos accelerates IBM’s global Information on Demand initiative to unlock the business value of information for our customers. IBM will provide broader reach for Cognos solutions across multiple industries and geographies with a more complete set of offerings, including consulting services, hardware, and other middleware software.

Cognos provides the only complete BI and performance management platform, fully integrated on an open-standards-based service oriented architecture (SOA), and has a strong history of supporting heterogeneous application environments, consistent with IBM’s approach. With Cognos, customers can turn data into actionable insight for coordinated, information-driven decision-making to improve overall performance. Cognos will also extend IBM’s reach further into the CFO office with powerful financial planning and consolidation capabilities.

“This is an exciting combination for our customers, partners, and employees. It provides us with the ability to expand our vision as the leading BI and Performance Management provider,” said Rob Ashe, president and chief executive officer, Cognos. “IBM is a perfect complement to our strategy, with minimal overlap in products, a broad range of technology synergies, and the resources, reach, and world-class services to accelerate this vision. Furthermore, this combination allows Cognos customers to leverage a broader set of solutions from IBM to advance their information management driven initiatives.”

Together, IBM and Cognos will expand IBM’s ability to provide customers with the right information they need when they need it, to optimize operational performance, and to quickly respond to changing market demands. The combination of IBM’s information management technology and Cognos will also help organizations discover new ways to use trusted information spread across their enterprises to identify new business opportunities and significantly reduce the expense and time required to address industry-specific business challenges.

Following completion of the acquisition, IBM intends to integrate Cognos as a group within IBM's Information Management Software division, focused on Business Intelligence and Performance Management. IBM also will appoint current Cognos President and CEO, Rob Ashe, to lead the group, reporting directly to General Manager, Ambuj Goyal.

Cognos has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide and serves more than 25,000 customers. IBM and Cognos have partnered for more than 15 years, with extensive technical integrations and eight pre-integrated joint solutions already supporting many joint customers, such as New York City Police Department, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Tennessee, Canadian Tire, MetLife, and Bayer UK.

Other strategic acquisitions in support of IBM’s Information on Demand initiative include Princeton Softech (data archiving and compliance), FileNet (enterprise content management), Ascential Software (information integration), DataMirror (changed data capture), SRD (entity analytics), Trigo (product information management), DWL (customer information management) and Alphablox (analytics).

About IBM
For more information about IBM’s Information on Demand strategy, go to: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/information-on-demand/. Additional details about the combination of IBM and Cognos are available at: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/info/cognos

About Cognos
For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at: http://www.cognos.com/

Source: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22572.wss

Business Intelligence Video

Actuage BI Products : Interactive Web Reporting - Key Features

Interactive Web Reporting - Key Features
Actuate offers Interactive Web Reporting for any report developer, any user, any data and any size project.

• Based on Open Source Technology
• One Design Across Skill-Matched Tools
• Many Deployment Alternatives

Based on Open Source Technology

The Collaborative Reporting Architecture draws its strength from Open Source. The Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project of Eclipse supplies the foundation technology within the Collaborative Reporting Architecture and its member products. Different report development products designed specifically for application developers, report developers, business analysts and business-users can share the same report design, allowing anyone to start the design process and anyone to complete it. Collaborative Reporting Architecture can be deployed and configured to address the needs of almost any type of reporting project.

Advantages of BIRT Open Source

• High Quality Software: BIRT technology advances in public forum drawing from the real-world experience of thousands of contributors.
• Abundant Development Resource: BIRT leverages a community of millions of Eclipse developers and users who are immediately familiar with the operation of the BIRT environments.
• Long Term Peace of Mind: Open Source ensures interoperability with future technology by supporting current and emerging Internet standards such as AJAX, XML and other Web 2.0 development styles.

One Design, Shared Across Skill-Matched Environments

Different report development products designed specifically for application developers, report developers, business analysts and business-users can share the same report design, allowing anyone to start the design process and anyone to complete it.

• Actuate BIRT Designer Professional: Enables professional application developers to build dynamic, interactive enterprise reports ready for deployment to end users and to create composite report design templates for BusinessReport Studio. This design environment includes a complete Eclipse IDE installation including a fully tested, commercially supported BIRT plug-in to provide maximum flexibility for engineers familiar with Eclipse.
• Actuate BIRT Designer: Enables report developers to build high-quality, interactive enterprise reports ready for direct deployment to users or to create composite report design templates for BusinessReports. The Actuate BIRT Designer is an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop report builder that offers the power of BIRT in a single, rich client package.
• BusinessReport Studio: Enables business analysts and power users to craft ad hoc web reports by using pre-defined BIRT Report templates reports and optional Information Objects. BusinessReport Studio is the ad hoc reporting centerpiece of the Collaborative Reporting Architecture.
• Interactive Viewing: Allows each report consumer to think beyond the current structure of the report and personalize it into his or her own perspective. AJAX-powered interactivity lets these users have the flexibility to modify and save report views, reducing the number of reports that need to be created. This flexibility rewards end-user initiative with fast results and the insight to drive corporate performance.

Collaborative Reporting is for Every Type of Reporting Deployment

Collaborative Reporting Architecture can be deployed and configured to address the needs of almost any type of reporting project.

• iPortal Workgroup Deployments: iPortal hosts Actuate BIRT, BusinessReport Studio and Interactive Viewing, and can be deployed independently for small workgroups or in conjunction with the Actuate iServer when enterprise caliber capabilities are required, including scale, access to Information Objects and multi-project support. JSR-168 portlets are also available to deploy content in standards-based portal environments.
• Embedded Java Reporting: iPortal, BIRT and BusinessReport can be embedded within larger Java applications to add on-demand and ad hoc reporting features to the application without creating a custom report architecture.
• iServer Enterprise Deployments: Enterprise reporting infrastructures rely on iServer to provide high scale, performance, reliability and security. iServer can also: supply Information Object metadata and data integration capabilities to reporting projects, schedule and manage report generation processes, scale to reach and support millions of users, host multiple Collaborative Reporting projects and provide corporate IT extensive capabilities such as archiving, logging management and integration interfaces.
• Actuate Information Objects: Enables data architects to leverage Actuate's Enterprise Information Integration (EII) - powered metadata to supply reusable data objects across the product line.

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.actuate.com/products/enterprise-reporting/interactive-web-reporting/key-features.asp

Actuate BI Products - Enterprise Reporting

Enterprise Reporting - Actuate Business Intelligence Products

Business Intelligence Gets Adopted When it is Delivered in an Application ExperienceActuate provides a complete set of products to meet the Business Reporting and analysis needs of any user in the organization, any partner and any customer - within the context of a business-specific application experience.

Featured DemoActuate 9 BusinessReports Watch this demo to learn more on Actuate's new ad-hoc web reporting environment View demo

People want Business Intelligence that supports the way they work today. They want relevant information delivered with the Enterprise Reporting and analysis functionality appropriate to their task. Successful Business Intelligence implementations deliver:

• A full line of BI and reporting tools accessible within a single interface
• On-demand Enterprise Reporting information delivered over the web in an intuitive portal
• An interface that adapts to the familiar look-and-feel of existing applications
• Limitless data presentation formats

Interactive Web Reports Reports developed, designed and personalized by everyone involved in reporting, from IT professionals and report developers to business analysts and end-users.

Brochure-Quality Reporting Meets the needs of even your most demanding user with precision formatting that remains consistent whether in print or online.

Spreadsheet Reporting Automatically generates Excel spreadsheets from enterprise data sources complete with formulas, formatting and cell-locking for compliance.

Business Analytics Full cube-based OLAP analytics with multi-dimensional modeling.

Dashboards Visualize operational indicators in real-time as they happen in order to proactively drive performance.

Scorecards Visualize performance against key metrics and goals within a specific time period to assess operational effectiveness and adjust plans for the future.

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.actuate.com/products/enterprise-reporting/index.asp

Actuate - Business Intelligence Solutions

Actuate - BI Solutions

Actuate offers a portfolio of Business Intelligence products to meet 100% of your Enterprise Reporting, Performance Management and Java Reporting needs. The Actuate product line assures that 100% of users—customers, partners and employees—get the information they need to drive prompt, effective action. Whether you wish to make better decisions, implement stronger customer relationships or manage to performance goals, Actuate provides a variety of intuitive, personalized and easy-to-use formats that present data integrated from all relevant sources. Our flexible deployment options and world class scalability support all of your projects, no matter how small or large.

Actuate Portfolio of ProductsLearn why Actuate can meet the requirements of any user, any data and any deployment.

Enterprise Reporting A complete suite of Enterprise Reporting products that provide interactive web reports, brochure-quality reporting, business analytics, spreadsheet reporting and ad-hoc query.

Performance Management Engage the entire organization in improving performance with visibility to the key metrics and day-to-day activities that drive performance.

Java Reporting Development API-driven, embeddable Java components for reporting and spreadsheet processes delivered within a Java application server or desktop application.

Data Integration Access data in multiple data warehouses, transactional applications, and custom legacy data sources. Efficiently deliver it to end users in meaningful ways while adhering to corporate standards.

Flexible Deployment Options A diverse set of deployment architectures to meet the reporting needs of a specific application, small workgroup or department, or large number of enterprise users, including customers and partners outside the firewall.

All Products View a complete index of Actuate's family of products.

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.actuate.com/products/index.asp

Tagetik - Business Intelligence Solutions

Tagetik Software Overview

Tagetik CPM is the first solution that unifies all Corporate Performance Management (CPM) processes.

Thanks to built-in processes that use a single database, Tagetik CPM unifies all application processes in one single solution:

• Budgeting and Forecasting
• Financial Planning
• Statutory Consolidation
• Management Reporting
• Profitability Analysis
• ABC Modeling

Built-in processes are composed of a set of functionalities and actions structured in a specific workflow framework. They can be easily configured and adapted for companies in any line of business, without the need for writing new code.

Why choose Tagetik CPM

• Unifies CPM processes in one single software solution
• Delivers faster process cycles
• Ensures rapid implementation
• Lowers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• Achieves greater transparency due to data accuracy
• Leverages existing infrastructure

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.tagetik.com/software/overview

BI Software - Spotfire

Spotfire - Business Intelligence Solutions

Spotfire has built a solid business as a guided, analytical application platform vendor. The technical strength of the platform comes from a combination of interactive visualization, in-memory-based analysis, and a wizard-based development environment built for analysts, not IT programmers. Spotfire has also been able to demonstrate knowledge of vertical domains like pharmaceuticals, energy and semiconductors to better understand the context of analyzing business problems. Its original DecisionSite product was primarily focused on the analysis of scientific data, but, with the release of DXP last year, Spotfire is branching into horizontal domains to analyze typical business subject areas such as sales, marketing and financial data.

This strategy has initially proven successful, as Spotfire has been able to sell large deals to multiple departments. Spotfire is positioned in the Niche Players quadrant because it does well in the analysis segment of the BI platform market. But it is rarely used for other BI platform capabilities such as reporting, dashboards, scorecards and BI metadata. Also, Spotfire's sales channel is much smaller than those of vendors in other quadrants. Its direct sales force is a reasonable size, but it has few partnerships with systems integrators, VARS and other channel partners.

Finally, Spotfire must find a way to sustain its technical differentiation, as other BI platform vendors improve their own interactive visualization and in-memory capabilities.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

BI Software - SAS Institute

SAS Institute - Business Intelligence Solutions

SAS offers the most comprehensive BI platform in the industry, with no other vendor in the Magic Quadrant matching its advanced analysis capabilities. Moreover, SAS consistently demonstrates strong customer support, vendor viability and vertical domain knowledge. SAS's large, globally distributed and BI-focused direct sales force has been selling Enterprise BI Server successfully to Global 500 corporations since early 2005. In August 2006, it launched a reseller initiative targeting midsize businesses. As a result of all these factors, SAS has the highest score for completeness of vision of all the competitors in the BI platform market. SAS's major hurdle in the BI platform market is the perception that it lacks usability and has strict licensing policies. Customer inquiries suggest that many of SAS's BI and analytics products, such as Enterprise Guide and Enterprise Miner, are sophisticated and require a great deal of training. As a result, they are not well suited for the broader user population. In response, SAS's more recent products, such as Web Report Studio and Forecast Server, use wizard-based graphical user interfaces to deliver more self-service capabilities. From a licensing perspective, customers do complain about SAS's strict licensing policies. However, the company has been more flexible with its Enterprise BI Server offering, which is priced comparably to other leading BI platforms.

To remain in the Leaders quadrant, SAS needs to continue winning deals outside its sweet spot of advanced analysis. This includes getting customers to standardize on SAS for enterprise reporting, dashboards, ad hoc query, OLAP, scorecards and, most importantly, BI metadata. SAS needs to remain price competitive with the other leading BI pure plays that are softening their pricing policies, due to competition from large enterprise application and infrastructure vendors.

Finally, SAS needs to execute on its vision to integrate its advanced analysis capabilities, along with its extensive data integration capabilities, into operational applications and performance management activities.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - SAP

SAP - BI Solutions

With almost 13,000 deployments, SAP has been remarkably successful in getting its customers to embrace NetWeaver BI. The stability and consistency of SAP's organization and product development plans contribute to its viability as a BI platform. SAP is also in a good position to make BI more pervasive by embedding analytical components within the NetWeaver business process platform. As a result, SAP has the highest score for ability to execute of all the competitors in the BI platform market.

However, almost all SAP BI deployments happen in heavy SAP R/3 and mySAP application environments. While most NetWeaver BI implementations import some non-SAP application data, SAP can point to only a couple of dozen large sites using NetWeaver BI without a dominant SAP application focus. To become a leader, SAP needs to demonstrate that it can succeed as a BI platform consistently in non-SAP application-centric environments. Its latest release, SAP NetWeaver 2004s, does improve its ease of use and its ability to query distributed data sources, but few customers have yet to use these capabilities in production. SAP's focus during the past 12 months has been mostly on the infrastructure side of BI.

With the availability of the Business Intelligence Accelerator (BIA) — an appliance-based performance booster and intelligent cache of the data warehouse platform — SAP has addressed regularly voiced concerns about the scalability and performance of the Business Information Warehouse (BW) platform, and has been innovative by being the first large BI platform vendor to embrace in-memory analysis.

Finally, SAP's BI front-end strategy still needs to demonstrate traction. Customer satisfaction will continue to be an issue unless SAP improves the flexibility of the NetWeaver BI infrastructure to make it more efficient for not only experienced developers, but also end users to customize, access and evolve their BI applications. SAP NetWeaver BI customers rely much more heavily on their internal IT organization than other BI platform vendors that have demonstrated more self-service BI implementations.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

BI Software Vendors - QlikTech

QlikTech - Business Intelligence Solutions

QlikTech executed very well in 2006, increasing its revenue by 80% and significantly expanding its customer base to over 5,400 organizations. Its technical advantages using an in-memory data model, automated data integration and a graphical analytical environment have attracted customers looking for both ease of use and highly scalable functionality.

Ironically, QlikTech — one of the smaller vendors evaluated in the Magic Quadrant — is able to show the most references, analyzing hundreds of millions of rows of data with good query performance. Beyond the performance capabilities, QlikTech has some unique architectural and contractual aspects. For example, by simultaneously "doing the inner and the outer join," QlikView makes it very easy for users to see both the query results and the non-query results. This functionality can be useful when performing analysis of the data, in particular when spotting outliers.

Also, QlikTech is the only vendor in the Magic Quadrant to provide a money-back guarantee, which takes some of the risk out of the vendor selection process. Given its size, QlikTech has a reasonably sized sales force that covers most of Europe and North America. For QlikTech to become a leader, it needs to show more examples of enterprisewide BI deployments where customers use QlikView as the system of record for BI metadata for all BI applications.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Panorama Software

Panorama Software - BI Solutions

Microsoft's acquisition of ProClarity — Panorama Software's most direct competitor — earlier in the year forced the company to dramatically alter its business strategy. Customers using Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services as an OLAP back end will now look first to ProClarity as an OLAP front end before considering Panorama Software's NovaView solution. In response, Panorama has been able to differentiate itself from ProClarity by having more references of larger customer deployments. Also, Panorama accelerated the release of the NovaView front end to an SAP NetWeaver BI back end.

Previously, NovaView only worked on the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services platform. Panorama leveraged its deep knowledge of Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) to query SAP InfoCubes, InfoQueries and the NetWeaver BI ODS. Moreover, it is one of the few pure-play BI platform vendors to front end SAP NetWeaver BI, without building an intermediate layer of metadata or moving the data out of SAP. This change showed strong market responsiveness. Panorama is now a front end for the two leading, and fastest growing, OLAP back ends in the market. Panorama also secured a strategic OEM partnership with Cartesis, a vendor of corporate performance management (CPM) software, which is also based on the Microsoft BI platform.

However, Panorama still needs to execute on its SAP vision by attracting a large number of SAP NetWeaver BI customers. To reach the Visionaries quadrant, Panorama needs to attract more customers that embrace NovaView as their core BI platform. Today, its customers see Panorama mainly as an OLAP front end to Analysis Services and NetWeaver BI. This is a risky position. While Panorama offers very good BI functionality, its overall growth will be limited, as both Microsoft and SAP improve their own front-end capabilities. Organizations that run both SAP NetWeaver BI and Microsoft Analysis Services should consider NovaView to provide a consistent front end that works simultaneously on both platforms.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

BI Software Vendors - Oracle

Oracle

Oracle's acquisitions have given the company a large, heterogeneous applications and infrastructure installed base. These customers need an integrated way to access, analyze and deliver information and insight from multiple business applications. While Oracle's customers have invested in non-Oracle BI platforms, the newly branded Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition from the Siebel acquisition — which Gartner previously rated as visionary — has given Oracle a new opportunity to create a compelling BI platform strategy and become a significant BI platform and applications vendor in 2007 and beyond.

However, there are still product road maps and product integration issues that remain to be delivered over the next 18 months (see "Acquired Siebel Products Will Play a Key Role in Oracle's BI Strategy"). Enterprise reporting has historically been a weakness for both Oracle and Siebel. The new BI Publisher goes a long way toward closing the reporting gap and appears to be a viable technology base for further developing reporting capabilities to complement the platform.

We think that, over the next few years, Oracle's Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition and Oracle Analytic Applications — different but related products — will be adopted much more broadly, given the products' comprehensive capabilities, pricing, and integration into the Oracle collection of business applications. We expect that Oracle will be very visible in its marketing and sales execution in 2007 and beyond as it executes on its expanded BI strategy. We also expect to see Oracle among the top three BI platform vendors, in terms of market share, by 2012.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy - BI Solutions

For years, MicroStrategy has been selling very effectively at the high end of the market (large data sets, large number of users and widely distributed BI applications) with a highly functional, but highly priced, relational OLAP-based BI platform. Expect MicroStrategy to continue focusing on the high end of the market, selling large, enterprisewide BI platforms supported by its "BI Factory" message. This claims efficient deployments, with low total cost of ownership, of numerous BI projects by leveraging shared, scalable infrastructure.

By focusing on the high end of the market, MicroStrategy avoids some of the price competition that is impacting other traditional pure-play BI vendors. Also, by focusing on just BI platforms and eschewing ancillary markets, such as data integration and corporate performance management, MicroStrategy will maintain its consistently high margins. MicroStrategy is positioned in the Visionaries quadrant because it has built one of the most technically superior BI platforms in the market, particularly due to its tight platform integration, scalable ROLAP architecture and fully object-oriented metadata model.

However, given its reliance on technical differentiation, MicroStrategy is vulnerable to the increasing parity within the BI platform market, particularly the flattening effects of in-memory analysis that enables better performance against large data sets.

Moreover, many customers have complained that MicroStrategy can be difficult to negotiate with — refusing to alter terms and conditions from previously signed contracts. For example, customers can't perform a partial maintenance renewal. This frustration has caused some MicroStrategy customers to seek lower-priced BI platform alternatives.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Microsoft

Microsoft - BI Solutions

As a challenger with significant market presence and resources, Microsoft has historically adopted a follower's, rather than a leader's approach, for its BI platforms and applications products. In 2006, Microsoft executed a more coordinated and unified BI strategy across several of its business and product units (including the Office and SQL server product lines).

Today, the capabilities and integration of its current BI platform offerings have improved significantly, but are still not as mature as those of the market leaders. Micorsoft's BI products will appeal to the large community of Microsoft application developers, and the pricing, packaging and integration with its Office (including PerfomancePoint Server) and SQL Server products will be attractive to organizations that have standardized on the Microsoft information infrastructure. Many departmental and business unit end users who hear the Office integration marketing messages for BI will likely ask for the products and associated support from their IT departments.

However, organizations that have heterogeneous applications, information infrastructure and development environments will find the Microsoft BI-related marketing and announcements to be interesting but potentially distracting, since they may not easily integrate with their existing investments in infrastructure and applications.

We expect that Microsoft will continue to grow its BI investments, leveraging the integration and product strength of Office and SQL Server, become a stronger competitor and, ultimately, a leader in the marketplace by 2012 (see "Microsoft Strengthens Business Intelligence and Performance Management Offerings" and "Microsoft Plans to Close Business Intelligence Product Gap and Shift Competitive Position With ProClarity").

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Information Builders

Information Builders - BI Software

Unlike most of its competitors, who already excel at providing self-service reporting and analysis against a data warehouse, but are only now providing operational reporting capabilities, Information Builders is doing the opposite. Already well-established in the operational reporting space — bolstered nicely by its iWay Software subsidiary — Information Builders spent 2006 building out its end-user reporting and analysis capabilities. In particular, it released Power Painter, its first true ad hoc query tool, and heavily promoted the report wizard, Active Reports, and Visual Discovery features of WebFOCUS. In addition, Information Builders improved its process-driven BI vision — going beyond just operational reporting — by focusing on its partnerships with key analysis vendors, particularly SPSS, to deliver predictive models.

Information Builders also released a visual workflow modeling tool that improves a BI architect's ability to insert information directly into the steps of a workflow process. Information Builders demonstrates its ability to execute, particularly in very large extranet applications, with the highest number of 10,000 plus seat deployments in the industry. To move into the Leaders quadrant, the company must bolster its sales-channel strategy and prove that its analysis capabilities can be successful in the market. It has a strong, energized sales force, but it is about half the size of those of other leading BI platform vendors.

Furthermore, Information Builders lacks a strong channel presence with systems integrators and value-added resellers (VARs), as offered by some of its direct competitors. Strengthening its sales channels would help drive Information Builders' deployments globally, which today are heavily concentrated in North America.

Furthermore, Information Builders needs to go beyond its "sweet spot" of operational reporting and information delivery and show a large number of successful deployments where WebFOCUS is used for analysis.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Hyperion Solutions

Hyperion Solutions

As a BI platform vendor, Hyperion has traditionally offered very strong analysis, but had weaker reporting and integration capabilities. Hyperion has now significantly improved these capabilities with System 9. These technical improvements, coupled with the success Hyperion had in 2006 upgrading its customer base to System 9, were enough to propel Hyperion into the Leaders quadrant. Hyperion benefits from its tight relationship with the CFO office, a particularly strong product champion, at most of its customers' sites. In addition, Hyperion has demonstrated strong vision with the acquisition of Razza — now Hyperion Master Data Management — to provide a single repository for all BI-related metadata. Currently, BI metadata serves only one purpose, that of a semantic layer for self-service reporting. Razza's technology enables BI-related metadata to be consumed by any application — not just ad hoc query tools — and, therefore, creates a central hub for business metrics and dimensions.

Finally, with the release of the aggregate storage option (ASO) and the resolution of a dispute over patents with HyperRoll, Hyperion can now provide OLAP capabilities for much larger, sparser data sets. This is a key component that will allow Hyperion to position itself as a BI vendor in operational subject areas beyond just finance. To maintain its leadership position, Hyperion must execute on its metadata vision. The Razza technology gives Hyperion a way to synchronize and publish BI metadata from a single source, but this technology has yet to be completely integrated with the entire Hyperion BI platform. A single metadata model that spans multiple projects for all BI platform capabilities, including reports, dashboards and OLAP, isn't expected from Hyperion until mid-2007. Hyperion must also continue to execute by upgrading its installed base to System 9. This could prove challenging as customer complaints about the System 9 enablement fee increased significantly in 2H06. Now that Hyperion has upgraded much of its stalwart bastion of financial management customers, Hyperion will need to waive, or substantially reduce, the fee to encourage upgrades.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Cognos

Cognos

With the release of Cognos 8, Cognos significantly improved its BI platform, particularly from an integrated infrastructure standpoint and by creating a single BI metadata model to support multiple capabilities such as reporting, ad hoc query, OLAP, event notification and scorecards. Initial adoption of Cognos 8 got off to a slow start at the beginning of 2006, due to support and migration issues, as well as lengthy sales cycles. However, by the end of 2006, Cognos was able to point to over 2,900 supported Cognos 8 customers and had closed 34 enterprise deals, worth over $1 million each. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a large number of Cognos customers are comfortable with their Series 7 and ReportNet installations, and are patiently evaluating their potential next move to Cognos 8 as part of an enterprisewide BI standardization. The elongated sales cycle leaves Cognos, like other pure plays, vulnerable to the changing competitive dynamics of the market, particularly to the improvements made by Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

On a positive note, 2006 saw the launch of Cognos' industry-specific Performance Blueprints — prepackaged data models and business content that give organizations a quick start when building BI applications. These vertically specific blueprints will prove to be a useful product offering for Cognos by adding value and sustaining margins in a market that is reaching parity in many areas. While the recent acquisition of Celequest opens new market opportunities to Cognos with better event-level monitoring, the need to integrate third-party vendor code will hamper its message about a fully integrated BI platform sold as a single product. Cognos also needs to articulate how it will map Celequest technology to its existing event management capabilities. To maintain its leadership position in 2007, Cognos must execute on its strategy to upsell Cognos 8 as part of a broader, more pervasive vision of BI to its installed base.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Gartner Business Intelligence BI Summit 2008

Gartner Business Intelligence BI Summit 2008
5-7 February 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, RAI Convention Centre

Overview

Smarter Decisions: BI and Performance Management Take Center Stage

Better decisions, faster. That was the most important reason cited for investing in BI in the Gartner "User Wants and Needs" surveys conducted around the world earlier this year. Our annual CIO Survey showed that Business Intelligence applications remain the highest technology priority for CIOs today.

Yet the biggest problem IT still faces is how to make BI more pervasive and to increase adoption among business users. This shows that investments in BI are not reaching key business users and helping them better measure and manage their performance.

The past year has seen significant changes in the BI market, with BI pure-play vendors acquiring technology and analytic application vendors while the mega-vendors have been increasing their footprint across the whole BI and performance management spectrum. So while CIOs are struggling to deploy BI to a wider business audience, the never-ending round of acquisitions threatens to disrupt their carefully planned BI strategy.

Meanwhile, the convergence of structured and unstructured data, the introduction of search technology, the delivery of BI "as a service", data-warehouse appliances, open-source technology and new 64-bit architectures are all impacting today’s BI environments.

To help you successfully navigate your way through these challenges, the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2008, now in its ninth year, delivers a wide range of analyst presentations, case studies, panels and guru keynotes. Furthermore, you will have the chance to network with and share the collective experience of delegates from all over Europe. It is with great pleasure therefore that we invite you to participate in this flagship event.

Key Topics

• Key steps to making Business Intelligence strategic
• Creating a BI and performance management strategy to widen the use of BI
• The evolving role of corporate performance management
• Role, structure and organization of the BI Competency Center
• Identifying the right metrics to measure performance
• The Data Warehouse in a time of data explosion
• New delivery models: Open Source and BI "as a service"
• The impact of SOA on BI
• Trends in Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and Master Data Management
• Difficult choices in the Data Quality tools market
• Portal strategies for BI integration
• Business Activity Monitoring and the rise of process-driven BI
• Determining the "return on BI"
• Performance management and compliance
• BI market trends and the increasing impact of the megavendors
• Best practices in budgeting, planning & forecasting

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.gartner.com/it/summits/bie9i/overview.jsp#keytopics

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Business Objects

Business Objects

Business Objects is the first vendor in the market to break the billion dollar revenue milestone and its execution in 2006 has made it the overall market leader on this Magic Quadrant. Under the leadership of John Schwarz, who joined the company from Symantec in 2005, Business Objects has expanded its product line to complement its core BI platform (adding budgeting, planning, consolidation applications and data integration/quality products). It has also initiated a focus on the midsize market, launched a software-as-a-service business (for example, crystalreports.com and the acquisition of Nsite Software) and has undertaken a strategy to expand its professional services offerings (adding more services at performance-management level).

The license revenue from its core BI platform products actually declined in the first three quarters of FY06, while its customers held off major new deployments during the migration to its BusinessObjects XI Release. During that time, the company's growth was driven primarily from acquired products. Business Objects improved its BI platform with the XI Release and its integration of Crystal Reports, and has been able to gain some competitive edge with its data integration products and associated data lineage and impact analysis capabilities. We expect to see the BI platform license return to growth in 2007, as customers shift to XI Release 2 and expand their deployments.

While Business Objects has one of the better partner programs, some of its larger service provider partners have been put off by the more competitive posture it has taken and the changes to its service provider licensing models. To maintain its leadership position, Business Objects must demonstrate that it can continue to execute on its strategy of acquisitions to drive growth, regain growth in its core BI platform business, maintain the right balance of partnerships and provide adequate support levels on its existing products as it expands into new product areas and markets.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Applix

Applix

Applix made a major move in 2006 by acquiring Temtec and its Executive Viewer product set to bolster Applix's TM1 BI platform with more robust Web-based reporting, ad hoc query and dashboarding capabilities. This move plugged a significant hole in the Applix product strategy. The acquisition also added over 500 new customers to Applix's installed base and introduced a partnership with Microsoft, which acts as an OEM of Executive Viewer by incorporating it within Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Solomon). The technical strength of the TM1 platform stems from Applix's 64-bit in-memory architecture for faster data loads and query performance. Also, Turbo Integrator, which automates data integration tasks, provides Applix with a strong ease-of-use message that translates into rapid implementation for users. As a result, organizations typically give Applix high marks for customer satisfaction. Applix remains in the Niche Players quadrant primarily because it is typically deployed in use cases that are application specific. Most of Applix's recent growth derives from planning deployments. Few organizations have used Applix as the standard enterprise BI platform. Applix is rarely shortlisted in vendor selection exercises. And its overall sales strategy is less comprehensive than most vendors outside the Niche Players quadrant — both in terms of numbers of direct sales representatives and indirect partners.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Vendors - Actuate

BI Vendor Comments : Actuate

Actuate's scalable reporting and spreadsheet capabilities have allowed the company to carve out a unique niche in the market, especially in the financial services industry. While Actuate's license revenue grew in 2006, much of that growth came from its installed base. The company has a smaller global market presence and penetration, compared with the other pure-play competitors. The company is managed by seasoned and experienced executives who have shown that they can stay in the game and execute as a smaller vendor, despite the intensely competitive market and business conditions. The adoption of open-source concepts in its products and marketing approaches, and its targeting of the open-source developer community with its reporting technologies, have started to drive new sales opportunities.

However, Actuate's spreadsheet products — and the claimed advantage of a more open approach to data, developer and deployment options — will come under intense competitive and pricing pressure as Microsoft roles out its new server-based Excel capabilities in 2007. As the competition increases in the BI platform market, Actuate will require more differentiated products and positioning to maintain or improve its position in this Magic Quadrant.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Business Intelligence Vendors - Arcplan

Vendor Comments : arcplan

arcplan's marketing strategy is to position itself as a platform that provides process-driven BI functionality. The vendor has also begun selling packaged analytical applications like the CFO Cockpit, a financial dashboard for Hyperion Financial Management. In 2006, arcplan received increased market traction demonstrated by a significant number of customers that selected it for big deployments based on this process-driven message. The company's process-driven BI capabilities focus primarily on performance management solutions that require simultaneous analysis of, and write-back to, multiple sources of operational and analytical data, which it can do very well. Customers also give arcplan high marks for ease of use, based on its visual development capabilities, which offer a wizard-driven approach for connecting to data sources and for building analytical applications.

While arcplan provides most of the 12 BI platform capabilities, it lacks predictive modeling and office integration. It is positioned in the Niche Players quadrant because it lacks a large number of references for certain key BI capabilities such as BI metadata and ad hoc query. Moreover, as a small vendor, arcplan lacks the sales channels and market presence of its larger competitors.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms Q1 2007

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 1Q07

26 January 2007, Kurt Schlegel, Bill Hostmann, Andreas Bitterer, Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00145507

The business intelligence platform market is dominated by traditional pure-play BI vendors, but several large application and software infrastructure vendors became much stronger BI competitors in 2006.

What You Need to Know

The goal of this Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms (see Figure 1) is to present a global view of Gartner's opinion of the main software vendors that should be considered by organizations seeking to develop business intelligence (BI) applications. Buyers should evaluate vendors in all four quadrants, including those from the Niche Players and Visionaries quadrants, as these vendors are driving innovation in many areas such as interactive visualization, in-memory data analysis, real-time dashboards, wizard-based application development and spreadsheet-based reporting. The scores and commentary in this document are substantially based on customer perceptions of each vendor's strengths and challenges derived from BI-related inquiries that Gartner performed in 2006. To assist with the evaluation, participating vendors were asked to complete a survey about their BI strategy and operations. Gartner analysts also performed a detailed analysis of the technical capabilities of each BI platform.

BI Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 1Q07

Source: Gartner (January 2007) http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html

Microsoft Business Intelligence Solutions

Business Intelligence Solutions - Microsoft

Microsoft offers you a complete, fully integrated business intelligence (BI) solution. With Microsoft Business Intelligence, you get a rich set of technologies—many of which your organization already uses—and a flexible, easy-to-use solution that helps extend the value of your enterprise data.

SQL Server 2005

An enterprise-scalable, secure, and proven BI platform for integrating, storing, and managing your data assets.

• SQL Server 2005 Integration Services - An ETL (extract, transform, and load) tool built into SQL Server that brings your data assets together into a central data warehouse.
• SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services - An online analytical process (OLAP) engine built into SQL Server that structures your data into multidimensional cubes optimized for analysis.
• SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - A reporting tool built into SQL Server that builds enterprise and production reports from your relational databases or your central data warehouse.

The 2007 Microsoft Office System

A widely used set of desktop and server software, tightly integrated with SQL Server 2005, which enables users to access, analyze, collaborate, and share information in a familiar environment.

• Microsoft Office Excel 2007 - Easily connect to, analyze, and share data that is centrally stored and managed.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Facilitate communication and collaboration. SharePoint Server is the place where people can find the information they need, whether it is a corporate scorecard, a spreadsheet, or a Microsoft Office PowerPoint slide deck.

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007

A performance management application that provides three key capabilities—monitoring, analyzing, and planning—that help organizations align their business to strategic corporate goals and objectives.

• PerformancePoint Monitoring - Define and use scorecards, dashboards, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to drive accountability and alignment across your organization.
• PerformancePoint Analysis - Easily analyze and identify trends, opportunities, and threats in your data. Capture and share that information using the intuitive and collaborative environment of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
• PerformancePoint Planning - Simplify the process of business planning, budgeting, and forecasting—all through the familiar and easy-to-use environment of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/bi/products/default.aspx