BI Market Definition and Description

Business Intelligence Market Definition/Description

BI platforms are used to build applications that help organizations learn and understand their business. Gartner defines a BI platform as a software platform that delivers the 12 capabilities listed below. These capabilities are organized into three categories of functionality: integration, information delivery and analysis. Information delivery is the core focus of most BI projects today, but we see an increasing need to focus more on analysis to discover new insights, and on integration to implement those insights.

Integration

BI infrastructure — All tools in the platform should use the same security, metadata, administration, portal integration, object model and query engine, and should share the same look and feel.

Metadata management — This is arguably the most important of the 12 capabilities. Not only should all tools leverage the same metadata, but the offering should provide a robust way to search, capture, store, reuse and publish metadata objects such as dimensions, hierarchies, measures, performance metrics and report layout objects.

Development — The BI platform should provide a set of programmatic development tools — coupled with a software developer's kit for creating BI applications — that can be integrated into a business process, and/or embedded in another application. The BI platform should also enable developers to build BI applications without coding by using wizard-like components for a graphical assembly process. The development environment should also support Web services in performing common tasks such as scheduling, delivering, administering and managing.

Workflow and collaboration — This capability enables BI users to share and discuss information via public folders and discussion threads. In addition, the BI application can assign and track events or tasks allotted to specific users, based on predefined business rules. Often, this capability is delivered by integrating with a separate portal or workflow tool.

Information Delivery

Reporting — Reporting provides the ability to create formatted and interactive reports with highly scalable distribution and scheduling capabilities. In addition, BI platform vendors should handle a wide array of reporting styles (for example, financial, operational and performance dashboards).

Dashboards — This subset of reporting includes the ability to publish graphically intuitive displays of information, including dials, gauges and traffic lights. These displays indicate the state of the performance metric, compared with a goal or target value. Increasingly, dashboards are used to disseminate real-time data from operational applications.

Ad hoc query — This capability, also known as self-service reporting, enables users to ask their own questions of the data, without relying on IT to create a report. In particular, the tools must have a robust semantic layer to allow users to navigate available data sources. In addition, these tools should offer query governance and auditing capabilities to ensure that queries perform well.

Microsoft Office integration — In some cases, BI platforms are used as a middle tier to manage, secure and execute BI tasks, but Microsoft Office (particularly Excel) acts as the BI client. In these cases, it is vital that the BI vendor provides integration with Microsoft Office, including support for document formats, formulas, data "refresh" and pivot tables. Advanced integration includes cell locking and write-back.

Analysis

OLAP — This enables end users to analyze data with extremely fast query and calculation performance, enabling a style of analysis known as "slicing and dicing." This capability could span a variety of storage architectures such as relational, multidimensional and in-memory.

Advanced visualization — This provides the ability to display numerous aspects of the data more efficiently by using interactive pictures and charts, instead of rows and columns. Over time, advanced visualization will go beyond just slicing and dicing data to include more process-driven BI projects, allowing all stakeholders to better understand the workflow through a visual representation.

Predictive modeling and data mining — This capability enables organizations to classify categorical variables and estimate continuous variables using advanced mathematical techniques.

Scorecards — These take the metrics displayed in a dashboard a step further by applying them to a strategy map that aligns key performance indicators to a strategic objective. Scorecard metrics should be linked to related reports and information in order to do further analysis. A scorecard implies the use of a performance management methodology such as Six Sigma or a balanced scorecard framework.

Source: Business Intelligence BI Market and Decription, Magic Quadrant Garter for BI 2000 at gartner.com

2009 Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms

This document was revised on 5 February 2009. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.

The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms (see Figure 1) presents 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 and not assume that only the largest organizations can deliver successful BI implementations. In addition to Gartner analysts' opinions, the scores and commentary in this document are based on three sources: customer perceptions of each vendor's strengths and challenges derived from BI-related inquiries with Gartner, an online survey of vendor customers conducted in late 2008 yielding 480 responses, and a vendor-completed questionnaire about their BI strategy and operations.

Market Overview

In January 2008, SAP completed its acquisition of Business Objects and IBM completed its acquisition of Cognos. The acquired firms were two of the largest in the market and had, arguably, been the defining suppliers in the space. Their absorption into larger entities (along with Hyperion into Oracle six months earlier) seemingly marked the end of BI platforms as a predominantly stand-alone, best-of-breed, buying decision. In 2008, BI platform investment decisions became tethered more closely to strategic sourcing and stack-led factors, and more influenced by organizational relationships with application and infrastructure vendors than before. Conversely, however, based on the research conducted for this report and interactions with Gartner customers over the year, there clearly remains a demand for independent BI platforms. To understand this duality, it is necessary to consider a number of factors at play that are driving the BI platform today:

1. A growing bifurcation of buying preference. There are two types of buying behavior evident: A) firms that see their BI platform as an extension of their enterprise middleware, and require the platform to fit into more heterogeneous data and application sources; and B) those with an inclination for pre-integration of a BI platform into a stack of data and application sources from a single vendor.
2. Innovation yielding to integration. One consequence of the market's consolidation has been that the acquiring megavendors' product releases and road maps have inevitably been dominated by integrating the acquired technologies into their existing portfolios. These vendors face a challenge balancing the conflicting goals of making the BI platform better at working together with the vendor's other products, while at the same time not becoming too inward facing. In the main, innovation in BI platforms is being driven by independents.
3. "Flattening" alternatives. The maturing of Microsoft's lower-cost BI portfolio, the application of Web 2.0 techniques, the availability of data warehouse (DW) appliances, the growth of open-source BI and the ongoing emergence of software as a service (SaaS) offerings have continued to make BI capabilities increasingly accessible and more affordable. As a result, this Magic Quadrant includes commentary on some alternative vendors which, while not meeting the inclusion criteria for the Magic Quadrant itself, offer a viable alternative for some BI use cases.
4. The re-emergence of "workgroup BI." Many of the pioneering vendors of the BI space entered the market delivering personal and workgroup-based BI. After much encouragement from their clients and from analyst firms (including Gartner), these vendors began to focus most of their resources on delivering enterprisewide BI solutions. This left an opening for a new crop of vendors to deliver solutions for personal and workgroup BI requirements using disruptive technology (specifically in-memory analytics). It seems likely that despite the inherent risk of silo-perpetuation, workgroup BI's light-touch nature will prove attractive in a recession.
5. Return on investment equivalence. Based on conversations with Gartner customers, and the survey carried out for this research, beyond the capability to meet the needs of international deployments, there is no correlation between the size of a vendor (in either revenue or staff terms) and the level of satisfaction or the return on investment delivered with a BI platform implemented. Formerly, while the market was dominated by independent pure-play BI firms, size was an important indicator as to capability; now, this isn't the case — a $300 million revenue BI specialist may well (and often does) out-deliver a more broad-based vendor many times its size. This apparent equivalence in the relative level of success delivered is reflected in the Ability to Execute axis positions in this year's Magic Quadrant.

After the vendor merger and acquisition (M&A) turbulence of 2007, 2008 was a year of transition. And 2009 is likely to be a critical year in which the total cost of ownership (TCO) of BI comes under increased scrutiny, and its value as a decision-making tool in the toughest economic conditions is put to the test.

Forecast

Gartner's view is that BI platform revenue will be less affected by the economic downturn than some other technologies because of the heightened need to make better, fact-based decisions — BI is a vital competitive tool of increased importance in an environment where doing business more smartly, in order to maximize share of the reduced revenue in circulation, is a necessity. That said, however, the recession, commoditization and consolidation are expected to put BI platform growth into the single digits in 2009 and beyond. As such, the BI platform market's compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2012 is expected to be 7.0% for stand-alone BI platforms and 7.9% for both stand-alone and embedded functionality (for details and an explanation of terms see "Forecast: Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2007-2012, 4Q08 Update").

Several demand-side factors indicate that BI platform revenue will continue to grow:

* CIOs are increasingly being required to invest in technologies that drive business transformation and strategic change. The fact that BI is a top priority for CIOs indicates that they see BI as part of the answer to this requirement. BI can deliver on this promise if deployed successfully because it could improve decision making and operational efficiency, which in turn drives the top line and the bottom line.
* Information generated from enterprise applications is at an all-time high and will continue to increase. BI platforms are seen as a means to turn that information into an asset on which better decisions can be made.
* BI platforms are expanding their capabilities beyond traditional query, reporting and online analytical processing (OLAP) functionality, toward providing dashboards, scorecards and visualization as well. We expect innovation and growth to come from technologies that make it easier to build and consume BI applications (such as visualization, search, in-memory analytics, SaaS and service-oriented architecture [SOA]).
* Smaller and midsize organizations are becoming an important target market for BI vendors, with a large proportion being new opportunities. The success of smaller vendors targeting the segment, new SaaS delivery models and increased offerings from Microsoft are prompting further growth in demand. In addition, several vendors traditionally not in this domain have been modifying or extending their product, pricing and partner strategies to reach this key group.
* While BI standardization projects are increasing, departmental projects are also on the rise, especially those provided by smaller horizontal analytics specialists and within emerging technologies, such as in-memory BI, search and visualization.
* Areas that have traditionally been under corporate performance management (CPM), such as business planning and forecasting, are increasingly being embedded with BI capabilities. This, together with a trend of embedding analytics into business processes, will drive further investment in BI.
* Consumerization of information — Users are becoming increasingly savvy in using and manipulating information to their advantage. This will enable a spread of BI across organizations, leading to a need for more licenses. Technology trends, such as increasing visualization, might help further.
* Another positive driver is the use of BI functions in customer-facing Web site applications as a value-adding service differentiator, using Rich Internet Application (RIA) techniques.

Source: gartner.com

SAS in Leaders quadrant for customer data mining applications

Business Intelligence BI Software News : SAS in Leaders quadrant for customer data mining applications

SAS, the leader in business intelligence and analytics, is in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Mining Applications , which it considers recognition for its success using descriptive and predictive analytics supporting marketing, sales and service functions to solve business problems.

According to Gartner, Leaders are vendors that can meet the majority of requirements for most organizations. Not only are they suitable for most enterprises to consider, but they also have a significant effect on the market's direction and growth.

Hundreds of companies globally – including American Honda Motor Co., Daimler Chrysler, The Dow Chemical Co., Eli Lilly and Company¸ Hartford Life, Healthways, RCI Global Vacation Network, Telstra AP, Verizon Wireless, and The World Wildlife Fund – use SAS® data mining for CRM initiatives.

"In turbulent economic times, organizations making multimillion-dollar decisions must use the best software solutions and tools at their disposal to reach decisions,” said Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at SAS. “We are in our 32nd year supplying analytics, adding deep industry knowledge and delivering proven results. Customers count on SAS for innovative solutions that solve business problems and reveal new opportunities.”

The world's most powerful data mining solutions – which include SAS Enterprise Miner™, SAS Text Miner, SAS Model Manager, and SAS Scoring Accelerator for Teradata – allow organizations to explore large quantities of data and discover relationships and patterns that lead to proactive decision making. Today’s news follows 2008 announcements of significant enhancements to award-wining SAS Enterprise Miner; SAS software’s in-database capabilities with partner Teradata; and SAS’ acquisition of Teragram to enhance SAS’ own robust text mining capabilities.

SAS® Customer Intelligence Solutions Powered by Predictive Analytics
The SAS Customer Intelligence solution suite includes SAS Marketing Automation, SAS Marketing Optimization, SAS Real-Time Decision Manager, SAS for Customer Experience Analytics, SAS Digital Marketing, SAS Interaction Management, SAS Web Analytics, and SAS for marketing performance management.

SAS offers other targeted business solutions that support enterprise intelligence, financial intelligence, supply chain intelligence and more, with turnkey solutions for vertical markets including financial services, life sciences, healthcare, retail and manufacturing. Many of these and others are available as SAS Solutions OnDemand.

The SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform provides an integrated environment for predictive analytics and descriptive modeling, using BI to open the world of SAS Analytics to all types of users.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About SAS
SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at more than 44,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know® .

Source: Business Intelligence BI SAS Software information at sas.com

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence 2008

Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms 2008

The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms presents 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 — those from the Niche Players and Visionaries quadrants are driving innovation in 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 based substantially on three sources: customer perceptions of each vendor's strengths and challenges derived from BI-related inquiries with Gartner, an online survey of vendor customers conducted in late 2007, and a vendor-completed questionnaire about their BI strategy and operations.

Business Intelligience BI Vendors

• SAS
• Cognos
• Business Objects
• Oracle
• Microsoft
• MicroStrategy
• SAP
• Information Builders
• QlikTech
• Tibco Spotfire
• Actuate
• Arcplan
• Board International
• Panorama Software

Source: For more information on Gartner, Business Intelligence Software, visit http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol7/article3/article3.html

Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit - Sydney

Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit

18 - 19 March 2008 - Sydney - Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre

Overview

Business dynamics are changing radically due to the globalisation of markets, increased scrutiny of results, and, ever increasingly rapid and interlocking business strategies and processes. As a consequence, higher expectations and user demands for information and analysis to make smarter decisions and manage business performance are changing.

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 BI applications remain the highest technology priority for CIOs today.

However, only 36% of CIOs believe that management is using the right information to run the business.

Most organisations equate BI with information delivery. The challenge is that most users, and vendors, don't see BI as a broad strategic initiative. The value of BI is more than information dissemination; BI is highly linked to achieving business goals. Yet the biggest problem IT still faces is how to make BI more pervasive and increase adoption among business users.

In its second year, the Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit will address the key issues affecting your organisation's BI strategy and initiatives, to make smarter decisions. From building the business case to increasing user adoption; and deploying new technologies to defining the right metrics, you'll get the advice, guidance and best practices to stay on top of all the latest trends, new strategies, technology developments, and the many other aspects of this changing business tool.

Start Making Smarter Decisions Now. The Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit delivers a wide range of analyst presentations, case studies, panel sessions, the latest technology solutions, discussion forums and more. Plus the opportunity to network with and share collective experience of delegates from throughout Asia-Pacific. We hope to see you in Sydney!

Source: For more information on Business Intelligence BI Summit Sydney, please visit http://www.gartner.com/it/summits/bi2a/overview.jsp

Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit

Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit

14 March 2008 - Singapore - Suntec International Convention & Exhibition Centre

Overview

Business dynamics are changing radically due to the globalisation of markets, increased scrutiny of results, and, ever increasingly rapid and interlocking business strategies and processes. As a consequence, higher expectations and user demands for information and analysis to make smarter decisions and manage business performance are changing.

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 BI applications remain the highest technology priority for CIOs today.

However, only 36% of CIOs believe that management is using the right information to run the business.

Most organisations equate BI with information delivery. The challenge is that most users, and vendors, don't see BI as a broad strategic initiative. The value of BI is more than information dissemination; BI is highly linked to achieving business goals. Yet the biggest problem IT still faces is how to make BI more pervasive and increase adoption among business users.

The inaugural Business Intelligence and Information Management Summit in Singapore will address the key issues affecting your organisation's BI&IM strategy and initiatives, to make smarter decisions. From building the business case to increasing user adoption; and improving data quality and governance, you'll get the advice, guidance and best practices to stay on top of all the latest trends, new strategies, technology developments, and the many other aspects of this changing business tool.

Start Making Smarter Decisions Now. The Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit delivers a wide range of analyst presentations, panel sessions, the latest technology solutions and more. Plus the opportunity to network with and share collective experience of delegates from throughout Asia. We hope to see you in Singapore!

Source: For more information on Business Intelligence BI Summit, please visit http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=563507&tab=overview

Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2008

Gartner Business Intelligence Summit

Smarter Decisions: BI and Performance Management take Center Stage
1-3 April 2008 - Chicago, IL - Hyatt Regency Chicago

Overview

Business Intelligence isn’t just about reporting anymore. Smart BI practitioners have harnessed the power of their business data to get the kind of business results every company needs to succeed – and now you can, too.

The Gartner Business Intelligence Summit is a multi-faceted BI conference with a unique “how to” focus. We’ll show you why smart BI is moving from simple rear-view reporting to a top-down strategic asset – and what role you play in making it happen. We’ll help you deliver a convincing business case for your BI initiatives – and explore new ways to engage the business users who need BI most. From applications and architecture to metrics and vendors, the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit will focus on real-world BI through case studies, best practices, product demonstrations and actionable advice.

What’s New This Year

NEW conference topics: The Role of Governance, Performance Management Impact on Information Infrastructure, Marriage of Search and BI, The Content Continuum: Adding Unstructured Content to BI applications. Making BI More Process Driven/Centric. The Role of Master Data Management. Leveraging the Synergy of Portals and BI Platforms. Social Software as a collaboration and insight platform.

NEW: Eight Hands-On Workshops (seating is limited to 25).

Plus Alumni favorites: Magic Quadrants Session, Avoiding the Five Fatal Flaws of BI, CPM, Data Warehouse, Metadata, Analytics, and more!

Source: For more information on Business Intelligence BI Summit 2008, please visit http://www.gartner.com/it/summits/bi6/overview.jsp

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

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