Business Intelligence
Date:
By: Gerry Brown
Classification: Research Report
In one of the most influential books ever written on software
marketing – Crossing The Chasm – the author Geoffrey Moore talks about
“Main Street”. This is when a market has reached a level of maturity
and a low enough price point that the technology is ready for wholesale adoption by corporate enterprises. When the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP announce strong interest in the BI market you know Main Street is here—the market is now large enough to support the massive investments required for these large players to prosper on a worldwide commodity market basis.
The Business Intelligence (BI) marketplace is now at that point. If you need any more convincing of this point, visit the Business Objects web site, which promises: “Attend any training course in July or August and you’ll save 10%. We’ll also enter you into our prize draw to win a
weekend in Spain!” The technology is now largely irrelevant—every credible vendor can extract data from heterogeneous databases, load that data into cubes, run some “what if” questions and output the results of those queries into professional report formats. The key question is: “which vendor(s) can you trust?”
Some vendors have been involved in unscrupulous profit-taking on the
path to Main Street. Others have technology and a level of available
resource that is questionable for the support of a complete enterprise
deployment. Others have shown worrying inconsistencies and a lack of
continuity. Regular changes of account representative are not a good
sign. Nor are yo-yo financial results or scandals involving the
company.
The message is clear. The time to flirt with half a dozen vendors is
over—it is time to choose your long-term partner (or two) and get rid of the rest. The Business Intelligence report complements the new Bloor Research report on Corporate Performance Management (CPM) published in August 2006.