BI4Lunch

Business Objects has once again been named the business intelligence (BI) market share leader, according to the 2005 market share numbers issued this week by IDC. With core business intelligence software license and maintenance 2005 revenues of $795.3 million, Business Objects owns a 14% share of the business intelligence software tools market. SAS was the second-largest vendor in 2005, with $582 million in BI tools revenue and a 10.2% market share. 52% of SAS BI tools revenue comes from advanced analytics software.

In the report, IDC notes that in 2005, the BI market grew 11.5% to reach $5.7 billion in worldwide software revenues. In addition, IDC reported that Business Objects core BI revenue grew to a total of $795.3 million, which is one third greater than the next closest vendor. Business Objects leads the end-user query, reporting, and analysis tools category, the largest segment of the BI market, capturing more than 17% of the market.

In 2005, the BI market grew 11.5% to reach $5.7 billion in worldwide license and maintenance revenue. As Table 1 shows, the database-embedded BI server market experienced a higher growth rate (19.9%) than did standalone BI software (10.7%). The query, reporting, and analysis market outgrew the advanced analytics market in 2005. We had anticipated a higher growth rate for advanced analytics. One of the reasons for the lower-than-expected performance of this market segment was a larger-than-expected shift in revenue to query, reporting, and analysis tools as well as to packaged analytic applications by SAS, the largest advanced analytics tools vendor.

Posted by metrics2 at 08:13 AM | Permalink

A new survey by Applix demonstrates the growth of performance management into operational aspects of business, the next step toward enterprise-wide performance management. This is the first in a series of surveys the company is conducting on the topic.

Applix and BPM Magazine conducted the first Operational Performance Management Survey in the spring of 2006 to investigate the alignment of strategic corporate initiatives with business-line function performance management. The survey delved into how organizations transform raw data into actionable information, creating a necessary and valuable link between finance, operational performance and overall business success. A total number of 239 CFOs, financial planners, analysts and line of business managers participated in the survey.

Performance management applications have been steadily gaining ground outside finance, their traditional stronghold. An ever-increasing emphasis on return on investment and profitability is encouraging this trend, spreading the need for tools to help manage business processes.

Selected survey results show:

• The majority of respondents, 64 percent, use performance management in multiple departments.
• While Finance is the most common user of performance management applications, 23 percent of the survey respondents identified operations (manufacturing, professional services, core business) as the second most popular user of those applications, indicating that existing operational use is already more common than might be otherwise perceived.
• Of the key capabilities required (but not yet active) in operational performance management, the ability to perform complex modeling is rated most needed, especially for the healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and utilities industries.
• When performance management is already in use in at least one department, respondents saw sales and marketing, and operations as the areas that would benefit most from using these kinds of applications.

An executive summary of the survey results can be downloaded at http://www.applix.com/opmsurvey. In addition, Applix provides a white paper with additional background material on operational performance management at http://www.applix.com/productresources/operational-performance-management.asp.

Posted by metrics2 at 05:41 AM | Permalink

Pentaho, creator of an Open Source business intelligence (BI) suite, announced that it has received an additional $8M in funding in order to further fuel its accelerated growth. Existing investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Index Ventures, funded the entire series B financing round.

Demand for the Pentaho BI project has grown from 5,000 downloads/month in August 2005 to more than 55,000/month in June 2006. These numbers show that there is clear demand from the marketplace for Pentaho Open Source BI solution.

A recent survey by Ventana Research has found that 43% of organizations are evaluating Open Source BI solutions and that another 40% are actually deploying Open Source BI solutions.

Industry surveys continue to rank Business Intelligence as one of the top five focus areas for IT investment. Leading research firm IDC is predicting that the BI market will grow by 10% to almost $6.5B in software spending in 2006.

Pentaho provides a full spectrum of open source Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities including reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining, data integration, and a BI platform. Formed by a highly experienced team of industry veterans, Pentaho's mission is to bring innovative, high quality technology and professional support to the BI market. Pentaho uses a revolutionary approach to development, distribution and support made possible by an open source business model. Pentaho is the primary sponsor and owner of popular open source projects including Mondrian, JFreeReport, and Kettle, and Pentaho's technologies support a wide range of business initiatives from sales and profitability analysis, customer analysis, HR reporting, Financial reporting, KPI dashboards, Supply Chain analytics, and operational reporting.

For more information on Pentaho: Pentaho's web site is located at http://www.pentaho.org.

Posted by metrics2 at 09:18 PM | Permalink

The impact of one individual on the performance of an organization has long been debated, and the debate has focused most recently on the controversy over compensation for CEOs. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton cite studies that maintain that no more than 10 percent of the performance of an organization can be attributed to its leader as opposed to other forces. There is also debate about the most important traits of leadership. Some recent studies continue to examine the personality and style attributes of effective leaders. Others are giving more emphasis to certain forms of intelligence.

In his recent book, Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes proposes another set of hypotheses, among them that too much emphasis has been given to personality and style and too little to types of intelligence that enhance leadership performance. He argues that "when it comes to predicting work performance, cognitive-ability tests have been demonstrated to be approximately ten times as powerful as personality assessments. . . . Personality is not a differentiator of star talent. It is an individual's facility for clear thinking or intelligence that largely determines their leadership success." Menkes places his bets on an individual's "executive intelligence," the ability to digest, often with the help of others, large amounts of information in order to form important decisions that produce useful action with the right amount of deliberation.

What do you think? Continue reading Harvard Business School Working Knowledge and contribute to the discusssion...

Posted by metrics2 at 10:21 PM | Permalink

A recent research study conducted at the 2006 SAPAdmin conference found that over 60% of SAP customers experience frequent performance and availability issues in their existing SAP implementations. The primary reason for these performance issues is the lack of visibility into the impact of workload, infrastructure and application changes on future performance and capacity requirements.

Many companies currently use monitoring tools to manage their SAP environment. While monitoring provides data on current SAP performance and capacity utilization, it does not give visibility into the impact of future changes. Often small increases in workload or simple infrastructure changes result in unexpected performance issues, increasing business risk and driving IT organizations into reactive "fire fighting."

Optimizer for SAP, based on HyPerformix's industry-proven IPS Performance Optimizer, enables SAP administrators and systems managers to predict and prevent performance and capacity issues in their SAP environment before they impact the business. Optimizer for SAP leverages performance data from SAP's CCMS monitoring environment to generate a predictive performance and capacity model. The model is used to perform "What if" analysis, predicting the impact of workload, infrastructure and configuration changes on each SAP business function and identifying future service-level violations before they impact the business. When future performance issues are identified, multiple preventive scenarios such as infrastructure upgrades or configuration changes can be modeled to identify the solution that delivers the best balance of performance, cost and risk.

Posted by metrics2 at 09:20 PM | Permalink

Ventana Research 2006 Performance Management Vendor and Product Scorecard results show that Extensity was ranked as the overall leader as a software vendor with technology capabilities to enable Performance Management and tied for top position in areas of Optimizing and Understanding performance. Cognos ranked in first place for Aligning performance while SymphonyRPM was tied for top spot in Optimizing and Understanding performance and Actuate tied for top spot in Understanding performance.

The scoring was broken down into the categories of Align, Optimize and Understand.  These three steps are the foundation of Ventana Research’s Performance Management methodology, PerformanceCycleTM.  The scorecard is independent and objective research that is based on factual analysis of vendors and their products, and is not sponsored.

Here is a summary of the findings for the overall ranking as well as rankings to each of the key steps in PerformanceCycle:

Overall – Leaders in Performance Management in the overall category are ranked in the following order with Extensity, SymphonyRPM, Cognos, Business Objects and Oracle.  Extensity ranks as the overall winner with Extensity MPC Corporate Performance Management 7.1 which had a 95% compliance to the questions followed by SymphonyRPM 4.7 at 94%, Cognos 8 BI Professional at 91% followed by Business Objects EPM BusinessObjects Enterprise Premium Bundle XI Release 2 (86.4 percent) and Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition (85.8 percent combined).

Align – Focusing on ensuring recommended actions and plans are on the direct path for reaching the goals, objectives and initiatives set out by executives and management, the leaders in Performance Management are ranked in the following order with Cognos, Extensity, Softscape, SymphonyRPM and Pilot Software.  Cognos ranked highest with Cognos 8 BI Professional which had a 98% compliance to the questions followed by Extensity MPC Corporate Performance Management 7.1 at 95%, Softscape Apex 2006 at 92%, SymphonyRPM at 91% and Pilot Software at 88%..

Optimize - Focusing on planning for future actions and decisions to define the goals, objectives and initiatives as set out in the align step, the leaders in Performance Management for this category are ranked in the following order Extensity, SymphonyRPM, Business Objects, Epistemic, Oracle and Clarity Systems. Extensity and Symphony RPM ranked at 95.65% compliance with Extensity MPC Corporate Performance Management 7.1 and SymphonyRPM 4.7, followed by Business Objects at 84%, Epistemic 79%, Oracle at 78% and Clarity Systems at 75%.

Understand - Focusing on reviewing the historical performance of people and processes, this step enables you to understand how results impact the organization, the leaders in Performance Management for this category are ranked in the following order Actuate, Extensity, SymphonyRPM, Cognos, Epistemic, Oracle, Business Objects, Softscape and Vanguard Solutions.  Actuate, Extensity and SymphonyRPM ranked the same at 95.65% compliance with Actuate iServer e.Spreadsheet, Extensity MPC Corporate Performance Management 7.1, SymphonyRPM 4.7. Close behind came four vendors, all at 95 percent: Cognos, Epistemic, Information Builders and Oracle.

Ventana Research 2006 Performance Management Vendor and Product Scorecard is assessment of over 15 vendors each covering products that were assessed with 337 questions and 46 functional capabilities.

Posted by metrics2 at 12:43 PM | Permalink

Staples, the largest office products company in the world, has selected SAS Marketing Automation to provide comprehensive database marketing campaign management and advanced customer data analytics in one integrated, easy-to-use solution.

Harry-Brot GmbH has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence as its standard BI platform. With Cognos 8 BI, Harry-Brot will add 600 new users to its BI system, and will integrate BI with planning to form a comprehensive performance management system. Company management will be able to measure success from revenue and product capacity across the company, or detailed down to specific breads or rolls.

CSK Auto Corporation has expanded its deployment of MicroStrategy for enhanced enterprise reporting and analysis. CSK Auto Corporation is the parent company of CSK Auto, Inc., a specialty retailer in the automotive aftermarket, operating more than 1,280 retail stores. Corporate management, business analysts, and field personnel use MicroStrategy for a wide range of applications, including analyzing consumer purchasing trends, loss prevention reporting, monitoring vendor performance and compliance, and conducting detailed analyses of the sales, replenishment, and purchasing functions.

National Offender Management Service (NOMS) of UK has standardized on BusinessObjects™ XI Release 2, the complete BI platform. BusinessObjects XI Release 2 will provide NOMS with an integrated solution for enterprise information management, reporting, analysis, and performance management. Eventually, more than 80,000 users within the criminal justice community, including courts, prison and probation services, police forces and other partner organizations, will be able to share up-to-the-minute information for more efficient and effective management of offenders.

Fiserv VISION, a leading outsource provider of bank services, along with Hyperion partner 1Answer Solutions, has created a report development environment built on the Hyperion Business Intelligence platform. The solution, VISION Data Warehouse Report Wizard, has been designed to provide business users with the capability to generate reports without extensive training.

Posted by metrics2 at 05:29 PM | Permalink

The solution is designed to simplify data collection and transformation, improve the productivity of the finance staff and lower the cost of compliance. It includes a unique option that allows companies to push consolidated results to their existing tax preparation application, reducing the time and money frequently spent on a largely manual, error prone process.

The Hyperion System 9 Financial Data Quality Management solution also offers functionality for lowering compliance costs, including instant error checking, audit validation, automatic archival and closing functionality.

Posted by metrics2 at 10:22 AM | Permalink

Posted by metrics2 at 10:12 AM | Permalink