So this is the first post of 2008, and what a busy few months it's been for BI! The major aquisitions that hit the industry have started to settle and we're starting to see some interesting positioning from SAP on their BI solutions. I particularly like the new Application Packages but I wish there would be more technical information on the metrics/reports included on the SAP website. Nice strategic direction and good blend of BI and ERP capabilities into something that will help folks who build reports off data originating in R/3 a lot of time and effort.
It was a risky takeover for SAP (BO was a large buy by SAP standards) yet things seem to be gelling together from an outsiders perspective. Would love to hear your thoughts if you're a BO customer who has survived the acquisition...
News from IBM, after their acquisition of Cognos, has been relatively quiet. Cognos are continuing about their business which is good to see as the rumors of their "demise" were starting to build to an annoying level last year. I attended their recent Western Region Users group in San Jose and it was great to see some real SaaS solutions being built on the platform. Cognos 8 looks solid but I've not had time to use it yet, so won't attempt to review the product here. The most interesting Cognos-solution I saw was from a company called Daptiv (formerly known as eProject) who provide a very cool online project management solution. It seemed clear that SaaS is a bandwagon that all the BI vendors want to jump on, but OEM customers who are using BI in a SaaS environment are still very hard to find.
The past few months have been busy for me personally. I've been working with some interesting SaaS companies and building out some new Analytics and BI products. I will review the main one in June once it's publicly launched but for now I can disclose that it's a very interesting sales performance management application that reports on sales commissions, payments, credits, etc. to help decision makers get a better handle on sales spend (the biggest expense for most companies after employee wages). Stay tuned!
Lastly, MicroStrategy are holding a free, one-day hands-on class on their BI Platform in San Francisco on May 1st. I plan to be there - check it out!
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