fahrnberger.net

Young companies need to focus on strategy and on growing their business. That’s why it is important to properly investigate before you choose a new brand or company name and register it. But even if you do you can never be sure no one will dispute your right to use it. We decided not to use our money and energy on such a dispute when another company claimed its exlusive right to use the letters “cp”

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What’s really important though is that we are growing like hell and that we are having fun doing it.

Considering that Microsoft is eager to win the battle around the business intelligence and reporting market against Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion, BO’s recent announcement to acquire Infomersion comes as a surprise (I would have guessed Microsoft will…). Infomersion are the authors of a flash-based quite smart report-visualitzation tool called XCELSIUS which nicely fits into the MS BI architecture, is very simple to handle and delivers highly professional dynamic reports, which among many other methods can be delivered via web or dynamically integrated into Power Point presentations. According to Microsoft sources XCELSIUS is even being used quite extensively for internal purposes at Microsoft.
Strategically it could definitely have been a good move to snap this relatively small company from it’s competitors…

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Business Intelligence
Business Objects
Microsoft
Reporting

Jahrelang hat Hyperion mit seiner IBM Partnerschaft kräftig Kasse gemacht. IBM schloss Enterprise Level Agreements (ELA’s) ab, die vereinfacht gesprochen nur das Volumen und den groben Umfang der Geschäftsbeziehung mit dem Kunden festgelegt hat. Die Key Account Manager mussten dann Anwendungen finden, die sie dann im Rahmen dieser ELA’s den Kunden “reindrücken” konnten.

Im CW Notitzblog fand ich eben die (wohl schon ein paar Wochen alte) Meldung, dass IBM nun selbst auf den Geschmack kommt und eine eigene Business Intelligence Strategie fährt. Mindestens fünf Jahre zu spät. Interessanter Weise ist IBM laut Eigendefinition ja ohnehin schon : “The world’s leading business intelligence solution provider”.Bleibt zu hoffen, dass der Kundennutzen nun mehr in den Vordergrund rückt.

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Business Intelligence
Hyperion
IBM

Cindi Howson praises the technical developments which are currently being driven by the software vendors in her article on intelligent enterprise. Convergence, i.e. interoperability of software from different vendors, within suites and across orginizational structures is the prevailing topic of her article.

In 2005, we’ve seen the following convergence efforts:

* Business Objects XI brought fuller integration of the Crystal Decisions products the company acquired in 2003.
* Cognos announced that it will bring OLAP and reporting into a common Web architecture with the release of Cognos 8 this fall.
* Hyperion’s Project Avalanche, due later this year, will pull its entire product line onto one platform.
* Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005, due in November, will provide tighter integration between the vendor’s Analysis and Reporting Services

Indeed technology advances have been tremendous over the last few years, even though many BI/CPM deployments fail to be successful. Also a lot of the “convergence” took place within the platforms of the respective vendors to bring together the different technologies following their acquisitions.

One of the main reasons for project failures I see in the fact that companies who endeavor to implement BI solutions are confronted with sales people who are only interested in one thing: Licence revenue. What Cindi Howson fails to emphasize is that the importance of software choice is far less than the industry leads us to believe. The real success factors lie much more in professional preparation, involvement of all stakeholders, proper project management and most of all the right technical architecture which usually involves software from different vendors.

To achieve all of this, the appointment of an experienced and independent external project manager early on in the project could prove supportive. Among other things would be someone who is interested in the success rather than in software revenue, he could act as an “advocatus diaboli” when it comes to usere requirements and he could balance the interest of the different stakeholders. Sometimes IT tend to see projects as a purely technical exercise that has nothing to do with Business requirements while Finance and other more business oriented departments have no idea how to translate their requirements into the language of technical people and do not understand arguements IT would use.

Another way to overcome the “software selection trap” is to find a Business Intelligence System Integrator who has expertise with different technologies, make them support the software selection process and take end to end responsibility for the project success. However a common problem with this approach could be that the SI is not focused enough to entertain a resource pool that is equally skilled in all areas. I would prefer Integrators who focus on two or three software packages who openly discuss strenghts, weaknesses and features versus the requirements and by doing so guide the buyer towards his decision over Integrators who emphasize their complete independence.

Sandy Kemsley also emphazises this point in her Column 2 blog with a slightly different spin and argumentative Gartner support: BPM softskills & BPM, BI and performance management

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BPM
Performance Management
Business Intelligence

The short term impact of this move (Reuters news) will be that Cognos, Hyperion and all the medium and small sized Corporate Performance Management (CPM) players and some niche vendors in the budgeting and planning market will face some more competition. As Cognos does after the Adaytum takeover, Business Objects now face the problem of platform integration, but due to the fact that BO have no own database engines, they will probably find this an easier task. So for the Business Objects customer who wants a complete solution the short term effect will be, that the BO sales person will suggest to use one and the same integrated platform from Business Objects, only to discover later that integration between the technologies is a pain in the ass. The mid term effect will undoubtedly be, that Microsoft will increase it’s efforts to bring a professional suite of their own, drive the licence costs down and by doing so will finally enable much smaller companies to take advantage of Corporate Performance Management Solutions.

Technorati tags:
BPM
Performance Management
Business Intelligence