Data Quality and The Art of Despair?
Check out the deeply subversive management videos at the despair.com site. Here, Dr. E.L. Kersten uses a mailing list debacle to illustrate his Demotivators© organizational storytelling techniques. Remember — it could be worse… Read More →
The Top 6 On-Demand BI Confusions
I’m a big believer in the future of on-demand BI, and yes, it’s hot. But a lot of the articles promoting on-demand BI don’t always separate fact from self-interested fiction. Here’s my attempt to redress the balance. 1. On-Demand = Subscription Pricing = Mid-Market There are three different axes that are often discussed as if they overlapped: on-premise vs. on-demand perpetual license vs. subscription license enterprise... [Read More...]
Compare Yourself To a Hedge Fund Manager!
In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of benchmarking your performance against others. So, with tongue firmly in cheek, here’s a personal, interactive benchmarking model for you. Top hedge fund managers made over $657M in 2006. Use this handy calculator to work out how long it took them to make more than you do all year — the time to brush their teeth? Take a shower? Commute? (model below — you will probably have to... [Read More...]
Who’s in Charge of Information?
According to a recent InformationWeek article, CIOs aren’t very visible in today’s Fortune 100 companies, at least measured by their tendency to appear on the company’s management team web page. Even at companies like Google and eBay, where information is the lifeblood of the organization, the CIOs don’t appear among the other top execs (at Business Objects, CIO Sheri Andersen makes the cut, but she’s shown... [Read More...]
Business Objects Buys FUZZY! Data Quality
Yet another acquisition: Business Objects purchases FUZZY! Informatik, based near Stuttgart, Germany, terms not disclosed The important: A “challenger” in Gartner’s 2007 data quality magic quadrant Adds European address databases to Business Objects’ existing portfolio and improves European customer base/sales expertise/coverage Vertical solutions for Postal, Financial services, and Telco SOA-enabled, which should make... [Read More...]
Cognos Buys Applix
Only minutes after I post an entry on the acceleration of consolidation in the BI market, I see that Cognos has purchased Applix. The interesting part is TM1, which uses memory-centric BI technology that has been around for as long as I can remember, but which didn’t really come into its own until 64-bit platforms became available. The other vendor closely associated with the technology is Qliktech, but both SAP and FAST claim to have a memory-centric... [Read More...]
BI Market Consolidation?
I was recently asked for my thoughts on BI market consolidation for a BI supplement to The Times newspaper: The BI market has been remarkably fragmented for a long time. According to IDC, the market share of the top 5 BI vendors (Business Objects, SAS, Cognos, Microsoft, Hyperion) barely changed over the period 2004-2006, from 46% to 48%, and non-top-15 vendors consistently made up over 30% of the market. But — following the trend of other technology... [Read More...]
Two Key Steps From Project to Enterprise BI
A lot has been written about what typically goes wrong in individual BI projects (see my blog postings on the five fatal flaws, or check out articles such as Madan Sheina‘s recent “What went wrong with business intelligence?“) But even when individual BI projects are successful, many organizations stumble on the journey to true enterprise BI deployments. What goes wrong? First, organizations must realize that implementing enterprise... [Read More...]
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