Grand Prix Business Intelligence

Last week I had the opportunity to attend VRAAAAAAAAAAAOOOMMMM a corporate event at the Belgian VRAAAAAAAAAAOOOOMMMMM Grand Prix, and present an SAP BusinessObjects product overview and roadmap. Unfortunately, the pleasure of having the opportunity to visit the famous Spa circuit, meeting Heikki Kovalainen, and seeing Lewis Hamilton at dinner was a little VRAAAAAAAOOOOOMMMMM drowned out by the constant, annoying VRAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOMMMM sound of race-cars... [Read More...]

Who Cares About BI and Performance Management Market Share?

IDC recently released several reports on business analytics market shares, including business intelligence and performance management: Worldwide Business Analytics Software 2009 – 2013 Forecast and 2008 Vendor Shares, IDC #219383, August 2009 Worldwide Financial Performance and Strategy Management 2008 Vendor Shares: Market Consolidation Drives Domination, IDC #218656, June 2009 Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2008 Vendor Shares, IDC... [Read More...]

Exciting, Risky Business Intelligence in South Africa

I was in South Africa last week for the inaugural meetings of the BI special interest group of the Africa SAP User’s Group (AFSUG). There were two events, one in Cape Town and another in Johannesburg, with Durban dialed in through an Adobe Connect session. There was lots of interest, with so many people wanting to attend that the event over capacity in Cape Town and had to have a second overflow room in Johannesburg. The agenda consisted of: An... [Read More...]

John Schwarz on SAP BusinessObjects Plans and Priorities

John Schwarz, ex-CEO of Business Objects (and now an Executive Board Member of SAP responsible for SAP BusinessObjects, the Global Ecosystem & Partner Group, and Corporate Development) had several conversations with bloggers at the Fortune Brainstorm event in July. Coverage included: Jeff Nolan: SAP’s John Schwarz on Analytics: “If you have been following SAP’s financial results this year you already know that Business Objects is fueling... [Read More...]

SAP’s Position on On-Demand, Social Networking, and Cloud Computing

The last few months has seen a lot of coverage of SAP’s directions on Web 2.0 technology including on-demand applications, social networking, and cloud computing. Here are some highlights, in the words of the leaders of these initiatives at SAP. On-Demand Phil Wainewright reported on SAP executive VP John Wookey’s presentation at the OnDemand Europe Conference in June: “On demand is the next stage in the evolution of application development... [Read More...]

IBM Acquires SPSS – A Big Deal, or Not?

IBM announced recently that it would purchase statistics vendor SPSS for approximately $1.2 billion. Various commentators have been saying this is a very big deal: Bob Evans of InformationWeek: “I think IBM’s acquisition of SPSS will mark a seminal moment in that company’s evolution” Merv Adrian: “With one stroke, IBM has signalled that it believes itself ready to redraw the BI map…. Why does it matter so much? Simple: Predictive... [Read More...]

SAP’s Sustainability Dashboards

The SAP’s Sustainability Report web site provides a great example of how business intelligence can help with sustainability reporting and analysis. All public organizations will have to start providing this time of information in the future, and SAP BusinessObjects provides some great tools to do it with. Here are some of the Xcelsius dashboards that are provided as part of the report: Environment Carbon Footprint

How SAP Got 1.7 Million Members in Its Online Community

Both Business.com and SAP Info have great interviews with Mark Yolton, Senior VP of SAP’s 1.7 million-strong Community Network. Mark talks about how to create a feeling of community, how SAP leverages technology like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, and what his team does to measure the success of their initiatives. SDN – SAP Developer Network – http://sdn.sap.com BPX – Business Process Expert Community – http://bpx.sap.com BOC... [Read More...]