OLAP is Dead (Long Live Analytics)

The term OLAP or Online Analytic Processing was coined in 1993 by relational database technology pioneer Ted Codd (my claim to fame: we went to the same high school, Poole Grammar). The term was chosen to contrast with OLTP or online transaction processing, and was prompted by some clever marketing folks at Essbase, who wanted to promote their multidimensional database product. Codd was famous for his twelve rules defining the relational model and... [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...]

BI Briefs: UPS, Facebook, MySQL, SAP, Microsoft

UPS minimizes left-turns. Advanced route planning minimizes fuel consumption and accidents. An old story, but given new life with a recent InformationWeek interview with UPS CIO Dave Barnes (and a good example of delivering effectively on a strategic multi-year IT project). Facebook’s community app platform. As BI vendors try to web-2.0 themselves, they will need to create communities — will they start turning to new platforms, such... [Read More...]

The Latest on BI+PM = ?

In two earlier posts, “What’s in a Name?” and “Putting the Business Back into Business Intelligence“, I talked about the ongoing debate about what we should all call the combination of business intelligence and performance management. With the recent wave of PM acquisitions by Oracle (Hyperion), SAP (Pilot and OutlookSoft), and BusinessObjects (Cartesis), the two markets are clearly becoming one.   As Cindi Howson... [Read More...]

Oracle Buys Hyperion

After the months (years?) of consolidation rumors, finally something happened…. Thoughts: Less change than you might expect It doesn’t change the BI market share picture much, based on the latest IDC numbers, from 2005 (2006 figures presumably due out soon, not expecting any huge changes in the relative positions). Hyperion is currently #5, and Oracle is #6, and combined they would become #4, ahead of Microsoft but behind Business Objects,... [Read More...]