IDC Business Intelligence Roadshow in Prague

I attended the IDC BI Roadshow today in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Tom Vavra, the IDC research director for the CEMA region, started off the day with a presentation entitled “The Next Wave of Business Intelligence”. He was under unusual pressure, because (1) his family was in the room, and it was the first time they’d seen him speak, and (2) part of the room fell on another IDC employee in the middle of his speech (he literally “brought... [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...]

IBM Falls off the Fence, and Picks Cognos…

IBM couldn’t take the heat any more — it’s Cognos, for $5bn. It seems they were reluctant up until the last minute, given the recent agreements announced with Business Objects XI bundled with DB2. But faced with being left out of the cold, and with other suitors surely bearing down on Cognos, they bit the bullet…   The only two remaining large BI players are SAS and MicroStrategy, both difficult to purchase: SAS because... [Read More...]