Marketing People in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones

InformationWeek Executive Editor Doug Henschen takes Oracle to task for having the gall to criticize his article about Microsoft’s new in-memory solution while being less than candid about their own in-memory solution: Oracle Spotlights Its Database Memory Gap. The result of Oracle’s action is an article that explains in detail the gap between Oracle’s marketing rhetoric and the reality of their solution: Oracle senior communications VP... [Read More...]

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...]

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...]

Oracle Buys Cartesis!

Market consolidation reaches absurd new heights! Many thanks to Piet Loubser for forwarding a link to this DM Review article by David O’Connell of Nucleus Research: Oracle’s recent acquisition of best-of-breed performance management vendor Cartesis means that ERP vendors want to take their BI-related functionality up a notch. Wait! Didn’t Business Objects buy Cartesis?!  The article should of course read “…performance... [Read More...]

The Case for Independent Business Intelligence

The time is ripe to discuss the future of independent BI, after the purchase of Hyperion by Oracle and continued speculation on the future of the remaining vendors. Will there be a ”domino effect”? A commentary in Business Week sums up the “domino effect” opinion (more prevalent among financial analysts than industry analysts) that the deal will lead to the purchase of the remaining large independent players. Here are... [Read More...]

Oracle Support Doesn’t Use BI?

One interesting aspect in Oracle’s lawsuit against SAP is how they apparently noticed that something was wrong: Intelligent Enterprise: “Ultimately, Oracle caught on to the unusual volume of requests…. Oracle says an investigation into huge traffic spikes on its Customer Connection servers…” Oracle’s complaint document: “In late November 2006, there occurred unusually heavy download activity on Oracle’s... [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...]