September 25, 2007
Mission Control Center for Business Intelligence
In the Volkskrant (a Dutch newspaper) I read two interesting articles The first one was titled: “Radiologist in India monitors Ethiopian baby”. The second one: “Drilling for oil in Iraq using a webcam”. If you take one step back and analyze these two articles you will find a very simple underlying model they have in common.
In both articles you have an expert (the radiologist or the oil driller) monitoring a remote process (baby development or oil drilling) and if needed taking action.
The main reasons for this remote monitoring are the lack of know-how, expertise or information in the vicinity of the process itself.
The main benefits of this remote monitoring and action taking were cost reduction and less time between the actual event and the appropriate measure.
Now apply this to the Business Intelligence domain.
The expert (Business Intelligence professional or knowledge worker) monitors the key business processes (for example: supply chain, time to market or product delivery), runs analysis’s and if needed takes action by intervening in the process or contacting the process owner.
If I close my eyes I can see a mission control center – like the bridge in Star Trek – where the whole company and its surroundings are being monitored for better performance.
Make it so.
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 5:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2007
Business Objects 4 sale? The fight continues...
PARIS (Reuters) - Business Objects (BOBJ.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) (BOBJ.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a French-American business intelligence software maker, is looking for a buyer and has appointed Goldman Sachs to find an investor, Le Figaro newspaper said.
At current market prices, Business Object is valued at 2.9 billion euros ($4.03 billion).
The consolidation of BI tools is entering a new round. Will be this the one where the final knock out will be given? An article in the French paper le Figaro mentions that Business Objects (BOBJ) has hired Goldman to sell the company! This is sure to reignite the acquisition speculation again.
Until recently BOBJ official position was that they were not for sale. On the contrary they were on the acquisition path themselves and their ambition was to remain an independent BI software firm.
Although this is the official stand point rumor has it that they have been contemplating this move for quite a while. Unable to make the much needed growth as an independent software - fighting their opponent Cognos - they need a large platform vendor to make the difference.
Which of the usual suspects would be in the market for BOBJ?
1) Oracle does not seem like a logical choice. With all their recent acquisitions their BI portfolio seems to be complete enough. Also Fusion will have to be their main focus for now.
2) The SAP BI solution (SAPBW) has never won any prices. It was considered to be not very user friendly and limited in its possibilities. I had many clients inquiring on alternatives. They could use a good BI environment maybe more than any of the competition. With they recent acquisition of Outlooksoft they have the possibility to finally go for a complete BI/CPM platform: leveraging the power of the underlying SAP data.
3) Another good possibility are they guys and girls from HP. They have bought Knight bridge - a BI consulting firm - and have a comprehensive data warehouse solution/infrastructure. However they are still missing a BI tool or environment to go with this. This might be a great possibility to really enter the arena.
4) IBM always comes up in these kind of list - but somehow they never seem to bite. But they have they same starting point as HP with strong data warehouse infrastructure and consulting in place. But an American - French marriage often leads to many problems (although in real life I have a good friend who has fought the odds). I keep hearing rumors about Cognos and IBM. If HP decides to buy BOBJ then IBM must follow. Start calling your stoke broker.
Although there are more candidates out there - such as Microsoft (don’t think so), Cognos (that would be so funny but impossible), Teradata (a possibility after the split from NCR) or even the real outsiders as Google Aps (hmmm, have to think about that one) - my guess it will be one of the above.
Do you agree or have I missed something or someone? Please react and share your opinions.
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2007
The blessed trinity of Business Intelligence
In the Netherlands there has been a lot of discussion about THE definition of Business Intelligence. Especially on the www.computable.nl/BI blog there have been many entries on this subject. Everyone has a different definition and all of them have merit. Here is the one that I often use. It is still way to long but I am pretty sure it covers the entire spectrum: “Business Intelligence enables the consumer to make processes, strategy or objectives - accountable, adjustable of adaptive resulting in a more efficient commitment of the scarce company resources and a better performance. This must by done by making univocal and reliable information available in the desired form and environment and based on
internal and external data from past, present and future”.
Organizations can make great use of the mandatory data they provide for compliance reasons (internally and externally). They can shift from distrust (what have you done) to trust and from looking back (lag) to looking forward (lead).
This is made possible by using Corporate Intelligence (know yourself), Customer Intelligence (know your customers) and Ecosystem Intelligence (know your stakeholders). In other words, from inside out. Having a robust master and metadata management layer in place provides the possibility to have this much coveted single version of the truth.
This can be represented in a pyramid which bears resemblance to Mazlow. On the lowest level (compliance) the focus is on the past and compliance (what has happened). On this level information within the company has been made explicit, placed in a central storage area (often a datawarehouse) and is used for reporting past performance. Best know examples are: Enterprise reporting, financial reporting and consolidation, SOX, IFRS.
On the next level (Corporate Performance Management) the link is being made between the data that originates from the compliance level and the corporate strategy. Data will be used for making the performance measurable against set goals and targets. This can be used to better steer performance. Know examples are: Dashboards, Scorecards and other KPI measurement instruments.
On the top level (Collaboration) the data will be used to support the execution of the strategy. Everything revolves around the possibility to constantly adapt to changing circumstances by seeking alliances with relevant stakeholders. Known examples are: CRM, Pricing, loyalty.
This means that on the lowest level the focus is on:
– Lag (past performance)
– Distrust (what have you done)
– Few people (knowledge workers often finance)
– Financially orientated (often mandatory)
– Focus is internal only
– Data is often structured
– Resulting in low effectivity and effiency
And on the highest level the focus is on:
– Lead (Near) Realtime (future performance)
– Trust (sharing with stakeholders/partners)
– Many people (information democracy)
– Pervasive (integrated in the companies DNA)
– Focus in on internal and external
– The data can be structured and unstructured (document warehouse)
– Resulting in high effectivity and effiency
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
Microsoft BI 2.0
Last week Microsoft came in the news with two seemingly separate events. The Dutch government has decided to make more use of open source software. There are several reasons for this: lower costs, more innovative employees and so on. But the most dominant driver for this was limiting the position of power of Microsoft.
Also the European community won their fight with Microsoft, forcing them to give other companies more information on the ins and outs of Ms Windows. Giving these so called API’s to other companies allows them to better integrate their products with Ms Windows. In the extreme this can be considered as a first step towards making Microsoft more open(source).
The support for open source software among some IT professionals is powerful. For example there is a high correlation between pony tailed network administrators and (Linux) penguin T-shirts.
As many of you know Microsoft has been entering the BI arena with products like performance point server. Many argue that Ms Excel already is the dominant BI tool anyway. It has been common practice among IT professionals to bash Microsoft and for BI professionals to bad-talk Excel. But on the other side, the business people (especially those grayish people from finance) cannot live without their spreadsheets. So if IT doesn’t want it but the Business needs it – are we at a deadlock?
If this first step of forcing Microsoft to open up its secrets to other players continues - perhaps in the future IT and Business can work together in making Microsoft BI (2.0) a truly collaborative business intelligence experience.
Bookkeeper and BI professional – both wearing a “I LOVE BILL” T-shirt – working together on improving Microsoft BI. Shall we live to see this?
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)
BI vendor consolidation: the kiss of death?
For as long as I can remember, the market for Business Intelligence tools has been more or less stable. Sure, sometimes a new player entered or another disappeared. But on the whole, the market was dominated by a couple of vendors. The most exiting news came from new versions, upgrades or a technological breakthroughs. To put it bluntly: you could choose either Cognos or BusinessObjects or if you were running SAP you could go with BW. Than things slowly started changing. Instead of Business Intelligence we suddenly found ourselves talking about things like Corporate Performance Management, financial consolidation, budgeting, planning, dashboards and scorecards. And we embraced the tools that came with it. Our work was no longer limited to reporting and analysis. We were proud that after so many years finally the strategic value of Business Intelligence was recognized. Thus changing the playing field completely. The focus in BI was shifting from a technical toward a business solution.
The BI and platform vendors quickly recognized this also and have been embracing these tools as well. They bought up companies that had tools specializing in this specific area and integrated them – as best as they could – in their own product portfolio. SAP for example acquired Outlooksoft (Consolidation) and Pilot Software (Strategy Management). Oracle acquired Hyperion (after they bought Peoplesoft and Siebel) – the market leader in planning, budgeting and financial consolidation. Microsoft acquired ProClarity (Analytics) and made a firm entry to the BI/CPM marketplace when they launched their Performance Point Server. Cognos – a pure BI player – acquired Adaytum and Frango and created a complete CPM solution. Finally BusinessObjects- still busy with integrating Crystal – bought Cartesis (consolidation) to complete their CPM offering that they already started building on when they acquired SRC and ALG Software. However is this buying up – this consolidation – not the kiss of death? Where is this going to end? Why this focus on applications rather than information?
Business Intelligence has come a long way. It is now closer tied with the business processes as ever before making the basic data (quality) that comes from this also more and more important. BI still can be an aggregated report of last month sales on a highly accumulated level but it can also be operational dashboards monitoring key business processes on a real time level supporting split second decisions. This makes a strong case for the platform vendors. They have the applications to support the business processes, capture the data and report on them. An integration of software and hardware therefore seems to be unavoidable. Cognos is one of the fist BI pure players to understand this. Their launch of Cognos Now! – which integrates a hardware server and dashboard for realtime monitoring – is proof of that. They might well be the first BI platform vendor.
But basically all BI/CPM vendors have more or less the same products and use the same technology. Even the corporate take over strategies are being copied resulting into a concentration of BI vendors. The real innovation still has to come from small companies that specialize in a niche of business intelligence such as: strategy implementation, meta- and masterdata, advanced visualization, text mining, search and business activity monitoring. These small companies will probably at some point in time be bought by one of the large BI vendors. After all, Cognos Now! was Celquest before. The real challenge for the large BI vendors will than be the technical integration of all these tools. It is easy to make a Ms Powerpoint presentation of where this new application fits in your product portfolio – but making it work with these other tools is a far more difficult thing to do.
Finally, will we end up with one or two BI vendors with a standard set of Business Intelligence tools? No, I don’t think so. The BI tool set will always be dynamic. Remember? After DDS (Decision Support Sytems) and EIS (Executive Information Systems) came Enterprise Reporting and OLAP (Analytics). Than came the consolidation, planning, dashboard and scorecarding tools. Nowadays, the streaming servers and realtime monitoring tools are being wheeled into the business. There will always be something new. The platform vendors will take a dominant position in the BI market but there will always be room for vendors with a focus on BI only. It is almost like the Olympics. Sometimes you need the decathlete to jump, run and throw the javelin and sometimes you just need a 100 meter specialist.
But I am not sure that the real innovation will come from these companies, though they may well acquire the innovators to embed them into their enterprise solutions. Like a thousand points of light, there are individuals and small companies out there already thinking in a really innovative manner about what Business Intelligence could be given new capabilities and technologies.
Who are they? I can’t wait to find out! Let me know what you have seen or are thinking, and that also means the big players too.
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)
Cognos to acquire applix
I hate to say I told you so - but I am going to do it anyway! I wrote in my blog about vendor consolidation that the innovation would come from small companies and that the larger (BI) vendors would acquire them. Well yesterday Cognos annouced they acquired Applix - a 200 person company specialized in performance Analytics.
See what cognos writes about this on their own website:
Cognos to Acquire Applix
Cognos has announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire Applix, Inc., a publicly held company based in Westborough, Massachusetts and an industry leader in analytics. With this acquisition, Cognos expects to further extend its position as a leading independent provider of financial performance management.
Applix will complement Cognos flagship products—Cognos 8 Planning, Cognos 8 Controller, and Cognos 8 Business Intelligence —specifically in the area of financial performance management. Applix performance analytics will give customers new capabilities to analyze and optimize financial performance. This will include improved control and leverage of large, complex financial performance data; strong finance self-service capabilities for “what-if” business modeling and scenario management; new solution areas including profitability analysis; and innovative technology, including a patented, 64-bit, in-memory multidimensional OLAP server
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)
I am a believer
Day 1 in Mumbai. What an overwhelming city this is. After ‘surviving’ Mumbai rush hour I will never complain anymore when stuck in traffic (ok, maybe a little). But this is probably the only city in the world where you don’t get RSI from clicking your mouse but from honking your horn (if you have been here you know what I mean). After driving through the slums – overpopulated with people so poor they cannot afford to buy shoes - back in my hotel room I found two chocolate cupcakes with fresh whipped cream! So does this mean that we should consider the Indian IT solutions to be at the bottom of the value chain as well? Or at best be of mixed quality? Is India only a country for low cost IT resources – or is there more than meets the eye?
I have spent the day talking with people that know how to do business. And their knowledge of Business Intelligence (BI) far exceeds the ‘simple’ data warehousing and reporting capabilities. Ok, it’s confession time. I also thought of India as a quick fix for our resource problems. Let’s just dump our specs over the wall and let the Indians build it. But guess what? They have strong knowledge of consulting – in for example supply chain or customer value – and of BI integration, and development and even outsourcing and maintenance. Some customers have said to me: “India is a great concept but that does not work for BI. Also all our documentation is in Dutch. This will not work”. But can you believe that today I met some Indians who actually spoke some Dutch! They had worked on a project where originally all requirements were in Dutch but were translated (in India) into English. After they were checked again in the Netherlands they started building the solution in Dutch using an English/Dutch glossary as reference. By working together with the end customer in the Netherlands they quickly picked up some of the lingo. So I have seen the proof here. A lot of successful BI projects (91% of the customers valued it as good, very good or excellent). And although I have to admit that BI is not standard and will probably be different for each customer or even subject area, I am pretty sure these guys can solve anything thrown at them (or already have).
So here are my questions for you:
• How mature can a BI solution or project from India be?
• What are the limitations? What are the opportunities?
• Is it limited to offshore development based on onshore requirements? Or can they do more?
• Where will it end?
Please let me know what you think of this
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)
