InsideYellowfin

« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »

October 18, 2007

Yellowfin Release 3.3

Yellowfin Release 3.3 Announcement

Yellowfin is delighted to announce the content for our upcoming release 3.3. Scheduled for release end of November 2007, Yellowfin 3.3 will bring further ease of use to reporting and analytics for both embedded and stand alone reporting users. Release 3.3 will certainly improve the ability to interact with, and visualise your data. This will be achieved through greater flexibility and functionality in dashboard design, report grouping and general formatting. Naturally additional administrative features will make Yellowfin even easier to maintain and embed into 3rd party applications.

Although we wish we could say these changes were solely our idea – we can’t! A lot of this release is a result of the fantastic advice we have received from partners and clients. If you wish to influence the next release then the taking part in the Beacon survey is your chance to shape what actually gets done! So if you were one of the many that completed the latest survey – then thanks (if not then there is always next time). Some of the improvements scheduled are listed below. This is not an exhaustive list but will provide you with a taste of what is to come.

A range of formatting improvements that will assist you to better visualise your data. This will include changes such as report summaries with hyperlinks to sections, additional format options for tables and columns. There will also be additional functionality for charting with extended interaction capability – stretching your expectations of what can be achieved via pure HTML delivery.
Additional integration options will provide you with even more flexibility for the deployment of Yellowfin into 3rd party applications or intranet environments. It may seem like boring old infrastructure but these changes will further speed up your deployment or time to market activities.
Users do not just read reports in isolation – they tend to browse a range of subject specific reports within the context of the work they are doing at the time. As such Yellowfin will be adding greater flexibility to its dashboards – providing you the capacity for linking reports together associated reports to provider deeper insight – that lets users link a series of reports together into a tabbed format.
Improved Freehand SQL – 3.2 already provided a full range of formatting options but 3.3 extends this with Source Filter Security, User Prompting and Advanced Functions providing the flexibility to author highly interactive reports quickly via your own SQL statements.
Enhancements to the Yellowfin View Builder which will greatly improve the usability and functionality of this process. No one loves Meta-data that much we understand – and we will keep trying to make this as easy as possible.
Introducing Broadcast and Schedule Administration – providing Yellowfin Administrators with total visibility of all scheduled jobs which they can manage to minimise redundant jobs being run.
This release builds on the fantastic achievements of 3.2. Our focus continues to be on improving data visualisation (without sacrificing ease of use) and assisting our OEM partners to deliver excellence in embedded BI solutions. We are very excited about the functionality that is to be delivered in this release.

We do not want to stop at 3.3 and we value your feedback; so don’t just wait for the next Beacon survey to have your say. Log into the Yellowfin forum at http://forum.yellowfin.com.au and you can contribute to the Beacon Wish list at any time. All good ideas will find their way into the next survey, and future releases.

Share:  

Posted by Justin Hewitt at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)

Yellowfin’s Take on the SAP acquisition of BO

Cognos buys Applix– no
'stop press' there is even bigger news in the industry! SAP buys Business Objects for $6.8 Billion. What’s all the fuss about and what does it mean for customers, the industry and BO’s current partner base?

The move wasn’t entirely a surprise; ever since the purchase of Hyperion by Oracle rumours have been circulating that Business Objects was next to be aquired. Industry watchers floated several likely candidates—including IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., and SAP—but few expected a deal to conclude so swiftly.

What do we make of SAP’s deal? Clearly the party with the most to gain are the SAP shareholders. There is, however, no advantage in this move for the Business Objects customer who are not SAP customers. In fact, it’s likely that SAP’s sales force will pressure such customers to buy SAP applications. After all, up-sell and cross-sell are prominent reasons for vendors merging.

One of the major impacts that few analysts have discussed is the impact on the embedded market. SAP’s acquisition highlights the journey some of the original Crystal Decisions customers have faced. Crystal was the recognised leader in embedded BI when acquired by BO in 2003. Since then, licensing and maintenance costs have spiralled, and now this is its fourth transition in that software in six years That’s a fairly significant impact to companies if they’re depending on the Crystal as their reporting engine either in their application or organisation.

ERP vendors who compete with SAP and currently bundle BO products as part of their reporting offering are now in a bit of a conundrum. Do they open up their customer base to SAP or look for alternative, independent and more flexible offerings such as Yellowfin. “All of this acquisition activity presents a great opportunity for Yellowfin” says Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie. “Most software vendors are uncomfortable tying their offerings to SAP, they want to deal with a Partner, such as Yellowfin, that works with them and not one that wishes to aggressively acquire their customer base. In the embedded space we expect to see a big shift away from Business Objects over the next 12 months”.

Product rationalisation will also have a profound impact on the existing customer base. There is a huge overlap in product functionality (for example between SAP NetWeaver and Enterprise XI) especially since Business Objects has boosted its product base with nearly a dozen acquisitions of which many have not been fully integrated and could easily be dropped. SAP isn’t known for supporting earlier versions of software or for being a quick, nimble company that offers reasonably priced products - so how the rationalisation and integration is to proceed is any ones guess.

In the final analysis, it comes down to customers, of course. The acquisition doesn’t appear to have much to do with adding value for customers. It’s more about maximising shareholder returns. The only question now is when will the next major acquisition take place?

Share:  

Posted by Justin Hewitt at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2007

Business Intelligence Consultancies must adapt to survive and prosper.

The business intelligence market is changing rapidly. Three major forces driven are changing the landscape. Firstly, BI software vendors are working feverishly to bring BI to the masses making it easier for end users to fulfil much of their reporting needs. Second, in addition some vendors are taking ownership of larger client consulting projects to boost their own revenue, and finely ERP vendors and consultants are looking to extend their reach by delivering BI solutions which leverage their understanding of the ERP deployment.

With these changes in mind BI consultants needs to re-think the way that they do business. To adapt and survive consultants need change their current mode of operation where:

1. Each new client is a unique consulting opportunity, little to no
value-add is transferred from one project to the next.
2. Big is still beautiful - driving the client towards long term highly
complex projects.

Instead, to compete, BI consultancies need to develop and package up their own Intellectual Property which they can sell their clients in conjunction with the value added services that they offer.

The BI software market is undergoing a major shift. For all the talk and hype BI for the masses is starting to happen. BI solutions such as Yellowfin which deliver user friendly web based reporting are making BI easy, and analytical skill sets are increasing in organisations. Yellowfin's collaborative technology encourages report writing by the staff that own and know their data sets. Reports are easily shared with the non-expert user base. The days of consultants earning revenue by writing reports are coming to a swift end. Consultancies need to move up the food chain and add value through true business analysis, and longer term reusable BI elements such as data marts and data warehouses. This is where the IP crunch starts. By changing the focus from report building to back end development the risk is that if the entire business is built on a services model the consultancy may erode long term revenue. How this addressed will be covered later.

If easier to use tools were not enough, then the growth of traditional vendors clawing at the BI consultancies client and revenue base surely does not help either. One of the trends lately for the big boys has been to tackle their flattening software revenue is to take greater ownership of the entire customer BI project - from software to implementation. If all the consultant sells is their time then the value proposition for the client and their point of differentiation is low. However, if consultancies develop their own IP in their specialist markets they can offer their client lower cost solutions (through a reduction of deployment time and re-usable BI
components) at higher margins and thus retain their profitability.

And now the crunch - ERP Vendors and consultancies are rapidly seeing their revenue streams drying up as the ERP market matures. They are using their understanding of the ERP application and their client relationships to extend their offering to BI in an effort to boost their revenue streams.
SAP's purchase of Business Objects leaves no doubt. The mature ERP market has to extend its reach if it is to maintain revenue growth. It is here that we have competing skills - ERP consultants with an understanding of the source data versus those with an understanding of how to package and deliver it for BI. To compete with the ERP consultant the BI consultant needs to pre-package solutions for ERP applications that leverages their BI expertise and can be quickly customised for their clients.

To prosper as a BI consultancy the business model has to change. Focus less on the services revenue, instead consider margins and profitability. BI consultancies must invest in developing their own IP - such as pre-canned report product sets that are generic to industries and technology platforms.
These must enable cookie cutting and be sold as a tangible product. IP development creates tangible business differentiation that creates barriers against competitors who have not invested in product development. In addition to IP revenue clients will also procure services for customisation and so provide two streams of revenue. Now is the time for consultancies to decide whether to go the way of the dinosaurs or evolve and thrive with a hybrid services/IP business offering.

Share:  

Posted by Justin Hewitt at 6:45 AM | Comments (18)