« November 2005 | Main
December 13, 2005
Thoughts on BI Standardization
It seems like everyone is talking about BI standardization the analysts, the vendors, and the companies deploying BI software. The projected benefits of standardizing on a single vendor seem logical, which makes the story attractive.
However, I seriously doubt a global 2000 company is really going to get to a single vendor anytime soon.
Does anyone really believe a company that has spent many man years and multiple millions of dollars building Business Objects Universes will rip it all out and replace it with Cognos or Hyperion?
What is more realistic is to see a company standardize on a smaller set of vendors. Business Objects for query and reporting, Hyperion for budgeting and planning, etc.
I still think some of the benefits of standardization like easier maintenance can be realized if the vendors work to implement open standards for data and metadata exchange. Some work has already been done to define standards like XML for Analysis and JOLAP, but vendor support for implementation needs work.
For example, you can't exchange or synchronize information across a Business Objects Universe, a Cognos Framework Manager Model, or a Microsoft Report Model.
I believe standardization on a single vendor might happen in small to medium sized businesses, but for large global organizations it will take a very long time and may never happen. Therefore if vendors really want to help their customers realize some of the benefits of standardization they should be making it easier for companies to manage implementations across different software packages.
Share:
Posted by Dan Everett at 9:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
