IBM – BI / DW Insider

BI Market: Data Mining & Predictive Analytics (Vendors and Products) – 2011

July 22, 2011/1 Comment/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

Data Mining & Predictive Analytic solutions provide the capabilities of analyzing large data sets in order to find patterns that can help to isolate key variables to build predictive models for management decision making. In addition, data mining applications help discover hidden patterns and relationships in data in order to effectively project and predict future results. In order to accomplish this goal, data mining application utilize statistics, algorithms, advanced mathematical techniques, and sophisticated data search capabilities. Moreover, these sophisticated tools provide answers to questions that may never have been asked and they are effectively able to determine relative amounts of correlation between data elements. Further, the predictive features of these data mining tools enable organizations to exploit useful patterns in data that may have otherwise been difficult to determine.

In 2011, the market leading vendors for data mining systems include: IBM SPSS, SAS, SAP Business Objects, Oracle, MicroStrategy, ThinkAnalytics, Pentaho, & Angoss.

BI Market: Dashboard Management (Vendors and Products) – 2011

July 20, 2011/0 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

Dashboard management systems are intended to facilitate and support the information and decision-making needs of management by providing easy access to key business information in a highly graphical and intuitive format. Fundamentally, a dashboard is a graphical business tool that displays a set of KPIs (key performance indicators), metrics, and any other relevant information to a business user, manager, or key decision-maker in a single consolidated view and allows for organizational performance to be easily measured and monitored. Dashboard data is often displayed as aggregate information and contains data that consolidated from multiple data sources scattered throughout an organization. Dashboards are commonly interactive and provide users users the ability to drill into particular aspects of the display and/or rapidly switch between views of the data.

In 2011, the market leading vendors for dashboard management systems include: SAP Business Objects, Oracle, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, SAS, QlikTech, LogiXML, Corda, Dundas, iDashboards, Pentaho, & Jaspersoft.

BI Market: Ad-Hoc Query & Analysis (Vendors and Products) – 2011

July 19, 2011/0 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

Query and analysis solutions enable business users and analysts to rapidly generate business queries and reports from enterprise data based upon business question of the data. Also known as “ad-hoc” querying, these tools typically provide intuitive, graphical interfaces that shields users from technical complexities and allows users to leverage business terminology instead of the more technical database names. The business focus of these tools allows nontechnical professionals to be comfortable with their data and allows them to quickly and efficiently satisfy their own information needsin real time with minimal assistance from system developers. Commonly, query and analysis environments include a middleware layer that converts database conventions into business nomenclature that is more intuitive and understanding to end-users. Moreover, query & analysis environments give users the capability to access and analyze data in a unique and personal manner. Utilized primarily by business users, query and analysis solutions provide an environment that enables interactive methods to query data, present data in an ad-hoc manner, and find information on an as-needed basis.

In 2011, the market leading vendors for ad-hoc query and analysis include: SAP Business Objects, Oracle, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, Information Builders (IBI), Pentaho, Jaspersoft, & SAS.

BI Market: Operational Reporting (Vendors and Products) – 2011

July 12, 2011/0 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

Operational reports are pre-designed business reports that focus on listings of data at the detailed level with data presented within a highly-structured format. Also known as “canned reports”, operational reports enable organizations to present data in a logical format and are designed to support the day-to-day activities of an organization at the transaction level. They are typically developed by information technology (IT) departments and/or advanced report users that have a good understanding of reporting tools, business rules, and database concepts. In addition, operational reports can be scheduled, refreshed, and distributed on a regular basis. Fundamentally operational reports are used by people with the responsibility for improving their organization’s operations.

In 2011, the market leading vendors for operational reporting include: SAP Business Objects, Oracle, IBM, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, Information Builders (IBI), Pentaho, JasperSoft, Actuate, and LogiXML.

Complete Data Warehouse Appliance Solutions

April 25, 2011/0 Comments/in Data Warehouse Appliance, Posts /by Adam Getz


Complete data warehouse appliances are purpose-built data warehouse solutions and systems that encompass a whole-technology stack including:

• Operating System (OS)

• Database Management System (DBMS)

• Server Hardware

• Storage Capabilities

Initially DW appliances were created with proprietary custom-built hardware and storage units. Netezza, Teradata, DATAllegro, & White Cross (now Kognito) were the first vendors to provide solutions in this manner. Subsequently data warehouse appliances evolved and started to utilize lower-cost, industry-standard non-proprietary hardware components.The movement from proprietary to commodity hardware has proven to bring down the cost of the data warehouse appliance as the commodity hardware can integrated at a lower cost of both developing and integrating proprietary hardware. Examples of commodity hardware typically include general-purpose servers from Dell, Hewlett Packard (HP), or IBM utilizing Intel processors and popular network and storage hardware from either Cisco, EMC, or Sun.

Introduced 2002, Netezza was the first vendor to offer a complete data warehouse appliance, so early definitions of appliance were based upon Netezza products. Subsequently, Netezza Performance Server still provides all of the software components of a data warehouse appliance, including the database, operating system, servers, and storage units. However in 2009, Netezza replaced its own proprietary hardware with IBM blade servers and storage units. Further in 2010, IBM completed a corporate acquisition of Netezza.

Similar to Netezza, DATAllegro was launched in 2005 with a complete solution involving proprietary hardware. Soon after DATAllegro replaced its own proprietary hardware with commodity server from Dell and storage units from EMC. In 3008, Microsoft acquired DATAllegro in 2008 and announced it will integrate DATAllegro’s massive parallel processing (MPP) architecture into its own MS SQL Server platform, which also runs on commonly-available hardware.

Additionally, both Kognitio and Teradata replaced their proprietary hardware within their appliances in a process similar to that of DATAllegro. Kognitio now offers a row-based, in-memory database database called WX2 that does not include indexes or data partitions and runs on blade servers from IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Teradata provides a proprietary database, a variety of common operating systems (Linux, Unix, and Windows), and a proprietary networking subsystem packaged along with commodity processors and storage units.

Announced at the 2008 Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine is a complete package of database software, operating system, servers, and storage. The product was initially assembled in collaboration between Oracle Corporation and Hewlett Packard where Oracle developed the database, operating system and storage software, while HP constructed the hardware. However, with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle announced the release of Exadata Version two with improved performance and usage of Sun Microsystems storage and operating systems technologies.

At the Sapphire conference in May, 2010 in Orlando, SAP announced the release of its new data warehouse appliance called HANA or High-Performance Analytic Appliance. SAP HANA is a combination of hardware, storage, operating system, management software, and in-memory data query engine that is characterized by data being held in RAM rather than being read from disks or flash storage.

Finally IBM bundles and integrates its own Infosphere Warehouse database software (formerly “DB2 Warehouse”) with its own servers and storage to deliver the IBM Infosphere Balanced Warehouse.

Business Intelligence Vendor Consolidation (2003-2008)

February 11, 2011/0 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

The business intelligence (BI) software marketplace has seen a wave of corporate acquisitions since the mid 1990s with the size and importance of the acquisitions coming to their apex during the years 2003 – 2008. This surge in corporate activity in the mid part of the decade has been characterized by a number of large software companies making major, strategic moves. Thus the industry is now in a state in which there are clear leaders or as Gartner, Inc puts it, “megavendors” that own a significant control over the over-all market share. In addition the rest of the BI vendors that not have been a part of acquisition activity are smaller organizations and are more commonly referred to as “niche” or “pure-play” vendors. These “niche” vendors each produce and sell viable business intelligence software products, but they do not encompass the breadth of complimentary technologies that the “megavendor” produces.

Business Intelligence Vendor Consolidation (2003-2008)

BI Vendor Consolidation (2003-2008)

As a result of the BI vendor consolidation of 2003-2008 the following megavendors have placed themselves in a position to control over 2/3 of the business intelligence software marketplace …: • IBM; • Microsoft; • Oracle; • SAP Business Objects

Business Intelligence Vendors and Products (2010)

January 8, 2011/1 Comment/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

As of the end of 2010, the business intelligence (BI) software marketplace is in a state in which there are clear leaders or as Gartner, Inc puts it, “megavendors” that own roughly two-thirds of the $6 billion market. In addition the rest of the BI vendors are more commonly referred to as “niche” or “pure-play” vendors. These “niche” vendors each produce and sell viable business intelligence software products, but they do not encompass the breadth of complimentary technologies that the “megavendor” produces. Regardless of the size of the vendor, both the “megavendors” and “pure-play” vendors do provide very capable and feature-rich software solutions.

Even though many of vendors listed below produce a number of related products, this list is only focused on business intelligence software products.

BI Software Vendors and Products (2010)

The following companies are currently known as megavendors …: • IBM; • Microsoft; • Oracle; • SAP

And the following companies are now known as niche or pure-play vendors …: • MicroStrategy; • Information Builders; • Actuate; • LogiXML; • QlikTech; • Pentaho; • Jaspersoft; • Panorama Software; • Tibco Software (Spotfire); • Tableau Software; • Targit; • arcplan; • Board International

Gartner Evaluates the “Big Four” BI Megavendors

December 22, 2010/2 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Front Page, Posts /by Adam Getz

Although they’re not pure-play business intelligence vendors, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle Corp., and SAP Business Objects own two-thirds of the $6 billion business intelligence (BI) market because they have optimized their BI platforms to work well with their respective enterprise and information management applications, according to Gartner Inc. This integrated approach, as well as the fact that many enterprises already have these vendors’ ERP and information management applications in place, is swaying customers to standardize on one of their BI platforms. (source: searchcio.com)