Microsoft

Business Objects Live Office

November 1, 2011/0 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Business Objects, Posts /by Adam Getz

Live Office from SAP Business Objects integrates business intelligence functionality from the Business Objects suite within the commonly-used Microsoft Office environment. Subsequently Live Office enables users are able to embed refreshable information within documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and share them across their organization. Live Office provides users with real-time data that is verifiable and easily refreshed. As Live Office is built directly into Microsoft Office applications, needed information is available at the user’s finger tips and is available in a familiar, easy to use format. In a nutshell, Live Office empowers business users to easily access corporate data from within Microsoft Office Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint without depending on expertise from the information technology department.

Benefits of Business Objects Live Office
• Access business intelligence (BI) content directly within Microsoft Office.
• Embed business intelligence directly in your e-mail messages using Microsoft Outlook.
• Format and perform calculations using familiar features of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
• Increase business user autonomy by exposing corporate data in Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations rather than web applications.
• Improve timelines of decisions by enabling simpler information consumption.
• Become less dependent on information technology personnel for generation of reports.

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: OLAP (Vendors and Products) – 2011

July 20, 2011/3 Comments/in Business Intelligence, Posts /by Adam Getz

On-line analytical processing (OLAP) solutions provide advanced techniques for rapidly visualizing and analyzing business metrics across different points of view. OLAP is a term used to generically refer to software and applications that provide users with the ability to store and access data in OLAP cubes (also called a ‘multidimensional cube’ or a hypercube) with this “cube” being made up of numeric facts, called measures, and text values, called dimensions.

Moreover, OLAP systems provide users with insight into past performance and they enable a deep understanding of the reasons behind why previous events have occurred. Fundamentally, OLAP systems allow users to rapidly view and analyze data from many perspectives or dimensions and allows the users to conduct sophisticated “What-If” analysis.

In 2011, the market leading vendors for OLAP systems include: SAP Business Objects, Oracle, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, SAS, Pentaho, & Jaspersoft.

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.

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)