Mar 21, 2010

What readers are saying about BI Valuenomics 1

“This book hits the bull’s-eye on the main challenge facing corporate BI engagements today, ...from being technology centric to business driven with a BI strategy thought process. Hari drives this point home with great insight, industry highlights and thought processes for consideration that make this book a great read for all BI professionals”

Richard Dunning former BI Chair, ASUG*; SITACORP BI Practice Director (USA)
*ASUG- Americas SAP Users Group
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“Gartner identified the enigma to BI Success. Hari provides a clear roadmap to attain it”
Jasvir Gill —ex CEO of Virsa (GRC), current CEO of Alert Enterprises (USA)
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“Perfectly timed, surgically focused insights . Just when we were lost in our BI investments Hari shows us the Business path out of the confusion”
Uli Neubert—CEO, ICM America (USA)
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 “Every C level executive focused on a positive ROI from BI needs to read this book, it will ensure success.  Hari has truly created the manual for success that keeps focus on the principles of business driven BI, delivered by leveraging technology”

Matt Murray Managing Director & Founder , EdgeRock Inc (USA)

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"This book pulls us out of our current engineering college where we learn everything about why a time machine cannot be built, but nothing about how to build a simple bridge. All our business users need is to cross the raging river"
Illias Yannopoulos, CIO, Hellenic Seaways (Greece)

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“In BI Valuenomics Hari lays out the roadmap for businesses to assure business value, optimize investments and enhance business capabilities in these tough times"
Jai Basrur —Director, Christmas Gouwland Basrur Consulting Ltd (New Zealand)

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“Hari’s book maps the value engine to explicitly identify and prioritize critical business components that will drive BI initiatives to success. A must read both for executives and non-executive staff having anything to do with BI"
AJ Peter Wall, President and CEO, Peter and Clare Corporation (Canada)

Mar 12, 2010

The 2010 Magic Quardrent in BI

This year gartner places Oracle DW and Microsoft almost at par in data warehousing.

In October 2009 ZL technology is suing Gartner for $1.7 billion for not accurate positioning companies in their magic quadrant. ZL accuses that Gartner is driven more by promotions and funding than reality. Companies are willing to fund such research, according to ZL, as Gartner reports move executive decisions.
But leaving conspiracy theories aside, here is what Gartner reports;-
1. While 2/3 of the 8.8 billion market share was dominated by the mega vendors, business users increasingly turned to pure-play BI platforms for time-to-value solutions
2. 2009 created a frenzy of major BI platform consolidations on one side, and resilient pure-play vendors on the other.
3. Despite mega acquisitions the messy 'post acquisition' digestion process has confused sales and customer to a point of 'Let’s wait and see'
4. Five megavendors control 75% of the global BI market today
5. There is a brewing bifurcation between IT and business with IT leading the IT and technology stacking principles and business leading with pureplay faster time-to-value deliverables that the mega vendors cannot provide.
Last years visionaries have become this years challengers. Data visualization has become very big business suddenly with clean exposure of underlying BI objects directly to information consumers
The acquisition turmoil is taking its toll with customer decisions. It is very cyclical and predictable. Initially there is concern and uncertainty, like the Gartner 2010 #5 priority for BI, followed by harmonized solutions, and often leads to a product replacement or change (Customer dread). This transition takes time and is neither easy for suppliers nor customers.
There is a clear shift towards [1] Metadata Transparency; [3] a move from measurement reports to predictive analytics; [3] Automation of core processes
Gartner predicts that the current trough is going to be very temporary indeed and BI is predicted to remain the fastest growth area in IT for the next decade or so.
The SNC or social network is really catching on as customers continue to leverage 360 degree analytics and mishmash data from outside their enterprises
Oracle leads the pack with three critical drivers reporting, dashboards and ad-hoc queries. However, lack of new leading edge technology is slowing Oracle DW enablement. Oracle is putting a lot of efforts integrating their BI to acquisitions and integration with their new platforms. Oracle continues to suffer from a 'slow to respond' perception with their customers. Lack of data quality is the number 1 reason for oracle customer concerns as their OBIEE is not currently very data friendly
Followed by IBM and Microsoft
QlikTek with Qlikview is the rising star
SAP dominates the number game with the largest deployments and their Business Objects acquisition seems to be positioned very well indeed as are their other offers. BOBJ brings much needed Ad-Hoc capabilities that were lacking in the BI functionalities. However SAP BI customer rating continues to lag and continue to be lower for a big player. Some changes in VM ware contracts are causing additional confrontations. Customers continue to reexamine their BI strategies between BEx and BOBJ.
So though BI is relegated to the #5 position there is a lot of work to accomplish