Business Objects
Analysis of business intelligence pioneer Business Objects, now a division of SAP AG. Related subjects include:
- SAP
- Business intelligence
- (in Text Technologies) Business Objects in the text analytics market
- (in The Monash Report) Notes on SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects
Some issues in business intelligence
In November I wrote two parts of a planned multi-post series on issues in analytic technology. Then I got caught up in year-end things and didn’t blog for a month. Well … Happy New Year! I’m back. Let’s survey a few BI-related topics.
Mobile business intelligence — real business value or just a snazzy demo?
I discussed some mobile BI use cases in July 2010, but I’m still not convinced the whole area is a legitimate big deal. BI has a long history of snazzy, senior-exec-pleasing demos that have little to do with substantive business value. For now, I think mobile BI is another of those; few people will gain deep analytic insights staring into their iPhones. I don’t see anything coming that’s going to change the situation soon.
BI-centric collaboration — real business value or just a snazzy demo?
I’m more optimistic about collaborative business intelligence. QlikView’s direct sharing of dashboards will, I think, be a feature competitors must and will imitate. Social media BI collaboration is still in the “mainly a demo” phase, but I think it meets a broader and deeper need than does mobile BI. Over the next few years, I expect numerous enterprises to establish strong cultures of analytic chatter (and then give frequent talks about same at industry conferences). Read more
| Categories: Business Objects, Business intelligence, Gooddata, Software as a Service (SaaS) | 10 Comments |
Quick reactions to SAP acquiring Sybase
SAP is acquiring Sybase. On the conference call SAP said Sybase would be run as a separate division of SAP (no surprise). Most of the focus was on Sybase’s mobile technology, which is forecast at >$400 million in 2010 revenues (which would be 30%ish of the total). My quick reactions include: Read more
Gartner’s 2009 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence
A few days ago I tore into the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS. Well, the 2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms is out too. Unlike the data warehouse MQ, Gartner’s BI MQ clusters its “Leaders” together tightly. But while less bold, the Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant’s claims are just as questionable as those in data warehousing.
February, 2011 edit: Here’s a partial link that works right now.
Of course, some parts do make sense. E.g.: Read more
Intelligent Enterprise’s list of 12/36/48 vendors
I’m getting a flood of press releases today, because many of the companies I write about were selected to Intelligent Enterprise’s list of 12 most influential vendors plus 36 more to watch in the areas Intelligent Enterprise covers (which seems to be pretty much the analytics-related parts of what I write about here and on Text Technologies). It looks like a pretty reasonable list, although I think they forced the issue in some of the small analytics vendors they selected, and of course anybody can quibble with some of the omissions.
Among the companies they cited, you can find topical categories here for IBM (and Cognos), Informatica, Microsoft, Netezza, Oracle, SAP/Business Objects (both), SAS, and Teradata; QlikTech; Cast Iron, Coral8, DATAllegro, HP, ParAccel, and StreamBase; and Software AG. On Text Technologies you’ll find categories for some of the same vendors, plus Attensity, Clarabridge, and Google. There also are categories for some of these vendors on the Monash Report.
An interesting claim regarding BI openness
Analyst conference calls about merger announcements are generally pretty boring. Indeed, the companies involved tend to feel they are legally barred from saying anything interesting, by mandate of both the antitrust regulators and the SEC.
Still, such calls are joyful events, full of strategic happy talk. If one is really lucky, there may a virtuouso tap dancing exhibition as well. On today’s IBM/Cognos call, Cognos CEO Rob Ashe was asked whether he thought Cognos’ independence or lack thereof was as important today as he said it was after SAP announced its BOBJ takeover. Without missing a beat, he responded that there were two kinds of openness:
- Database openness (not important)
- ERP/business process openness (indeed important)
Hmm. I’m not so sure I agree. To begin with, there aren’t just two major points of potential integration. There’s also a whole lot of middleware: obviously data integration, but also app servers, portals, and query execution acceleration as well. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business Objects, Business intelligence, Cognos, IBM and DB2, Memory-centric data management, ParAccel, SAP AG | 1 Comment |
IBM is buying Cognos – quick reactions
Some quick thoughts in connection with IBM’s just-announced plans to acquire Cognos.
1. Ironically, IBM just put out a press release describing a strong-sounding reseller partnership with Business Objects. The deal specified that
Business Objects will begin distributing and reselling IBM DB2 Warehouse with Business Objects XI and CFO Performance Management solutions. In addition, IBM will include a starter edition of Business Objects XI with DB2 and DB2 Warehouse.
Jeff Jones of IBM told me that they also had a partnership with Cognos, but with different details. I guess Cognos will eventually take over that deal, which is an obvious negative for Business Objects.
2. More generally, I can see where Cognos will now likely gain share at DB2 sites, and IBM/Ascential at Cognos sites. I can’t as easily see why Cognos would now lose share at Oracle or Teradata or Netezza sites, or why Ascential would lose share at SAP/BOBJ sites. So there seem to be some genuine synergies here, albeit perhaps modest ones.
3. Thus, I think the negatives in this deal for the remaining independents (Microstrategy, Information Builders, Informatica, etc.) will somewhat outweigh the positives.
4. I’m not a big fan of Cognos’ management, former CEO Ron Zambonini and a few other freethinkers excepted. So from that standpoint I don’t think they have a lot to lose being taken over by Big Blue.
5. Obviously, with most of the dominoes now fallen, the big question is about the future of BI as it – potentially – gets integrated into much larger enterprise technology suites. And I think the answer to that depends a lot more on technology than most people seem to realize. More on that subject later, but here’s one hint:
I think fixing the disappointment that is dashboards will involve taking query volumes up by at least 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. So as great as recent innovations in analytic query performance have been, I hope and trust that so far we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.
Links:
1. eWeek on the IBM/Business Objects deal.
2. Press release on the IBM/Business Objects deal.
3. Press release on the IBM/Cognos deal.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business Objects, Business intelligence, Cognos, IBM and DB2 | 5 Comments |
Vertica update – HP appliance deal, customer information, and more
Vertica quietly announced an appliance bundling deal with HP and Red Hat today. That got me quickly onto the phone with Vertica’s Andy Ellicott, to discuss a few different subjects. Most interesting was the part about Vertica’s customer base, highlights of which included:
- Vertica’s claim to have “50” customers includes a bunch of unpaid licenses, many of them in academia.
- Vertica has about 15 paying customers.
- Based on conversations with mutual prospects, Vertica believes that’s more customers than DATAllegro has. (Of course, each DATAllegro sale is bigger than one of Vertica’s. Even so, I hope Vertica is wrong in its estimate, since DATAllegro told me its customer count was “double digit” quite a while ago.)
- Most Vertica customers manage over 1 terabyte of user data. A couple have bought licenses showing they intend to manage 20 terabytes or so.
- Vertica’s biggest customer/application category – existing customers and sales pipelines alike – is call detail records for telecommunications companies. (Other data warehouse specialists also have activity in the CDR area.). Major applications are billing assurance (getting the inter-carrier charges right) and marketing analysis. Call center uses are still in the future.
- Vertica’s other big market to date is investment research/tick history. Surely not coincidentally, this is a big area of focus for Mike Stonebraker, evidently at both companies for which he’s CTO. (The other, of course, is StreamBase.)
- Runners-up in market activity are clickstream analysis and general consumer analytics. These seem to be present in Vertica’s pipeline more than in the actual customer base.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business Objects, DATAllegro, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, HP and Neoview, RDF and graphs, Vertica Systems | 2 Comments |
Wrinkles in the Informatica versus Business Objects patent litigation
Business Objects recently lost a patent lawsuit to Informatica in the area of data integration. While I was at the Business Objects conference, I asked about it, and was told in effect “It’s no big deal. In fact, the monetary award was reduced. Anyhow, we shipped a non-infringing version within 12 days after the decision, and sales are rolling along.” I then reflected that answer back to Informatica’s stellar analyst relations guy Chas Kielt. He checked with corporate counsel, and sent back the detailed clarification below. Since I got my Business Objects answers from a couple of caught-off-guard non-lawyer French guys, while Chas got a careful explanation of an American court’s judgment from an American lawyer, I’m inclined to think that in any details where they might conflict, Chas’ version is more likely to be accurate.
There’s a more substantive disagreement as to whether the features deleted from BOBJ’s product due to the injunction are actually important in the marketplace. I’m looking into that subject, and hope to post about it in the near future. Read more
| Categories: Business Objects, EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Informatica | Leave a Comment |
One Greenplum customer — 35 terabytes and growing fast
I was at the Business Objects conference this week, and as usual went to very few sessions. But one I did stroll into was on “Managing Rapid Growth With the Right BI Strategy.” This was by Reliance Telecommunications, an outfit in India that is adding telecom subscribers very quickly, and consequently banging 100-150 gigs of data per day into a 35 terabyte warehouse.
The beginning of the talk astonished me, as the presenter seemed to be saying they were doing all this on Oracle. Hah. Oracle is what they moved away from; instead, they got Greenplum. I couldn’t get details; indeed, as a BI guy he was far enough away from DBMS to misspeak and say that Greenplum was brought in by ‘HP’, before quickly correcting himself when prompted. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business Objects, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Oracle, Specific users, Telecommunications | Leave a Comment |
SAP is losing crucial managerial talent
In the past month or so, both Dennis Moore and Nimish Mehta have left SAP. Their reasons are well-known among Oracle alumni to be — at least in large part — discomfort with SAP’s direction. (My unnamed sources on that are highly reliable.) And of course Shai Agassi left earlier this year. It now looks as if my contrarian viewpoint pooh-poohing the importance of Shai’s departure was probably wrong.
Based on all that, I don’t think there’s much reason for optimism about SAP’s system software futures, except perhaps for those that are placed wholly under the control of the Business Objects division. NetWeaver? Already a creaking omnibus. MaxDB? They didn’t get it right the first time around; what will be different now? BI Accelerator? That one actually could do well under Business Objects. The dream of other kinds of appliances? Not likely to achieve take-off. TREX? They weren’t really enhancing that much anyway. The rest of the search-related vision Dennis outlined for me? That’s another one that actually could thrive under Business Objects, but I expect a considerable number of false starts at best before they work out a coherent new strategy.
The high-end app business, the new SaaS business, the new Business Objects subsidiary — any and all of those could do well. But the attempts to become a broad-based system software player rivaling Oracle, Microsoft, and/or IBM are looking a lot less healthy than they used to.
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Technorati Tags: SAP, NetWeaver, Business Objects, TREX, BI Accelerator
| Categories: Business Objects, Business intelligence, SAP AG | 1 Comment |