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Twisting Terms to Make BI Market Share Claims

Posted by Cindi Howson
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
11:18 AM

I always look forward to IDC's annual BI market shares, waiting to see who comes out on top and who is losing ground. I'm sure everyone noticed that they were, in fact, a month early this year! Call me a bean counter at-heart, but I like the irrefutable, quantifiable comparison they bring that other evaluations (including my own BI Scorecard) lack. Or so one would think.

Most product evaluations involve a degree of subjectivity, with varying definitions and opinions of what capabilities and criteria matter more. The IDC market share figures, on the other hand, are cold-hard facts: what were the revenues, who's leading, who's growing. While such data may have been somewhat trackable on 10Ks when BI vendors were independent, it's now largely impossible as BI is often but a small part of a larger company. Software vendors don't have to report their revenues by market segment, and throughout the year, we only get vague, imprecise references about how the BI business is going. The IDC report lays out the breakdown by vendor.

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Posted by David Linthicum
Monday, June 29, 2009
7:12 AM

Years ago I was running a large software development shop when the "offshoring" movement became all that and a bag of chips. I felt extreme pressure to fire some of my staff in the US and cut a deal with the dozens of outsourcing firms that were calling me daily. I was asked about offshoring so many times that it was clear to me that the pressure was on.

I had to buck the offshoring hype at the time, but for good reasons. First, our systems had issues around quality and architecture. Until we corrected those issues, bundling the code up for development offshore would do little good, and could actually kill the software. Once we stabilized the code, then I could pick portions of it to be developed in outsourced development shops, but not until then. It was very tough explaining that to laymen who just saw the dollars and cents, along with the trend and hype that told them offshoring was the way to go.

Posted by Seth Grimes
Friday, June 26, 2009
5:50 AM

Visualization guru Stephen Few reminds us that analyst opinions, while offered by recognized experts, are inherently personal, and that on the other side of the table, there are real people behind products, marketing campaigns, and corporate decisions. I'll amplify that each of us does bring unique personal experience and even personality to bear when reviewing (analysts) or promoting (vendors) products, and I'll agree that we should each be accountable for what we write or claim.

It's an analyst's personal perspective, coupled with strong judgment, communications skills, and fairness, that creates a sense of authority and makes his or her views worth reading. Good analysts don't blindly accept vendor claims. We investigate, and sometimes we reject what we've been told. But I disagree with Steve that analysts should always name names. Some situations become simply too personal. I and others I know have even been the subject vindictive behavior, which unhelpfully diverts attention from products to people. In the worst cases I've seen, the vendor can even exploit personal conflict to dismiss or attempt to denigrate the analyst.

Posted by Bruce Silver
Thursday, June 25, 2009
12:18 PM

The vote on BPMN 2.0 is not the only thing on the agenda at this week's Object Management Group (OMG) meeting in Costa Rica. There is also the release of an RFP for a new Case Management standard, authored by Henk de Man of Cordys.

The RFP asserts that BPMN is inadequate for case management but that case management should leverage BPMN for the "process" part, and I agree with that. It also seeks to tie in to OMG government task force efforts on records management for the case folder part. That might be useful as an option, but I hope it's not a requirement.

Posted by Seth Grimes
Thursday, June 25, 2009
7:04 AM

Summer's slower pace allows time to work through material set aside for calmer days. What's on your reading list? Mine includes a variety of papers and also longer works on Information Retrieval, Sentiment Analysis, and Visualization. The items on my list are technical and accessible (which is not the same as easy), of potential interest to anyone who works with analytics. I've paged through them and plan to take a deeper dive. TechWeb readers might also find them worth at least a quick look.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
1:37 PM

At this week's Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, Lee Bryant of Headshift looked at the adoption challenges for 2.0 technologies in companies that have grown up around a centralized model of IT, particularly for the second wave adopters required to move Enterprise 2.0 into the mainstream within an organization. He points out that we can't afford the high-friction, high-cost model of deploying technology and processes, but need to rebalance the role of people within the enterprise.

External tools are subject to evolutionary forces and either adapt or die quickly, whereas we are forced to put up with Paleolithic-era tools inside the enterprise because it's a captive market. 21st century enterprises, however, aren't putting up with that: they're going outside and getting the best possible tools for their uses on demand, rather than waiting for IT to provide a second-rate solution, months or years later.

Posted by Doug Henschen
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
2:46 PM

Chris Kanaracus of The Industry Standard reported yesterday that SaaS-base BI vendor LucidEra is set to shutter the business and put all assets up for sale. The story named only "a person familiar with the company's situation" as the source. There's no official word on the Web site and all my attempts to reach the company have failed thus far.

[Update: Darren Cunningham, LucidEra's VP of Marketing, responded to inquiries 6/23 at 3:40 pm ET with the following e-mail message:

Posted by Sandy Kemsley
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
12:38 PM

I'm at this week's Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston watching the panel entitled "Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check: What's Working, What's Not, What's Next," moderated by Matthew Fraser, and featuring Christian Finn of Microsoft, Nate Nash of BearingPoint, Neil Callahan of mktg and Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. Amazingly, I've found the optimal way to do this is to go back to my room and watch it streaming over the Web, since the wifi is completely overloaded in the conference area and the seating is cramped.

It's always difficult to blog a panel since the topics tend to vary widely (and quickly), so just a few thoughts:

Continue reading "Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check"

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What's Your Secret to Success?

Posted by Cindi Howson
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
10:24 AM


Two years ago, as part of the research for this book, you helped me identify those factors that most make or break your BI deployment. I'd like to know if anything has changed since then.

Take the updated survey here. As before, it's not vendor-sponsored.
Is the economy helping or hurting your BI efforts? Maybe a down economy is forcing you to work smarter, or maybe layoffs and budget cuts are putting a dent in your BI strategy. Two years ago, 42% of you had standardized on a BI platform (see chart below). Have industry consolidation or the economy changed that? And if so, which vendors are you standardizing on?


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IBM 'Clouds' Look Like Conventional IT

Posted by David Linthicum
Monday, June 22, 2009
6:57 AM


According to this e-Week report, and this report in the New York Times, IBM continues to form its cloud computing strategy, including the definition of some key products.

IBM will announce a number of new cloud computing products and services... In addition, IBM will unveil plans for a new research lab focused on cloud computing. The initial plans will be for a bundle of hardware, software and services aimed at software developers and testers, and another bundle targeting virtual desktop environments. The moves come at a time when every major IT player, including HP, Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, are making deeper in-roads into the cloud.

The issue here is that cloud computing is really about, well, cloud computing. Existing hardware and software vendors, including Microsoft, Cisco, HP, etc., and of course IBM, seem to find that thought a bit scary and continue to toss traditional hardware and software at the problem.



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Will .Gov Sites Nix Cookies for Analytics?

Posted by Phil Kemelor
Thursday, June 18, 2009
2:01 PM


We may be on the verge of significant changes to US Federal government policy on the use of persistent cookies. The White House blog is inviting comment on how a new cookie policy should be shaped. I've posted my comments on the site and have reprinted them here.

My recommendations for a new policy are fairly straightforward:


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iManage & iPhone: Something New, Something Old

Posted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
12:57 PM


Search-cum-enteprise content management (ECM) vendor Autonomy has announced an integration for its recently acquired WorkSite product with the iPhone. The WorkSite product is particularly well known and widely used within the Legal community. Smart mobile devices are increasingly usurping the role of laptops as the mobile computing device of choice, so secure access to documents in your ECM system via the iPhone makes a great deal of sense, particularly if you are an on-the-move attorney.

One small point of annoyance with this particular announcement is that it claims the iPhone integration to be the first of its kind. It's not, and in the spirit of debunking myths let me just remind the PR folk at Autonomy of the following:


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Another Reason to Put Data in the Cloud

Posted by David Linthicum
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
8:59 AM


Google Labs recently announced Google Fusion Tables, an "experimental system" for fusing data management and collaboration. In other words, it's a means to merge many data sources, including any electronic conversations around data, visualization and data queries. Fusion Tables provide a platform to analyze data along with tools for electronically collaborating about that analysis.

The use cases here are numerous, but the core idea is that users will upload data, and then analyze and visualize the data on Google Maps or mashed up with other APIs, such as the Google Visualization API. Nothing new there, right? Wrong. Fusion Tables also provide for the discussion of data at the row or column level, or even specific data elements... think database and business intelligence meets Google Docs. However, the biggest bang for this new cloud service is the ability to "fuse" multiple sets of data that are logically related and then determine patterns.


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Google Announces Fusion Tables

Posted by Curt Monash
Monday, June 15, 2009
9:10 AM


Google has announced an experimental cloud-based data management system called Fusion Tables. A press article and Slashdot thread ensued, based on some bizarre-sounding analyst quotes that I will not attempt to parse.


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They Better Get This MDM Program Right

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Thursday, June 11, 2009
2:35 PM


The US Government is about to undertake a massive nationwide Master Data Management program. Like all big MDM programs, concerns over data quality, data governance and exception handling loom large, but there's a difference this time: the Secure Flight program announced by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will be directly affecting you, me... and our great grandchildren.

The T.S.A Secure Flight program has been developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a key 9/11 Commission recommendation for improving the effectiveness of watch lists at our airports, in order to enhance the security of domestic and international commercial air travel. As reported in The New York Times and on the TSA Web site, the Secure Flight program will improve upon current practices in matching passenger identities to watch lists in many ways. At first glance, this appears to be a well thought-out program that conforms to several basic tenets of Master Data Management (in bold below), in this case for the "Customer" entity.


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Reports from the 2009 Text Analytics Summit

Posted by Seth Grimes
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
12:57 PM


The number and quality of end-user presentations at year's Text Analytics Summit prove that Marti Hearst's 1999 observation, "The nascent field of text data mining (TDM) has the peculiar distinction of having a name and a fair amount of hype but as yet almost no practitioners," is definitively no longer operative.

The summit was vendor heavy in its first year, 2005. For the last couple of years, end users have dominated the program. Their numbers held up this year even with overall attendance down about 1/6, a far smaller loss (due to economic conditions of course) than I've observed at other, recent analytics conferences. I'd pin much of the text summit's loss on integrators and start-ups facing limits imposed by a down economy. They're out there, but better to cut conference presence than R&D or staff when budgets are tight.

Voice of the Customer was (again) a popular summit topic, augmented this year by very helpful talks on sentiment analysis (e.g., by Bing Liu) and with broadened coverage of listening platforms and on-line sources including social media. I believe this year's was the first summit with open-source (GATE project coordinator Hamish Cunningham) and search (Usama Fayyad and Daniel Tunkelang) on the program.

And I again presented a pre-summit workshop, Text Analytics for Dummies. I've posted my slides, which folks are welcome to use however they wish.

Rather than recap further myself, I'll point you to a rich crop of blog articles posted by summit attendees.


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Who Needs BI When There's Active PDF?

Posted by Cindi Howson
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
9:41 AM


Information Builders kicked off its annual user conference in Nashville, Tenn., this week on an upbeat note to the tunes of a marching band, a furry mascot, and a comedian. Yep, comedian Greg Schwem (very funny!) preceded the official keynote by President and Founder Gerry Cohen. It was a novel start to a BI conference, but with the economy struggling and some attendees having to travel here on their own dime, it was an upbeat start to a smaller-than-usual conference.

The most intriguing part of Cohen's keynote was VP Daniel Ortolani's demo of a new feature of Active Reports called Active PDF. With Active PDF, the entire range of Active Reports capabilities (sort, filter, chart) are now available from within a PDF document. While Information Builders' positions Active Reports for a mobile work force, I see the value as much broader to any information consumer, including customers, suppliers and regulators who receive currently static reports and documents. As a residential electricity consumer, I would love for JCP&L to send me an Active PDF e-bill so I can figure out which months our consumption flags us as a high-consumption electric user. (Heck, I leave our thermostat at 78 in summer, and we even have a portion allocated to wind power! But let's not digress).


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The Resurgence of Data Modeling: Part 2

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
8:03 AM


The dichotomy in the evolution of data modeling tools (described in my previous blog) is of more than historical interest; it goes to the heart of how IT shops manage information modeling and software design. It's also a key differentiator in corporate IT philosophy and approach, with potential impact on capabilities and effectiveness.

Analyst Jeffrey Hammond, co-author of a recent Forrester Research report on the data modeling market, finds that organizations aligned more traditionally -- with clearly delineated database administrator and data modeling/architect roles -- tend to favor classic data modeling tools like CA ERwin. Organizations with an emphasis on integrated enterprise architecture are more likely to favor tools like Sybase PowerDesigner, with its integrated modeling platform that goes beyond data. For organizations looking to empower developers, Hammond recommends tools like Embarcadero ER/Studio and Microsoft Visual Studio.


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Greenplum's Announcement and the Future of Data Marts

Posted by Curt Monash
Monday, June 8, 2009
9:20 AM


Greenplum is announcing today a long-term vision, under the name Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC). Key observations around the concept -- mixing mine and Greenplum's together -- include:

• Data marts aren't just for performance (or price/performance). They also exist to give individual analysts or small teams control of their analytic destiny.
  
• Thus, it would be really cool if business users could have their own analytic "sandboxes" -- virtual or physical analytic databases that they can manipulate without breaking anything else.
  
• In any case, business users want to analyze data when they want to analyze it. It is often unwise to ask business users to postpone analysis until after an enterprise data model can be extended to fully incorporate the new data they want to look at.
  
• Whether or not you agree with that, it's an empirical fact that enterprises have many legacy data marts (or even, especially due to M&A, multiple legacy data warehouses). Similarly, it's an empirical fact that many business users have the clout to order up new data marts as well.
  
• Consolidating data marts onto one common technological platform has important benefits.

In essence, Greenplum is pitching this story:


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IBM Taps SPSS Analytics Software

Posted by Doug Henschen
Thursday, June 4, 2009
4:15 PM


IBM has been putting a full-court press on analytics in recent months, and it's pretty clear it will do whatever it takes to prevail in a field in which it currently has more depth than breadth. In a deal that will bolster IBM's ability to bring analytics to the enterprise masses, it was announced yesterday that the IT giant has licensed PASW Statistics software from Chicago-based analytics vendor SPSS.

IBM has deep thinkers, promising research and development, hundreds of high-end custom projects under its belt, and more than a score of new analytic applications available. Analytics has become so important a hot button that IBM has also reassigned more than 4,000 consultants from its BI, information management, performance management, content management and enterprise integration practices into a new Business Analytics & Optimization Services practice. (No doubt these folks will be doing much the same sorts of work, but under the banner of analytics.)


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The Resurgence of Data Modeling: Part I

Posted by Rajan Chandras
Thursday, June 4, 2009
10:55 AM


CA, Embarcadero and Sybase have all recently released significant upgrades of their data modeling tools. The good news is that all three products surpass previous limitations and step up to the challenges of enterprise architecture and information governance. For IT shops, the question is: which tool works best for you?

Data modeling is a niche discipline and a small software market with consistent if unspectacular growth -- Forrester Research puts the current market (including sales and support) at about $165 million, growing to about $290 million over the next four years. But what this market lacks in terms of size it more than makes up in terms of business impact; data modeling is at the heart of every custom application development, data integration and data warehousing effort.


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JetBlue Structures the Unstructured Customer

Posted by Dave Stodder
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
9:15 AM


Angry customers vent. I know, because I did it last night after getting fed up with poor cable TV reception. Rather than call the provider's contact center as I had previously, I decided to use the online chat service. Not wasting time, I started the conversation with some country hardball, letting the agent know that I was upset. "Oliver" replied with effervescent joy; he typed out a profuse apology for my inconvenience and let me know what a true pleasure it would be to serve me. Not satisfied that he got my point, I tossed off another angry comment, which prompted another delight-filled apology. He then offered his hope that I was having a wonderful evening.

A wonderful evening? Did it sound like I was having a wonderful evening? No matter what I said, his pleasure to serve me proved unbendable. It became impossible to stay angry. I felt foolish. And so it worked; the agent broke my anger and we were able to focus on solving the problem.


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Reinventing Business Intelligence

Posted by Curt Monash
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
9:41 AM


I've felt for quite a while that business intelligence tools are due for a revolution. But I've found the subject daunting to write about because -- well, because it's so multifaceted and big. So to break that logjam, here are some thoughts on the reinvention of business intelligence technology, with no pretense of being in any way comprehensive.

Natural language and classic science fiction

Actually, there's a pretty well-known example of BI near-perfection -- the Star Trek computers, usually voiced by the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry. They didn't have a big role in the recent movie, which was so fast-paced nobody had time to analyze very much, but were a big part of the Star Trek universe overall. Star Trek's computers integrated analytics, operations, and authentication, all with a great natural language/voice interface and visual displays. That example is at the heart of a 1998 article on natural language recognition I just re-posted.


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Why Open Source Amazon APIs Will Matter

Posted by David Linthicum
Monday, June 1, 2009
1:33 PM


Dave Rosenberg had an interesting post around a rumor that Amazon is going to open source its API:



"Amazon.com's legal team is 'investigating' open-sourcing their various Web services API's including those for EC2, and S3, Amazon's main cloud computing interfaces, according to Enomaly founder Reuven Cohen."

Amazon's APIs are widely leveraged by thousands of Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. While Rosenberg considers them the "best" method of interaction for various cloud services, at this point I only agree that they are the most used.

So, what does Amazon stand to gain by this? As Rosenberg argues, by releasing the APIs as open source (creative commons, or no-sue covenant), Amazon could find that other cloud computing vendors adopt their way of doing APIs. There is no clear revenue stream from that approach, but the use of the IP will be clearly linked back to Amazon. It could become one of those little heard of "brilliant moves."


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