CMP -- United Business Media

Intelligent Enterprise

Better Insight for Business Decisions

UBM
Intelligent Enterprise - Better Insight for Business Decisions
Part of the TechWeb Network
Intelligent Enterprise
search Intelligent Enterprise





The Intelligent Enterprise Blog: Peak Performance, by Mark Smith
Peak Performance, by Mark Smith

Mark Smith is the CEO and SVP of research at Ventana Research, an advisory services and research firm providing insight and education on best practices and technology in performance management. He writes the Peak Performance blog at IntelligentEnterprise.com.


Why IT Might Be in Big Trouble — Again

My assessment might be a little harsh, but my experience in the last six years analyzing organizations across all industries and company sizes provides insight to a serious problem. IT has lost touch with reality as they have been disconnected from the situation in business and do not seem to be concerned about it. My last blog pointed to the state of business being mad as hell. IT is apparently responding by shifting focus to the management of an organization's data assets rather than worrying or focused about the capabilities needed by business.

>>Continue reading "Why IT Might Be in Big Trouble — Again "


Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2008
12:00 PM
>>Comments


Why Business Should Be Mad as Hell at IT

The state of information adequacy across business has never been worse. The percentage of IT budgets allocated to improving decision support and business intelligence for business and the underlying information management technologies is now a miniscule fraction of total spend by IT for business. Even worse, the time it takes to implement improvements is dire. The cycle time has gone beyond normal response and in many organizations can be measured in years. How is this possible? Well, IT is not spending enough time and resources on assessing the situation and has become fully out of touch with the user and functional requirements for information and process needs.

>>Continue reading "Why Business Should Be Mad as Hell at IT"


Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008
8:39 AM
>>Comments


HP Software Advances and Transforms

An HP Global Analyst Summit for the Technology Solutions Group (TSG) held in early April detailed the continuation of a transformation led by Mark Hurd, CEO, Ann Livermore, the head of TSG, and Tom Hogan, the top HP Software executive. The motivation for change is to be relevant in not just hardware, with servers, storage technology and related services and outsourcing aimed at helping CIOs to transform infrastructure to drive improvements in the efficiency of data centers. The question is how relevant HP Software will become in enterprises considering the growing role of enterprise software providers like IBM, Oracle, SAP and even Microsoft.

>>Continue reading "HP Software Advances and Transforms "


Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008
9:14 AM
>>Comments


Software as a Service: Are You Prepared?

The economic environment has placed increased pressure on organizations to ensure they are even wiser with their IT budgets and resources in order to respond effectively to business. As organizations find methods to reduce and avoid costs, the dilemma of installing and maintaining software and applications continues to be a place for examining alternatives. These software as a service (SaaS) alternatives could be a great opportunity to deliver business value more immediately and avoid long IT cycles that may conflict with the time pressures of your organizations. But nothing comes so easily without precautions and warnings.

>>Continue reading "Software as a Service: Are You Prepared?"


Posted Monday, March 24, 2008
8:09 AM
>>Comments


BI Chaos Escalates with SAP-Business Objects Combination

SAP announced they achieved an ownership milestone to move forward with their acquisition of Business Objects and the formation of new subsidiary of SAP focusing on business user needs like BI and Performance Management along with Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC). The acquisition of Business Objects has enabled SAP to accumulate a significant number of customers and technologies and bring new scale to their efforts. The market demand for supporting management processes has finally gained front-and-center importance for SAP and their future growth as it has for other large enterprise software providers IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

>>Continue reading "BI Chaos Escalates with SAP-Business Objects Combination"


Posted Tuesday, January 22, 2008
2:07 PM
>>Comments


Be Skeptical about BI Predictions and Trends

Happy New Year! Have you ever wondered why every year in December we hear all these new BI predictions and trends for the following year? Should you invest the time and energy to listen and believe them? Well after being in the BI market for now 20 years, I have become more skeptical than optimistic about much of this hoopla. While they might sound interesting you should clearly examine the sources of information. If they come from a technology vendor executive, do they result in pushing their company’s agenda, or if they come from a consultant or firm is it helping market their services? What you do with BI has become more complex than simple and the exercise of coming up with predictions and trends might be limiting your perspective and not expanding it.

>>Continue reading "Be Skeptical about BI Predictions and Trends "


Posted Wednesday, January 2, 2008
9:44 AM
>>Comments


Oh Oracle — Let's Be Honest Now!

This week is Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco and it is one of the largest enterprise software conferences in the industry. But not just that their conference has taken over the city of San Francisco but that is has over 25 press releases and announcements in three days. The keynotes at the conference from Oracle and industry executives provide some good opportunity to understand the operations and direction of Oracle and also where they feel more than confident. Highlighting a lot of the hard work they have made with Oracle 11g information management platform and rationalizing of their applications. Clearly Oracle celebrating their 30th anniversary has a lot to be proud of in their rise to one of the largest software companies in the world.

Listening in to one of the keynotes by Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President, Fusion Middleware of Oracle on Tuesday, he reviewed a broad range of what is happening with their technology platform. There were many positive advancements and points in the presentation of Oracle's Fusion middleware, but one point should not be left without comment.

>>Continue reading "Oh Oracle — Let's Be Honest Now!"


Posted Friday, November 16, 2007
9:51 AM
>>Comments


Teradata: New Choices For a New Tiger in Analytics

An important event for Teradata occurred recently when it completed its spin out from its parent company, NCR. This milestone was over a year in the making and gives Teradata the ability to more independently operate as a public entity. The company also announced third-quarter revenue of $375 million, which puts it well on the way to being a $1.5 billion technology provider in 2007.

I'm sure you all know the Teradata brand and its dedicated focus on data warehousing, but the company has also been building — through acquisition, organic efforts and partnerships — a robust set of analytics solutions that span line-of-business and vertical industries. In October, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) won the Financial Performance Management Leadership Award from Ventana Research on the strength of its ability to meet deep, domain-specific customer requirements — a capability richly supported by Teradata.

>>Continue reading "Teradata: New Choices For a New Tiger in Analytics"


Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007
12:25 AM
>>Comments


IBM (Not So Stubborn After All) Digest Cognos

Today's breaking news is that IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cognos. Just last week I called IBM stubborn for not addressing BI seriously at its annual IBM Software Group analyst summit. Well for a good reason, IBM was avoiding the BI discussion as they have been working rigorously on the details on this announcement. This finishes the years of rumors and the fall of Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion into the hands of large enterprise software providers. Making the announcement today is strategically an interesting time as Oracle launches its annual OpenWorld conference and highlights its progress with the acquisition of Hyperion. IBM is smart to act now or be left out of the strategically important BI and Performance Management market.

IBM plans to add Cognos to its Information Management division, which is a precarious position to place the company as this group is not well versed on the BI market, as I have previously written. Considering that it has placed brands like Tivoli, Rational, Lotus and WebSphere at the same level, IBM is spending a lot of money to place Cognos under Information Management, which is focused on middleware technology and infrastructure. There are some great synergies between Cognos BI and IBM Information Management group where they have a great opportunity to have deeper integration, but it will impact Cognos' current agreement to license competitive Informatica data integration technology.

>>Continue reading "IBM (Not So Stubborn After All) Digest Cognos"


Posted Monday, November 12, 2007
1:02 PM
>>Comments


IBM Software Group: Visionary, Conservative or Just Stubborn?

This year's IBM Software Group Global Industry Analyst Summit brought the traditional annual update of the company's progress this year and its direction in the year ahead. Led by the head of the Software Group, Steve Mills, the event focused on the theme of integration from business to IT and across the software reference architecture of IBM products. This whole area is clearly a continuing challenge for most IT organizations and the technology landscape is becoming more complex. Integration is at the core of IBM's approach, and the company capitalizes on a very strong portfolio of middleware and services. With dozens of product releases this year and a lot queued up for 2008, IBM is one the software companies that you have to watch.

IBM's Software Group is very profitable and it has grown consistently, thanks in large part to more than 50 technology supplier acquisitions since 2000. These acquisitions have blended into the existing IBM software brands of Lotus, Tivoli, WebSphere, Rational and Information Management, and the company continues to drive new capabilities and introduce technology innovations. IBM is clearly a very large and dominant provider of application, collaboration, data management, and middleware technologies that compete with those from large providers like HP, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and plenty others. Despite heated competition from a array of software providers large and small, IBM is still very conservative about talking up any technological advantages it may have in the market. Touting size and stability as a strength is a good start, but it would round out the company's position if executives could articulate why IBM's products and approaches are superior to those of other vendors in terms of capabilities and architecture.

>>Continue reading "IBM Software Group: Visionary, Conservative or Just Stubborn?"


Posted Friday, November 9, 2007
9:59 AM
>>Comments


The Not-So-Good at the Business Objects Meeting

Following up on my last post about all the good things I encountered at Business Objects' recent user conference in Orlando, Fla., here are a few looming and, in some cases, troubling aspects of what's ahead for customers in the wake of the pending SAP acquisition.

Business Objects is very bullish on its approach to enterprise performance management (EPM), a topic highlighted in many executive keynotes at the event. Most particularly, Mark Doll, head of the EPM business unit, talked about new services tied to performance management products. Despite all the reassuring words, I have my doubts about what lies ahead.

>>Continue reading "The Not-So-Good at the Business Objects Meeting"


Posted Monday, October 29, 2007
1:45 AM
>>Comments


The Good at Business Objects' User Conference

My trip to the recent Business Objects user conference in Orlando, Fla., revealed many good surprises as well as many big questions yet to be answered. Of course I went into the conference with some skepticism about the pending acquisition by SAP, as I explained in this blog. Business Objects founder and chairman Bernard Liautaud addressed the deal during the opening of the event, and his comments quickly transitioned to those of SAP CEO Henning Kagermann (by way of video), who shared a welcome message and a commitment to the importance of the acquisition.

With many forks in the path ahead for customers and partners of Business Objects, Kagermann's video created more uncertainty than comfort. SAP's BI and Performance Management strategy has changed dramatically since the departure of Shai Agassi, who I believe, looking back, was holding SAP's strategy steady and avoiding acquisition chaos, as I pointed out in this blog.

>>Continue reading "The Good at Business Objects' User Conference"


Posted Monday, October 29, 2007
1:38 AM
>>Comments


IBM's Info On Demand Strategy: Complex, Evolutionary, Important

In the second annual IBM Information On Demand Conference this week, a series of new advancements were brought forward in information management. Now with an even more solid and robust portfolio of products, there is great momentum in the company's focus on Information Management. IBM has been on a multi-year transformation of its content, data and information focus with process and integration technologies through acquisitions of a large number of technology suppliers over the last three years. These technologies have been slowly but progressively advancing the IBM software product portfolio for a broader range of information management capabilities.

>>Continue reading "IBM's Info On Demand Strategy: Complex, Evolutionary, Important"


Posted Tuesday, October 16, 2007
3:37 PM
>>Comments


SAP-Business Objects Deal Heralds Rocky 2008

I guess SAP's acquisitions of OutlookSoft and Pilot Software were not enough as they announced their intention to acquire Business Objects to bulk up in the BI and Performance Management markets. What does it mean to you who might be a customer of Business Objects or SAP?

If you are in the middle of evaluating SAP or Business Objects products in analytics, BI or performance management, take heed and prepare for a rocky future. Organizations evaluating SAP should stop and perform a thorough review before proceeding on new or existing projects. SAP products like SAP SEM, SAP NetWeaver BI, SAP BW and even recently acquired OutlookSoft are part of the overlap with Business Objects. Those evaluating Business Objects products should consider the potential impact on existing and planned deployments. While SAP plans to keep Business Objects as a separate organization, the reality is that there will be significant changes to existing products to ensure that they integrate effectively with SAP.

>>Continue reading "SAP-Business Objects Deal Heralds Rocky 2008"


Posted Tuesday, October 9, 2007
10:45 AM
>>Comments


SAP Business ByDesign — One Step at a Time

SAP publicly announced the new software as a service (SaaS) business application suite called SAP Business ByDesign, filling a gap in its market offering. Marketed as the big event, SAP is adding another branded application suite to its portfolio that goes beyond the three on-premise suites it already has for large, medium and small businesses. The applications suite focuses on midsized firms with 100 to 500 employees and provides a new area for growth through both direct sales and channel partnerships. Yes, there is more fanfare, but the application suite is not yet ready for primetime.

>>Continue reading "SAP Business ByDesign — One Step at a Time"


Posted Friday, September 21, 2007
8:56 AM
>>Comments


Can Salesforce.com Make the Dream a Reality?

This week, salesforce.com had its annual conference, Dreamforce 2007, with more than 7,000 attendees and 200 partners. The company highlighted the next steps in its mission to conquer the enterprise applications and platform computing market. Beginning as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider for contact management moving to sales force automation (SFA) and then on to a CRM suite in the last 10 years.

Salesforce.com and its dyanamic CEO & chairman, Marc Bennioff, are at it again. The company is positioned to take on the vast majority of the broader enterprise applications and platform software market. Directly competing with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP and others, they are challenging the conventional wisdom of the on-premise approach of purchasing, installing and configuring software across large, medium and small sized organizations. In fact, it is taking on the broader platform market opportunity.

>>Continue reading "Can Salesforce.com Make the Dream a Reality? "


Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007
2:47 PM
>>Comments


Business Objects for Sale?

Reported over the weekend by Reuters was that Business Objects had hired Goldman Sachs to find a buyer for the billion-dollar-plus business intelligence (BI) provider.

Is Business Objects, which has recently made acquisitions in financial management, data quality, search and other technologies to extend their portfolio of platform and application capabilities, ready to be consolidated? Is this report just more of the continued discussions of market consolidation in BI market and finding the best return for shareholders or just accidental leaks from normal business operations? Will HP, IBM or SAP get more serious about the BI market to compete against Cognos, Microsoft and Oracle? No comment of course from official channels at Business Objects, but clearly something is brewing.

>>Continue reading "Business Objects for Sale?"


Posted Monday, September 17, 2007
10:37 PM
>>Comments


Can Microsoft Performance Point Perform for You?

Microsoft is on the final leg of their journey to release its dedicated BI technology to support performance management. This enterprise-level move has been expected for some time, and with the multi-year pre-marketing of the technology there are high expectations. Will it perform?

Microsoft PerformancePoint is a platform and set of tools that includes the long-awaited version of Microsoft Excel Server. Many components are aimed at the BI and performance management markets. The group of products is a critical first step toward becoming an enterprise-class vendor, but is it a large enough first step? I'm not sure yet, but let's look at a couple of examples and see what you think.

>>Continue reading "Can Microsoft Performance Point Perform for You?"


Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2007
9:09 AM
>>Comments


Oracle 11g: Expanding the Definition of Database

The Oracle 11g database, released today in its Linux version, differs from earlier releases in that it contains significant advancements pushing the leading enterprise database further ahead of the competition. But is it a database anymore?

In addition to improvements in performance, scalability and ease of administration that any major new version should have, Oracle has expanded the capabilities in information management for items such as documents, text, files and other unstructured data, including XML, and by doing so, it continues to encroach on the territory of content management systems.

In reality, though, what has caught the attention of OLAP and BI insiders is that in release 11g, Oracle completes the embedding of multidimensional access and storage capabilities from the Express technology it acquired 12 years ago. It's an interesting bit of timing — Oracle now has to decide what to do with recently acquired Hyperion Essbase, a long-time rival of Express. This adds more OLAP to the Oracle portfolio that yet needs to be formalized. Oracle appears to look to further implant this database as part of their global BI effort and differentiate it as a database-level OLAP option.

>>Continue reading "Oracle 11g: Expanding the Definition of Database"


Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007
10:28 AM
>>Comments


Oracle Touts Leadership: Should We Believe Them?

Oracle has gained a lot of weight in the BI market with its recent acquisition of Hyperion, gaining many new customers, and large number of experienced employees. Since its acquisition of Siebel, which was the source of their current Oracle BI Enterprise Extended Edition (EE) technology, Oracle had achieved critical milestones on their product roadmap. With the completion of the acquisition of Hyperion, Oracle now has a new challenge of integrating another large collection of BI technologies and financial management applications. The company is aggressively pushing its new agenda and is stating its differentiation as having the first and complete integrated, end-to-end enterprise performance management system.

>>Continue reading "Oracle Touts Leadership: Should We Believe Them? "


Posted Thursday, August 9, 2007
9:50 AM
>>Comments


Data Discovery: A Tool for Information Management

We all need to understand better how to establish high-quality, cost-effective information management strategies. As part of this effort, we need to identify methods and technologies that can automate and improve data processing.

Yes, data processing and other basic tenets of management information systems (MIS) from the 1980s are cycling back to the forefront of business and the desk of the CIO. The silos of data generated over the last decade continue to proliferate and to challenge organizations as they look to gain a consistent view of their operations, both historical and ongoing.

>>Continue reading "Data Discovery: A Tool for Information Management "


Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007
9:28 AM
>>Comments


Your IT Portfolio Could Be Bleeding Money

As we consider the issue of IT budgets and the competition for funding between the tasks necessary to keep the lights on and investments for innovation and improvement, we start to appreciate the bind CIOs and IT managers find themselves in. The sheer mass of technology required to keep organizations operating has grown significantly in the last decade, and so have the maintenance demands to keep everything running.

As CIOs and IT management come under pressure to invest in the future, they're finding they need an even more thorough knowledge of their existing IT portfolios, what they can do, where they fall short and their worth to the company. Yet I find that many IT managers do not have enough information – about what technologies they actually have, how well they are performing and how much they cost – to make wise decisions about budget allocations. What is sad about this situation is that portfolio management applications like those from HP and PlanView have been readily available for many years.

>>Continue reading "Your IT Portfolio Could Be Bleeding Money"


Posted Thursday, July 12, 2007
8:18 AM
>>Comments


Are You Ready for (Google) Location Intelligence?

Google is offering its mapping capabilities as a potential source of enterprise-class business intelligence in the area of location intelligence. Google has made its Google Maps for the Enterprise available at a low cost while providing telephone and e-mail support. The challenge for you is to decide whether this offering can meet your enterprise needs.

>>Continue reading "Are You Ready for (Google) Location Intelligence?"


Posted Wednesday, June 27, 2007
8:52 AM
>>Comments


Microsoft Buys Stratature to Master Data

Microsoft has announced its acquisition of Stratature, a master data management (MDM) vendor that supports the definition, sharing and maintenance of reference data. Stratature's technology is used by organizations with specific analytical master data challenges in which master data changes over time in financial, product and customer hierarchies. Microsoft lacked a solid position and technological approach to MDM and was under competitive pressure to respond.

>>Continue reading "Microsoft Buys Stratature to Master Data"


Posted Friday, June 8, 2007
10:30 AM
>>Comments


Do BI Vendors Want SOA Now?

It was interesting to see at IBM's recent Impact 2007 event on service-oriented architecture (SOA) that the only business intelligence (BI) vendor exhibiting to demonstrate interfaces to IBM's SOA technology was Actuate. We know that other BI vendors also are evolving their platforms to support Web services and XML, along with some other advancements in the service-oriented direction. But few have been motivated to go beyond the fundamentals; the BI market seems a little insulated from the SOA and enterprise architecture transformations.

>>Continue reading "Do BI Vendors Want SOA Now?"


Posted Tuesday, June 5, 2007
9:09 AM
>>Comments


Business Impact from SOA? Yes, SOA

In an article two years ago, I wrote that service-oriented architecture (SOA) was technobabble, not strategic technology. In 2006 I noted that SOA was moving beyond chatter. Well, in later May IBM hosted Impact 2007 – an SOA event where people finally talked about it not only from an IT perspective but as real customers who have used SOA to deliver business value to their organizations. That’s good progress. Also CIO Magazine recently did a survey that found that CIOs who have embraced SOA earn higher compensation and have larger budgets as a percent of company revenue than those who do not support it.

>>Continue reading "Business Impact from SOA? Yes, SOA"


Posted Friday, June 1, 2007
9:06 AM
>>Comments


SAP Improves Outlook on Performance Management

Another day, another headline. SAP has decided that it needs to retool its financial performance management offering. Why? The reason is the business software giant’s announced acquisition of OutlookSoft, which I predicted when Cartesis, the other possible buyer, was taken out of play by itself being acquired by Business Objects. SAP has tried before to update its applications, but this time may be different. OutlookSoft comes with a strong Microsoft-based technology approach and capabilities for budgeting, planning, consolidation, reporting and analysis, all designed for finance departments. If it can harness these, SAP has the potential to be a significant player for financial performance management. In fact, OutlookSoft has not only a good foundation of customers but also a significant head start on Microsoft, which will be releasing the first major version of its technology for performance management at the end of the year.

>>Continue reading "SAP Improves Outlook on Performance Management"


Posted Monday, May 21, 2007
1:12 PM
>>Comments


Does IBM Understand BI?

With Oracle's recent acquisition of Hyperion, the expectations of other industry heavyweights has heated up significantly. I've already examined SAP; now I move to IBM and what it will do to address this key information middleware technology.

IBM recently made the point to me that it did considerably less work with Hyperion than had Business Objects, Cognos and SAS and so it's not particularly worried about its acquisition by Oracle. Historically, IBM's software executives have insisted that these components are applications and not middleware and that IBM is not in the applications business. Recently, though, that monotone is fading, to be replaced by a new note: They now say "No Comment," or when they do comment, talk about Hyperion-like technology as though they believe this part of the BI market involves just the writing and delivering of reports.

>>Continue reading "Does IBM Understand BI?"


Posted Monday, May 7, 2007
2:03 PM
>>Comments


TIBCO Spots Opportunity in Analytics

We're seeing the market for analytics change again with TIBCO's announcement that it plans to acquire Spotfire, a rapidly growing provider of analytics for operations management. This merger will bring a significant analytics software business under the ownership of a leading information bus and business process management (BPM) provider.

TIBCO certainly is no stranger to applying analytics. Nonetheless, at first I was surprised by this move; until now, TIBCO has focused on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and integration technology for business events and activities and BPM. But TIBCO's CEO, Vivek Ranadivé, espouses the building of a predictive business, something that cannot be accomplished without analytics, which may suggest the reasoning behind acquiring Spotfire. Of course, ultimately it's about business: TIBCO, which has been investing in its information bus and complementary technologies and has made several acquisitions over the years, is looking for ways to expand what it sells to its customers. The acquisition lets it tap into Spotfire's base in operations and lines of business and to demonstrate to those customers the relevance of monitoring events and activities while applying analytics.

>>Continue reading "TIBCO Spots Opportunity in Analytics"


Posted Thursday, May 3, 2007
11:51 AM
>>Comments


Do You Have Business Intelligence?

It's sad but true that in most organizations "business intelligence" is something of an oxymoron. The term ought to refer to the ability to ascertain the state of a company's performance and then to determine its future direction and competitive strategy by applying information and metrics. BI also relies on technology and the organization's human capital to help it gain deeper knowledge and timelier insights. Despite the fact that many companies fall short here, this is not an esoteric process. A pragmatic self-assessment can show you where new investments are necessary to provide business intelligence for everyone in your organization.

>>Continue reading "Do You Have Business Intelligence?"


Posted Tuesday, May 1, 2007
4:19 PM
>>Comments


Business Objects Leads Financial Tech Shakeup

If you work in finance or IT, yesterday was a big news day, with announcements hitting the wire on changes in ownership and shifting positions in the race for BI and financial performance management leadership.

Starting off the morning was Business Objects' announcement that it will acquire Paris-based Cartesis. In so doing, the San Jose, Calif. (and originally French-based) software company will acquire a world-class financial performance management suite that will be enhanced through the addition of Business Objects' costing and profitability applications (acquired with ALG Software) and the BI suite of tools and applications. Talk about a deal! For a mere $300 million, Business Objects has improved its market position, accelerated its development pace and very shortly will be able to compete with the big kids in financial performance management. There is definitely no doubt that this is a smart acquisition; in fact, it's one that Business Objects should have done earlier instead of acquiring the much smaller and less enterprise-ready SRC. Putting that aside, Business Objects now is just as well-equipped as Cognos, Infor and Oracle – and probably better equipped than SAP!

>>Continue reading "Business Objects Leads Financial Tech Shakeup"


Posted Tuesday, April 24, 2007
10:23 AM
>>Comments


Oracle and SAP: Fur Flies as Executive Jumps Ship

It's been an interesting week for the two giants slugging it out in the business software marketplace.

First Oracle filed suit against SAP for intellectual property intrusions into its Internet-based repository of product support information. Not to put too fine a point on it, Oracle accused SAP of wide-scale theft. Of course, this will play out over time, and ultimately, I expect, something like the true story will emerge.
I deliberately framed that last sentence loosely. Each company has tens of thousands of employees (almost 40,000 for SAP, more than 55,000 for Oracle), making it a considerable challenge to monitor and control their actions. Also, given those numbers, at any time more than few people are in the process of moving – from Oracle to SAP, say, or among the partner community. Since it's impossible to make sure all knowledge stays behind, it's tough to ensure that individuals do not cross the legal line protecting proprietary information.

>>Continue reading "Oracle and SAP: Fur Flies as Executive Jumps Ship"


Posted Thursday, March 29, 2007
5:28 PM
>>Comments


Prof. Davenport Misses the Point of Analytics

I recently sat in on a keynote presentation by Thomas Davenport of Babson College, who wrote a much-touted article on analytics in Harvard Business Review last year. He identified analytics as a competitive market advantage and illustrated his point with a number of case studies.

It's certainly important to recognize the value of analytics and to broaden the discussion, but analytics alone are only a small part of what is currently missing in business. To effectively apply the results of analytics also requires appropriate management processes and an understanding of how to utilize metrics and other relevant information to change operating plans, create initiatives and make decisions collaboratively, all while keeping an eye on the goals that matter.

>>Continue reading "Prof. Davenport Misses the Point of Analytics"


Posted Monday, March 26, 2007
7:47 PM
>>Comments


The Business Bottleneck May Be Technology

Too often, businesses get little information in return for the millions of dollars they spend on information technology. We have built silos of BI tools attached to ERP and CRM systems that aren't designed to communicate common objectives across business. Even data warehouse efforts have not automated information processes, instead creating poorly structured libraries of data that business users may not be able to find or access.

>>Continue reading "The Business Bottleneck May Be Technology"


Posted Friday, March 16, 2007
9:08 AM
>>Comments


Score One for Oracle: Can SAP Stay in the Game?

It has been clear for a while that Oracle needed to make a strategic acquisition to elevate its standing with corporate finance organizations, so few were surprised when the Redwood Shores database giant announced today it plans to acquire Hyperion Solutions Corp. When it comes to finance, Hyperion is, after all, the biggest kid on the block from customer, revenue and product-line perspectives.

The intention to acquire Hyperion is further proof that market consolidation is still the name of the game. It also is validation of the increasing importance of the CFO and the finance organization. The ownership and leverage of ERP has been waning for many years now and is just an IT maintenance function mostly and not a strategic finance conversation. This is a critical point that is now much more obvious to Oracle and SAP. The CFO relationship for influencing the management of budgets and many key strategic elements of decisions on technology is not to be under estimated.

How Hyperion will get along within Oracle remains to be seen. The finance components of Hyperion's offerings will be a good, complementary fit to Oracle Financials, but integrating its BI line may not be quite as simple. After all, Oracle has made its strategic bet clear with the release of Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, a product that came courtesy of the earlier acquisition of Siebel. Hyperion BI will provide a starting point from which to build a future migration path. But what happens to Hyperion's BI customers in the meanwhile?

>>Continue reading "Score One for Oracle: Can SAP Stay in the Game?"


Posted Thursday, March 1, 2007
5:30 PM
>>Comments


Is SAP Ready for BI?

The market for BI has never been more vibrant, or the interest at midsized and large organizations in adopting BI greater. Yet in the face of this opportunity, I continue to hear reports of unrest on the part of companies using SAP for BI – reports about its lack of enterprise capabilities and the usability of the technology.

>>Continue reading "Is SAP Ready for BI?"


Posted Wednesday, February 21, 2007
8:46 AM
>>Comments


The BS in Business Intelligence

In the last year, corporate management seems to have gained a better understanding of what business intelligence (BI) means to organizations. Executives finally are realizing that information about performance and the metrics that measure it are keys to improving their bottom line. Even so, they have invested far less in efforts to support BI than in other areas of information technology.

>>Continue reading "The BS in Business Intelligence"


Posted Tuesday, January 30, 2007
12:47 PM
>>Comments


 




    Subscribe to RSS