 |
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. See More by Mark Smith 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. It's difficult to know what Business Objects’ status is, but there is a clear understanding that the enterprise software segment called BI has great opportunity for expansion and profits. Gaining more rapid access to information to understand and manage the business is a high investment priority for organizations. Even with this growth, BI is still a small fraction of the technology spend in organizations and has yet to reach broad workforce deployments. More is possible in supplier growth and is why we see market consolidation like this one to further the channels of distribution to reach you. Is the BI market ready for more mergers and acquisitions? Maybe, there has already been enough for most of you to deal with in the last year. For you, this may mean you will experience the slower product release cycles and innovation typical of large software providers. Business Objects is looking to mitigate these risks by providing BI on Demand as announced yesterday. The On Demand approach might have you caught in the middle of a major transformation as this new approach to BI simplifies technology adoption. The deployment approach of on-premise BI technologies continues to be consolidated forcing organizations like yours to re-evaluate the variety of approaches. Tread carefully, as clearly the rumors of Business Objects being on the market to be sold might come true and then effect your investments as they could rapidly become a branded product line of some larger enterprise software company. Let me know your thoughts. Mark Smith is CEO And Senior Vice President of Research at Ventana Research. Write to him at mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com.  E-MAIL | SLASHDOT | DIGG This is a public forum. CMP Technology and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. CMP Technology makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers. Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of CMP Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in CMP Technology's Terms of Service. Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.
|
|
Blog Channels
Cindi Howson on Business Intelligence The Brain Food Blogger Tony Byrne on Content Management SQL Puzzlers by Joe Celko Rajan Chandras on IT & Information Management Seth Grimes on Analytics In Context by Doug Henschen Phil Kemelor on Web Analytics Sandy Kemsley's Column Two Nelson King on Enterprise App Development David Linthicum on Software as a Service Natural Insight, By Mark Madsen Alan Pelz-Sharpe on Content Management Mark Smith on Performance Management Neil Raden on Business Intelligence Bruce Silver on Business Process Management Product Maven  Subscribe to RSS Archives
|
|
|