Business Intelligence - Vendor Consolidation

The OLAP report says

The BI industry has seen a wave of acquisitions since the mid 1990s, with takeovers occurring every few months. The first wave was mainly other companies who were attracted by the higher growth rates in the BI industry and preferred to buy an existing vendor rather than to develop their own product. These changes of ownership did not produce any ‘consolidation’ because there was no net reduction in the number of BI vendors or products. There was also no reduction in competition as market shares were not concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

Year Acquirer Price Company acquired Product
2007 SAP Pilot Software PilotWorks
2007 Oracle $3.3bn Hyperion Solutions Essbase, Hyperion Planning, HFM, former Brio
2007 Business Objects €225m (~$300m) Cartesis Cartesis Finance, Planning and Analytics
2007 SAP $375m? OutlookSoft OutlookSoft 5 (formerly Everest)
2007 Cognos $339m, $306m net Applix TM1 and Executive Viewer
2007 Exact Software $51.5m Longview Solutions Khalix
2007 SAP $6.8bn Business Objects BusinessObjects, Crystal, Cartesis
2007 IBM $5bn Cognos Cognos 8, Planning, Controller, TM1
2006 Golden Gate Capital (Extensity) Geac MPC
2006 Microsoft ~$50m ProClarity Corporation ProClarity
2006 Applix $14.5m Temtec Executive Viewer
2006 Infor (Golden Gate Capital) MIS DecisionWare (including Alea)
2006 Infor (Golden Gate Capital) Extensity MPC and DecisionWare
2006 Business Objects $56m ALG EPO
2005 Cartesis INEA
2005 Business Objects $100m SRC
2005 Oracle Siebel Siebel Analytics
2004 Apax Partners Funds Cartesis Magnitude
2004 IBM Alphablox
2004 Cognos $52m Frango Controller, Consolidator
2004 Sage Group IntelligentApps
2003 Cognos $157m Adaytum e.Planning
2003 Geac $52m Comshare MPC and Decision
2003 China Development Corporation CIP Executive Suite
2003 Hyperion Solutions $142m Brio Software Intelligence
2003 Business Objects $1.2bn Crystal Decisions Analysis, Holos
2003 Systems Union $42m MIS AG DecisionWare (including Alea), onVision, Plain and DeltaMiner
2002 Open Ratings Gentia
2002 SymphonyRPM WhiteLight
2002 Pilot Software Acquisition Corporation $1.5m Pilot
2001 SPSS $94m Showcase Strategy
2001 Microsoft ~$15m Maximal Max (later renamed to Data Analyzer)
2001 IBM Informix MetaCube
2000 Business Objects $15m OLAP@Work
2000 CA Sterling EUREKA:Suite
2000 Accrue $19m Pilot Software
2000 Broadbase $10m Decision·ism Aclue
1999 Brio Technology, subsequently renamed to Brio Software $250m SQRIBE
1999 Hyperion Solutions $15.5m Sapling
1999 PwC Cartesis Carat
1999 CA Platinum Technology InfoBeacon (later renamed DecisionBase)
1999 Sterling $168m Information Advantage MyEureka!
1999 Business Objects $8m Next Action Technology AnswerSets (later renamed to Set Analyzer)
1998 Arbor Software, immediately renamed to Hyperion Solutions $600m Hyperion Software Enterprise, Pillar
1998 Information Advantage $36m IQ Software Data-Vision
1997 Platinum Equity Holdings ~$5m? Pilot Software
1997 Hummingbird Andyne PaBLO
1997 Arbor Software $6.7m AppSource WIRED for OLAP
1996 Seagate Software $84m Holistic Systems Holos
1996 Applix $11m Sinper TM1
1996 Microsoft ~$15m? Panorama relaunched as OLAP Services
1995 DecisionWorks IOC Track
1995 Oracle $100m IRI Software Express
1995 IQ Software $5.2m Soft Systems Data-Vision
1995 Informix $16.5m STG MetaCube
1995 Platinum Technology $36m Prodea Beacon
1994 Dun & Bradstreet ~$28m Pilot LightShip
1994 Speedware Info-Innov Media


I have worked with Microsoft, Business Objects (now owned by SAP) and Oracle. Some of the vendors I have never heard of but now there is a very small list of vendors.

They include:

• SAP


• Oracle


• Microsoft


• IBM

5 reasons to embrace Business Intelligence

Top 5 Reasons Every Business Should Embrace Business Intelligence

How many times has the justification or question for embarking on a BI program been reduced to cost ?

I often recommend the following ...

Escalating business costs and increased completeness are enough reasons alone to
seriously consider implementing a solid Business Intelligence program.

When Veneta Research surveyed over 400 companies on their BI expectations, the five most commonly cited reasons for embracing BI were these:

1. Improved competitiveness

BI provides an organisation with the ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time. This enables the organization to fine-tune its supply chain management and provide tighter integration and better communication between all supply chain members and partners.

2. Improved customer service

Business intelligence allows organizations to monitor and respond to changes and trends in the marketplace. BI tools also allow an organization to respond to changes in the way that customers behave and match that behavior to offerings designed to match customer needs.

3. Improved profitability

Because BI makes data accessible and displays it in meaningful ways, organisations can identify cost-cutting opportunities, gain more leverage during vendor negotiations, better manage its supply chain and identify optimal price points for its goods and services.

4. Improved revenue generation

Accessible data and improved reporting capabilities combine to provide an organization with the ability to identify new market opportunities by analyzing and responding to changing customer demographics and a variety of variable market conditions.

5. Improved capacity

With access to powerful decision-support tools comes the ability to build more accurate predictive models. This provides an organization with the ability to improve capacity planning by enabling them to switch from reactive business strategies to proactive business strategies.

There is no question that BI provides value to competitive organsations that are seeking strategic ways to support growth and profitability. Improved performance is always the # 1 motivator behind implementing and embracing a business intelligence system.

Business Intelligence Tools such as management reporting systems, management dashboards and OLAP are just some of the driving forces behind a new breed of empowered employee who is now capable of making accurate and informed business decisions that are based on known facts rather than making ill informed choices that result from having to guess at what the current state of the organisation is and what the future holds for their marketplace.

The process of implementing an effective BI program has been made much easier thanks to a plethora of next-generation tools from companies like Microsoft BI, Oracle BI and Business Objects BI.

Business Objects nets 14,000-seat Australia Post deal

I am often asked which companies are using Business Objects product suite.

In Australia Australia Post is planning to boost its business intelligence capabilities. It has signed a 14,000-seat software licence with Business Objects. The three-year installation and support deal is the largest local win for Business Objects, which originated in France and is now listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Australia Post is embarking on a performance management initiative, and will use our software to help it do all reporting and analysis

Business Objects Asia-Pacific general manager Keith Budge said. “It’s a pretty significant project, certainly a world leader for the postal industry."

In an interview with Australian IT ... Australia Post chief information officer Wayne Saunders said the organisation was focused on shaping its enterprise architecture for the future.

"We saw an opportunity to make business intelligence tools a strategic platform," he said.

"With the BI infrastructure, we can develop an architecture that supports the business."


Business Objects reports ... Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 39,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company's innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects™ XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects and Microsoft To Make War in the Midmarket

Another question asked regularly is what Business Intelligence products are suited for mid sized companies often referred to as SMEs.

Doug Henschen of intelligent enterprise

Seeing a huge market opportunity to sell business intelligence software to companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, Business Objects today announced a major new-product family and larger initiative aimed at catering to midsized companies. The midmarket now buys $2.1 billion worth of BI software each year, according to IDC, and Business Objects says that figure is growing 12.5 percent per year — 50 percent faster than BI sales growth among large enterprises.

To cater to the tighter budgets and leaner IT staffs of midsized companies, Business Objects is introducing Crystal Decisions, a “holistic” product that will be offered in Standard, Professional and Premium editions. The Standard edition, which includes reporting, query and analysis, is being released today starting at $20,000. The Pro and Premium editions, which will add data integration and performance management capabilities, will debut in the second and fourth quarter, respectively. All three editions will be able to deliver data, reports and analyses within Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Microsoft includes integration technologies with SQL Server, something only available in the Pro and Premium editions of Crystal Decisions, but Rowe says Crystal Decisions will deliver more extensive data quality, data cleansing and ETL capabilities. Microsoft's PerformancePoint Server, based in part on ProClarity products Microsoft acquired last year, debuted in mid 2007. Crystal Decisions Premium, which will include goal, metric, scorecard, trend and collaboration features, won't debut until the fourth quarter.

Update: Microsoft launched its Performance Point recently with a well organised Business Intelligence Summit. This day long event was well worth attending !