Friday, December 28, 2007

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