Cannonball!

Talk about making a splash! The halls of the Seattle convention center were filled with BI hopefuls, Starbucks coffee in hand they searched for answers to their business challenges. Whether it was the buzz of the java or all the recent market news, there was certainly much ado at Microsoft’s BI coming out party. To add a little special sauce to Guy’s post, Steve Ballmer actually addressed the question of market consolidation in his keynote this morning. His answer was less BI specific and more a stance on big picture software moves in general. He stated that there will always be a few big companies, a second level of middle tier players, and a whole bunch of smaller companies. Some of those smaller players will rise up others will be acquired and new technologies will form. That aside, there was certainly a lot of chatter around Microsoft entering BI as a game changing event and the pressures it’s put on some of the other competitors and how the middle tier Ballmer spoke to must continue to innovate, acquire new technology and re-define the strategy as the cycle continues to stay competitive, all pointing to more changes to come.

Timing was also a keen topic of interest, by that I mean the timing of technology, market awareness and customer maturity. If I had a nickel for every time in the past two days I heard, “What took you guys so long to host a BI conference?” well I’d probably have a couple of bucks but you get the point. The timing around market readiness and overall appetite for performance management has certainly evolved. I can’t help but look back three years ago, at the time I was at Business Objects listening to analysts tell us that we were ahead of market in the performance management applications business. Although it’s probably a bit too early to say as the conference just ended but I will say it any ways, the BI conference was a historical event as it is the starting point for the beginning of a complete year of BI activity where Microsoft will release the first version of PerformancePoint Server and the next release of SQL Server. All of this activity builds momentum that the market is forced to react against and you either lead, follow or get out of the way as our old buddy James Thomas would say. Guy’s comment on something happening in the next six months to shift the market once again is also a fair one. You’ll likely see other big players like IBM and HP show their hands as they step into the game. For all those interested in seeing some of the content from the conference it was all recorded and will be posted online, I’ll post a link when it’s available. From the conference showroom floor this is Performance Guy Nic signing off.