Contrary to reports that my blog post yesterday was "breathless" reporting by Pat, I feel as though I must respond as such:1. Wow, um, thanks.
2. Let the record reflect that it wasn't me reporting with a headline that Microsoft was the big winner in the whole magic quadrant thing, but someone from Information Week, and I remarked that it was a fairly bold departure from all the staid press releases with which Gartner constrains the vendors.
3. I would have remarked similarly if the article was focused on Cognos being the leader as well; you know I call 'em as I see 'em.
4. I'm in no way saying that one vendor or the other has everything that a customer could need--far from it, and you dissecting the ins and outs of the various offerings is instructive, but not wholly relevant to the point I was making. And as regular readers to this esteemed blog will recall (here and here), I've written in the past about what I believe to be the myth of BI "standardization," and why just saying "so and so has standardized on our BI tool" actually means little beyond the press release. Are they using Excel? What's their portal? What DB tools and integration tools to they use? How many ERP user licenses do they have? Often times the standardization argument falls down here, which, like it or not, benefits non-pure play vendors like the folks in Redmond (or "did" anyway, now everything's all mixed up, which is a topic for further dissection).
5. I'm as confused as you are on the puppies post--clearly we've entered new territory on this blog and need to get Nic some help.
6. Happy birthday to my fellow PG's, here's to another year of fun and merriment!
3 comments:
You know the circle of love from Red Slice land extends equally around, but I have to agree with Guy on the standardization point. This word tends to be bastardized in the software community - and as a marketer, I too can plead guilty. Similar to the "Immunity" that contestants get to win on "Project Runway" (where did they find that guy Christian with the hair?....I digress...) many vendors claim standardization this and that in their marketing materials as if it were an invisible shield they toss around their customers, protecting them from other vendors. But according the BI market's own research, if BI is so poorly penetrated with the Information Worker, how many of these companies are really "standardized" in the true sense? And what is the true sense?
1) My entire team uses it
2) My entire division uses it
3) My entire office location uses it
4) Our North American offices all use it
5) Everyone in our company uses it all over the world
From the cheap seats, I'd say the marketing hype wants everyone to think it's #5 when in many cases it's #1 or #2. And show me a company who still doesn't rely on Excel pervasively for reporting and I''ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
Some thoughts from the very cheap seats:
* Bias is an entertaining core element of the Performance Guys content. A certain PGer has been pushing the BPM/BI integration angel for quite some time when no...one... actuallly..cared...
* The puppy thing was weird
* Did anyone notice a) Cognos got respect for joining up with IBM when every software company they buy disappears into consulting nothingness and b) Business Objects lost their leadership after loosing all the key marketing people with Gartner analysts to other vendors.
* I'm willing to admit that that last point was mostly a smug self reference
* The puppy thing was weird
haha, come on, "surprise, surprise, puppy surprise...?" you can't beat that old school 90s commercial. maybe I was the only one watching morning cartoons back in the early 90s. :)
Post a Comment