Performance Management is Hot says Gartner

Chicago was host to the Gartner BI conference this past week. I had a chance to attend and tried to focus most of my time on the CPM side of the house attending most of the performance management related sessions, here’s a recap from the events that took place:

CPM is still hot according to Gartner, with strong growth in the market over the past several year, the future looks bright for once upstart now well established category of performance management. Nigel Rainer had a session on CPM where he called out five key focus areas of corporate performance management functionality including; planning and budgeting, dashboards and scorecards, financial consolidation, profitability optimization, and financial management reporting. Rainer also had spoke to hosted solutions in the CPM realm as an area to watch in the next 2-5 years. This holds true particularly in the mid-sized business market where organization have neither the budget nor the IT staff to support user demand around performance management applications.

There was lots of interesting commentary around XBRL and hosted solutions as the future of the space, there was a mention of XBRL filing being made mandatory by the SEC. Rainer spoke to XBRL as a new way to revolutionize the way companies provide financial information to the org. Rainer pointed to the SEC’s financial explorer portal which provides financial details of several dozen publicly traded companies using XBRL tagging. http://209.234.225.154/viewer/home/

John Van Decker and French Caldwell had an interesting session on GRC and financial governance, the net here was that most of the smaller governance vendors will get sucked up by the already consolidated CPM/ERP vendors and added to the portfolio. They also spoke to the overall vision of document management and collaboration as a key piece of the future of GRC.

From a vendor perspective there were a number of other very interesting presentations from the other BI vendors including Oracle and SAP/Business Objects, where they showed roadmap and tried to paint an integrated story. The session that I did sit in on was SAP/Business Objects where they mostly talked around SAP/Business Objects integration or BI/ERP cooperativeness and focused mainly on the Business Objects product stack feature some of their newly acquired technology such as their text mining functionality acquired from a company called Insight.

SQL 2008 Launches in LA - Ballmer Talks

The next wave of Microsoft BI launched last week with the launch of SQL Server 2008. The event in Los Angeles reached 4,000 attendee and is the first city of an epic tour that spans across the globe as the Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 are let loose on the market.

Get more details on this event and other upcoming events and watch Steve Ballmer’s keynote here.

Surprise, Surprise, Puppy Surprise

Big news from Gartner yesterday with the release of the new BI quad. The quad itself positions Microsoft as the dominant vendor in the "ability to execute category," partly due to their partner and sales model and mostly due to the new functionality built right into their core platforms which they are using to deliver BI, The Office System and SQL.

The time seems to be now for Microsoft to release the hounds, and deliver on their BI strategy as the major players in the space (Business Objects and Cognos) will be consumed with integration efforts. In addition to this the company just released the v1 product PerformancePoint Sever, which is not really a v1 product but more of a combination of a more mature product portfolio with the ProClarity tools and Business Scorecard Manager (a 4 year old scorecarding tool built in house at Microsoft). What is new is the planning and budgeting functionality which is added into PerformancePoint and is delivered in the all familiar environment of Excel. Add in some new BI functionality in the latest release of Office 2007 and an upcoming launch of SQL Server 2008 and you can quickly get the picture for why Microsoft is that clear leader in the ability to execute column. Oh wait, how could I forget the most important piece, PRICE. Which could actually be more of a factor than anticipated given recent economic rumblings, just ask you stock broker.

What will happen when SAP, Oracle, and IBM get their acts together? Will HP jump into the game and pick up MicroTradgedy? Only time will tell but all of this gives Microsoft a good opportunity to give a real kick of the BI can in 2008, it’ll be interesting to see how many puppies are really inside. Heck just ask the product manager for Crystal Reports what happened when Reporting Services released back in 2002.

BI and Search

Today's news of the proposed acquisition of Yahooooooooo! by the Death Star, while not very BI/performance management related, still brings "search," and more directly "how does this impact BI and performance management" to mind.

Truthfully speaking, the announcement just a few weeks ago that Microsoft was acquiring a real, live, honest to goodness enterprise search vendor, FAST, is probably more directly related to our core topics here, but today's news re-emphasizes a point that several folks have noticed, namely that "search" has the potential to be the future interface of business intelligence.

Now despite attempts by other BI vendors to get into the realm of search (Business Objects' well intentioned, but unsupported "Intelligent Question" immediately comes to mind), and unstructured data, these efforts have been largely unsuccessful, in part due to the fact that the engines aren't optimized to find data outside of the data warehouse and data marts which which the search tools are associated. And companies like our friend Dave Kellogg's Mark Logic exist and thrive due to their ability to work across multiple data types and sources to scour information everywhere to get you the result you need.

But it's hard to escape the fact that there's a convergence in technologies going on here, and that the user interface for finding out what you need, as well as the engines that actually "do the finding" are quickly coming together. And whatever comes out of the other end of all this mish mash is only going to help information workers everywhere get ready access to the information they need--maybe by simply typing in a question into a search bar...

The Big Ticket

The dates are set for the second annual Microsoft BI conference Oct. 6-8 in Seattle Washington. The events hopes to build on the tremendous popularity of the first Microsoft BI conference held in May of 2007. Sure it’s not U2, The Red Hot Chili Peppers or The Rolling Stones and the ticket scalpers down at SafeCo field probably aren't getting too worked up over it but who’s to say software can’t get it’s groove on from time to time. For more information on the conference check out:
http://www.microsoftbiconference.com/

Piecing Together the Gartner CPM Magic Quadrant Results

Well, we knew when we broke for the holidays that the Garnter CPM magic quadrant release were just days from coming out. We deliberated about doing a post-festivus alert, but knowing that everyone was quickly headed out of town, decided that the world would have to wait with bated breath for our in-depth analysis of the latest results.

Now while we're not able to actually publish the quad itself, it being copyrighted and all, it's pretty easy to piece together where the main players fell out in the mix based on the 55 font type press releases and wire service reports that have been pinging our inboxes every day since the results were announced.

The big winners:

Oracle/Hyperion: The combination of the two companies nearly complete, they make for a compelling offering in the CPM space; and with the long-time leadership of Hyperion, this one was a no-brainer. Oracle has been on quite a roll lately, racking up leadership awards from all the main analyst firms. Now whether they all equate to Oracle being #1 in BI is another story, but there's no question that the BI pieces have come together for them in the past year.

Cognos: Although their acquisition of Applix was not fully factored into the mix, Cognos was positioned in the leaders quadrant this year, as they have in every year since the quad was released. Another strong showing from Team Ottawa in their last quad as an independent vendor. As IBM has not been represented on the quad in the past, expect the big name change in the leader's quadrant for next year.

Business Objects: The big mover this past year, BOBJ was also positioned strongly in the leaders quadrant, along with soon-to-be lord and master SAP. The combination of the two company's offerings should make this coming year's competition interesting, product roadmap challenges not withstanding. As has been well documented, the Business Objects strategy of buying their way into the leadership position with acquistions of SRC, ALG, and finally Cartesis was enough to push them over the top.

Not-so-Big Winners:
Now while everyone's a winner in our book, you can always tell these companies by the fact that they don't rush out press releases touting the fact that they came in behind the pack, like, for instance...

SAS: Nope, move along, nothing to see here. SAS isn't exactly touting the fact that they aren't in the leaders quadrant again this year, something that must be disappointing to them, seeing as they are rated about the same as they were in 2006--close, but actually falling a bit behind the new leaders given how much the market has changed.

Microsoft: We should really label Team Redmond as having an "incomplete" this time around, as Gartner points out in their review that the PerformancePoint Server product was not fully taken into account into the evalutation, as the product was not actually out in the market in-time to hit the cut-off date. As such, Microsoft was dinged a bit on their ability to execute, but those of you with the quad in your hand will recognize the rightward tilt of the completeness of vision that vendors fight most with Gartner on that they actually did pretty well on. With a full year of PPS selling and positioning in the marketplace, it will be interesting to see how much MSFT is able to move in the coming year.

Other Miscellan-ee-i that we can disclose and have opinions on:

--Total number of vendors in leaders quadrant in 2007 vs. 2006: 4 vs. 2
--Total number of vendors on the quad in 2007 vs. 2006: 13 vs. 16 (so much for all-consuming consolidation)
--Biggest winner: I'll go with SAP actually. If you compare last year's and this year's measurements, while Hyperion/Oracle and Cognos are still clearly the leaders, their position really didn't change that much. However, with Business Objects moving into the leaders quadrant along with SAP, they are well positioned for a strong year, again pending product issues (and those are huge, by the way, so while I don't discount them, they are well set up)
--Biggest loser: Has to be SAS. They were so close last year to the leaders quad, and barely moved up this year, actually losing ground to several competitors. Getting to be a tough market!
--Vendor to watch: I'll leave aside the obvious choice in Microsoft, and actually go with Infor. Their completeness of vision continues to move right, and they themselves are getting very close to the upper right region.
--Off-the-wall New Year prediction: This is the last year for a stand-alone CPM quad--there's already rumblings that it will be BI and CPM next year--we shall see!

Tis the Season to be Mobile

There’s no doubt PDAs will be popular stocking stuffer this year, whether it’s the new iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Smart Phone, there’s something out there for everyone. The mobile market has always been read hot but when I read a recent article about RIMs Q3 earnings announce that more than doubled, I couldn’t help but write a post about the growth of mobile and the relevance to mobile BI.

BI vendors have been waiting for years for this egg to hatch, bringing the power of business intelligence directly to the users mobile devices has been a strong area of interest for quite some time now. Just take a look at where some of the BI players are at with their mobile strategy, read about the Business Objects mobile strategy, and how they are making BI available on any mobile device. Cognos 8 goes mobile as well extending the value of the Cognos 8 Business Intelligence architecture by providing users with access to timely, secure, and personalized information on their BlackBerry® wireless devices. Microsoft is also in the mobile BI game and is actually one vendor who has an interest in both the BI and the mobile businesses. They have a whitepaper on using windows mobile and business intelligence for making better business decision wherever you are.

Look for the wave of PDA user empowerment to continue and vendors to look for simpler ways to get information into the hands of the business users. Good or bad, BI on the mobile device is yet another reason to make us all more addicted to our little dingleberries!

Pumping Some Serious Iron

Just off the heels of the PerformancePoint Server launch, Microsoft is getting pumped up again with another major BI product launch just around the corner. SQL 2008 holds the promise of trusted and secure data and the ability to leverage core business intelligence functionality to gain better business insight, now that’s strength that even the Govinator couldn’t handle. SQL Server has long been the backbone of Microsoft’s BI story, together the wave of PerformancePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, and soon to come SQL Server 2008, Microsoft is really stacking up the rack. Watch for more details on the launch of SQL Server, in the meantime you can get more familiar it by watching the demo here,

MicroSAP Anyone?

Posted with limited comment, because this would likely make our heads explode...

Portal Wars--The Latest Volley

Regular PG readers will remember this post from about 10 days or so ago where we talked about the potential future importance of the Portal in determining the BI strategy for many companies. The thinking goes that since so much BI functionality is being put into the portal, and with the increased need to collaborate and work across teams, this "Team BI" concept becomes critically important to how we use BI information as individuals, as well as how we align with our corporate and organizational goals.

So it's not entirely surprising, given this hypothesis, to see Business Objects announce yesterday that they're going to provide a free PIK (or portal integration kits to you BI rubes) from the XI platform and Crystal reporting roducts into the Microsoft SharePoint portal, affectionately known as MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server--catchy, isn't it?).

This integration is a great attempt to lower the threshold of the potential issue of having different collaboration and BI tools in-house, which is a smart move for both companies--Microsoft, continuing its partnering ways with all BI vendors and platforms, making MOSS a versatile and open portal platform that can work with everyone, and for Business Objects, they get to show their flexibility and independence as well, and can draft behind the momentum of MOSS in the marketplace.

Good times, good times...

Adobe and Business Objects Deepen Their Partnership

News last week that Adobe and Business Objects continue to work together across multiple fronts, integrating Crystal Xcelsius and other technologies (previously an agreement was signed to align the Adobe process management capabilities) to fight the evildoers up in Redmond.

Adobe has had some great financial results recently and is really on a roll, and there were minor rumblings about them being interested in potentially acquiring Business Objects before SAP stepped in earlier this year. So with that possibility off the table, the two companies continue to find common ground from which to compete against a common enemy.

Jaw Dropping...

I know it's not directly the result of the PerformancePoint Server launch, although it's fairly widely acknowledged that our friends in Redmond are doing well in the BI market. But the news today that Microsoft blew out its Q1 earnings targets by over $1 Billion is well, shocking. Suddenly, investing a mere $240M for a share of Facebook doesn't seem like too much money to pay...

To put it in some perspective, Microsoft beat their number by almost as much as Cognos generates in revenue in an entire year. They generated over $4.5B in NET Profit. All Hail Halo 3!

The stock is doing well in after-hour trading, which you might expect, and has given the company their biggest single day stock jump in years.

The impact on BI, again, can't be known--but if nothing else, the 500 lb. gorilla is alive and kicking, and is sitting on a sh*tload of cash...

Facebooked!

You’ve probably heard the phrase “are you on facebook” within the past couple of months. The friend-picture sharing website that has grown tremendously in popularity. With its routes in the college and university world, Facebook started as a way for students to share their class notes with each other. Although this is not specific to the BI and performance management world, I thought this was big enough news in the technology industry to deserve a post. The announcement yesterday of the $240 million price tag Microsoft paid for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook

This move is all about eyeballs and follows Microsofts acquisition of aQuantive ($6 billion, the largest in Microsoft history) to aggressively move into the advertising space and compete directly with Google. To try and bring this home, yes I know it’s a stretch, but this is somewhat relevant to BI as we see the overall category of communications and collaboration expand. Sites like Myspace and Facebook are using the technology as a platform to communicate information, search on information, allow users to post information about themselves, all of which is collected and organized and optimized to bring relevant, meaningful content to the users and create a greater sense of community. The massive amounts of data on all of these sites is also forming a kind of digital history, unlike that of any other generation. Just think, the future president of the United States likely has a Facebook page with him playing flip cups with his buddies somewhere out there right now!

Process is the New BI

Is BI growing up, getting paid up, or maybe just getting passed up? Depends on who you ask, and what seat they occupy. At a minimum, there is activity on all fronts.

BI is all grows up? You know you are a full adult when Microsoft decides you are a real market. All the cycles around Performance Point signal that the Redmond death star is now fully operational and now focused on market share. If you have a market cap like MSFT, everyone not named you in any chosen category has a market cap the size of the resistance organization. They are big, but nobody seems to be going home. In fact, there are multiple pockets of resistance. Do not be surprised if the Redmond BI team enlists the Master Chief, available tomorrow, to counter the resistance. Can't wait to get in on the road show. Other notes of interest...

Item #1, the fact that the upstart is getting press in your father's newspaper. On demand BI with LucidEra is validated in the Wall Street Journal Technology section. Check this article that talks about the value of BI and mentions Cognos, Business Objects and LucidEra. Note to LucidEra - forward the article back to VCs that funded the new round and declare mission accomplished. New money to fund marketing, new WSJ article. You do the math. It took Business Objects about 10 years to get in the Journal. Guess the new guys are on to something.

Item #2. Business Objects and Goldman - Let's make a deal. Are they for sale? If you ask executives at the company, probably not. At least not publicly. However, when someone shows up with an offer, you either take it, or your hire a firm to conduct a process. Just because nobody is shopping does not mean nobody is buying. Do not be surprised if they get bought. By the same token, do not be surprised if nothing happens. I heard a couple times last year that multiple people had it on good authority that Oracle tried to buy BOBJ when the stock was trading in the low 30s. I heard that got punted when Business Objects said the price started at $40 per share. Looks like a good position, especially considering the current cycles. This could go either way this year.

Item #3. Unsolicited offer for SAS. My understanding from a good source is that a player that matters showed up with an offer. The response back from SAS was, "Bidding starts at $20 Billion." $20 Billion?!? 10X+ trailing twelve month revenues? Goodnight indeed. If you spend 20 years building the company in your own image, hold the controlling shares, and live in a hot market, would you sell? File this one under the simulation scenarios you wish you had. My money is on team North Carolina holding firm and staying private.

Item #4. Forrester reminds people that BI needs to get actionable and mentions TIBCO as a thought leader. You have that right, TIBCO runs BI. Boris Evelson and Colin Teubner from Forrester put out a report last week titled, From BPM to Optimization. The subtitle notes that while "BI vendors fiddle while TIBCO burnishes its BPM offering with Spotfire." This is essentially like calling out BI vendors as unfit to parent, much like Brittany Spears. This makes TIBCO out to be K-FED. Nobody has seen them parent, but sometimes proximity wins you points by association. I happened to speak to someone in product management last week from Cognos who indicated that Spotfire was last seen on the street about 20 seconds before TIBCO purchased them. This makes them an excellent candidate for Cold Case, assuming anyone was interested and wanted to tune in to another Law and Order knock off on visualization and analytics purchased by a platform wanna be. Which begs the question, do BPM analysts at Forrester not get BI inquiries, so believe their own press? Or, is the BI market turning into process management market and the BI players are asleep at the switch? Note to Ottawa, Cary and San Jose - check your dashboards!

Regardless of how you score, BI is hot. Looks like we are in for an exciting end of year finish.

Get ready for a whole lotta lauchin’!

Big week coming up in the world of BI and performance management, as both Business Objects and Microsoft get ready for their respective product launches.

Business Objects is first up tomorrow, with their EPM XI launch webcast, touting the integration of the former Cartesis products being rapidly integrated onto the XI platform. We’ll leave it to them to explain what this actually means, since they’ve previously announced a year-long roadmap to integrate the products. But this should help some with current XI customers and with the bulk of the sales force who are selling XI to the IT function make a clearer case why they should consider Business Objects for performance management.

Microsoft is up next week, as they kick-off the PerformancePoint Server launch with a big soiree in New York City, and later next month in London. Seeing as how they’ve been talking about the product for the past two years, it’s about time! But in the wake of the hype in the market, the glowing analyst reports from the tier 1 firms, and the momentum within the Microsoft customer base (their first BI conference in May was 40% larger than the 2006 Business Objects Americas conference, now in its 11th year), it should be interesting to see how this product takes hold in the market.

PerformancePoint--Oh it's on...It's ON!!!

Gin up the ole PR machine, get your analyst briefing scorecards out, and start standing in line now for one of 1,000,000,000 field events (90% of them planned by Performance Guy Nic) around the world supporting the PerformancePoint Server launch later this fall. You thought the Paris Hilton coverage was a bit much--trust us, she's got nothing on our friends up in Redmond.

Our good friend Russell Damske from the B EYE (get it) network gives us an early preview, and trust me, this is only the beginning. (OK we've really never met Russell but we're sure he'd be a good friend if we knew him).

We're seriously thinking of live blogging the whole launch event here at Performance Guys, we're that excited. Not like Steve Ballmer excited, but very excited--more like Japanese funny dance excited.

PS--Nic is the one in the middle--

All Hail Microsoft’s Formal Entrance into the Land of Performance Management!

So while Performance Guy Nic is busy prowling the halls of the Seattle Convention Center this week at the first ever Microsoft BI Conference, it occurs to me that it’s a great opportunity to take a look at the impact of Microsoft on the performance management market.

To be sure, they are a formidable force in any market they enter. Their resources and patience are bottomless, and they are not afraid of refining a strategy many times over.

But the BI and performance management market has changed significantly since they first announced this initiative over 18 months ago. Then, if you look at the reactions from the analysts and press, it was a matter of time before they took over the space, and the vendors were all put on their guard—deals were frozen, partners were summoned, developer resources marshaled.

So what’s different now? Well, the market is, for one. The market now, given the rapid consolidation we’ve seen just in the last month, means that other vendors are in a far stronger position to compete against Microsoft than they were a few years ago.

Also, the maturity of the market is different. While at the time positioned strongly as both an enterprise and mid-market play, given the rich features and functionality of other offerings in the market, it’s going to get mighty crowded up in the Fortune 1000 for a non-business oriented sales manager. Which leaves the mid-market, which is where the analysts think this will probably gain the most traction early on, especially as the planning and budgeting capabilities of the performance point products take time to catch up to what’s on the market today.

Also, given that we’re still about 6 months or so away from the launch, who’s to say what else will happen in the market that may further marginalize this offering.

Or are we about to see the unveiling of a performance management juggernaut that will lay waste to the EPM landscape. Let’s ask our roving Microsoft correspondent Nic Smith—over to you, Nic…