Press Release Performance Management - Can We Get a Little Clarity

Ok, so I am overdue to get my blog on after a recent long vacation. Thinking that I needed to get up to date with everything in BI and performance management I did a quick surf of a number of websites to get up to speed with recent events - and found a couple of press releases that could use a strong dose of improved performance. So about Clarity Systems.

On March 5, Clarity Systems announced that they had an airline vertical market and that it is taking off. They went on to announce that JetBlue, Eos, British Airways, and "other" regional and international airlines have selected Clarity 6. This is great news for Clarity, except on the messaging and press release front.

It is great to know the vertical is taking off. Might be good to tell the other internal folks at Clarity, as the press release appears to be the only mention of the new vertical on the whole website. Airline does not even get a call out under "other industries" in the web navigation either under solutions or partners. Note to Clarity for sake of clarity, it is a vertical or not?

In the same manner, are you a leader or not? Clarity indicates they are a leader in performance management - the press releases all say so. This includes the press release where they announce they are visionary, not a leader in the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPM. As if this is not bad enough, take a look at the quote from Clarity's president Mark Nashman:

“We believe Gartner's report acknowledges our software for its openness, flexibility and depth of functionality in all areas of CPM,” says Mark Nashman, President, Clarity Systems. “In my opinion, it distinguishes Clarity Systems as a thought leader and innovator in the CPM market.”

Ok, I got it. And it other news, Mark's mom thinks he is a wonderful son and could not have committed the crime. Seriously. Seriously? While we all know it can be painful to run the Gartner gauntlet to get a release approved when mentioned in a report, at least they are clear about the rules of engagement. (In contrast to Forrester, which is a whole other post). I guess it never occurred to me that I could have just inserted the words "In my opinion" somewhere in the quote section to indicate this was the actual opinion of the person who is being quoted.

So actually, when Clarity says leader, they mean thought leader. I got it. Ooops, I read the rest of the release. It goes on to quote Nashman at the end of the release:

"We believe Gartner's Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites recognizes what our customers already understand: Clarity delivers visionary CPM solutions to the market.”

So the Gartner quad actually represents what their customers think, that they are a visionary, not a leader. This is helpful and actually explains that their vision is to have an airline vertical, but it is not actually generally available today. We think we are leaders, but our customers don't think so.

This would help explain where the other airline customers might have gone. In the release on their visionary airline vertical, the other airlines are never actually mentioned. Jetblue, Eos, and British Airlines have cleared customs and boarded the release, but the other airlines apparently got caught in a security screening. They did not board. Not in the headline, not in the body of the release. So what is there to prove they actually exist? Who writes this stuff? Who approves this stuff? Seriously. The visionary leader release has Dilbert written all over it. The airline one is a thing unto itself.

Color me dazed and confused. And I am sure it is not only me.

More from Cognos - So About The Product

Picking up and closing off from yesterday, let’s talk product for Cognos 8v3. The demo portion of the event was led by Cognos VP of Product Marketing, Leah MacMillan. MacMillan started by quoting a recent Accenture study indicating the up to 2 hours a week is wasted looking for information, most organizations information is wrong half the time and that people admitted they used the wrong information at least once a week. Interesting, sounds like they need BI, specifically Cognos 8v3 to storm the information castle.

MacMillan then did a very credible job in calling out key issues for different classes of users and new features in Cognos 8v3 to address those points of pain. Among the key highlights for the CEOs include briefing books and the demo included Indigo Montoya’s briefing book displayed in PDF format. It was not clear what time frame and metrics where measured for Mr. Montoya’s quest. Also new capabilities for the portal, portlets and metrics management.

Cognos mobile was also highlighted for business line managers as well as new additions to the planning capability and multi-tabs displays for their dashboards. While hard to show the capabilities of how you can change a spreadsheet and the plan, the planning element of the demo did showcase integration with MSFT PowerPoint.

Those important non-BI users called employees were also called out with new capabilities focused on author once, publish many times. Other details mentioned include integration with leading enterprise search capabilities including Google One Box, MSFT Express 2008 and other vendors, as well as enhanced personalized alerts. This includes the ability to right click and add alert conditions.

MacMillan finished with mention of additional capabilities required for customers, partners and suppliers and well as hard core BI professionals and indicated she did not have time to review but teams were prepared to demo and spend time. She noted there were additional benefits for these groups of users. However the likelihood is that the focus on administration is among the highlights for both camps. The BI administrators get more capability to manage from the portal, which in turn helps them manage users outside the firewall.

The demo section was then followed by a quick Q&A Chad Erman from Southwestern Energy. Suffice it to say that Erman is a fan of the company and technology, noting in his responses that Cognos is a company “that just gets it”, and that they are so good they are nearly mind-readers. However he is very credible on stage and should be a strong reference to Cognos for the foreseeable future.

The demo and the presentation were both handled very professionally. Ms. MacMillan is very credible on stage and showcasing the product. The key themes around the event – the evolution of performance management and performance management in the real world were both delivered on in the presentation. Cognos deserves high marks for the event and their presentation and new capabilities.

However, as one might expect from a point release, this is not a game changer, and I am not sure that Cognos meets their suggested bar around innovation. The concept of BI on a Blackberry, re-usable portal widgets, portal based administration and multi-tab dashboards are not exactly new or innovative. However, they are all very useful capabilities that should be high on the enhancement request lists of existing customers and are likely to have immediate uptake. This is a straight upgrade for customers on Cognos 8v2. This is not necessarily a straight upgrade from earlier versions, so your results may vary. Look for Cognos 8v3 from your local sales rep as it is available now and have fun storming the castle.

Cognos 8v3 - Ask the Experts

After Mr. Ashe concluded his keynote presentation, he did a little Q&A with industry analyst John Hagerty of AMR research, a noted expert in performance management as well as compliance. John is a favorite of the performance guys and a great choice for this type of event for a variety of reasons - he knows a ton about the space, is very credible, and he speaks clear English and does not pull his punches. He also happens to be a former Cognos employee, which never hurts, but John did not expressly endorse the product, nor would you expect him to.

John did a Q&A with Rob Ashe and continued to reinforce some of the key themes and challenges in the market place: billions of dollars spent on aggregation and collection of information without enough measurable impact or direction on what to do with the information or how to drive business return. Also the challenge of not enough tools - or the right kind of tools for all types of users.

Hagerty and Ashe both commented that for many organizations, the journey to a performance managed and optimized organization is still early stage. Ashe also commented that journey is often custom to the needs of individual organizations. (Very good point)

To address this issue, Hagerty outlined a maturity model for organizations moving to a more strategic approach to BI and performance management. For AMR clients, you can find it here, but for the rest of you, the headlines of the 4 stages are:

1. Reactive - Performance management and/or BI used to address a specific issue. This services as the baseline in the department or organization

2. Anticipation - The viral impact as performance management projects starts to spread. Nothing breeds success like success

3. Collaboration - A more proactive approach as the organization starts to recognize the cause and effect relationship between their goals, the information and the expectations of performance.

4. Orchestration - A coordinated approach that moves everyone to the same sheet of music. Very much rooted in strategy

Both Ashe and Hagerty asserted that most organizations are early in the process, but on their way to a more strategic, higher value approach. Interesting, and likely due to time constraints, neither panelist was asked or volunteered examples of more mature or performance managed companies. While Southwest Energy was on the video transition to the panel and spoke live later(I will comment on this later), I thought this was a missed opportunity.

The closing remarks by both men netted out to don't boil the ocean with your performance strategy and look for return at every step. This is very much on point and a constant struggle for those in both business and IT looking to execute on their performance strategy.

Overall this was a good session and both presenters were on script and kept things moving. However, the audience and Cognos might have been better served to allow John Hagerty a little more time and his own stand alone presentation slot to get one level deeper on how to make performance management actionable and reference some more specific case studies in context of the AMR maturity model. This might have cut into the demo a little bit, but the credibility of AMR and a global view would have served the corporate interest at least as well. And teams were standing by to demo around the room.

Stay tuned for new product features and demo update.

Cognos Brings Their Performance DNA to Gotham

Greetings from the Cognos kick-off event for Cognos 8v3. Cognos bills this as The DNA for Performance Evolution. Doors opened at 8am and to their performance credit, the group running the event managed to get it kicked off on time. Cognos bills this as performance management in the real world, with a target of reaching 8,000 customers in 35 cities as well as an online event.

Mark Jeffries kicked off the event and quickly gave way to Cognos CEO Rob Ashe. Ashe welcomed everyone and noted that Cognos 8v3 is a “foundational release – very sturdy and the product of more testing than any prior release from the company.” Ashe asserted that performance management is the #1 priority for all organizations.

Ashe followed with the standard BI assertion - the issue starts from the sheer quantity of data. Another issue is the increasing competitive environment. Arguably we are on the edge of a recession and Ashe suggested that is part of the priority and urgency. Performance of the business is critical. Finally, part of the issue is management. Too much money on automation. Too much back office, but not enough focus on optimization and driving performance.

Ashe commented that Cognos has been on a 20 year journey of innovation. However, the product circle that appeared behind him was not as high quality as other graphics in the presentation. It was the standard circle with performance in the center, first ring measure and monitoring, next planning, finally, reporting and analysis. Ironically, the product diagram was less good than the one I remember when I presented right after Ashe at Computerworld’s BI show in 2005.

He presented an overview of the BI industry using Cognos products for reference and the reality over the last couple years that performance management is where it is going. Performance management is growing up and the result is more demand and CPM going very broad and very deep.

The focus of the Cognos message and belief:

1. BI + Scorecards + planning must all be integrated on a single platform.

2. Delivery of a framework – revenue management, long term asset management, expense management, financial management. Looking for what is unique in the business and using it to drive forward
3. Architecture – services oriented backbone on a single, SOA, extendable platform.

Cognos 8v3 key message points: More targeted info to more users, easier to deploy and manage and new solutions and best practices to accelerate success

Interesting that Ashe commented that this has been the longest product test. 9 months. IBM performance lab tested 3 times before release. Ashe also asserted that “Cognos stands alone in ability to make it easy to administer and manage applications in real deployment and drive adoption.” However, it is not clear from the demo that they are providing anything that is revolutionary or truly new here.

There was a little time spent on acquisition talk. Cognos recently closed the deal from Applix and Ashe mentioned that the new company and technology is a strong fit and well received. TM1 was positioned as an “all in one solution for the mid-market”. It was interesting to hear it positioned this way as that was not consistent with the original press releases on the topic.

On the topic of IBM, Ashe noted that he and the whole company are excited. The deal was approved by the Cognos shareholders yesterday with approval vote of 99%. Ashe asserted synergies and shared vision around business optimization and performance. He also mentioned that Cognos employees are excited about the merger. Clearly it is not a merger and it is not clear that everyone is excited.

The event venue is great, being hosted in a rotunda of a former bank. Kudos to the Cognos team for putting the stage together and adding Cognos signage without taking away from the elegance of the venue. Mark Jefferies is the host for the event and while he is high energy, he clearly is not a Cognos employee because he was reading his open remarks from his clip board and needed to refer to the sheet to remember the names of the presenters. Overall a very solid presentation and a good set up for the rest of the presenters.

Watson, Crick, Darwin and Ashe - DNA of Performance

Next week Cognos takes the covers off the next generation of performance management in NY during a live event called The DNA of Performance Evolution in New York City. The event takes place at Gotham Hall next Tuesday the 15th and includes keynotes by Rob Ashe and Q&A with John Hagerty of AMR as well product demonstrations and a customer discussion with Southwest Energy.

The main stage product demo on the agenda is titled "Experience Performance Management Innovation." I will be happy to offer my candid view on Cognos' delivery of this promise as I will be attending the event and hoping to blog in real time if at all possible.

Interesting to note that Cognos is clearly promoting Cognos 8v3 as evidenced by their web links and details on the site. Regardless of the marketing around the assertion of innovation, the launch is clearly important to Cognos 2008 plans. They are doing a similar agenda as a road show as well as a virtual event. Expect customers and partners to be just as interested in the new relationship with IBM as they are in the latest release.

More from NYC.

Counter Point - Absence Management, People Management and Family Values

Great post by the original performance Guy, last Wednesday discussing the impact of Absence Management and commenting on a recent article in Business Week discussing how employers are fighting the issue of employees playing hooky. This topic is of high interest to many people - both in senior management and at the line level. And the reality is that that the approach endorsed by the Business Week article is completely opposed to the reality that organization performance is a function of people.

For the defense, I submit a great article from Jeffrey Pfeffer in the most recent, and regrettably, last issue of Business 2.0. In his article, "It's time to live up to family values," Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's school of business, notes that a key issue for employers is the declining birth rate and the reality is that most employers don't practice what they preach in terms of work / life balance. Among the damning stats:

- 86 million Americans do not get a single sick day to care for a sick child
- The US is the only industrialized nation without a policy of paid leave for infant care
- Many employees don't get paid vacations
- The current policy of 12 weeks UNPAID family leave is resisted by many employers
- Many people and organizations would rather have sick people on the job than at home, at the expense of performance and productivity

Pfeffer notes that the over the last decade, companies on Fortune's list of top companies to work for (Fortune is the parent company of the newly departed B2.0) have notably improved work-family benefits. And those companies typically beat benchmarks for shareholder return. While this is not the entire story unto itself, the top line would seem to indicate that being good to employees and their families is good for the stock and good for performance. Is there a better indicator of strong performance management?

On the flip side of the coin, you have companies that focus on performance, not if the employee is in the office or has punched the time clock. A great example of this is Best Buy, also mentioned in the Business Week article, but with little detail. This is unfortunate, and likely due to the fact that their story runs counter to the slant of the article. Best Buy is on the forefront of the concept of performance impact with their concept of ROWE - Results Oriented Work Environment. The net of this is that performance is based on (get this) performance, not hours worked. Best Buy does not care if you are in the office, they only care if you get something done. The concept is covered in Business 2.0's April edition.

According the the article, more than 60% of the Minneapolis' based Best Buy's corporate workforce at the home office is now managed based on ROWE. If you factor out senior executive staff who are measured on things like EPS, the real percentage is even higher. According to the article, implementing a resulted oriented approach as improved productivity by 35%. You heard that right - the team is more than 1/3 more productive when measured based on what they produce, not what time they show up at the office.

According to a spokesperson in the article, the program "has forced managers and employees to be really clear about what needs to be accomplished". This is interesting for a variety of reasons including the revolutionary idea that performance should be judged on well defined goals, not the number of hours worked, whether you were at your desk promptly at 8am, or whether at performance review time your boss happens to like you.

Interestingly, Best Buy is has not only spun off a consulting organization to impart this success to other organizations, they are also experimenting with the ROWE concept for their retail stores. While there are some obvious hurdles, if they achieved 50% of the performance improvement in store that they have achieved at corporate, the results as measured in sales person productivity and by association, same store sales, would be extraordinary.

Also interesting to note that the companies called out as using software to track absenteeism in the BW article include Wal-Mart, whose contributions to performance management include low or no health benefits and locking 3rd shift cleaning employees in store, and Dell, who happens to have restated their earnings and fired their CEO for playing fast and loose with the numbers. If this smacks of a double standard, it should. Or at a minimum, it is reflective of a corporate culture and how performance is managed and incented or not.

In a performance oriented world, always-on world, it is my strong belief that if employers spend half as much time on employee care and incenting performance as they did trying to play defense against the small number of people who abuse the system, we would all be much farther ahead.

Hyperion Bites the Dust

Finally, the end of an era. The Hyperion logo has now been officially removed from the building and street signage at the former Hyperion mothership on Great America Parkway in Santa Clara. The building and parking lot has looked empty for a while, and maybe that is the reason it took so long to finally remove the signage.

The logo was part of the marketing makeover spearheaded by the arrival of Heidi Melin as CMO. As the logo was fairly new, it likely does not invoke the same nostalgia of the PeopleSoft logo, or PeopleSoft the company. There are many people who still speak very fondly of their time at PeopleSoft and it is not uncommon to see one of the old PeopleSoft dark backpacks with the red and blue logo which were standard issue for the entire organization on the street or in an airport. Team PeopleSoft positioned themselves as the people people in technology. Maybe that is why it still doesn't look right when you drive east on 580 and see the old PeopleSoft campus and sign with the big bold colors of Oracle. It would be interesting to hear Melin's take on this since she was group VP and brand czar at PSFT before coming to Hyperion. What looks great in the bank may feel a little less great. At least one version of Hyperion's logo still lives on in the Oracle website. As for the Hyperion BI product, it remains to be seen.

Here Comes the Mother Ship

Guy is not kidding when he says PerformancePoint is in full swing, two weeks ago was MGX (what Microsoft calls sales kickoff). The 15,000 person event was host to the latest and greatest product demos and feature the plans and strategy for the upcoming year. Included in the mix was a main stage demo of PerformancePoint Server tied together with the Microsoft Unified Communications products. The demo nicely tied together BI capabilities of scorecards, analytics, and planning with communications functionally via live meeting, instant messaging, and VOIP. If you’d like to get a good look at PerformancePoint, there’s a demo recording on YouTube from the recent Microsoft BI conference in Seattle featuring our good friend Bruno Aziza. There will be a continuous string of activities throughout the rest of 2007 and into 2008, so pack your bags and grab your favorite conference outfit, it’s gonna be a performance management boogie fest.

BI vs. Performance Management - Ground Hog Day

The circular debate of business intelligence Vs. performance management is noted by Jonathan Becher in his blog. He has incorporated a handy reference chart on the differences in case anyone is still not clear. Of note is that he did not incorporate the industry standard wheel diagram used by most vendors and analysts. He also makes an interesting and important distinction that performance management includes the requirement to "motivate" in front of monitoring, management and measurement. This is important and often does not get the attention it deserves. Performance is tied to motivation - as in take home pay. Not on a better looking dashboard or more financial analytics wrapped in BI.

Business Intelligence and BPM - Looking for a Clue

Clint Boulton wrote an interesting take on the intersection of BI and BPM for Datamation where he explores the ramifications of the Tibco's announcement of the purchase of Spotfire. I commented on this in a earlier post. Boulton describes this as a "head scratcher" but then does a nice job of finding some other people to comment on what it means for BI and BPM, and where the market might move. His summary - more intelligent business process capabilities.

I think the article provides a good perspective on what is happening in the market and how BI and BPM might work together as well as where the market is heading. I find it interesting that he notes that "leaders" in the market include IBM, BEA, Tibco and Software AG. Maybe true if you approach BPM as an integration issue, not a people, process or strategy issue. Not completely incorrect, but this is kind of like judging BI vendors by their data integration capability. While this is a key part of the puzzle, it is a lot like deciding to build a house. When you decide to break ground for your new home, the first person you call is not the plumber.

Boulton's article also illustrates gaps in understanding of the intersection of BI, BPM and performance management by analysts like Mark Smith of Ventana. Smith comments

"Most corporations weren't built on business processes...the challenge with process management is that it makes good common business sense, but most corporations aren't designed or managed by process, right? It's not because they're doing the wrong thing, it's because companies aren't mature enough to manage their business by process."

What?

Last time I checked, ERP was all about how to capture, automate and replicate key business process. Anyone been to an ERP or supply chain conference in the last 15 years? Maybe you might have heard of business process engineering - armies of consultants documenting business processes in the 80's and 90's. How about the holy trinity of performance management: Kaplan, Norton and Jack Welch.

BSC and Six Sigma are process methodologies designed to improve performance. This may help explain to Smith why BI, BPM and platform vendors spend so much time and money to offer BSC dashboards and scorecards, Six Sigma graphing tools, strategy maps, and ABC costing options for their finance analytics, Total Quality Management frameworks, and more. Regardless of size of company, I have yet to meet any company of any size where senior executives cannot explain their quote to cash process.

I am not sure if Smith's comment implies that companies are actually managed via Excel, planning and ad-hoc reporting, or if he truly believes companies are not mature enough to understand and manage process. If that is true, how in the hell did all the ERP, CRM, PLM, MRP and analytics get sold over the last 30 years? And why is process so important to so many people? Jack Welch or not, Smith's comment displays a clear lack of understanding of the issues and the market.

It is not clear if Tibco's move is a single data point or an early indicator of more BI and BPM intermingling. Regardless, more analytics linked to business process is likely a good thing, and I think most of us are mature enough to handle it.

SAP Buys Outlooksoft

Consolidation in financial analytics and performance management is happening at light speed with the announcement yesterday that SAP plans to acquire Outlooksoft. In their announcement, SAP clearly positions this as extending its solutions for the CFO's office and expanding its portfolio to include performance management. In SAP speak, they provide everything from governance, risk and compliance to performance management, while doing a little ERP as well.

Interestingly, SAP usually does not usually spend much time talking about performance management as a stand alone offering, yet with Hyperion buying Oracle and Business Objects buying Cartesis, SAP could not afford to be left on the sidelines. Paul Hammerman at Forrester indicates that this closes a gap around Planning in the SAP product line in his interview with SearchSAP and notes that SAP's Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM) was not great. Hammerman suggests that SAP is losing CPM deals to best of breed vendors like Hyperion and Cognos.

OutlookSoft had been all Microsoft, all the time, until recently when they expanded support for Oracle. Outlooksoft offers a nice Excel front-end tool and makes it easy to do custom planning, budgeting and forecasting. The capability is user friendly for finance teams who have grown up with Excel. The capabilities and ease of use are both things SAP customers will benefit from, but there is clearly some overlap with existing functionality, and OutlookSoft products are not going to be used like Hyperion or Cartesis for complex consolidations. John Haggerty from AMR research points this out specifically in his view of the SAP acquisition.

"When thinking of Outlooksoft, we picture an image of a solid, highly usable, prediction-focused planning, budgeting and forecasting system. Customers, many of which are divisions of larger organizations, have built very responsive and flexible planning systems with the product. The consolidation tool is decent, but used more for budgeting and forecasting roll ups and less for complex enterprise consolidations, which is what SAP customers will need and expect. "

I would suggest this is true for legacy SAP customers, but maybe less so for the next generation of SAP customers, who are smaller organizations. SAP has spent a lot of energy and money talking and marketing to the mid-market with NetWeaver, even spending on ads suggesting start ups use SAP. While there is little evidence to suggest this is true, SAP has been touting mid-market wins and spent many cycles at Saffire 2007 talking about the mid-market and their strategy.

SAP's Chairman Hasso Plattner unveiled SAP's focus on SaaS as part of their mid-market strategy at Software 2007 yesterday. His chalkboard slide set was interesting to those of us in the audience, but the strategy was not as warmly received by the media. (Thanks Darren). Regardless of whether you believe SAP will be successful with on-demand, the Outlooksoft acquisition will sell very well in the mid-market, be very applicable for existing SAP enterprise customers, especially at division and business line levels, and the concept of extending Outlooksoft into a SaaS option is not a big jump. The OutlookSoft offering with Oracle also gives them something else to sell into Oracle and Hyperion customers, many of them still running on OFA and Essbase that is way past its prime.

Very clearly the consolidation wave has crested. Will the last pure play financial analytics and performance management vendor please hit the lights on the way out.

Performance Guy Infighting Fever--Catch It!

Corporate standards prevent me from speaking on the record on my opinions of my Pat's article, but suffice it to say that he nails most of the rationale for the acquisition, in my opinion misses on a few areas, and is pretty much on the money for Oracle and Hyperion, although I think we'll utlimately see that this wasn't about BI nearly as much as it was about the performance management side of things.

Although as the industry analysts seem to be pointing out, there is a convergence of the two spaces at hand, so the ongoing consolidations may be as much about this, as they are gaining an upper hand in any one area.

Business Objects and Cartesis - Consolidation Continues

As everyone has seen this week, Business Objects announced its intent to acquire financial planning and consolidation vendor Cartesis for as much as $300M in an all cash deal. There have been many media cycles on this and perspectives on the impact on the industry: - continued consolidation in the market, potential overlap with existing financial applications - including the SRC deal for financial planning and budgeting already in the Business Objects portfolio. This has also been positioned as reactive to Oracle's purchase of Hyperion, which closed and was consummated in high style with Hyperion officially turning over the keys to the castle this week at their user conference. While this may be exciting if you are in the middle of it or work at one of the aforementioned companies, the reality of all these moves are pretty straight forward.

Oracle Buys Hyperion
In spite of how this has been positioned as performance management and rounding out Oracle's BI portfolio with a best of breed BI tool, the simple reality is that the Hyperion acquisition is nothing more than continued acquisition of financial applications to add to its portfolio, as well as the associated customer base and maintenance revenue that comes with it. See also PeopleSoft, Siebel, Retek and most other things added recently. If there is one thing Oracle does not need, it is one more BI tool to add to the multiple versions it has. Hyperion is #1 is financial applications in most markets globally, has a strong installed base, has plenty of legacy Essbase customers, and a nice maintenance revenue stream. (Sound familiar?) They were not successful in upgrading Oracle Financials customers, their new solution was great, but nobody bought it, and so they bought the market leader in the segment for financial analytics. The big get bigger and things roll on.

Business Objects Buys Cartesis
This one is almost as simple, regardless of how it was positioned or not positioned realitive to existing applications and prior acquisitions (SRC) on the conference call. This is about market reach, customers and access to Global 1000 accounts. It has little to do with BI.

Guy notes in his post that Business Objects has been accused of not having strong enough consolidations. While that may be true, the reality is that they do have it and they don't sell much of it. Cartesis does not exactly solve this problem because if you are a company that matters, you likely already have consolidations. If you don't, the bad news for Business Objects is that you are likely to buy 6 -10 seats. This reality is reflected in Cartesis growth - which is to say not much. They also never had success selling in the states. But not for lack of effort.

Conversely, SRC never sold much in Europe outside the UK prior to the acquisition. This deal solves a problem for everyone involved: Cartesis gets a white knight and investors get an exit. Business Objects gets a great enterprise consolidations solution at a low multiple, footprint in key accounts across Europe, and the opportunity to leverage BI and performance management leadership in the existing account base. The portfolio expands, they continue to scale EPM solutions and can fight Oracle head on.

The acquisition, in spite of the pain of buying a French company, should close with good speed and Business Objects will continue with their focus on growth and acquisitions. The overlap is minimal, and I will not be surprised if more EPM acquisitions follow in short order.

I Heard Search and Business Intelligence are Dating

It’s spring and love is in the air. What better time to talk about a relationship between two technology categories that seem to be budding in our midst, I’m talking about Search and BI. The love affair between Search and BI has really always been there and it’s the presence of Google and a topic analysts are calling Biggle (the combination of search and BI) reflects ways new technologies are tackling this topic. Just like any good romance story there are a number of truths and lies, here is an interesting article from Search Data Management that drills into some of the common myths about search and BI.

There’s no doubt that organizations are looking at simpler ways to access information and reduce costs. "Many companies are recognizing now that they need to provide business users with more access to BI information. Just the training costs [for commercial BI systems] are often quite expensive. Organizations are looking for easy and simple interfaces," said Dan Vesset, research director at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC.

If we relate this back to performance management; yes… it’s all about simplifying the way users access information, increasing their productivity, and enabling them to make decisions… but are those the decisions the right ones? How do users know their decisions and the information they are searching on is aligned to the strategy of the business… perhaps Search should do some “searching” of its own for a new romance with performance management?