Putting the Truthiness in BI

Ok nation, time for a fact check - or at least a little dose of reality for the BI truthiness that seems to have invaded the performance guys blog from somewhere in the pacific northwest. First we had seals being broken, followed by puppies, and can kicking. At this rate, it will not be surprising to find an Eddie Murphy Boomerang reference and a free year of Cat Fancy when you download your trial of Performance Point Server via a special performance guys offer. Give me a big old break.

First, the facts:

Gartner finally just released their new Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence. Have a look at the report here.

One of the news stories covering the release leads with MSFT's strong position in ability to execute. You can read the article, or check Guy's breathless rehash here.

Nic invariabily lets the proverbial dogs out here.

Steven Colbert popularized the word truthiness when he launched his show in 2005. It was later named the world of the year and the wikipedia definition reads, "a satirical term to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts."

While their are some facts here, much like Nic's puppy surprise (where did that even come from), there is also a little more to the story. And isn't this supposed to be a BI blog?

I think Doug Henschen is on target in his review in Intelligent Enterprise, that none of the vendors really stand out - and that Gartner played it safe. The top vendors - SAS, Oracle, Business Objects, Cognos, Microsoft - are in one long continuum and Doug nets out that he thinks they all have a ways to go before they get to the top right in the MQ. Sounds about right.

Microsoft gets full credit (some would argue much more credit than they deserve based on their position) for having a strong set of products, large and active ISV channel and strong product quality. They also have a cost advantage for many organizations - especially critical for the SMB market. What is interesting is that there is no mention of MSFT being the BI standard in any account, a point raised for vendors like Cognos and Business Objects. How can you be an execution leader with no tier one enterprise standard deployments? I am not saying they don't exist, I just have not seen them.

Also interesting to note that MSFT gets dinged for being late to the BI party and Gartner notes that according to customers they lag behind in "metadata management, reporting, and dashboard and ad hoc query capabilities." In other words the bread and butter of BI is not as good as the other leaders. Sounds like the litter needs to grow up a little more, something that is widely expected.

As for the other leaders:

Cognos gets point for enterprise deployments and benefits of the version 8 architecture and positive perspective impact of IBM capabilities when the acquisition is completed. They get called out for lack of performance management and predictive capabilities as well as product overlap.

Business Objects scores with strong core BI and platform standard customers as well as SaaS leadership in category. However they get docked points for XI upgrade and migration headaches and get called on the carpet for having the least effective support of any major vendor. Ouch. Both of these have been points of pain for some time and this obviously had a negative impact to their position.

Oracle gets well deserved credit for having a strong enterprise offering, even if the name, OBIEE, leaves more than a little to be desired. Among the cautions are the uptake by Hyperion BI users (surprise) and long integration cycles with multiple BI products and offerings that will occupy Oracle and customers throughout 2008.

SAS rounds out the leadership pack with pronounced breath and depth of analytics that go well beyond the traditional BI requirements. However, as per usual, they lose points for being hard to use, lacking some key features and not even being the BI standard in many places where they are well entrenched for analytics and predictive analysis.

Note that Microstrategy and even Information Builders (on the line), are leaders in this quad, but they are not generally in the same class as those noted above.

Congratulation to all the leader's in this years Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI. It should be an interesting year with new products, new integrations, new market strategies. Let's hope for a little more fact based reality and a little less truthiness. And as Guy notes, where is the BOBJ press release?

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.

Pot Calling Kettle - Let's Make a Deal

I would post this as a comment, but after the aggressive and amusing take by Guy regarding the SAP / Outlooksoft deal, I have to move this back to page 1. While I can't disagree with his perspective regarding valuation and the sheer giddy feeling OutlookSoft shareholders must be enjoying tonight, I think this take is, at a minimum, ironic. His view that SAP just wildly overpaid for an Excel planning tool that directly overlaps with the current technology they have been peddling sounds vaguely familiar...just change the order.

If you apply this spin to the Business Objects deal, then with an outlay of $300M, Business Objects just (over)paid for a back end consolidation plus planning tool set that directly overlaps with the current technology - an Excel front end planning tool - they have been peddling in the market for almost two years. Talk about rejoicing by the shareholders. The difference here is that the Cartesis shareholders are French, so the likelihood is that they are drinking champagne as well. Just better champagne. As my good friend Lance recently noted, Black is the new Black. Funny, he has a kettle at well.