BI market consolidation has ripple effect

Last year marked an especially busy time for the BI market, with many acquisitions taking place, the gap closing between BI and performance management, and many players releasing new dashboards or acquiring dashboard functionality, Mariette du Plessis, programme director at ITWeb Events, said at the annual ITWeb Business Intelligence Conference in Bryanston recently: "The analysts agree that the primary driver for BI market consolidation has not been a lack of technology, but to gain or keep market share."

2008 OUTLOOK

Du Plessis said several exciting developments in the BI space were expected to emerge this year. "This is the year that BI and analytics will move to real-time prediction analysis," she explained.

She added that analysts were predicting that BI would be used at all levels in the organisation - from strategic, to operational, to tactical. "BI will become pervasive. It is no longer an option to report and analyse metrics in isolation - companies have to go enterprise-wide," she said.

Analysts had also identified 2008 as the year that BI would move beyond "four walls" to the extended supply chain, connecting customers to suppliers.

Du Plessis said open source, although it would be slower on the uptake locally, was making a comeback in the BI space. "The renewed interest in open source BI solutions comes as a direct result of the market domination from BI consolidation that took place last year," Du Plessis explained.

THE ITWEB BI SURVEY

Du Plessis presented results from ITWeb`s seventh annual BI survey at the conference. "This year, the survey focused more on the user experience than in previous years, with more questions relating to their preferences, usages and expectations," she said.

A total of 178 valid respondents took part in this year`s survey, most of them holding IT management titles (30%) or who are BI/data warehousing technical staff (27%). Furthermore, 26% belong to the IT sector, 19% work in the banking, insurance and technical industry, and 7.9% in telecommunications. The survey explored local opinions surrounding 2007`s market consolidation, and responses showed positive (30%) and negative (33%) views to be almost equally divided, with a further 23% feeling impartial to the situation and 14% saying they felt cautious.

With regard to purchasing decisions, the top reason for a specific choice of BI software purchased is that it addresses business requirements sufficiently (34%) This was closely followed by "ease of use for end-users" (29%) and "functionality and product features" (24%).

The highest number of respondents first implemented their BI solution over five years ago (26%) and said it took three months to fewer than six months from software purchase to initial roll-out (25%). The majority of respondents (54%) said that their own in-house IT resources implemented the BI solution, while 35% said the implementation was done by the software supplier`s consultants.

THE GOOD, THE BAD

When asked what the top issues that could deter a large-scale deployment of the BI solution were, 26% of respondents said they found had no deterrents to a wider deployment. Twenty-two percent said the cost of software was a big deterrent, 16% claimed not to have a need for a wider-scale deployment, and 13% cited cost of implementation as a factor. Furthermore, 11% saw lack of skills as a deterrent.

The majority of respondents (59%) felt strongly about their choice of vendor having a local representation. Twenty-five percent said this was "somewhat important", and only 16% believed it to be "not important". In their experience with vendor support, 54% found it to be generally acceptable. Thirty-one percent cited vendor support as being "excellent - accurate and timely", while only 4% found the support poor, and 1% "unacceptably bad".

When asked what problems were encountered with their use of BI, 25% found no significant problems. Twenty-two percent had problems with poor quality data, 19% found lack of skills to be an issue, and 13% had problems with company politics.

In most part, local users were pleased with their BI projects. In a multiple answer section, 96% said the project largely met the business goals that were originally set. Only 4% said the project "hardly met" goals.