The Business Intelligence Blog

From Washington Post -

IBM’s US$5 billion acquisition of business intelligence software vendor Cognos took a step forward on Thursday as European regulators gave their approval to the deal.

After examining the acquisition, the European Commission said in astatementthat it “would not give rise to competition concerns, since the parties’ combined market share would be moderate.”

IBM announced its intention to buy Cognos, based in Ottawa, in November, saying it hoped to combine the Cognos software with IBM’s back-end database products. They hope to close the deal by the end of March, but there are still a few regulatory requirements to be met, including the approval of Canada’s minister of industry.

Having used MySQL extensively for my personal blog and also on other pet projects that I have done, I’m perfectly sure that MySQL just like SQLite is certainly a cost-effective(!!) replacement for costly RDBMS systems. Having said that, MySQL isn’t perfect already. It certainly needs a good GUI front-end and needs some streamlining on the licenses, which is turning out to be a crazy affair these days.

Its interesting to see that Sun picked MySQL than the PostgreSQL that has become popular offlate. The industry would certainly be interested to see how Sun will turn this Open Source Platform into a business model. Interesting days ahead but MySQL Developer should drink an extra beer this weekend.

From Sun Ceo, Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog -

Both sets of customers confirmed what we’ve known for years - that MySQL is by far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network services. From Facebook, Google and Sina.com to banks and telecommunications companies, architects looking for performance, productivity and innovation have turned to MySQL. In high schools and college campuses, at startups, at high performance computing labs and in the Global 2000. The adoption of MySQL across the globe is nothing short of breathtaking. They are the root stock from which an enormous portion of the web economy springs.

The good news is Sun is already committed to the business model at the heart of MySQL’s success - first investing to grow communities of users and developers, and only then creating commercial services that attract (rather than lock in) paying customers. Over the past few years, we’ve distributed hundreds of millions of licenses and invested to build some of the free software world’s largest communities. From Java to ZFS, Lustre to Glassfish, NetBeans to OpenOffice.org and OpenSolaris, we’ve been patient investors and contributors, both. Free and open software has become a way of life at Sun. MySQL’s has similarly driven extraordinary adoption of their community platform, with more than 100 million downloads over the past 10 years. Their users, as with Sun’s, run MySQL across every major operating system - Linux, Windows, Solaris and the Mac; and every major system platform, from IBM, Intel, AMD, Dell, Sun and HP.

In the yearly, Americas Partner Excellence Award winners by Business Objects, it named Accenture as the Global Alliance Partner of the year.

From the Press Release -

Global Alliance Partner of the Year: Honors the partner that provided outstanding expertise in strategy, design, implementation, and customization services for Business Objects BI solutions. The Business Objects Global Alliance Partner of the Year is Accenture. Accenture was recognized once again in this category for its notable customer successes, solution innovation, and partner support. With many years of experience and nearly 4,000 successful client projects, Accenture has carved out a reputation for its unique approach to delivering complex data management, integration and analysis solutions that are aligned to business needs.

And that a welcome thing. Congrats BO !!

From the press release -

As a first indication of the successful pace of integration of the two companies, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Business Objects S.A. (NASDAQ: BOBJ) (Euronext Paris: ISIN code FR0004026250 - BOB) today revealed nine joint product packages, available this month, that will be sold by both organizations’ global sales teams. These packages were chosen to address the most common challenges facing business users from the C-suite to Main Street, which include: gaining better business insight, improving company performance and ensuring compliance with corporate governance policies. These packages will allow companies to license, install, and manage solutions from SAP and Business Objects in a single IT investment transaction.

The companies detail these new product packages in conjunction with today’s announcement acknowledging the next steps in SAP’s successful acquisition of Business Objects (see press release entitled “SAP and Business Objects Unite to Lead Emerging Market for Business Performance Optimization.”) With a broad showing of support from shareholders and business partners, SAP and Business Objects now embark on a road map to expand their wide lead in the market of software for business users into leadership in the emerging market for business performance optimization.

The Data Warehouse Institute has an audio report aka podcast on How BI is considered Hot in the industry and how unfortunately, the useful tools to excel in BI are still not available.

There is still lack of fresh ideas and tools that can take BI to the next level. Flow your ideas, Float a Company and this could be you chance to excel in the BI industry.

Check out the audio report -

In a recent survey, more than 63 percent of IT professionals said business intelligence tools are important to their operations. However, fewer than one-quarter had the necessary tools in place. The survey, conducted at Interop New York by IT management provider ScienceLogic, polled systems and network administrators from a wide range of business sectors.

The survey also revealed that although IT managers clearly realize that they need help in managing information, there is a lack of interest in using standards such as ITIL and Configuration Management Databases, or CMDB, to help with that management.

From TDWI News-

The C8.3 enhancements aren’t confined to the back end. The revamped suite boasts several end-user (or user-focused) improvements, too—including a new Express Authoring mode that lets users quickly create and publish crosstabs and statement-style reports. Cognos officials say that C8.3 delivers a raft of reporting improvements—including, for example, support for horizontal pagination and improved navigation in multi-page reports. There are also a few portal improvements, including a global filtering capability, new metrics portlets, personal report subscriptions, and watch rules.

The new C8.3 reporting improvements, which are more in the line of user self-service capabilities, should get a warm reception from both business power users and the IT teams that struggle to support them.

Cgonos 8 Go! is now being talked about in the industry circle, just extended its features to Windows Mobile 6 smartphones.

From Arabian Business -

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile is the industry’s first business intelligence solution designed to make it convenient to view, consume and interact with highly relevant performance information on mobile devices. Cognos 8 Go! Mobile delivers enterprise data through an intuitive interface optimized for each different type of mobile platform. It now brings timely decision-support information directly to Windows Mobile 6 devices. All decision makers who need to access BI content across the enterprise, either through a mobile device or on the Web, are able to use the same consistent, trusted source of operational information.

Existing Cognos 8 BI customers, such as MTD Products, will be able to use their Windows Mobile 6 smartphones to further leverage their BI investments.

“We beta-tested this new version against our Windows Mobile Treo environment and saw immediate opportunity to add value by bringing BI reporting to new users across the company,” said Natalie Sabo, manager, Business Intelligence, MTD Products. “With Cognos 8 Go! Mobile, we have the capability to provide executives and sales personnel with daily sales and shipment information in a convenient, easily consumable format.”

From the detailed Washington Post report -

Pilots and executives at 16 other airlines have similar data-monitoring initiatives approved by the Federal Aviation Administration that are known as flight operations quality assurance programs. The carriers scour the flight data, which is often combined with pilot reports, to identify potential “precursors,” a buzzword in aviation circles used to describe events that often go unnoticed until they lead to an accident. The data are amazingly detailed — small onboard memory discs (not the “black boxes”) capture hundreds of parameters that include airspeed, pitch angles, engine temperatures and movements.

Such data initiatives have grown so extensive in recent years that the FAA has launched its own effort to mine the information in search of precursors. Seven carriers have signed on to the initiative, which began in October. The FAA, which already combs government safety databases looking for precursors, thinks the flight data will be a powerful tool when combined with other information, including pilot reports and radar plots.

An interesting podcast on achieving audit based practices to achieve excellence in Business Intelligence. Must listen.

From The Three Aspects of Six Sigma Business Intelligence

Applying Six Sigma to the business intelligence world requires a new approach to the creation and management of business intelligence assets. Understanding the business intelligence customer, the goals for business intelligence, and the Six Sigma principles are keys to success. Customer needs are top of the list. Near perfection is the goal. Data, measurement, analysis, and control is the process blueprint for achieving Six Sigma level business intelligence.

The three aspects of a Six Sigma business intelligence initiative are:

1. Strive for a Six Sigma business intelligence product.

2. Identify the customers for business intelligence and define their critical to quality (CTQ) needs.

3. Define and follow a Six Sigma improvement process that:

* Has strong management support,

* Focuses on the customer’s needs,

* Is based on Six Sigma principles, including data, measurement, analysis and control,

* Is iterative and evolutionary, and

* Is pervasive across the business intelligence arena.

From VuNet -

Analyst firm Gartner predicts a slow growth in the business intelligence (BI) market during 2008 because of its increasing maturity.

Gartner expects the BI market growth rate to be at 12.5 per cent this year, and to move beyond $7bn by 2011.

Nigel Rayner, Gartner research vice president, said that as markets mature, growth rates tend to decrease and this leads to consolidation. “Increasing consolidation in a market reflects its maturity,” he added.

The BI market maturity is reflected by lack of differentiation between BI solutions, Rayner said, because of this it has become harder for vendors to deliver a competitive edge in capabilities such query, reporting and online analytical processing.

“This is a popular space that has been commoditised, and most organisations have technology that is mature and a proliferation of BI tools,” Rayner said, adding that the outcome of this is buyers are putting pressure on vendors to lower prices, and in many cases organisations have multiple platforms they need to rationalise.