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        Analyst Perspectives

        In the realm of technology that matters for business and IT, our firm as part of our responsibility continually assesses the latest technology and how it can impact organizations’ efficiency and effectiveness. Our benchmark research in technology innovation found that 87% of participants indicated the importance of increasing the organization’s value through technology innovation. Every year we take our knowledge from research and technology briefings to focus on our Technology Innovation Awards

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        Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Mobile, Sales, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Customer, ESRI, Globoforce, GRC, HCM, Kronos, Kyriba, Location Analytics, Marketing, NetBase, Office of Finance, Overall Operational Leadership, Peoplefluent, Planview, SQLstream, VMWare, VPI, IT Analytics & Performance, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Hortonworks, IBM, Informatica, Information Applications, Information Builders, Information Management, Information Technology, KXEN, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Oracle, Workforce Performance, Contact Center, Datawatch, Financial Management, Information Optimization, Johnson Controls Panoptix, Roambi, Service & Supply Chain, Upstream Works, Vertex, Xactly

        Predictive analytics has the potential to help businesses increase the impacts of their actions by creating indicators that represent future outcomes based on existing behavior. This process becomes more complicated when they have to apply predictive analytics to what we call big data environments. As yet only 13 percent of organizations are using predictive analytics according to our business analytics benchmark research, although 37 percent indicated that predictive capabilities are very...

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        Topics: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Opera Solutions, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Operational Intelligence

        At this week’s SAPPHIRE NOW (Twitter #SAPPHIRENOW) annual conference, SAP unveiled a refreshed cloud computing strategy and released technology that addresses its new cloud computing business priorities regarding customers, people, money and suppliers. It’s a good time to see what has changed since my analysis at the SAP Analyst Influencer Summit last December.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Human Capital Management, Mobile Technology, Business Analytics, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology

        Informatica has announced a major release, version 9.5, of its software platform, which will be generally available in June. The company’s data integration technologies will support the new generation of computing that includes big data, cloud computing, mobile and social media. These computing environments, which our firm has defined as key business technology drivers for this decade, have a compelling impact on the data that enterprises create and use. Being smart about integrating and...

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        Topics: Big Data, Supply Chain Performance, Mobile Technology, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Informatica, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Strata+Hadoop

        With the release of Business Analytics version 4.5, Pentaho has expanded its platform and tools to address the needs of business and IT. The product has come a long way since the version 4 release less than a year ago, which broke ground in ease of use and support for big-data sources. Advancing beyond its roots in business intelligence, Pentaho Business Analytics 4.5 addresses data discovery, data integration and data mining and provides visual discovery and analytics that operate against...

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        Topics: Big Data, Pentaho, Supply Chain Performance, Mobile Technology, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Strata+Hadoop

        Making business use of the vast amount of information on the Web and Internet along with a company’s intranet is no easy task. Kapow Software aims to help by providing tools to define and virtualize access to information, integrate it with other information, such as that in databases, and present it in a useful format. The tool can supply access to data from legacy applications such as PeopleSoft and Siebel, newer applications from Oracle and SAP and applications in cloud computing...

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        Topics: Big Data, Supply Chain Performance, Mobile Technology, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Kapow, Strata+Hadoop

        Business intelligence software is increasingly mobile, becoming available via smartphones and tablets and now enabling planning and what-if scenarios to determine the impacts of changes that might be made to improve performance. InetSoft, which has been providing business intelligence tools for more than 15 years, has advanced its technologies to address these trends. The company recently announced version 11.2 of InetSoft Style Intelligence, adding many new capabilities. Among them, the...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, InetSoft, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology

        Thanks to Datawatch, businesses may find themselves buying and deploying fewer new business analytics and business intelligence tools. As I noted in my analysis last year, the company’s new management has begun to transition it to a more appealing market position in which it helps enterprises use analytics to improve operational efficiency and decision-making. The Datawatch products focus on data virtualization – that is, accessing data from multiple sources not usually seen as accessible for...

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        Topics: Supply Chain Performance, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Datawatch

        Splunk recently entered the financial markets as a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: SPLK) and also entered a new phase in its corporate growth. Splunk combines the power of search and discovery with analytics on data generated by IT systems, that they call machine data, and provide insight for a new generation of operational intelligence that helps everyone in IT including the CIO determine the efficiency of its systems that support business. The company has built a platform that can index data...

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        Topics: Big Data, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Splunk, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, IT Analytics, Location Intelligence, Machine data, Operational Intelligence, Strata+Hadoop

        Through a series of acquisitions and organic development over the last five years, IBM has established itself as a leader in enterprise big data for business analytics. I recently wrote about IBM Smarter Analytics, which brings together the company’s portfolio of software, systems and services from analytics to big data. But supporting big data requires the ability to access many sources of information; our benchmark research on big data found that more than half of organizations require...

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        Topics: Big Data, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Vivisimo, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), IBM, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Strata+Hadoop

        The increasing pressure to store, retrieve and process data on an unprecedented scale in the enterprise has created a market for processes and tools to support it. Big data, as it’s widely known, is one of the six business technology innovations of the decade outlined in our research agenda, and it has created a renaissance in data management. Our benchmark research on big data finds the top benefits of it to be the ability to retain and analyze more data (74%) and to increase the speed of...

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        Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Strata+Hadoop

        The increasing volume of information within enterprises and on the Internet requires businesses to be smarter and more efficient in how they use it. One large challenge is navigating through information and access to the data underlying key business documents in a way that people actually think and operate. The traditional technology approach is defining a data model with a database and then mapping the data to it and is not capable of dealing with data from diverse unstructured information...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Cambridge Semantics, Data Virtualization, Informatics, Information Discovery

        IBM this week launched a business initiative called Smarter Analytics to showcase the value of its technology and professional services in this area. The event, led by Steve Mills, head of IBM’s software and systems business, highlighted the company’s ability to solve analytic challenges at all levels of complexity. At the event IBM highlighted Watson, the learning and expert systems technology that in 2011 beat human champions on Jeopardy. IBM also introduced a collection of case studies...

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        Topics: IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Operational Intelligence

        Now finishing our first decade of providing research and education for business and IT professionals, we at Ventana Research have learned what it takes to improve the value of processes and performance in many industries. This is no easy task; it requires thorough and wide-ranging research on the best (and worst) practices that organizations need to understand as they try to increase their competency and effectiveness – and our firm is committed to that work. For 2012 we are moving forward from...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Market Research, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Industry Analyst

        While we will wait until January to publish our recommendations for the new year, we can digest the lessons learned in 2011 within the technology markets and with Ventana Research right now. That’s appropriate, since we at Ventana Research are committed to helping you with solid information and education. We help thousands of organizations make a better, faster, safer, smarter and more cost-effective environment for leveraging technology to its fullest extent. Our benchmark research worldwide...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Market Research, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, CFO, Industry Analyst, Technology

        I attended the annual SAP Influencer Summit (Twitter #SAPSummit), at which executives from SAP meet with analysts and customers from around the world to discuss the company’s direction. Pointing out that in 2012 SAP will reach its 40th anniversary of operations, chief communications officer Hubertus Kulpus and chief marketing officer Jonathan Becher kicked off the summit, then passed the microphones to co-CEO Jim Hagemann-Snabe and CTO Vishal Sikka for overviews of the business and technology...

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        Topics: Mobile, Sales, Sales Performance, SAP, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Human Capital Management, Smart Phones, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Business Applications, CFO, COO, CRM, HR, Sybase, Tablets, Talent Management, Digital Technology

        Just when it seemed that Hewlett-Packard’s new management team led by CEO Leo Apotheker had a growing and solidifying technology agenda that included mobile computing, yesterday it all changed.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Google, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), HP, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, HP Touchpad, Digital Technology

        At this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW conference (Twitter: #SAPPHIRENOW) SAP demonstrated its in-memory computing technology and applications. SAP’s High Performance Analytic Application (HANA), which I think of as a high-availability network appliance, is part of the technology industry movement to increase the performance and scalability across a range of applications, from analytics to transactions, to drive timely insights on data or real-time interactions across a business value chain that includes...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Workforce Performance, CFO, COO

        It is no easy task to change the culture of a global technology company, especially one that has a very demanding customer base with high expectations for advancing its widespread product lines. This is the challenge that SAP faces as it transitions from a company of three-letter-acronym collections of applications including CRM, SCM and ERP to one that focuses on specific business processes and needs. (My colleague recently discussed the problems in forklift migrations of ERP.) This transition...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, CFO, COO

        As part of our largest-ever research study on business analytics, which surveyed more than 2,600 organizations covering the maturity and competency of business, IT and vertical industries, we looked at how IT is applying analytics to support their own business activities. One of the things we found is that, charged with enabling business units to use information systems as effectively as possible, the IT department, like the shoemaker’s barefoot children in the old tale, typically stands last...

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        Topics: Predictive Analytics, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, IT Analytics, IT Service Management, ITIL, ITSM, IT Performance Management (ITPM)

        In various forms, business intelligence (BI) – as queries, reporting, dashboards and online analytical processing (OLAP) – is being used increasingly widely. And as basic BI capabilities spread to more organizations, innovative ones increasingly are exploring how to take advantage of the next step in the strategic use of BI: predictive analytics. The trend in Web searches for the phrase “predictive analytics” gives one indication of the rise in interest in this area. From 2004 through 2008, the...

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        Topics: Predictive Analytics, Predixion, R, Revolution Analtyics, Sales Performance, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, IBM SPSS, Information Builders, Information Technology, KXEN, Netezza, Oracle, Tibco, Workforce Performance

        The information management (IM) technology market is undergoing a revolution similar to the one in the business intelligence (BI) market. We define information management as the acquisition, organization, control and use of information to create and enhance business value. It is a necessary ingredient of successful BI implementations, and while some vendors such as IBM, Information Builders, Pentaho and SAP are in addition integrating their BI and IM offerings, each discipline involves...

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        Topics: Data Quality, Social Media, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Technology, CIO, Complex Event Processing, Data Governance, Data Integration, Information Management, Information Technology, Operational Intelligence

        The new CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Leo Apotheker, has unveiled his vision of the future in the consumer and enterprise markets. His announcement carried some suspense after interviews in which he said “HP has lost its soul” and added that he will “get rid of cynics” inside HP who try to undercut his mission. Now Leo has defined what his company calls Everybody On, which is described as “seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world.” He intends that HP will reposition itself in...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), HP, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance

        The business intelligence (BI) technology market is undergoing a revolution. I’ve been working in this segment for 20 years, and it is and has been an exciting market in which to work, but its dynamic nature can be daunting to organizations trying to evaluate, purchase and deploy BI to improve their business processes. And despite the advances our benchmark research shows high levels of dissatisfaction with and immaturity in BI capabilities within organizations.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance

        One of the many interesting findings that came out of Ventana Research’s comprehensive benchmark research on business analytics was partly buried in an analysis of maturity groups. The Maturity Index of our research benchmarks classifies organizations at four maturity levels (from bottom to top, Tactical, Advanced, Strategic and Innovative) in each of four categories: People, Process, Information and Technology. We’ve conducted more than 100 benchmarks during the past seven years, covering...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance

        I recently attended SAS Institute’s annual analyst conference. My colleague covered the multibillion-dollar company’s strategy and the event. Now I want to look into some of the details of SAS’s products for business analytics and how they are supported with business intelligence (BI), and information management. Although SAS is not a publicly traded company and therefore is not required to make the financial disclosures that others are, the company revealed numerous financial statistics....

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        Topics: SAS, Social Media, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence

        The just-concluded SAS Institute analyst summit (Twitter: #SASSB) provided the annual update on the company’s performance, strategy, products and customers. My analysis of last year’s event talked about its continuation of its product roadmap to new customer acquisition and the broadening of its underlying platform, applications and vertical solutions. SAS is no small-time mover and shaker when it comes to the analytics industry; it extends from technology to tools and applications across...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Fraud, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Risk

        SAP has launched its Enterprise Information Management (EIM) 4.0 release as part of its “Run Better Tour.”  It includes a broad range of information management components spanning data integration, data quality, data profiling, metadata management and more. The launch was done in conjunction with SAP Business Intelligence (BI) 4.0, which got much bigger billing at the event –to the point where one might call this a stealth marketing campaign. However, the event did identify three themes intended...

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        Topics: Data Quality, SAP, Social Media, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Technology, CIO, Complex Event Processing, Data Governance, Data Integration, Information Management, Information Technology, Operational Intelligence

        The just-concluded SAS Institute analyst summit (Twitter: #SASSB) provided the annual update on the company’s performance, strategy, products and customers. My analysis of last year’s event talked about its continuation of its product roadmap to new customer acquisition and the broadening of its underlying platform, applications and vertical solutions. SAS is no small-time mover and shaker when it comes to the analytics industry; it extends from technology to tools and applications across...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Fraud, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Risk

        Last week SAP launched the 4.0 Release of its Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information Management products in conjunction with the New York City stop on its “SAP Run Better Tour”. My colleague Mark Smith has already covered the announcement in the context of some of today’s major technology trends. In this post, I’ll focus on the specifics of the product announcements.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Social Media, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance

        SAP has reached a critical milestone in launching version 4 of its business intelligence (BI) and enterprise information management (EIM) product suite from its SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. These offerings, currently in final beta testing, will be released as a collection of software products by midyear.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Social Media, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance

        The technology analyst industry has ended its barrage of exuberant predictions for the new year. After digesting all of these commentaries (some were a challenge, I admit), we need to stop our predicting and instead start a discussion about what all of us ought to be doing. From my perspective, that should be an annual statement of direction, what we here call the research agenda. I have decided it is time to remind all of us what this important activity is and why it is really important to see...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Market Research, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Industry Analyst

        The new year has brought a revolution in business technologies that allows enterprises to roll out new applications, processes and services in record time. What used to take a business six months to a year to develop and deploy – and not too long ago that was considered fast! – can now be done in a week or two, making enterprise application and business intelligence deployments of the recent past seem more like ancient history.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Market Research, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Technology, Customer & Contact Center, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Industry Analyst

        Social media, the newest channel of communication across the Internet, is increasingly being used to influence, but also to deliver advice and research. I wrote about this revolution last year (See: “The Social Media Revolution in Industry Analyst Community”), reporting on the transformation that is underway and the work of our firm along with Altimeter Group and dozens of other active industry analysts. While some industry analysts are aggressively engaged in social media, using Twitter and...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Market Research, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Business Technology, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Industry Analyst

        Interest in and development of in-memory technologies have increased over the last few years, driven in part by widespread availability of affordable 64-bit hardware and operating systems and the performance advantages in-memory operations provide over disk-based operations. Some software vendors, such as SAP with its High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA) project has been advancing with momentum, have even suggested that we can put our entire analytic systems in memory.

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        Topics: Database, Enterprise Data Strategy, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Complex Event Processing, In-Memory Computing, Information Management, Information Technology

        In the weeks leading up to and as part of its Information On Demand Conference that my colleague assessed, IBM introduced version 8.5 of InfoSphere Information Server and several related product updates. As my colleague suggested earlier, IBM has an ambitious agenda to provide comprehensive information management capabilities through a combination of product development and acquisitions. The breadth of this portfolio is impressive, and InfoSphere Information Server 8.5 makes significant strides...

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        Topics: Enterprise Data Strategy, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Data Integration, IBM, Information Management, Information Technology

        The battle for business analytics rages on. IBM, Oracle, SAP and SAS as billion dollar and larger companies each combine analytic computation and processing in the underlying data but Teradata remains a key player. For its part Teradata used its annual Partners conference to tout the next generation of analytics in its product portfolio and brought along customers to testify to their success in using its technology.

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        Topics: Enterprise Data Strategy, Teradata, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Information Management, Information Technology

        At its annual conference Oracle OpenWorld this year Oracle flexed its muscles as a technology giant. The company has been steadily growing through acquisitions to expand its database, middleware and applications, and the recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems gives it a way to sell hardware for servers and storage. This momentum is enabling Oracle to develop new streams of revenue, which were on display at OpenWorld in offerings such as a new generation of appliances from Oracle Exalogic for...

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        Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology

        With the ongoing spate of mergers and acquisitions in the software industry, I’d like to offer some perspective on what these acquisitions mean to software-purchasing organizations. Think of the software industry as a thriving ecosystem, with large software companies at the top of the food chain. Small companies are formed and, if they have an interesting idea and some good marketing, they grow. The really good ones may continue to grow and be independent, but most of the good ideas eventually...

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        Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Information Technology

        Here’s a big shout-out to the Ventana Research community. I’m happy to be here. I think it would be appropriate to introduce myself and tell you a little bit about why I’m here and what I hope to accomplish as a member of the Ventana Research team.

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        Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Information Technology

        Looking forward to Oracle OpenWorld, I was recalling that about 20 years ago, when I started covering the software industry as a Wall St. analyst, I paid a visit to the company. There were many fewer database-shaped glass buildings there in Redwood Shores then but the lack of corporate focus on business applications and users remains unchanged.

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management, Information Technology, Oracle, Workforce Performance

        At the eye of the tornado of accusations, rumors and gossip in Silicon Valley that began with CEO Mark Hurd’s departure from Hewlett-Packard are the internal politics and lack of management procedures and oversight at the company. I have pointed out a connection not discussed elsewhere to issues around the enterprise software efforts at HP (See: “HP Scandal Reflects on Enterprise Software Issue“). Now with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s hiring of Hurd as president and appointment of him to the ...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Information Technology, Oracle

        The recent turmoil at Hewlett-Packard that went public with news of the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd is only superficially about the facts of the scandal or the question of who will be the new CEO, sexy as those issues may be. What it really shines a light on is the performance of the company itself. I wrote earlier this year (See: “HP Takes Technology Portfolio to the Clouds with New Growth Strategy”) about the challenges HP faces in building its brand credibility and gaining traction to...

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        Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, HP, Information Management, Information Technology

        The battle for business analytics rages on. IBM, Oracle, SAP and SAS as billion dollar and larger companies each combine analytic computation and processing in the underlying data but Teradata remains a key player. For its part Teradata used its annual Partners conference to tout the next generation of analytics in its product portfolio and brought along customers to testify to their success in using its technology.

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        Topics: Enterprise Data Strategy, Teradata, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Information Management, Information Technology

        At its annual conference Oracle OpenWorld this year Oracle flexed its muscles as a technology giant. The company has been steadily growing through acquisitions to expand its database, middleware and applications, and the recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems gives it a way to sell hardware for servers and storage. This momentum is enabling Oracle to develop new streams of revenue, which were on display at OpenWorld in offerings such as a new generation of appliances from Oracle Exalogic for...

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        Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology

        At the eye of the tornado of accusations, rumors and gossip in Silicon Valley that began with CEO Mark Hurd’s departure from Hewlett-Packard are the internal politics and lack of management procedures and oversight at the company. I have pointed out a connection not discussed elsewhere to issues around the enterprise software efforts at HP (See: “HP Scandal Reflects on Enterprise Software Issue“). Now with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s hiring of Hurd as president and appointment of him to the ...

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        Topics: Sales Performance, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Technology, Oracle

        The recent turmoil at Hewlett-Packard that went public with news of the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd is only superficially about the facts of the scandal or the question of who will be the new CEO, sexy as those issues may be. What it really shines a light on is the performance of the company itself. I wrote earlier this year (See: “HP Takes Technology Portfolio to the Clouds with New Growth Strategy”) about the challenges HP faces in building its brand credibility and gaining traction to...

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        Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, HP, Information Management, Information Technology
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        Our Analyst Perspective Policy

        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@ventanaresearch.com

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