ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Living in the Era of Hadoop and Large-Scale Data

Posted by ISG Software Research on 02 March 2011

It’s clear that now we are living in the era of big data. The stores of data on which modern businesses rely are already vast and increasing at an unprecedented pace. Organizations are capturing data at deeper levels of detail and keeping more history than they ever have before. Managing all of the data is thus emerging as one of the key challenges of the new decade.

Topics: Data Warehousing, RDBMS, IT Performance, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Management, Information Management, Strata+Hadoop

SAP Business Intelligence 4.0

Posted by ISG Software Research on 01 March 2011

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.

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 Retrofits Business Intelligence and Information Management to meet IT and Business Needs

Posted by Mark Smith on 25 February 2011

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.

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 Diminishing Science of Research in Technology Analyst Firms

Posted by Mark Smith on 18 February 2011

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...

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 Business Technology Revolution in 2011

Posted by Mark Smith on 17 February 2011

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...

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

Kognitio Pablo Brings MDX to Data and Analytics

Posted by ISG Software Research on 14 February 2011

Kognitio announced the addition of MultiDimensional eXpressions (MDX) capabilities for its WX2 product line. John Thompson, CEO of U.S. operations, and Sean Jackson, VP of marketing, shared some of the details with me recently. I find the marriage of MDX and large-scale data both technically challenging and potentially valuable to the market.

Topics: Data Warehousing, MDX, RDBMS, IT Performance, Business Intelligence, Data Management, Information Management, Kognitio, MPP

MicroStrategy Combines Actions with Business Intelligence and Mobility

Posted by ISG Software Research on 07 February 2011

Last week I attended MicroStrategy World 2011 in Las Vegas, the North American version of the business intelligence (BI) vendor’s annual user conference. The event was well attended, and the company claimed attendance was up 40% over last year. The purpose of the post is to recap the announcements made, highlight the areas where MicroStrategy is making investments and comment on the overall...

Topics: Data Warehousing, MicroStrategy, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Management, Information Management

Jaspersoft Releases Version 4 and Tackles Large-Scale Data

Posted by ISG Software Research on 28 January 2011

Open source business intelligence (BI) software vendor Jaspersoft recently announced general availability of its flagship product Jaspersoft 4 and earlier this week announced a new reporting project that provides data connectors to a variety of large-scale data sources.

Topics: Data Warehousing, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Management, Information Management

Secrets Revealed in Massively Parallel Processing and Database Technology

Posted by ISG Software Research on 19 January 2011

This is the first in a series of posts on the architectures of analytic databases. This is relational database technology that has been “supercharged” in some way to handle large amounts of data such as typical data warehouse workloads. The series will examine massively parallel processing (MPP), columnar databases, appliances and in-database analytics. Our purpose is to help those evaluating...

Topics: Data Warehousing, RDBMS, IT Performance, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Management, Information Management

Social Media Ignorance in the IT Analyst Industry

Posted by Mark Smith on 17 January 2011

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...

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

The Headquarters Effect and Salesforce.com

Posted by Robert Kugel on 24 December 2010

Wall Street has many leading indicators to work with, some serious – such as housing starts and the purchasing managers’ index – and some done a bit tongue-in-cheek. One of the latter is the Super Bowl Indicator, which says that if a team from the original National Football League wins the game, the market will be up for the year, but if an old American Football League team wins it, the market...

Topics: Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Enterprise Software, Financial Performance, Information Management

HP Gives Up on Business Intelligence and Analytics Markets

Posted by Mark Smith on 05 December 2010

No one has seemed to notice that in the last several months, Hewlett-Packard has quietly made changes to its participation in the enterprise software market; this will significantly change HP’s value for CIOs and IT organizations in regards to business intelligence (BI) technologies.

Topics: Data Warehousing, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), HP, Information Applications, Information Management, HP Neoview

XBRL Filing Errors Point to Need for Automation through Technology

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 November 2010

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) “Interactive Data” initiative continues to progress forward. Thus far, some 1,500 corporations have filed their financial information using XBRL tags to facilitate review and analysis, of which almost 400 have had done detailed tagging of their footnotes. By June 2011 all public companies will have to provide an XBRL-tagged, interactive version of...

Topics: Office of Finance, XBRL, IT Performance, Business Performance, Business Technology, Financial Performance, CFO, Corporate Finance, Financial Performance Management

Planview Does Initiative-Based Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 November 2010

I’ve written quite a bit about integrated business planning (IBP), which is the process of connecting aspects of the planning function across an organization to improve its internal alignment and financial performance. IBP begins with operational – rather than financial – planning (that is, budgeting) because it’s about running the business and figuring out how to make the financial aspects work...

Topics: Performance Management, Project Portfolio Management, IT Performance, Operational Performance, CIO, Financial Performance, Business Planning, CFO, Initiatives Management, Initiatives Planning, Operational Planning

Advantages and Challenges of In-Memory Databases and Processing

Posted by ISG Software Research on 28 November 2010

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...

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

Microsoft Hopes for a Miracle with Windows Phone 7

Posted by Mark Smith on 28 November 2010

Mobile computing isn’t new anymore. The capabilities of smartphones, among other things, enable businesses to run applications across an enterprise and workers to collaborate across business and social networks. In this endeavor Microsoft was early to market with its Windows CE devices that provided e-mail and Web browsing to phones. For the first years it was a low-level battle among Microsoft,...

Topics: Microsoft, Mobile, Mobile Applications, Mobile Technology, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Mobility, Digital Technology

IBM Makes InfoSphere Information Server a Force in IT

Posted by ISG Software Research on 28 November 2010

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...

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

Teradata Advances Analytics across the Board

Posted by Mark Smith on 28 November 2010

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...

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

IBM Brings Business Analytics and Information Management to Center Stage

Posted by Mark Smith on 28 November 2010

This year IBM joined its annual Information on Demand conference with the new IBM Business Analytics Forum. Some 10,000 attendees came to learn about managing information assets using analytics for business, and the value of integrating business intelligence (BI) with information assets across the enterprise. All these topics are relevant, as large organizations have created thousands of silos...

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

Cognos 10 Breaks Down Barriers To Business Intelligence and Analytics

Posted by ISG Software Research on 28 November 2010

On October 25, IBM introduced Cognos 10 at its Information on Demand and Business Analytics Forum in Las Vegas that I attended to review the technology closer from my examination at its recent IBM Business Analytics analyst summit in September. According to Rob Ashe, IBM’s general manager of business analytics, Cognos 10 has been developed for over six years. You’re probably aware that in that...

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