The BI Survey 8

2008 by Board International and written by Nigel Pendse – “The BI Survey provides a detailed quantitative analysis of why customers buy BI tools, what they use them for, how successful they are and why they eventually abandon them. It is based on the analysis of the real-world experience of over 2600 respondents (1894 users, 256 consultants and 472 vendors) from around the world. This year’s Survey also includes more analyses of how vendor, user and consultant perceptions vary. As such, it is the largest, most thorough fact-based analysis of the growing BI market. The BI Survey 8 benefits both from the experience of the seven previous editions and the ability to analyze trends based on up to eight years of data…

In descending order, 23 products or groups of products had enough usage to be analyzed individually throughout this Survey: MicroStrategy, Infor PM OLAP, QlikTech QlikView, BOARD, Microsoft Analysis Services, Cognos Reporting, BusinessObjects, SAP BI/BW, WebFOCUS, Cubeware Cockpit, Cognos TM1 Server, arcplan, Microsoft Reporting Services, Panorama NovaView, Bissantz, Hyperion Essbase, Crystal Reports, Cognos Analysis, Targit, Oracle BIEE/BISEO, Actuate Platform, Microsoft Excel PivotTables and MIK. LogiXML is also included in some analyses, even though its sample size was just below the threshold…

Just as was found in previous years, product functionality has a relatively low correlation with project success, being the second lowest ranked product-related factor. This was the most frequently cited reason for choosing products, not only in this edition of the Survey, but in every one of the previous editions — and yet it ranked only eighth in the BBI-driven rankings. This again confirms that organizations spend too much time assessing product features — even though most mature products are likely to have all necessary features, and minor gaps can be worked around — and too little time evaluating query performance, despite the fact that poor query performance cannot be disguised and always antagonizes users…”

180 View – This report is a summary report prepared by Board – one of the Business Intelligence vendors. Naturally, they have been selective in what they have summarized, but there is enough interesting material to check it out. However, we suggest caution in the acceptance of the conclusions of the report that found some of the better known products to provide less benefits. The better known products may have been implemented in much more challenging environments.