Competitive Overview in the BI Space
I attended an informative overview yesterday of the competitive outlook in the business intelligence market, given by Visual Studio Magazine columnist
Andrew Brust. With Microsoft having refreshed and reordered its BI stack around the trifecta of SQL Server 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010 and Office/Excel 2010, Brust's presentation offered valuable insight into how Redmond's BI pitch lines up against competitors like IBM, Oracle, SAP and numerous pure play and open source BI providers.
Brust says BI pros hoping to move their organizations to Microsoft solutions face an uphill climb, ironically because many of the incumbent solutions are so expensive. Companies, Brust noted, are not anxious to retire BI stacks they spent fantastic sums of money acquiring in the first place. Microsoft's ace in the hole, however, is it's robust interop capability, which allows users to employ Redmond solutions on top of and alongside many existing BI and data infrastructures.
There was little question that Brust feels Microsoft has done an outstanding job assembling a first-class BI solution stack, praising the power, integration and performance of Microsoft's solutions. He noted that Microsoft has a very strong story to tell, with a logical collection of well integrated solutions and a robust community of third-party providers that address the BI waterfront. By contrast, competitors like IBM and SAP are still working to digest major BI acquisitions. Still, he cautioned attendees against dismissing competing solution stacks, noting that these companies are moving quickly to integrate some very impressive capabilities.
You can find a listing of the companies Brust profiled
here.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 06/09/2010