BI industry

What’s an SaaS vendor to do?

May 6, 2009

SaaS vendors who also sell on-premises versions have a tricky little problem, Claudia Imhoff says. How do they sell both at the same time? A few people from SaaS vendors who attended Claudia’s Tuesday session mentioned two strategies: One is to separate the sales forces, with one selling the on-premises version, and another selling the [...]

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Less than meets the ear

April 8, 2009

Last week, SAS Institute did what few other rearrangers of jargon have done: They got attention — in the way fashion hounds do. They’d like to replace “business intelligence” with “business analytics.” Why? Because “business intelligence is not “where the future is.” Last year’s styles are never next year’s. Sooner or later, all clothes, cars [...]

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Big BI, meet Big Ag

March 18, 2009

Swap out a few terms in a recent New York Times story about farmers’ attempt to split California, and you might see the IT vs. business saga.

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Let’s call the whole thing DI

February 26, 2009

You say dayta and I say dahta. You say business intelligence—and now Colin White and Claudia Imhoff say “decision intelligence.” They may want you to say it, too, depending on what you mean. Now or later—yesterday afternoon it didn’t sound clear just when—they’d like you to say “decision framework.” Perhaps that’s in addition to “decision [...]

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Fooled by proximity?

February 18, 2009

Almost the same moment I read that for the fourth year in a row executives rate BI the top tech priority in 2009, I hear Tableau Software’s news: last week saw the most downloads of trial software ever. “Not by a little, by a lot,” says marketing and PR VP Elissa Fink. The poll of [...]

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Time for traditional BI vendors to “pass the baton”

February 17, 2009

The shouts from the back of the BI room seem to be getting louder. In various ways, they’re saying let Big BI die. Former TDWI education director Dave Wells, visual analytics critic Stephen Few, and Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot are back there. Others, too. Last spring, Wells proposed a new, people-centric definition of business [...]

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To hell with “guts,” Accenture’s survey gave a false choice

February 2, 2009

Forty percent of business executives trust their guts over data? I admit those survey results made me raise an eyebrow — but then I put it down again. False alarm. Forty percent may be significant, but compared with what? Is that worse than last year? For all we know — at least from the press [...]

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Some of us like to name things in BI

January 6, 2009

Stephen Few’s damning review of a new BI tool prompted a weeks-long discussion-turned-scholarly-fistfight over definitions.

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Not just one tool alone anymore

December 4, 2008

This time of year it’s tempting to sit under a tree and wait for the apple to drop. Aha, a trend! But it’s better to go asking smart people what they think, and Dave Wells—former TDWI education director and now a consultant—is one of the smartest I know. He says the one-tool-fits-all scenario is going [...]

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“Going through the roof” at Corda

October 31, 2008

Evidence came in yesterday afternoon that, so far, BI is doing well in the new economy. Greg Turman, director of sales for the Western Region at Corda, phoned to say, “I’m going through the roof,” by which he means sales are good. “I’m seeing tremendous startup activity. People are saying, ‘I can no longer guess. [...]

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