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With SAP acquiring Business-Objects, Oracle acquiring Hyperion and IBM acquiring Cognos in 2007, 2008 brings in a lot of anticipation on:
- Will there be any further consolidation of application suites market?
- What will these acquisitions mean for the customer and the market in general?
The above 3 are key examples of some other acquisitions which have taken place like IBM acquiring Data Mirror, Cognos acquiring Applix, SAP acquiring outlooksoft etc..
This gives a message that Business Intelligence has become an important component of end-to-end value chain for the corporate customers, and the big players are working fast to plug that gap.
Execution-MiHinstitutte.com see the following developments happening on SAP,ORACLE and IBM:
- As these enterprise Business Intelligence apps are designed to work well with the ERP solutions and enterprise databases, the initial phase will be to integrate these acquisitions without rocking the boat. Essentially an integration of the support, sales and service.
- I don' t think that these acquisitions have been done to kill competition to promote the native Business Intelligence capabilities of the ERP application suites.
- On a general observation, the native Business Intelligence capabilities of ERP apps work best on their own environment and application suites. These acquisitions will provide a more thorough Business Intelligence solutions across the ERP apps and all other secondary, non-core or interfacing apps linked to these ERP behemoths.
Here are the possible landscapes:
- The easiest and fastest one is to offer these Business Intelligence apps as a standalone offering over and above the native Business Intelligence of ERP apps, and let the customer choose.
- The Business Intelligence apps sitting over the top of the native Business Intelligence of ERP apps. For example BO sitting on top of SAP business warehouse..
- The native Business Intelligence of ERP apps and the acquired products are truly integrated and presented as a singular solution. (like what BO almost did post acquiring crystal).
- A more comprehensive set of Business Intelligence applications can be built over these Business Intelligence apps, by leveraging upon the domain expertise of the ERP players.
Whatever be the road-map identified, the following are other possible outcomes:
- Emergence and thriving of independent Business Intelligence players, as there is huge market for companies which want to go independent solution and don't want to be tied-up. It's possible that large corporates may use the end-to-end solutions offered by ERP/Database players for their core processes, but use independent players for their other needs.
- A greater attention could be paid to open source commercial vendors like Pentaho and Jasper.
Following are the risks, which I see at the moment:
- The Enterprise Solution Providers, may not be able to maintain the independent Business Intelligence player mind-set. As Business Intelligence solutions are "independent" integration platform, and the people, process and architecture linked to this platform are driven by the same "independent" mind-set. If these platforms become too aligned to the ERP solutions of their parents, it may negatively impact their long term potential.
- The time it may take to leverage the synergies of the acquired products with the products from the ERP solution vendors.
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