PDF X-Change – Still The One

February 25, 2010 by Leave a comment

Nearly a year ago, I mentioned a wonderful product called PDF X-Change, from Tracker Software,  in a post. It allows me to annotate PDF files, which many vendors maddeningly insist on using for briefings. Why “maddeningly”? Because for me at least, the best place for my notes is in the presentation – it provides the context and I don’t need another window open. In PowerPoint I just use the notes at the bottom of the window. PDF X-Change is a free download, and takes care of the rest of the pitches I see. Read more of this post

Filed under Analyst Relations, Research Industry, Software infrastructure, The Computing Life, Vendor image and communications Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Want Broader BI Usage? Crystal Reports Founders Offer Indicee

February 16, 2010 by 2 Comments

Mark Cunningham has reunited some of the team that built Crystal Reports (now part of SAP Business Objects) and launched Indicee, a SaaS-based BI reporting play that is pointed squarely at the continuing difficulty of extending BI beyond its seemingly permanent minority usage model.

It’s commonly understood that users continue to fend for themselves manually, moving data to spreadsheets for analytic manipulation because IT is unable to respond quickly enough to their needs. Indicee tackles this by re-using existing report and spreadsheet content (not surprisingly, Crystal reports lead the source list), moving it to the cloud for data mart-based interaction, and innovating a different approach to user interaction. It’s worth a look, and a free download for trial use sweetens the deal. Read more of this post

Filed under Data Management, Data Warehousing, On Business Intelligence, Software infrastructure Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What To Expect at Sapphire? Breya Hints At BO-BWA Connection

May 7, 2009 by 1 Comment

IT Market Strategy recently sat down with Marge Breya, Executive Vice President & GM Intelligence Platform & NetWeaver of SAP BusinessObjects, to discuss the first full year of life within SAP after being acquired at the beginning of 2008. Breya oversees full product line responsibility for BI and information management  solutions, as well as the company’s OnDemand business. In addition, Breya is responsible for solution management of SAP NetWeaver within the Technology Group at SAP AG. Prior to joining SAP via the Business Objects acquisition, Breya served in a number of executive roles at BEA Systems, where she was senior vice president (SVP), CMO, and chief strategy officer (CSO); and Sun Microsystems, where she served in various executive management roles. In this excerpt form our conversation, the discussion turned to how the BO portfolio and the SAP portfolio would combine for greater leverage.

You’re busy right now thinking about the developmental opportunities for how [your] portfolios work together. Read more of this post

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IBM Acquires Exeros – Information Agenda Gets A Boost

May 5, 2009 by 2 Comments

IBM has taken another key step in its Information Agenda strategy, improving customers’ ability to analyze, understand and remediate existing data by acquiring Exeros. There is a fundamental business problem that grows with data volume: an understanding gap. As new development, acquisition and integration of multiple systems takes place, meaning and process understanding are often obscured or lost entirely. At the edge, this is manifested when new BI efforts attempt to find data and its meaning. Exeros Discovery is a leading solution to that problem. My good friend Jim Kobielus of Forrester has provided some excellent background in his blog here. Some other firms are also pursuing this kind of BI-related analysis; Balanced Insight comes to mind, and I’ll blog about them soon. IBM’s ambition is broader than that, and acquiring Exeros is a key enabler of its vision. Read more of this post

Filed under Data Management, Industry trends, On Business Intelligence Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ralph Kimball’s TDWI Crowd Shows DW & BI are Thriving

May 1, 2009 by 2 Comments

The economy may be challenging, but 100 attendees on a weekday afternoon in San Francisco proved that there is plenty of interest in data warehousing. The Silicon Valley Chapter of the Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) drew a sizable, energetic group to its quarterly meeting.

No doubt the presence of Ralph Kimball, a seminal and influential thinker, had a lot to do with the success, Read more of this post

Filed under Data Management, Data Warehousing, Industry trends, On Business Intelligence Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interview: SAP BusinessObjects’ Marge Breya Celebrates Progress and Anticipates Accelerated Growth

April 30, 2009 by 1 Comment

marge-breya_cSAP BusinessObjects Executive Vice President & GM Intelligence & Netweaver Marge Breya recently sat down with IT Market Strategy to discuss the first full year of life within SAP. That interview is excerpted here; Breya gives a flavor of the challenges and opportunities that faced the newly acquired company, and her enthusiasm about their success so far was palpable. Read more of this post

Filed under Industry trends, On Business Intelligence Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sybase Delivers Another Strong Quarter, Rep Server Refresh

April 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sybase is celebrating. Let everyone else complain about the bad economy; the perennial “Tier 1A” database, mobility and analytics vendor just had its best quarter ever to kick off 2009 – its 6th consecutive record quarter. With 14% growth in license revenue (31% in database) and a margin of 21%, there is certainly much to be happy about. The company is particularly happy to point to its highest-ever quarterly cash flow from operations – $97.4 million. The investment in messaging continues to generate substantial results: at $43.4M, it was nearly 17% of the firm’s revenue. Sybase seems at last to have anchored itself solidly in the billion dollar club.sybase Read more of this post

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IBM InfoSphere Now Supports Informix and z

April 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

IBM’s InfoSphere Data Warehouse has been a steady growth asset. As IBM has created and acquired pieces of the infrastructure and progressively created a more complete, end-to-end offering, it has continued to add new customers to (and from) one of the largest installed bases in the world. In reviewing 2008, IBM CFO  Mark Loughridge asserted compound growth of 18% since 2006. For 2008 the claim is 100 more transactions, and 50 InfoSphere customers new to DB2 while in Q4 “distributed (non-mainframe) DB2″grew at 30% growth in constant currency terms. Read more of this post

Filed under Data Management, Data Warehousing, Industry trends, On Business Intelligence Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

PDF X-Change Rocks: AR Soft Copy Survey Participants Take Note

April 24, 2009 by 5 Comments

Poll results for soft copy survey

Poll results for soft copy survey

This is the third and final post on the topic of which format is best for providing soft copy of briefing material to analysts. After a few more votes were added, the combined total of PDF and annotatable PDF formats got closer to Powerpoint in our survey. The final total was PPT 29, PDF13, annotatable PDF 10. (See chart at right.) Read more of this post

Filed under Analyst Relations, The Computing Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Confio Tries to Apply BI to DB Performance – Needs Work

April 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

The Boulder BI Braintrust hosted Confio this week. Confio is fairly small (25 people focusing on product development sales and support, with most other infrastructure outsourced), and privately held with angel and operating revenue funding it. The value proposition of their product, Ignite Performance Intelligence, (I’ll call it IPI from here) is to deliver information about database performance using a more BI-like interface. Prospective buyers (and today’s customers, who number in the hundreds) are DBAs and application performance specialists. Read more of this post

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