I received this from a colleague today. I just recently started focusing on BI, so I find this pretty exciting and a good reason to continue along this path.
Last week, Gartner held their annual Business Intelligence Summit. Microsoft presented PerformancePoint and their end-to-end BI platform offering. Judging by the reaction from analysts AND customers, Microsoft BI “has arrived”…See below for some compelling quotes from Gartner BI Analysts’ at last week’s conference, and keep in mind that Gartner has not been a big fan of Microsoft BI in previous years (when I receive the conference presentations, I’ll post them somewhere)…
1. With recent announcements, Microsoft must now be considered a feasible BI player and a serious competitor in the market.
2. At this point, current Microsoft customers of other BI and performance management products will probably only consider Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 if they have a strong enterprise-wide commitment to SQL Server 2005, SharePoint and Office/Excel.
3. Microsoft’s combined value proposition has always been user friendliness and low (or comparatively low) pricing. Therefore, even with deeply discounted offerings, classic BI vendors will be hard-pressed to compete on price. Microsoft is applying the commodity business model to BI, forcing established players to offer more complex, premium products and services.
4. Microsoft has developed a good set of reporting, analysis and data integration BI capabilities, which levels the playing field for the BI market.
5. Microsoft will become a globally dominant BI vendor, with top-five market share by the first quarter of 2009 (0.8 probability). It’s also only a matter of time before Microsoft challenges Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, and other BI vendors for best-of-breed status in such things as CPM.