Frank Xavier

Who's Next in Business Intelligence Consolidation?

Still an interesting article, even today. After IBM's acquisition of SPSS, this option is no longer available to Microsoft (and to SAP). From my point of view, Actuate and MicroStrategy could be possible acqisition targets for Microsoft, but Microsoft may also continue to extend its Excel and PowerPoint products in ways that make an extra reporting tool less important.

BI/DW Index: Dragged Down by Hardware

In times of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing and operating-system-indep... programming languages like Java hardware is less and less of a differentiating factor for competitive IT infrastructures, but software and services become more and more important. That is why SUN, HP, and IBM turn more and more from hardware to software and services. It will be interesting to watch what Oracle will do with the hardware business it acquired with the acquisition of SUN. Maybe they start building appliances or maybe they will try to get rid off it.

Introducing the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Index

From your list, I consider Actuate, Pervasive, Tibco, and Netezza particularly interesting companies to watch.

A Look at the Business Intelligence Index Performance

Some of the BI software vendors you listed already rebound quite nicely (for example SPSS, Pervasive, Actuate).

SPSS, Inc.: Predicting The Future, Predicting Growth

Interesting to read this article about two years later. SPSS has had its ups and downs as a stock, but has done quite a good job in terms of keeping its market share high. Good enough to be acquired by IBM.

Interesting to see also, that there still is a lot of competition. SAS is still the main competitor. But while Oracle, NCR, Fair Isaac, Angoss, and Unica have lost in significance in the data mining and predictive analytics market, other competitors have emerged and growing quickly.

These competitors include open source software products and companies. The R project and RapidMiner are quickly gaining ground getting a larger share of the analytics market.

Look at the results of the yearly KDnuggets poll among data mining experts in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and you know what I mean:

www.kdnuggets.com/poll...
www.kdnuggets.com/news...
www.pressebox.de/press...

Rapid-I ( rapid-i.com ), the open source company behind the open source data mining software RapidMiner ( RapidMiner.com ) has doubled its team, revenue, and profit every year and Rapid-I has a profit margin most closed source companies would like to have.

Cheers,
Frank

IBM Launches 'Smart Analytics System'

This sounds like an attractive product, especially with the envisioned set-up times ("days not months'). I am really curious, what the pricing of the offer will be and how it contains Cognos and SPSS elements and how those are made usable for non-expert users.

The Next Acquisition Wave: Enterprise Software?

I agree. I also expect further acquisitions in the enterprise software market. However, in the data mining arena, there are no similarly sized equivalents to SPSS.

SAS is five times as large in terms of revenues, privately owned, and much stronger in terms of market position and quality of service and solutions. Hence it is no easy target for take-overs.

All other players in the data mining and predictive analytics market are much smaller and hence much less attractive for the big IT players like IBM, HP, SAP, Oracle, and the like.

Anyway, the data mining and predictive analytics market is quite an interesting one moving at a very fast pace. Open source vendors are also worth a look. Their market shares are growing quickly.

The R project and RapidMiner are quickly gaining ground getting a larger share of the analytics market.

Look at the results of the yearly KDnuggets poll among data mining experts in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and you know what I mean:

www.kdnuggets.com/poll...
www.kdnuggets.com/news...
www.pressebox.de/press...

Rapid-I ( rapid-i.com ), the open source company behind the open source data mining software RapidMiner ( RapidMiner.com ) has doubled its team, revenue, and profit every year and Rapid-I has a profit margin most closed source companies would like to have.

Cheers,
Frank

IBM's Tuesday 'Doubleheader': Still Behind Its Usual Yearly M&A Pace

I think IBM needs to stay up-to-date with its software portfolio to be competitive in the long run. From my point of view, Cognos and SPSS are very good additions to IBM's enterprise software portfolio.

Business Intelligence is a strong topic in IT spending and for CIOs and hence the market leader in the BI market, Cognos, was a good pick. And within Business Intelligence, Data Mining and Predictive Analytics are the hottest topic and SPSS is one of the market leaders there. It is second to SAS, which is privately owned by its founder and probably not for sale. Hence SPSS as number two again was a good pick.

By the way, Cognos already used SPSS software within its BI tool portfolio under an OEM license deal. Hence the IBM acquisition of SPSS was not such a surprise for me.

I wonder, what SAP thinks about this. They acquired the BI tool vendor Business Objects last year. And Business Objects also acquired an SPSS OEM license last year. Hence SAP would have been another candidate for an SPSS take-over, but now they are too late.

Monster Merger: IBM Buys SPSS for About $1.2 Billion in Cash

On Jul 28 11:23 PM Robert0713 wrote:

> So, what happens to SAS?


SAS probably is happy to have one independent data mining competitor less on the list.

However, other competition is emerging to both, SPSS and SAS, from the open source software world. The R project and RapidMiner are quickly gaining ground getting a larger share of the analytics market.

Look at the results of the yearly KDnuggets poll among data mining experts in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and you know what I mean:

www.kdnuggets.com/poll...
www.kdnuggets.com/news...
www.pressebox.de/press...

Rapid-I ( www.rapid-i.com ), the open source company behind the open source data mining software RapidMiner ( www.RapidMiner.com ) has doubled its team, revenue, and profit every year and Rapid-I has a profit margin most closed source companies would like to have.

Cheers,
Frank

Is IBM's Acquisition of SPSS Too Late?

Besides of the R project, there is another open source data mining competitor for SPSS and SAS increasing the pressure: RapidMiner.

Look at the results of the yearly KDnuggets poll among data mining experts in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and you know what I mean:

www.kdnuggets.com/poll...
www.kdnuggets.com/news...
www.pressebox.de/press...

Rapid-I, the open source company behind the open source data mining software RapidMiner has doubled its team, revenue, and profit every year and Rapid-I has a profit margin most closed source companies would like to have.

By the way, RapidMiner is available for any major operating system including Apple Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, etc. Check it out for yourself at www.rapid-i.com/

Cheers,
Frank