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Life Beyond The Four Largest BI Vendors

Are IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP the only companies that matter in the business intelligence software market? Well, of course not. That's ridiculous. Independent BI vendors and even some surprises -- Google, anyone? -- are driving a lot of the innovation.

It's a very different BI market than it was a year ago, with the world's four largest software companies now owning half of it. I wrote an in-depth piece on their strategies that we published earlier this week. I then got a number of e-mails from independent BI vendors pointing out it's not just about the Big 4. And I completely agree.

I don't think innovation will die within the Big 4. But it does take a long time to turn a tanker, while smaller boats can maneuver with agility. You can count on smaller companies to keep coming up with new ideas and options, and it would be a mistake to ignore them.

Panorama Software, for example, has this symbiotic relationship with Google that's starting to get pretty interesting. A few weeks ago Panorama was among the companies that Google announced were providing new graphics widgets and data viewing capabilities users could download and use within the Google Docs spreadsheet. Now I've learned that within a few days, Panorama plans to announce support for Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services for Google Docs.

Panorama, as some may recall, is the BI vendor that sold back in 1996 the OLAP technology that's the foundation of SQL Server Analysis Services, plus a query language for accessing the platform called MDX. Panorama has since become among the fastest growing small BI companies, creating apps that work with SQL Server Analysis. The bottom line of this latest Panorama effort appears to be the opportunity for companies to perform more sophisticated data analysis in Google's spreadsheet, not just Excel. I don't think Google has any big plans to tackle the BI market -- we are talking about a spreadsheet, after all -- but you have to admire Panorama's ingenuity.

Following my aforementioned article, I also got a few notes from the folks over at SAS Institute, among the biggest of the independent BI vendors, challenging my focus on the Big 4. "These guys are talking BI platform? We've been there for years and have established a real market presence they're only now trying to catch up to," writes one of my media relations contacts. I agree, to some extent. SAS hasn't just BI tools but offers critical middle layer stuff for a BI platform like data integration, and in fact makes more money off that technology. SAS also has done an incredible job at creating BI products for specific vertical markets.

I got "me, too!" notes from other vendors, including QlikTech, Information Builders, and others. I appreciate the reminders, but I need no reminding they are all doing cool things with BI (QlikTech's in-memory processing and Information Builder's focus on Web 2.0 graphics and mobility come to mind).

The near-dominance of the BI market by IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP undeniably changes things, and it's important that customers understand their strategies. But there is another side to the BI market consolidation story: There are still lots of options out there and new innovations and approaches coming from all sorts of directions. You don't need to build an OLAP cube to figure that out.

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