Business Objects: Open source a distant threat

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There's little chance of an open source company shaking up the Business Intelligence (BI) market any time soon, according to Bernard Liautaud, the chief executive of Business Objects.

Speaking last week after the launch of Business Objects Extreme Insight (XI), Liautaud said he didn't think that the success enjoyed by open source CRM vendors such as SugarCRM and vTiger will be repeated in the BI space, at least not imminently.

"In BI there has been no particular effect yet but like any part of the software industry, there will be some open source initiatives. There are some open source Java-based reporting tools but it is a fairly mature market so it is going to be a little harder, but it is still a factor," Liautaud -- who is a MySQL board member -- told ZDNet UK.

Liautaud also said that Business Objects was considering the potential of offering its analysis and reporting tools through an on-demand model similar to that of Salesforce.com.

"Salesforce.com has been growing very significantly without a particularly new technology but with a new business model -- that is certainly something we have taken notice of," said Liautaud, who insisted that Business Objects didn't have any firm plans in place for on-demand services.

You can read the full interview here.

Talkback

Watch your backside pal the next thing you know Open Source will be biting a lump out of it and the we can all LOL saying we told you so so many companys have said the self same thing and look at them now they almost invariabley end up supporting and recomending Linux as the answer dont say you were not warned ..

via Facebook 19 January, 2005 01:08
Reply

Thank you for sharing Bernard Liautaud's perspective on the evolution of Business Intelligence.

It was interesting that he dismissed open source BI as quickly as he did. A couple comments:

(a) We have found that some of our best customers are companies that have poured money into a platform but lack the resources and expertise to convert the information into actionable insights. His comment: "...The third piece is sharing information with external constituencies and partners and suppliers..." reflects one of the fundamental schisms separating BI vendors and their customers. Based on our experience in providing customer intelligence solutions to Fortune 1000 clients, partners and suppliers don't need more "information". They need insights and guidance on what to do with all their "information".

(b) On Open Source. We predict that companies are ready, willing, and able to shift their spending from annual licensing fees to investing into the actual transformation of information to actionable insights. Companies that provide an open source business intelligence platforms will exactly enable this by commoditizing the infrastructure and put the necessary focus on building intelligence. They will re-shape the ways leading companies invest in transforming their business and what they demand of their vendors.

At Loyalty Matrix, we provide Customer Intelligence to Fortune 1000 companies and are investing in the open source vision.

Matt Strain
VP, Marketing
Loyalty Matrix, Inc
San Francisco, CA
http://www.loyaltymatrix.com

via Facebook 19 January, 2005 20:27
Reply

Take a look at PALO www.palo.net - This is an open source OLAP server which will be similar to commercial offereing such as TM1 and MIS Alea.

Its RAM based and so should be fast and there is an excel add-in so end users should feeel comfortable with this environment.

Since it's easy to import data, report becomes a breeze and with true separation from the transaction systems they don't take a performance hit when you want to analyse data.

Additionally there are number of APIs available so users can embed it or customise it.

via Facebook 10 October, 2005 19:41
Reply

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