A few open source CRM vendors have recently emerged. Do you see a similar thing occurring in BI?
Not yet, I would say. Open source is something I look into a lot, I am on the board of MySQL and I have a good understanding of that business. I think every enterprise software company should be well aware of what is happening in that space. 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.
Companies such as Salesforce.com have cut a swathe through the CRM market by offering on-demand or hosted applications. Is there similar potential in the BI arena?
Definitely it is a business model we are looking into very carefully. 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. But no news, no plans at this point.
BI is somewhat of a different environment in some sense because a lot of companies believe the information they hold for strategic purposes is very proprietary and they are not yet ready to outsource the management of that. They can outsource a process such as sales force automation but I'd say there is a bit more time to go before companies are ready to do the same with BI.
So it’s a cultural issue rather than a technical one which is preventing the uptake of on-demand?
It’s a trust issue.
There aren't any issues around database integration with hosted applications?
No, because now you can do data integration across networks and across companies.
How much consolidation do you see happening in the market -- how many main players are there at the moment in your opinion?
The companies that really have a name in the space -- there's probably only around seven or eight of them. But there has been a big shift. If you look at how the market was three or four years ago, it was very undecided -- you had six or seven players who could pretend to be number one. Now that is no longer the case as the smaller firms have shrunk and the larger ones have grown. Today you have basically three players with critical mass; us, Cognos and Hyperion -- you could add SAS to that but they are somewhat of an unknown because of the private nature of the company. The likes of Actuate, Microstrategy, Informatica have all shrunk. My belief is there will be consolidation in the lower part of the market.
How many companies to do you see dropping out?
I could certainly see two or three companies dropping out, if not more.
