The recently released 2008 Gartner BI Magic Quadrant analysis focuses on the consolidation that is underway in the BI reporting and dashboarding space. The diagram below seems straight-forward, but you must realize that with the speed of acquisitions in our space, it was already obsolete when released. The Gartner analysis missed the late breaking news of the SAP/Business Objects acquisition.

Dashboards By Example Update: Readers are advised to visit the Gartner link posted above as they have updated their report. As they mention regarding the changing vendor landscape:

“This document is an updated version of the document published on 1 February 2008.”

Market Overview – One “macro trend” defined the BI platforms arena in 2007 — market consolidation — making it the most turbulent year, so far, in business intelligence.

As anticipated in last year’s Magic Quadrant and other Gartner research (see, for example, “Market for Business Intelligence Platforms: Round Two of Consolidation Begins”), large application and software infrastructure vendors completed or initiated significant strategic acquisitions in the BI platform market in 2007:

In July, Oracle completed its purchase of Hyperion. An example of straight market consolidation, this move brought two competing BI platforms, Hyperion System 9 and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, both Leaders on the 2007 Magic Quadrant, under Oracle ownership and expanded Oracle’s BI resources and staffing. (See “Hyperion Purchase Will Strengthen Oracle in BI Platform and CPM Suites Markets.”)

In October, SAP announced its acquisition of Business Objects, which will expand its presence into the “business user” market, which SAP defines as being made up of business roles involved in analytical and information-intensive activities. This acquisition, which was completed in January 2008, fills a significant gap in SAP’s query and reporting tools portfolio, but represents a major strategic shift away from “slot-in” technology buys and organic software development. (See “SAP’s Planned Business Objects Buy Signals Strategic Shift.”)

As the year closed, Cognos completed its acquisition of Applix, and its in-memory online analytical processing (OLAP) engine. It also agreed to be bought by IBM. Though not strictly a consolidating move, this acquisition is significant, as it will end IBM’s abstinence from the BI platform and applications market. IBM has repeatedly stated that it will focus on the infrastructure and the middleware layer, and that it will only “enable” applications. While a BI platform includes many infrastructure components, the Cognos BI and performance management applications will fill a big void in IBM’s stack. (See “IBM Aims for the Business Intelligence Endgame With Cognos.”)

Megavendors are beginning to dominate the BI market — in less than one year, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and IBM will have gone from accounting for a quarter of the market to owning over two-thirds of it. As such, the “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008″ reflects the tipping point at which the market moves away from being led by independent BI vendors like Business Objects and Cognos, to one where the megavendors rule. Future BI investment decisions will be tethered much more closely to strategic sourcing and stack-led factors, and will be more influenced by organizational relationships with application and infrastructure vendors.

During the same period, “flattening” factors — including the maturing of Microsoft’s BI portfolio, the adoption of Web 2.0 techniques, the growth of open-source BI and the continued emergence of software as a service (SaaS) offerings — have made BI capabilities more accessible and affordable than they have ever been. As a result, this Magic Quadrant includes commentary on some emerging vendors which, while not yet meeting the inclusion criteria for the Magic Quadrant itself, offer a viable alternative for some BI use-cases.

Here is the Magic Quadrant Diagram:

Here are some snippets from the report itself. You can read more by using the link at the top of this post:

Synopsis

Several large application and software infrastructure vendors initiated major BI acquisitions in 2007. Macrotrend of market consolidation.

Megavendors are beginning to dominate the BI market — in less than one year, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and IBM will have gone from accounting for a quarter of the market to owning over two-thirds of it. As such, the “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008″ reflects the tipping point at which the market moves away from being led by independent BI vendors like Business Objects and Cognos, to one where the megavendors rule. Future BI investment decisions will be tethered much more closely to strategic sourcing and stack-led factors, and will be more influenced by organizational relationships with application and infrastructure vendors.

During the same period, “flattening” factors — including the maturing of Microsoft’s BI portfolio, the adoption of Web 2.0 techniques, the growth of open-source BI and the continued emergence of software as a service (SaaS) offerings — have made BI capabilities more accessible and affordable than they have ever been. As a result, this Magic Quadrant includes commentary on some emerging vendors which, while not yet meeting the inclusion criteria for the Magic Quadrant itself, offer a viable alternative for some BI use-cases.

Forecast

Even allowing for the inevitable disruption to buying patterns caused by acquisition activity, Gartner maintains the forecast growth rates it previously published. The BI market will show a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR), in revenue terms, of 8.6% from 2006 through 2011.

Several demand-side factors indicate that BI platform revenue will continue to grow:

• CIOs are coming under increasing pressure to invest in technologies that drive business transformation and strategic change. BI can deliver on this promise if deployed successfully, because it could improve decision making and operational efficiency, which in turn drive the top line and the bottom line.
• Information generated from enterprise applications is at an all-time high and will continue to increase. BI platforms can turn that information into an asset on which better decisions are made.
• The adoption of BI platforms’ expanded capabilities beyond traditional query, reporting and OLAP functionality to leverage dashboards, scorecards and visualization. We continue to see innovation and growth arising from technologies that make it easier to build and consume BI applications (such as search, in-memory analytics, SaaS and service-oriented architecture).
• Organizations are continuing to progress along the BI continuum, from analyst/user-driven BI applications, to strategy-driven ones, to process-driven applications.
• Smaller and midsize organizations are becoming an important target market for BI vendors, with a large proportion representing new opportunities. Several vendors have been modifying or extending their product, pricing and partner strategies to reach this key group. Hosted BI through SaaS is now offered by a number of vendors.
• Standardization of tools continues to be a driver of growth, but it also slows down the sales cycle as organizations rationalize their portfolio of tools.
• The continued growth of performance management initiatives, particularly finance-led corporate performance management, and the rising prevalence of analytic applications for non-financial applications, like CRM or supply-chain analytics, are also driving the market.
• “Consumerization” of information means users are becoming increasingly savvy in using and manipulating information to their advantage. This will enable a spread of BI across organizations. Technology trends, such as improving visualization, might help further.

Read the article from Gartner for more.

As mentioned above growth is high for usage of a Supply Chain Dashboard to track and monitor complex logistics. See examples of supply chain dashboards at klipfolio.com.

Tags: Gartner 2008 BI Magic Quadrant, dashboard vendor landscape, business intelligence reporting and dashboard vendors, BI Dashboard, Dashboard software, enterprise reporting vendor