Advertisment

BI Solutions

author-image
PCQ Bureau
New Update

Oracle is the winner in the inaugural year of this segment, followed by Microsoft, SAP and IBM, in that order. Business Objects and PeopleSoft make up the rest of the Users' Choice Club.

Advertisment

BI as a solution offering has been around for some time now, but has been limited to the very top end of the enterprise. To give a quick rule of thumb, it is usually enterprises with a turnover of Rs 300 to Rs 500 crore and above who are targeted by the vendors of BI solutions.

The votes that Microsoft got include votes for SQL Server. In fact most of the votes were for SQL Server.

Advertisment

Oracle, the winner, has the highest brand loyalty at 88 percent, followed closely by IBM with 86 percent. Microsoft with 66 percent and SAP with 59 percent complete the picture. From the brand-switch matrix, it is clear that the company to watch in this space is SAP, with it attracting users of all other brands. Oracle stands to make strong gains from both SAP and Microsoft. IBM users, if they switch, want to switch to SAP only, while IBM stands to gain a 12 percent switch from SAP and an 11 percent switch from Microsoft. Our trend says that Microsoft stands to gain from the brands that did not make it to the Users' Choice Club.

For Microsoft, Oracle and IBM, their database software seems to be giving them an added impetus in this segment. This is very clearly seen in Microsoft's case, where many respondents specifically mentioned MS SQL Server as their BI solution of choice. For SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle, their ERP businesses would have given them a leg up here. So, Business Objects needs to be particularly congratulated for being the only pure-play BI vendor in the Users' Choice Club.

ERP vendors have been talking for some time now, of moving downstream to medium enterprises with special offerings to suit their budgets. BI vendors at this point in time are keeping quite about the possibility of similar BI offerings from their stables. 



Our guess is that it is only a matter of time before BI too, starts to woo smaller businesses with
solutions that meet their needs and budgets . And that is when the action will hot up in this segment. Till then, this is likely to be a niche

segment.

Advertisment