In-Depth
A look at BI vendor strategies today
- By Peter Bochner
- September 1, 2004
So what are vendors up to in the business intelligence
(BI) space?
- Netezza, Framingham, Mass., offers the Netezza
Performance Server (NPS), which integrates servers, storage and databases into
a single solution for analyzing terabytes of data. NPS does not require
customization, performance tuning or administration.
- At IBM, DB2 is at the core of the BI and data
warehousing strategy. “We will create the necessary links to the analytical
app providers. We’ve simplified that with a meta data bridge. You can build
your model in your meta data bridge and it can report out to any tool. This
saves time and increases the speed with which reports are produced. You model
once, and you use it everywhere,” said the firm’s Karen Parrish, VP, worldwide
sales, BI solutions.
- Cognos Inc., Burlington, Mass., offers Cube Views, a
meta data bridge. With it, users build a model, and the model uses the bridge
to deliver information to the report. According to the company, this provides
dramatic performance improvements.
- Hyperion Solutions, Sunnyvale, Calif., is combining
the latest version of Essbase and Hyperion Performance Suite Version 8.2 into
a single platform for BI. The Hyperion BI platform features dashboards, query
and reporting tools, a scalable analytics environment and a developer
environment. The Hyperion BI Platform makes it easier for users to switch from
a high-level view of the business to a view of underlying root causes. New
support for predictive analytics enables customers to model multiple future
scenarios and predict business outcomes.
- Information Builders Inc., New York City, has recently added new visual
features to WebFocus, including new PowerPoint reporting integration and
scalable vector graphics (SVG). These visual BI capabilities offer users at
different levels the ability to see summary and detail data with an
interactive and three-dimensional approach.
Please see the following related story: “BI today: One version of the
truth ” by Peter Bochner and Jack Vaughan