Nickname: Value_Growth_Investor

Review: Customers vs technology. If MSFT's technology turns out to be weak and it competes only on price then it would be the race for customers. Oracle will make the move. If Microsoft comes out with a strong value proportion, SAP and Oracle will stay put. I would rule IBM completley out of the picture. There is no synergy for them acquiring a BI company. Internally they use Hyperion not Cognos. SAP makes only strategic acquisitions. I would rule them out too. I think Oracle and SAP would wait out for a while before making any move. Also the prospective customers would wait on making any purchase decision thus compounding the misery of existing BI players.

Date reviewed: Oct 26, 2005 5:40 AM

Nickname: iknowitwell

Review: Don't be surprised to see larger vendors continue to snap up the smaller but more established niche corporate performance management (CPM) players like OutlookSoft, Applix, and others. These companies use BI technologies in a strategic way, to track and measure business performance through budgeting, forecasting, scorecarding, etc.

Date reviewed: Oct 26, 2005 5:35 AM

Nickname: G. Washington

Review: Oracle's purchase of Siebel gave them a powerful BI tool. The customer list of Siebel Analytics is impressive: Cisco, Microsoft (believe it or not), UPS, Royal Bank of Canada, Keynote Bank, Pfizer, etc. It has grown extremely fast during the past three years and with Oracle's backing it could grow even faster. It will certainly be an interesting space for growth, competition may also push margins down as well. It remains to be seen how the marketplace will unfold.

Date reviewed: Oct 26, 2005 2:46 AM

Nickname: sarah lacy

Review: Hey everyone- Thanks for calling this to our attention. We're making a correction in the story. by revenue, Business Objects is number one of the three. In terms of market share, Cognos is larger, potentially making it a pricier acquisistion, depending on how the deal would be valued. But the broader point still stands that no one of the three is running away with the market, and it's still quite a horse race.

Date reviewed: Oct 26, 2005 12:05 AM

Nickname: in the know

Review: Very doubtfull SAP would want to purchase BOBJ (see eailer comment), the only reasonable suitor is Microsoft, since BOBJ's primary tool is a knock-off of an old version of Microsoft Access reporting functionality.

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2005 11:29 PM

Nickname: in the know

Review: SAP purchased Lighthammer in July 2005 to plug its shop floor data extraction hole. The big side benifit is that Lighthammer is a reasonable enterprise BI tool (better than the R3 BW tool). Doubtfull SAP will make another purchase in this market segment.

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2005 11:20 PM

Nickname: MikeC

Review: Cognos is #2 in the Industry as far as revnues. Not #1. Business Objects will finish the year @1B in sales.

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2005 5:45 PM

Nickname: value_growth_investor

Review: Founded in 1969, Cognos is still strugging to reach $1 billion in revenues. It is the no 2 in the market behind BOBJ. In terms of product strategies of these companies BOBJ clearly stands out. Cognos will take additional two years to refine its product strategy. Report-net was developed in isolation with out linking current product strategies. Each product requires has its own infrastructure and back-end. Customers clearly have not had any alternative for a while. It will be quite a task for MSFT to dislodge COGN & BOBJ's foot print. but I bet MSFT will easily dominate this industry in less than 5 years due to its inherent advantages without buying any of these companies.

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2005 4:52 PM

Nickname: Karl22

Review: Don't forget players that aren't public: SAS Institute revenue last year was $1.5 billion. Maybe easier to try to buy a private company?

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2005 2:43 PM

Nickname: Adrian

Review: This article ranks Cognos as number one in BI with sales expected to hit $930 for the current fiscal year. Business Objects is expected to surpass the billion mark this year. Business Objects also finished the last fiscal year well ahead of Cognos, and has consistently experienced higher license revenue. Also, regarding growth affected by acquisition, Business Objects' last major acquisition, Crystal Decisions, happened in Dec 2003. Growth reported over the last year has happened since this acquisition. Later acquisitions of SRC, or pending Infommersion have not been reflected in Q1 or Q2 revenue reported.

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2005 2:05 PM