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The business intelligence applications market is entering a new era, requiring a shift in emphasis back toward the IT organization for operational and tactical BI application development, as well as integration of BI components with enterprise applications. However, the innovative use of BI Web services and the redesign of BI architectures will not be a panacea, and it may even be the root cause of future BI catastrophes. In reality, the marketing engines from BI and platform vendors currently extol features that exceed the actual technology, with a few exceptions. This shift will take place during the next two to three years, so don't be hasty in switching over to these architectures until you are prepared to change the way BI is done in your organization.
Companies are looking for a way to reduce the number of redundant BI platforms, and the best way to do that is to standardize on fewer integrated platforms that can support multiple BI reporting and analysis categories. Cognos has not only joined the shortlist of BI and platform vendors that can deliver these various reporting solutions on a single platform, but also has raised the bar for how BI platforms must be capable of being integrated with the rest of the technology assets in a services-oriented environment. This is quite a bit more than marketing and branding, as Cognos has re-architected each product into the SOA platform initially launched with ReportNet in 2003 and extended the reach of each functional area.
Standardizing on a single business intelligence reporting and analysis solution is a good idea in theory, as the results would be lower costs for developing and maintaining reports, greater consistency in the data surfaced by the reports, and lower risk of having multiple reports with contradictory information. In practice, however, this is not easy, as many large enterprise organizations have between five and 15 different BI reporting and analysis solutions in use today, and some have more than 20. Companies can save money by standardizing but must plan for a long, slow migration that may not be practical.
Basic search approaches are useful and cost-effective for most corporate employees, yet are seldom intelligent enough to achieve the relevance, accuracy, and insight users demand when searching across complex information sources. When basic keyword-based retrieval methods run out of gas, the quest for a better search demands a new method. One approach companies can use includes what Forrester calls "intelligent content services" (ICS). ICS uses linguistic analysis, fact extraction, automated categorization, and taxonomies to help organize and make sense out of large volumes of disorganized, unstructured content. ICS makes it easier for end users to express their information needs and to get the information they require.
Open source alternatives to leading collaboration platforms appeal to small businesses and others with tight IT budgets -- or to large organizations that have IT skills and resources needed to maintain solutions in-house and have a business reason for doing so. But open source collaboration platforms are still relatively immature and present a high degree of risk. Their viability could improve in the next five years if a commercial software vendor steps up to play the role of open source project coordinator and integrator. No vendor is better suited to play this role than Novell. If Novell were to take on this role, it could carve out a place in the enterprise collaboration platform market -- and the information workplace market -- that is significantly differentiated from IBM and Microsoft.
The "Millennials" -- those born between 1980 and 2000 -- have an innate ability to use technology, are comfortable multitasking while using a diverse range of digital media, and literally demand interactivity as they construct knowledge. Millennials lack the workaholic drive of their burned-out predecessors, but they compensate by using many technologies -- often simultaneously -- to get the job done quickly and have a personal life as well. They don't have the skills and experience of the many retirees they are replacing, but they look to technology to help fill this gap. Managers must understand the work style differences among the multigenerational workforce and develop collaborative work environments that give Millennials the information they need -- just in time and integrated with the job.
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From The Editor: Consolidation In, Around, And Throughout The Information Management Market(s)
During the past three years, we've been writing about massive consolidation within the enterprise content management (ECM) space. As our recent ECM Wave™ shows, the ECM vendors are now beginning to provide true, out-of-the-box suites that support the full breadth of unstructured content -- ranging from email to rich media. Kyle McNabb is now working on a new Forrester Wave™ that evaluates the ECM vendors' ability to support content-centric applications that will differentiate their products in a consolidated market. Stay tuned for this research.
But consolidation doesn't just apply to content. In this First Look, Keith Gile takes a hard look at the future of business intelligence (BI) -- ranging from consolidating on a single BI platform to the impact of service-oriented architecture (SOA) on BI architectures. The pure-play eLearning market is also experiencing massive consolidation as ECM and IT infrastructure vendors are now focusing on eLearning as a business tool, not just a technology for training departments. There's lots of evidence; for example, take a look at Claire Schooley's analyses of Vignette's recent entry into eLearning, Saba Software's recent acquisition of Centra Software, and SumTotal System's acquisition of Pathlore Software.
And if that isn't enough to think about, some companies have lifted their sights to information management -- being able to manage both structured and unstructured information at an enterprise level. As Barry Murphy tells us, IBM is thinking about the same thing, which is propelling its stunning number of acquisitions during the past 12 months and its recently articulated Information OnDemand vision.
And on the collaboration side, which is already a consolidated market dominated by IBM and Microsoft, Erica Rugullies examines whether there is a role for Novell as an aggregator for open source collaboration software. As for implementing collaboration by stitching together various open source offerings, Erica recommends waiting a few years.
We'll be watching these trends and more -- and I look forward to hearing from you about what you're seeing as the worlds of data and content begin to collide. As always, I welcome your comments.
Connie Moore
Vice President and Research Director
Forrester Research
Join Us At Forrester's Executive Strategy Forum
Four of our information delivery analysts are available to meet with you at
Forrester's Executive Strategy Forum being held Nov. 15-16 in Boston. Paul Kirby (data warehousing), Barry Murphy (ECM), Erica Rugullies (collaboration and message archiving) and Connie Moore (ECM and BPM) are available for one-on-one meetings with attendees throughout the conference. If you are a registered attendee and would like to sign-up for one-on-one meetings, click here. Also, plan to catch Erica Rugullies' presentation "The Future Of The Information Workplace" and Connie Moore's panel session on "The Retiring Workforce Onslaught: Changes In The Enterprise And The Role Of Technology" on Nov. 16.
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The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Content Management Suites, Q3 2005
As demand for ECM grows, IT decision-makers are turning to ECM suites as a platform for managing all unstructured information. But how broad and deep are the ECM suites? Forrester evaluated 10 leading ECM vendors and found that IBM and EMC have established early ECM platform leadership -- thanks to their ECM capabilities and infrastructure focus -- and Stellent leads the ECM pure plays with the most complete, suite-ready ECM offering. FileNet, Hummingbird, Interwoven, and Vignette are strong performers, but lack an IT infrastructure focus, and are better suited for content-centric apps. Microsoft has more ECM vision than current capabilities, while Oracle has an ECM suite that while limited in scope shows substantial promise. Open Text still has work ahead to build a true suite and has a questionable ECM strategy. And despite acquisitions, Mobius Management Systems has not gotten traction in ECM and is best suited for complex COLD/imaging requirements.
IBM's Information On Demand: A Visionary Work In Progress
To help enterprises deal with the complexity of managing information, software vendors offer a variety of technologies to manage information and deliver it efficiently to applications, business processes, and information workers. No one supplier has the product portfolio to offer a completely holistic information management solution that spans structured and unstructured data, but IBM comes very close and is far ahead of other vendors. The company's Information On Demand (IOD) strategy aims high and gets the message right. But at the same time, the strategy brushes aside product gaps and calls into question IBM's ability to execute, given its corporate culture, and the structure and compensation model of its sales team. IBM has a sweeping vision, and almost all the pieces for delivering information as a service, but needs to coax divisions into collaborating and incent its sales force to start selling more than a mere laundry list of products.
Verizon's Information Workplace
Very few organizations have thought about information workplaces (IWs) yet, much less deployed them. But Verizon has not only developed an IW strategy, but deployed one to more than 65% of its 214,000 employees. Verizon's IW is based on a rich, highly functional enterprise portal, speech portal, right-time communications platform, and a scrolling executive dashboard. Lessons Verizon learned along the way: the importance of marketing the IW to end users; rallying early adopters and turning them into evangelists; securing sponsorship from a highly visible, influential, and visionary executive; and dedicating adequate resources to the basics, like digitizing paper content and creating canned searches.
Using SAP NetWeaver BI For Non-SAP Data Is A Question Of Balance
Organizations that are unable to decide whether SAP NetWeaver BI should be used to store non-SAP data should assess SAP's dominance in their structured data landscape. Although NetWeaver BI is ideal for SAP reporting and analysis, organizations with large volumes of data from many sources will find more benefit from a hybrid approach, using both NetWeaver BI and generic architectures. The question is not whether you should store non-SAP data in NetWeaver BI. You will. The question is how much and what type.
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