The Forrester Wave™: Business Performance Solutions, Q4 2007

Forrester assessed 10 leading business performance solutions (BPS) vendors across 83 criteria in a product evaluation. Cognos, Oracle, and SAS Institute were found to lead the category with overall breadth of functionality and aggressive strategies for competing in this rapidly evolving market. Business Objects and SAP both showed strong solution functionality, but have considerable work ahead to integrate recent pure-play acquisitions into more seamless BPS offerings. Clarity Systems leads the BPS pure plays with a very strong planning and budgeting solution. Applix and Longview Solutions, though lacking as much out-of-the-box functionality and scorecarding capabilities as the large vendors, made solid Strong Performer showings as well based on their flexibility to handle unique customer requirements. Infor is also a Strong Performer with a mature BPS suite, but needs a more aggressive strategy for competing outside of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) installed base. Microsoft's initial release of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 in September puts it in the mix as a Strong Performer with an assertive vision and a solid technology foundation, but the solution needs to mature in terms of breadth and depth of functionality.