David Menninger's Analyst Perspectives

Qlik Makes a Qonnection with Qlik Sense 3.0

Posted by David Menninger on Jul 2, 2016 9:25:29 AM

Qlik helped pioneer the visual discovery market with its QlikView product. In some respects, Qlik and its competitors also spawned the self-service trend rippling through the analytics market today. Their aim was to enable business users to perform analytics for themselves rather than building a product with the perfect set of features for IT. After establishing success with end users the company began to address more of the concerns of IT, eventually creating a robust enterprise-grade analytics platform. This approach has worked for Qlik, driving growth that led to an initial public offering in 2010. The company now generates more than half a billion dollars in revenue annually, making it one of the largest independent analytics vendors. Of which based on their company and products was rated a Hot Vendor in our 2015 Value Index on Analytics and Business Intelligence and one of the highest ranked in usability.

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Topics: Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Preparation, Information Management, Uncategorized, Visualization, Qlik, Qlik Sense

SAS Analytics Juggernaut Keeps on Truckin’

Posted by David Menninger on Mar 11, 2016 6:59:49 AM

I recently attended the SAS Analyst Summit in Steamboat Springs, Colo. (Twitter Hashtag #SASSB) The event offers an occasion for the company to discuss its direction and to assess its strengths and potential weaknesses. SAS is privately held, so customers and prospects cannot subject its performance to the same level of scrutiny as public companies, and thus events like this one provide a valuable source of additional information.

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Topics: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, SAS, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Information Applications, Information Management, Uncategorized, Visualization

Steve Jobs Leaves an Indelible Mark on Business Intelligence

Posted by David Menninger on Oct 7, 2011 6:01:12 AM

About 30 years ago, perhaps on this very day, I was sitting in front of an Apple II working on a VisiCalc spreadsheet. At the time, I don’t think I even knew who Steve Jobs was. I wasn’t in the software industry yet. I was working for a public accounting firm. The Apple II sat in a corner of the office “typing pool.” For those of you who don’t know what a typing pool was, there was no swimming involved – it was a group of full-time employees with dedicated equipment who did all the typing and word processing tasks of the office.

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Topics: Mobile, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Visualization, IT Performance Management (ITPM)

Oracle Unveils the BI Appliance Called Exalytics

Posted by David Menninger on Oct 3, 2011 11:14:12 AM

Oracle kicked off its Open World 2011 conference with the announcement ofExalytics, a new data warehouse appliance specifically for business intelligence (BI). Three years ago when Oracle introduced the Exadata product line it was based on hardware from Hewlett-Packard. Since then it has acquired Sun Microsystems and replaced the HP components in Exadata, assuming complete control over the hardware and software included in the appliance. Oracle also introduced two other appliance products: Exalogic, which is focused on Oracle Applications, and more recently the Oracle Database Machine. Oracle’s new tag line, “Hardware and software, engineered to work together,” indicates its emphasis on these appliances and the potential for more, perhaps even some to be announced at Open World.

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Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Exalytics, Financial Performance, Oracle, Visualization, Workforce Performance, Digital Technology

MicroStrategy Takes Cloud Computing Personally

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 29, 2011 12:13:42 PM

This has been the year of the cloud for MicroStrategy. After ignoring early competition from cloud-based business intelligence (BI) providers, the company has jumped on the cloud BI bandwagon. At MicroStrategy Worldearly this year it announced a program called Cloud Intelligence and this summer introduced MicroStrategy Cloud, a complete BI platform with the option of using either IBM Netezza or ParAccel as the database and Informatica as the data integration environment. Now the company has expanded its cloud offerings to include MicroStrategy Cloud Personal, which enables individuals to easily upload spreadsheet data, analyze it and share it with others. (A free version is currently in beta testing.)

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Topics: MicroStrategy, SaaS, Sales Performance, Software as a Service, Supply Chain Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Visualization, Workforce Performance

Pentaho 4 Unites Enterprise Business Intelligence and Data Integration

Posted by David Menninger on Jun 22, 2011 10:26:10 AM

As recently as two years ago, Pentaho was all about open source business intelligence. The company used an open source business model to build a base of more than 1,200 paying customers and establish more than 8,000 production deployments. It still has an open source business model, but the company has created a broad yet integrated product line that deserves to be evaluated on its features, not just its licensing scheme. This week Pentaho announced version 4.0 of its BI suite along with version 4.2 of Pentaho Data Integration (aka Kettle). 

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Topics: Pentaho, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, OLAP, Visualization, Workforce Performance