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Where can I find good lists of business intelligence software products?
Business intelligence is a relatively new concept, and I'm having trouble finding vendor reviews and white papers about specific products. Where can I find some lists and/or comparisons of different BI software products? I'd really like to know who the leading vendors are for midmarket companies.
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Hi Max,
There are a lot more BI vendors for the midmarket than there used to be, so you have a lot of options. I'm assuming that you don't have a large IT team with deep BI expertise and that your budget is limited.
If that's the case, there are two types of BI that you should investigate first: SaaS BI and in-memory.
SaaS BI
Vendors include: Birst, PivotLink, GoodData, Business Objects OnDemand
SaaS BI is delivered as a service over the web, so upfront costs are lower, implementation times are faster, and ongoing maintenance requirements are few. Some vendors offer more robust BI platforms than others, and some are highly specialized to one type of analysis, such as sales analysis, so you need to know what your needs are.
In-memory analytics:
Vendors include: QlikTech
In-memory is good for groups and it runs off of your own computer. This is best for visualization of data that's already fairly organized. At smaller scale it's very affordable. At larger scale it starts rivaling the traditional on-premise providers in terms of cost and complexity. Doing this well also requires some knowledge of coding (although not a lot, and certainly not as much as on-premise BI).
If my assumption is wrong and you *do* have a lot of BI expertise on staff, there are more options:
Open Source BI
Vendor: Pentaho
Software is free but support is not, and you implement and maintain it yourself.
On-premise BI
Vendor: Microsoft SSAS
Many small businesses start here, especially if you're a Microsoft shop and have an IT team to implement and maintain it. Features are limited and it's somewhat complex.
In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I work for Birst, a SaaS BI company (www.birst.com), so I'm a little predisposed to the SaaS option.
If you're interested in learning more about SaaS BI from an analyst firm, Aberdeen just came out with a report. If you use this link, you can get a free copy of it: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30411437&cid=6512
There's also a "BI 101" section on the Birst website that might be of help: http://www.birst.com/bi101/index.shtml
- Barbara
www.birst.com
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