Who are the market leaders in the business intelligence industry?

We agree with Ben in that every organization is different - SMBs can offer just as good a service as the big players, if not better! There could be a number of things that make smaller companies stand out above others.

The ones we think are the most important are:

· Price
· Simplicity of use (functionality)
· Features
· Overall sexiness

For example if we compare some of the market with our product, Bime™:

Birst – Not so user friendly, does not have so many features
QlikView – Long installation and setup. Expensive
GoodData – Fewer data connectors, specialized by industry
Tableau Software – Expensive, installed software but user friendly and intuitive
PivotLink – No geolocation, specialized to certain industries

So yes, it really depends on your business needs.

Hi Mike,

If you are asking a generic question about BI vendors then it is already answered by researchers. This information is already available at the Magic Quadrant for BI platforms.

If you are asking about the leaders focusing on innovating and improving, my big vendor choices would be:
- SAP with it's OnDemand-portfolio,
* They have an innovating team doing great things

- Microsoft with it's Azure-platform,
* They are always looking ahead and I think they will move in to become a top-player

- IBM with it's move for SPSS will add new frontiers
* They will focus on predictive and statistics instead of 'mainstream BI'

It depends on the next targets, the predictive analytics vendors, before we have a new leading list in the Overall BI.

I've been really impressed by the work Tableau is doing. Though they're still a relatively small player, they're a thought leader that is focused on clean, intuitive data presentation. Also, with the release of Tableau Public, they've launched an exciting effort to bring free BI to the masses.

SAP

You need to know first what you're looking for.

If budget is not really considered. The most famous would be teradata.
If flexibility and features, I would prefer cognos and bo.
If do not like cubes, in some situation it's funny to make many cubes. You would like microstrategy.
If the most consider is predictive analysis, spss should be considered.
if budget very limited, pentaho and jaspersoft. But I prefer jaspersoft if you do not need predictive analysis. But I think it is debatable.

We agree with Ben in that every organization is different - SMBs can offer just as good a service as the big players, if not better! There could be a number of things that make smaller companies stand out above others.

The ones we think are the most important are:

· Price
· Simplicity of use (functionality)
· Features
· Overall sexiness

For example if we compare some of the market with our product, Bime™:

Birst – Not so user friendly, does not have so many features
QlikView – Long installation and setup. Expensive
GoodData – Fewer data connectors, specialized by industry
Tableau Software – Expensive, installed software but user friendly and intuitive
PivotLink – No geolocation, specialized to certain industries

So yes, it really depends on your business needs.

There is no one leader because there is no one-size-fits-all BI solution. The context of the installation and solution scope usually narrow options very quickly.

If we talk about BI, I had the opportunity to work with OBIEE and Microstrategy.
In my opinion, I think Microstrategy is the most comprehensive platform for BI. MicroStrategy is one of the few companies that their main focus is on BI and the product is one of the best evaluated by Gartner (in the magic quadrant). If we talk about Business Analytics I think SAS is a good choice.

I think you should add BOARD MIT (www.board.com) to the list of leaders.

According to Forrester's report (released this week), Actuate BIRT lead the way in OSBI. You can take a look at their report here http://bit.ly/bXgYk7.

There are many players, but the leadership depends on the sector and the way the company is managed (according to its strategic structure)

Anyway there are a few players involved on leadership nowadays; I would say Microsoft, Oracle, IBM & SAS, then in a second level I’d say Microstrategy & SAP.

Then (in a 3rd level) I’d say Tableau that is making an awesome improvement of the traditional BI, and could be an interesting challenger of the industry.

Finally every company using a BI software, at the end uses MS Excel to process and analyze data.