This year will be pivotal in BI as the BI pureplay vendors are under fierce attack led by Microsofts giveaway pricing. But lets not don rose colored glasses – Oracle, IBM, Sybase and everybody else is out to make Gartners call for consolidation in BI a reality … and maybe a bit prematurely. As I point out in my BI Desktop article – the presentation layer in BI and enterprise computing is up in the air – how to do it best, and what technologies work most effectively in a vary diverse BI application terrain. So why trim prematurely when the competing technologies havent sorted themselves out?
There have been at least 4 major occasions in the past 20 years where a premature choice was taken by the IT industry to its demise:
1)Relational over hierarchic and network databases – look at the growing reprise of XML, XQuery and hierarchic databases;
2)Bitmap GUI over character based – look whats happening in mobiles, PDAs, and embedded -fast, low power, character GUI;
3)Microsoft to replace IBM as the vendor to trust “you never can get fired for choosing MS” – reliability, security, pricing woes;
4)Move to one browser after assurances Microsoft would fully implement W3C standards – still waiting, resurgence elsewhere.
So in the BI field, which has been so productively leading real enterprise integration, “info at your fingertips”, plus realtime and workflow collaboration – why mess with success and let ivory towers dictate what works best is the market place.
(c)JBSurveyer 2005