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Gartner: Premature BI Consolidation Call

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

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