A new research report from AMI Partners reveals some promising trends in the business intelligence market. As BI sales heat up in certain regions, The VAR Guy wonders who will benefit most: Traditional BI software companies, open source alternatives or software as a service (SaaS) options? Here’s The VAR Guy’s best guess.
First, some background from AMI Partners: The research firm says 20 percent of mid-sized companies in Brazil and Mexico that are not using a business intelligence solution are expected to acquire the software this year.
The VAR Guy believes BI will enjoy similar growth across North America, Europe and Asia. But the options for businesses and channel partners can be overwhelming. There are:
- Traditional on-premise, closed-source systems from Oracle, SAP and independent companies like SAS Institute.
- Open source options from Jaspersoft and Pentaho, among others.
- Emerging SaaS options.
Alas, many of the closed-source options have reputations for being complex and expensive. But BI companies have gradually polished and positioned new offerings for the mid-market. An example: SAS Institute’s offerings for small and midsize customers.
Open Alternatives
Still, open source options from Jaspersoft and Pentaho continue to gain momentum. Both companies landed on The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50, which tracks the most promising open source partner programs.
Pentaho upped the anti in February 2009 by introducing a Gold Partner Program level. And some IT consulting firms — such as OpenBI of Chicago — are creating SaaS solutions by blending Pentaho’s BI software with Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud.
For solutions providers, the message is clear: BI sales opportunities — and deployment options — continue to grow. If you were a BI reseller five years ago and left the market because the software was too expensive or too complex to deploy, it’s time to come back and give the industry a second look.
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Thanks for the link to the AMI research VAR Guy. We’ve been personally experiencing the same momentum mentioned in that report already here in NAmerica. We work Pentaho and have played around with Jaspersoft. Another open source component you didn’t mention is Jitterbit’s data integration suite, which we use pretty often for its ETL tools. Not a complete BI solution but it works great in situations where clients already have one of closed-source or Saas BI implementations.
In this economy BI becomes all the more important for efficiency and the open source options offer the value and the right price. It’s a great time to hop on board.
Harold: You taught The VAR Guy something new. He wasn’t familiar with Jitterbit. Now he is
Harold: You taught The VAR Guy something new. He wasn’t familiar with Jitterbit. Now he is
Sorry, forgot to add great post! Can’t wait to see your next post!
It was great to know, five years back BI implementation was an expensive investment and ROI was scaled high,however now the Open source Bi implementations have taken the BI market by STORM
I agree with the Post that Many of the industries who have invested in BI solutions with Licensed softwares are slowly moving towards the Open BI solutions during this financial crunch
Thanks,
Aasheerwadh Karapi
Aasheerwadh: Whether it’s open source or closed source, businesses are looking at a range of options before they sign off on a PO.
Open source companies certainly grab headlines because most are small, nimble and Web 2.0 savvy when it comes to market.
But don’t dismiss the closed-source folks. Saw some news over on CRN that SAS Institute (closed source BI) has zero plans for layoffs this year and the company seems to be holding up pretty well during the recession.