BI Survey 9 - Multiple Ways To Spin A Story

[Alan Kirk]

BI Survey has released its results for the 9th year. Either I didn't know about or had forgotten that I'd ever heard of years 1 to 8. And with the report costing around USD $5K I'm unlikely to be excessively familiar with year 9's results either.

The survey was of 2,170 users, of which only 39 (1.80%) were TM1, and 60 (2.76%) were PALO. The largest participant categories were MicroStrategy (172, 7.93%) and QlikTech QlikView (146, 6.73%).

This is not what I found interesting.

What I found interesting was what came through the news feeds today, although I hesitate to call verbatim quoting of press releases "news".

On the one hand (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Full-Mark ... 0.html?x=0), we have:

FREIBURG, Germany, October 12, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Palo, the Business Intelligence of the Jedox AG, was analysed in detail for the first time by the BI Survey and was able to claim a top position at the first go in the global list of leading BI-products. With regards to various categories Palo claimed multiple top positions, against 23 examined products. In the Business Benefit Index (BBI), a key factor of the survey that represents the customer value of the products, Palo is placed as the 1st. runner-up.

First. Runner. Up??? That had to be written by a marketing 'droid. It sounds suspiciously like a lot of local (any country's local) reporting on the Commonwealth or Olympic Games where there is extensive coverage of how the local team member won SILVER!!! in some event or other, with the assumption that there may have been a gold winner but really, who cares? We wuz the first who wasn't first!

Now on the other hand (http://www.cnbc.com/id/39436067) we have:

MicroStrategy Receives Highest Overall Ranking in The BI Survey 9, Industry's Largest Independent Survey Received Top Rating in 16 Key Performance Areas in Peer Group Analysis of Largest BI Product Suites
MCLEAN, Va., Sept 30, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- MicroStrategy(R) Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software,

If we do say so ourselves...

today announced that in a comprehensive survey of companies using business intelligence software products, MicroStrategy achieved the highest overall ranking. The BI Survey 9, conducted by Business Application Research Center (BARC), is the world's largest independent survey of business intelligence users, with more than 3,000 respondents.

> 3000 is > 2170? Hmm, might want to check the cylinder heads on that calculation engine, there.

I'm sure that if I searched for it I'd be able to find similar releases from other vendors. This one reminds me of the old song lyrics; "Everyone's a winner, baby".

[Michel Zijlema]

Instead of relying on German BI Surveys we could of course rely on Gartners 'unbiased' magic quadrant...

Michel

[Mike L]

The BI Survey is the re-branded successor to The OLAP Report, which you may remember from days of yore. It was quoted several times in the old Applix Forum that was the progenitor of this one. I don't think anyone here shelled out for a full copy when it cost "only" $3-3.5k(USD) either, but the free excerpts made for interesting reading. Of course, marketing 'droids (who may or may not have actually read it either) can make it seem to say whatever they want.

[jim wood]

There has always been a question around the output of this report. It's funny that they have not included any oracle products or did you not include them in the list Alan??

Jim.

[Alan Kirk]

There has always been a question around the output of this report. It's funny that they have not included any oracle products or did you not include them in the list Alan??

The full product list can be found from the "2,170 users" link in my original post. There were too many to list in the post. TM1 was in fact the last one to make it into the detailed analysis list; two Oracle products were higher on it:
Oracle BIEE, 49 respondents, 2.26%
Oracle Hyperion Essbase/Planning, 41 respondents, 1.89%

And two made it into the also-ran list:
Oracle Discoverer/BISE 21 respondents, 0.97%
Oracle Hyperion Intelligence/Interactive Reporting 18 respondents, 0.83%

Now, as for how they selected the respondents for inclusion, that's another matter. And whether some groups of product admins were perhaps too busy creating useful solutions to answer questions like "Is BI a good thing for a business?" is another.

[jim wood]

Now, as for how they selected the respondents for inclusion, that's another matter. And whether some groups of product admins were perhaps too busy creating useful solutions to answer questions like "Is BI a good thing for a business?" is another.

How do you make the answer to that colourful? I think I would rather answer "Describe the contents of a ping pong ball in 500 words"

[garry cook]

I got a copy of the OLAP report from 2007/08 kicking about somewhere (combination of being a respondant to the questionnaires and a reduced payment to £1.5k made via a consultancy budget if I remember correctly). Was authored by Nigel Pendse.

Strage thing is that the 07/08 report featured TM1 quite heavily - certainly far more than 39 users (pretty sure it was in the hundreds). It came out very strongly in quite a few areas if I remember correctly, pretty sure it topped the speed of implementation, success rate of implementation, end user satisfaction and lowest consultancy cost for project completion and was top three for a number of other areas.

May try and hunt it out to post depending on if there's any legal bindings on it (which to be fair there probably is).

Seems strange though given the huge changes in TM1 both in terms of functionality and in terms of level of usage following the takeover of Applix that they've actually dropped the numbers of TM1 respondees so desperately

[Alan Kirk]

Seems strange though given the huge changes in TM1 both in terms of functionality and in terms of level of usage following the takeover of Applix that they've actually dropped the numbers of TM1 respondees so desperately

OK, well that explains part of it; apparently the voters are determined by "whoever rocks up to the web site to vote". Very scientific. (And yes, I am aware of the "DO NOT SHARE" bit of the link there, but it seems to work from any computer and it's not like I'll be using it any time soon.)

Of course, some vendors may encourage their customers to respond to it, which could explain the number skew.

[Mike L]

Yes, that is how they are determined: self-selected interested parties. I was a respondent in the OLAP survey for three years running, but since I retired I am not among the 39 this year.

Nigel seems to have been very favorably impressed by TM1, and talked it up quite a bit. He more or less threw in the towel on covering OLAP products as a distinct market when consolidation of BI companies made them more like components than a distinct line of business. Now the BI survey is carried on in other hands.