The economy is headed into recession, if it isn't there already, and IT budgets are feeling the pinch. But that doesn't mean companies are putting their business intelligence (BI) plans on hold, especially if those plans involve open source software. Just last month, open source BI vendor JasperSoft Corp. recorded its 80,000^th deployment, making it the world's most widely used BI software, according to the company. Nearly 20,000 developers have accessed BIRT Exchange, the open source BI community site sponsored by Actuate Corp. And Pentaho Corp. recently raised $12 million in funding, indicative of investors' confidence in open source BI.

With the cost of a typical commercial BI software deployment reaching well into six figures, open source BI software is an attractive option for many cash-strapped businesses and offers them a less expensive way to tap into the power of their data. And with a community of developers regularly adding code, new and customizable open source features emerge more frequently than do those of their commercial counterparts.

But open source doesn't mean free, and companies considering it still need to set aside budget dollars to cover maintenance and support fees.

"Open source is coming on," said an analyst. "There's interest in it and companies are growing more comfortable with it. In fact, research we did last year showed that people didn't have any [reservations] with open source business intelligence."

Open source in a tight economy

An economic downturn, in fact, may actually prove to be a boon for open source BI vendors. CIOs regularly highlight BI as a top priority, but with fewer resources, buying expensive software from commercial vendors like Business Objects and Cognos is difficult to justify. Investing in open source BI software, meanwhile, is a much easier sell.

But the benefits extend beyond a lower price tag.

Downloading and installing open source BI software, for one, is usually a quick proposition. Actuate's iServer Express, an open source report server for its BIRT Eclipse reporting tool, can be deployed in under an hour, according to Vijay Ramakrishnan, marketing director for the San Mateo, Califoernia-based software maker's Java group. Just try that with a commercial BI offering. A large and active community of developers, both outside and within the vendors themselves, also means the upgrade cycle for open source BI software is significantly shorter than it is for commercial offerings, which sometimes last for years.

And the open source model makes customization easier. A company can deploy an open source BI system, gauge user reaction, then work with its own developers and the developer community at large to reshape the software to satisfy its particular needs. Commercial software can also be tailored, but the process is usually more cumbersome, as the code needed to make changes is not open to outside developers and can only be customized by the vendors themselves.

Gartner has embarked on a wide-reaching new study of Google and its potential impact on IT, enterprise businesses, and society in general in the coming years. On April 10 at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Las Vegas, Gartner Vice President Richard Hunter revealed some of the first data points from this study.

The two most interesting points were:

1.) The best way to think of Google is as a disruptive technology.

2.) Disruptive technologies create big losers and big winners, and one of the biggest losers in the Google disruption could be traditional IT departments.

Google’s “Data Layer” includes both internally stored and externally accessed sources (Source: SRS, Google Analysis by Gartner)

· ..- Google knows (almost) everything that is connected to the Web

· ..- Google knows 67% of all Web searches

· ..- Google knows 1% of what is sold on the Web

· ..- Google knows the traffic to over 1.5 million Web sites

· ..- Google knows the physical locations of many things

· ..- Google knows the status of your machine if you install Google apps

· ..- Google knows the behavior patterns of Google registered users

· ..- Google is trying to know the physical location of any cell phone user who has installed Google apps or accesses Google services from the phone

Google as a disruptive technology

This new study is being conducted by a team of 15 Gartner researchers, led by Hunter, and the full report will be published in mid-2008. The title of Hunter’s presentation at ITxpo was “What Does Google Know?” The answer to that question was even more sobering than I expected, as the slide below demonstrates.

Hunter added that Google will know a lot more about what’s sold on the Web if Google Checkout takes off, and could soon know a lot about medicine and health patterns if Google Health Records gets adopted.

The Gartner researchers have estimated that Google technology can address 100 exabytes of data (an exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes). “Their infrastructure has unprecedented scale,” said Hunter, “and what is even more impressive is their ability to connect vast quantities of information… Google is sitting on the biggest pile of information that has ever been collected in the world.”

The reason why Gartner chose to characterize Google as a disruptive technology - rather than just an Internet search engine company - is due to the ambitions that Google has for all of that data and the potential impact that those ambitions could have on the technology industry.

“Where the previous [computing] paradigm has been about my computer, my technology, my stuff … Google is trying to deliver any information, anywhere, to anyone in the world, on any device,” said Hunter.

“Google’s paradigm is a different paradigm. It’s an open source paradigm… We’re about to see a war of paradigms.” Clearly, the leader of the “previous paradigm” and the counter-movement to Google is Microsoft.

However, we also can’t forget that the Google paradigm includes massive privacy concerns. Hunter noted that Google continues to struggle to find the right balance between privacy, security, and its legitimate business interests. The more data Google collects, the bigger and more valuable target it becomes for electronic criminals. That will also make it a bigger target for governments, politicians, and citizen groups.

Hunter stated, “We believe Google’s information security will be a political issue worldwide by the end of the year in 2010.”

Here are few other interesting quotes from Hunter’s presentation, based on the study:

• “Google transcends the limits of the traditional OSI stack.”
• “We don’t know how good Google’s information security is.”
• “Google doesn’t worry about resources. Google’s always got more resources.”
• “Ask not what Google will do to you. Ask what you can do with Google … Ask how much of your business you want to expose to Google.”
• “Above all, move fast, because Google is moving fast.”

Google’s disruption to IT

“Google is disruptive and disruptive technologies produce big winners and big losers,” Hunter said, “One of the big losers is potentially traditional IT departments.”

As part of his presentation, Hunter specifically noted a number of ways in which the Google revolution would disrupt the IT industry in general:

• Traditional database management vendors would be marginalized into handling only high value transactions
• Enterprises will co-opt Google’s approach to data management and Google could host the data
• Proprietary applications such as Microsoft Office would be “deeply threatened”
• Many application builders could start developing on top of the Google platform
• Collaboration services will take a big leap and Google could provide the platform
• Companies will take major parts of the IT infrastructure (e.g. e-mail, storage, and business intelligence) and source it to Google.

However, after the presentation I followed up with Richard to get further clarification on how IT departments could be significant losers in the Google disruption. Here was his response:

“Google has the potential to be the first-choice provider of many services that are now handled by internal IT organizations, starting with non-competitively-differentiating services such as email (which Google already provides to a number of enterprises), and ultimately including high-value-added functions and services such as business intelligence, mobile sales support, and others. Some IT organizations might consider it a boon to pass these functions on to Google so that the IT department can concentrate on very enterprise-specific competitively differentiating applications. IT organizations that measure their worth in terms of how much of the company’s IT needs they supply themselves will be less happy to see Google move in on their turf-and I do mean specifically that in many cases it will be an argument about turf, not enterprise value.

“An important question is: can Google provide the quality (e.g. reliability, availability, security, etc.) that enterprises-a more demanding market compared to individual consumers-require from their suppliers? Consumers are satisfied when the potential provider says ‘Of course!’ Smart enterprises demand certification from someone besides the provider. Providing that certification will be something new for Google. On the other hand, many IT organizations aren’t mature enough to provide proof of their own capabilities in terms of value for money, and so will have a difficult time proving superiority over any external provider, whether or not it’s Google”.

Bottom line for IT leaders

What Gartner is arguing is that Google’s database and data center magic is creating a massive cultural movement and a competitive advantage that is going to sweep away businesses and industries and transform the technology world. In fact, Gartner sees Google becoming so large and powerful from a data storage and access standpoint that it is going to attract scrutiny - and potential regulations - from governments.

While these predictions have legs, several of the trends are larger than Google. As far as IT departments go, there are two related trends that will transform IT over the next decade: utility computing and managed services. The utility computing model will allow IT departments to deploy only the computing capacity that is needed and to track it and charge it to the appropriate business unit, department, or project. That will allow IT to tie the value of technology much more closely to business decisions.

Some businesses won’t want to handle that type of IT internally and so they will outsource it to providers like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, and Verizon Business. It’s unclear whether Google will want to get into the managed services business, but it might make sense for them partner with vendors like the four mentioned in order to offer services such as e-mail, storage, and business intelligence.

In terms of Google’s technical advantage - part of which is tied to its sheer data center capacity - let’s not forget that the other two big data center builders, Microsoft and Yahoo, could tie the knot soon and became a much more potent threat to Google’s vision. That could especially be the case if Microsoft allows its new technology leader, Ray Ozzie, to drive Microsoft in a much more Google-like direction centered around cloud computing. It’s also not a given that what Google has created in the world’s largest and most effective database isn’t something that Microsoft will eventually catch up to and co-opt.

Nevertheless, Google is obviously on the leading edge many of the trends that are powering the next breaking waves in the technology industry, and the effects of these trends will fundamentally change the way corporate IT departments are organized, operated, and financed over the next decade.

Source: Gartner report, 2008

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) customers increasingly need to integrate their internal applications directly with the software functionality available from SaaS providers.

Vendors should implement a portfolio approach to their multienterprise integration strategy to best meet the diverse needs of their target market.

Key Findings:

• Multienterprise integration is complex and resource-intensive.
• SaaS customers need to deal with SaaS integration just as they do for multienterprise integration with other external business partners.
• SaaS vendors that choose a one-size-fits-all approach to multienterprise SaaS integration are more likely to fail to meet the diverse requirements of SaaS customers.
• SaaS vendors can build or outsource their business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure.

Recommendations:

• SaaS customers should evaluate multienterprise SaaS integration from SaaS vendors the same way they evaluate multienterprise integration solutions from other vendors.
• SaaS customers should ask SaaS providers for details about multienterprise SaaS strategy and pricing, and whether their preferred method of integration is supported.
• SaaS vendors should offer a portfolio approach to multienterprise SaaS integration; those that can't do this unilaterally should partner to accomplish this approach.
• When doing integration with multiple business partners, including a SaaS vendor, SaaS customers should implement a portfolio approach to multienterprise integration.

The Multienterprise SaaS Integration Problem:

Although some SaaS-based software functionality can be delivered via the ubiquitous Web browser, in many cases, direct application integration between the software functionality of the SaaS provider and its customer's internal applications and systems are required. We refer to this scenario as "multienterprise SaaS integration." As is the case for internal application integration, the particular type of integration problem you are solving for multienterprise SaaS integration can vary.

For example, the problem you may be solving may be data synchronization, process integration or composite application integration (see "Three Forms of Interapplication Integration in Healthcare"). Regardless of which three integration problems you are solving for multienterprise SaaS integration, the approach can vary widely: for example, batch vs. real-time interaction; or flat files vs. electronic data interchange (EDI), XML or Web services. In addition to achieving basic multienterprise integration, SaaS vendors also need to support multienterprise process visibility (for example, a view of the business process spanning the SaaS provider's and SaaS customer's applications) and compliance (for example, monitoring and enforcing security and service-level agreements).

Alternative SaaS Vendor Strategies for Multienterprise Integration:

Whether large or small, SaaS vendors will ultimately choose one of three strategies for multienterprise SaaS integration:

• One size fits all
• Any way you want it
• Portfolio approach

India to remain the fastest growing IT Services country in the region, while Greater China will represent the largest regional opportunity by 2011…

The IT Services market in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will grow from US$37.5B in 2007 to US$55.9B in 2011, representing a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5% from 2006 to 2011, according to the ‘Asia Pacific IT Services Market and Forecast, 2006-2011’ report by Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry. According to the report, the Indian IT Services market with a CAGR of 18.6% will remain the fastest growing in the region, although as a region Greater China will offer the largest market opportunity in dollar terms at the end of the forecast period.

“The Asia Pacific IT Services market is arguably the global leader in terms of growth, supplemented with a mix of mature and emerging markets,” said Phil Hassey, Vice President – Services Research at Springboard Research. “The markets of interest are not just the top four – China, India, Australia and Korea – but the emerging ones like Indonesia and Vietnam, which will register significant growth going forward,” Mr. Hassey added. The report uses Springboard’s Market Attractiveness Index to rank countries and individual IT Services markets on the basis of growth opportunities. According to the Market Attractiveness Index, the top ten countries in the region are:

1. People’s Republic of China

2. India

3. Australia

4. Korea

5. Indonesia

6. Vietnam

7. Malaysia

8. Rest of ASEAN

9. Singapore

10. Philippines

“For India and China, local capabilities, offerings and presence is just the start of a list of essential requirements for success. On the other hand, existing relationships, marquee clients and strong partnerships can provide capabilities for expansion in markets such as Hong Kong and New Zealand with relatively limited opportunities,” Mr. Hassey added. According to the report, Application Hosting with a CAGR of 19.5% between 2007 and 2011, will register the fastest growth during the forecast period, although Enterprise Application Integration at US$ 7.8billion will continue to be the largest component of the market by 2011. While Enterprise IT Outsourcing is the largest market in 2007, the reluctance of PRC firms to use the Enterprise IT Outsourcing model will reduce its relative size and weighting in the market by 2011.

As part of the report’s overall assessment of the APEJ IT Services market, Springboard Research has several key outcomes and predictions for the industry in 2008. The report predicts that challenges in accessing and retaining IT Skills will accelerate the shift to external services providers, as enterprises will struggle to retain in-house key individuals and skill sets. Also, China will not challenge India as the home of offshore service delivery especially for English language requirements – as skill levels, quality, culture and governance are all more suited to India being a hub of global delivery against the PRC.

About this report

Springboard Research ‘Asia Pacific IT Services Market and Forecast 2006-2011’ report offers an extensive and insightful perspective on IT Services market across Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) region. It outlines 15 individual IT Services markets – including Infrastructure Support, Desktop Management, Enterprise Application Integration and IT Outsourcing - and 15 countries with respect to market size, key players and growth dynamics and forecasts demand and growth for each of them. The report also contains predictions for the IT Services industry for 2008.

About Springboard Research

Springboard Research is a next-generation IT market research and advisory firm. Springboard leverages its pioneering research model to deliver greater agility and flexibility in IT market research and helps its clients lead rather than follow market trends. Springboard works with the leading IT companies in the world in the software, services, telecommunications and hardware sectors. Founded in 2004, Springboard has a worldwide presence with offices in the United States, Australia, Singapore and Japan, as well as global research centers in India, Pakistan, and Morocco. Springboard has been acknowledged as an emerging leader and was recently named ‘Rising Star’ in the global IT market research industry by Outsell, the leading research and advisory firm for the information industry. For more information, please visit www.springboardresearch.com

China leads the pack with SOA integration dominated by local players…

Singapore, March 11, 2008: Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today reported that local System Integrators (SIs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are playing a significant role in SOA vendors’ ability to penetrate four major domestic markets in Asia. This is especially evident in the Chinese market that is dominated by local players. These are the findings of Springboard’s latest research covering Asia’s Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) market, based on a survey of 354 CIOs and IT managers of large and mid-market enterprises in China, India, Singapore, and Australia.

“Local SIs and ISVs form an important part of the SOA ecosystem by integrating systems well, and by building customized applications on vendor platforms,” said Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Manager for Emerging Software for Springboard Research. “While international software vendors also offer integration and consulting services directly, ISV/SI partners are key providers of these services,” added Ms. Aggarwal.

The local ISV/SI partner landscape is very unique throughout most of Asia because up until now, many multinational vendors worked in the region with their top tier global integration partners. However, the Indian market is a notable exception where global IT companies such as IBM, HP and Microsoft dominate mindshare as SOA players, despite the presence of home-grown IT giants like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Satyam.

“The Indian players are now beginning to expand both in the domestic market and neighbouring markets in the region. The case for Chinese integrators is just the opposite, as they have established their hold on the domestic market and are now on the prowl to expand their regional and global presence,” added Ms. Aggarwal.

Springboard has scanned the SOA partner landscape and identified some key vendors who are prominent in Asia. These SOA local leaders include:

1. Kaz Group- Australia
2. Kingdee- China
3. TongTech- China
4. Patni Systems- India
5. Satyam Computers- India
6. TCS- India
7. Wipro- India
8. TmaxSoft- Korea
9. Samsung SDS- Korea
10. NCS- Singapore

“Integration skills of partners have a critical role in successful SOA projects as SOA involves bringing together disparate IT systems,” Ms Aggarwal explained. “The battle for SOA has extended from simply marketing SOA solutions to seeking out partners who have good integration skills and reach in the local markets. Ultimately it is good partners who will make the difference in vendors’ ability to woo customers,” she added.

The study also found that price is not the number one reason for vendor selection. Important reasons for vendor selection are proven products and solutions, clearly defined roadmaps for deployment and vendor reputation. On the other hand, the perception of SOA being expensive emerged as the top inhibitor for SOA deployment.

“As SOA is a strategic initiative, the process requires investment and a long-term organizational commitment. Further, since business managers typically control the budget in an organization, particularly for extended strategic projects, vendors need to target business managers along with technology managers,” said Ms. Aggarwal.

About This Study

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been one of the IT industry’s hottest buzzwords over the past several years. IT vendors are evangelizing SOA and many organizations are looking at SOA to help them better integrate and leverage their existing and future software applications and infrastructures. SOA’s popularity lies in its promise to help organizations improve operations, cut costs, and boost efficiencies, while IT vendors see the technology as a way to tap into new revenue streams and acquire larger enterprise accounts. Springboard Research’s SOA Market Canvas is an ongoing research service that provides extensive SOA market coverage for the Asia Pacific region. The SOA Market Canvas examines key trends in the Asia Pacific SOA market and offers an array of SOA market data on an ongoing basis. Springboard’s Market Canvas service delivers a deeper level of research than other reports of its kind and assesses data from a granular level to help IT vendors formulate better SOA go-to-market plans.

About Springboard Research

Springboard Research is a next-generation IT market research and advisory firm. Springboard leverages its pioneering research model to deliver greater agility and flexibility in IT market research and helps its clients lead rather than follow market trends. Springboard works with the leading IT companies in the world in the software, services, and telecommunications & hardware sectors. Founded in 2004, Springboard has a worldwide presence with offices in the United States, Australia, Singapore and Japan, as well as global research centers in India, Pakistan, and Morocco. Springboard has been acknowledged as an emerging leader and was recently named ‘Rising Star’ in the global IT market research industry by Outsell, the leading research and advisory firm for the information industry. For more information, please visit http://www.springboardresearch.com/.

(By Jeff Kelly, TechTarget)

The business intelligence market underwent some major changes in 2007: A slew of big-time acquisitions altered the vendor landscape dramatically; Microsoft claimed it was "changing the economics" of BI; and one city police department even used BI to fight crime. Here, the TechTarget experts make sense of all the recent BI market action and predict what 2008 holds so you can better plan for the New Year.

William McKnight

Senior vice president of information management at East Hanover, New Jersey-based consulting firm Conversion Services International

• As organizations round out their technology stack, most will chiefly consider business intelligence (BI) offerings from one of the mega-vendors already in their shop, such as SAP, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle.
• Mastering master data in the operational environment will become a needed part of information management, starting in Fortune companies.
• The value proposition for MDM/CDI will become clearer as organizations begin using it to address problems with customers, products, parts, and other "lists" they struggle with having too many of and having too little data integrity with.
• Operational BI will continue to grow.

John Hagerty

Vice president and research fellow at Boston-based advisory firm AMR Research

• Analytic applications will significantly increase in prominence. Historically, most of the attention in this market sector has focused on BI tools. Buyers increasingly demand information delivered to business users in the context of their role and job function within the organization.
• Recent mergers and acquisitions will further force the standardization issue.
• BI and PM will go pervasive. It's no longer an option to report and analyze metrics in isolation.

Wayne Eckerson and Cindi Howson

Director of research for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), and founder of BIScorecard.com

• As BI becomes more pervasive and is deployed on an inter-enterprise basis, vendors who currently offer only per-user pricing will also offer per-server pricing.
• Near-real-time dashboards will be in demand. Users want fresher data faster to gain insight into core operations and business processes and make faster, better decisions.
• Event-driven analytic platforms come of age, as there are many analytic applications that require real-time monitoring and process execution.
• System and usage monitoring will take precedence. Monitoring capabilities, currently lacking in most BI platforms, will reach show-stopper status as the number of BI users in any given deployment escalates, and as BI becomes mission critical. IT will rely on niche vendors (such as Teleran and Appfluent) that currently provide better monitoring capabili¬ties than many BI vendors.
• Mission-critical infrastructures supporting BI solutions will become much more industrial strength in the next 12 months.
• A majority of enterprise BI customers will deploy BI solutions on clustered servers with failover and disaster recovery host sites.

James Kobielus

Principal analyst of data management at Washington, D.C.-based Current Analysis

• BI is quickly becoming SOA's crown jewel. The past year has seen a rash of headline-grabbing mergers and acquisitions in the BI arena.
• BI is evolving into tailored business analytics. Performance management (PM) is rapidly becoming a key competitive front in the BI wars.
• BI going truly real-time through complex event processing. Complex event processing (CEP) promises business agility through continuous correlation and visualization of multiple event-streams.
• BI tools will be increasingly bundled with data warehouse appliances. More and more data warehouse vendors will pre-integrate BI solutions -- their own and/or those of their partners -- into appliances. Increasingly, data warehouse/BI appliances will be tailored, packaged, and priced for many market segments and deployment scenarios.
• BI goes collaborative. In 2008 and beyond, we expect to see the BI, collaboration, and knowledge management segments converge.