Business Intelligence Will Be HOT in 2009

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Sam Conforti

Nobby Akiha reports in SandHill.com on Gartner’s Top Ten “HOT” technologies for 2009. Included in this top 10 list is Business Intelligence (“BI”). Akiha lists the 10 predictions for BI and how BI will surge in 2009 and they include the usual suspects, “The Recession” and “Going Green”; however, the list also gives us some insight into the other salient issues that will cause the use of BI to swell in 2009. For the complete story read Nobby Akiha’s article 10 Predictions For Business Intelligence. Here is a short-hand version of the list:

1.       More Open Source Collaboration: Blogs, online communities, and social networking will help spur the development and use of BI tools.

2.       Rich Internet Applications (“RIA”) for consumers influence the Enterprise:  Workers start to demand the same web applications used at home for the workplace.

3.       The Cycle Goes from Applications – to – Users – to - Better Applications:  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

4.       A Recession Fighter: BI provides the competitive advantage to analyze costs, margins, and channels to better gauge profitability.

5.       Green: BI assists in the allocation of resources. “Plus, ‘going green’ fits with consumer sentiment and conserving resources conserves cash.”

6.       Regulations are coming: In light of the financial melt-down on Wall Street, it is a foregone conclusion that the Feds will be writing more regulations and these regs will most assuredly require companies to retain and disclose data. BI will help with the data management.

7.       Globalization Increases Competition: BI makes it possible for business decisions to be more informed and in real time.

8.       Wider Access to the Analysis: Decision makers are enterprise wide and as BI gains wider adoption these decisions makers will have access to the informed analysis.

9.       Flexible Reporting: Siloed data isn’t much help to the enterprise at large. BI makes it possible for data to be scalable and viewable in various formats.

10.   More Open Source Deployments: These solutions will be customizable for business decisions.

 

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SAP Partners with IBM and INTEL

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Sam Conforti

Alex Goldman reports for InternetNews.com on two interesting collaborations announced recently by SAP in his article SAP Taps IBM, Intel to Cut Datacenter, SMB Costs. Here’s a brief synopsis:

Ability to create an in-house cloud:

The two giants have been collaborating since 1999 on this particular project. Although the product is not yet generally available, SAP and IBM demonstrated it at the CeBIT trade show. The idea is simply to spread SAP’s utilization across the servers in an enterprise which lessens underutilization of servers while also allowing for spikes in usage. This should be attractive to companies trying to get the most out of their current infrastructure. The technology demonstrated is based on the RESERVOIR cloud computing project. The goal is to make it easier for datacenters to be able to adjust their services to meet demand at different times. 

Xeon-based systems for SMB’s:

Another SAP announced partnership is with Intel. SAP’s Business One customers (i.e. SMB’s) are to be the beneficiaries this time. SAP plans to develop applications for use on Intel's 64-bit Xeon architecture. The end result is a faster deployment for SMB’s using Intel Xeon based systems.

The Green Effect:

The current “Green” craze is not lost in the two announcements above. The parties involved are proud to state that both moves reinforce the output of lower carbon emissions in customers' datacenters.

 

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Will IT Vendors Weather the Financial Crisis?

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Sam Conforti

 

Global stock markets are falling.  The price of a barrel of oil broke the $70/barrel mark on its way to $60 and maybe $50.  The $700 billion bailout (or rescue) package of Wall Street hasn’t seemed to take hold.  The Fed has opened up its discount window to all sorts of entities.  And yet amid all the financial tumult, Gartner sees IT spending for the coming year as slowing, but not stopping.

Richard Adhikari reports for Internet.News.com from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida in his article entitled Gartner: IT Spending Will Grow, Just Slowly.  He quotes Gartner’s global head of research, Peter Sondergaard:

"In a worst-case scenario, our research indicates an IT spending increase of 2.3 percent in 2009, down from our earlier projection of 5.8 percent"

What makes Sondergaard so sure the growth, albeit slowed, will continue into 2009?  He cites three factors:

·         There is usually a 2 quarter lag in decreases in IT spending vis-à-vis the economy.

·         The shift to a multi-year approach to IT projects makes a cut implausible.

·         Top management’s realization that IT can help transform their business.

Sondergaard sees developing countries worst hit, with Europe posting negative growth, and the US and Japan as flat for 2009.

It seems that the need for IT will be a stabilizing factor in these turbulent times.  AFCOM is an association which is related to the datacenter industry.  Their study supports Gartner’s conclusion that IT spending will hold and might even increase in 2009.  Why?  Well, if the data center goes down, the whole business might go as well.  Read the whole story Datacenter Dollars Seen as Steady Spend.  The salient points in the datacenter industry to keep in mind for 2009 are these:

·         The downturn in the economy will spur a major growth in greening efforts because they have a payoff in savings.

·         The impact of datacenter budget cuts will reduce overall efficiency of operations in the entire company. When budgets are cut, new technologies don't come into play. Firms need to expand or adopt new technologies and won't be able to.

·         The downturn may spur increases in purchases when companies realize increases in their datacenter's effectiveness affects their company's survival.

·         A company's ability to survive in this economy is more than ever before dependent on the datacenter's performance.

 

 

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Oracle's Financials Look Bright Ahead of "Oracle OpenWorld 2008" as the Acquisition of BEA comes to the Fore

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Sam Conforti

 

It is important to note that Oracle does not have the familiar 12/31 year end, but rather a 5/31 fiscal year end.  Ahead of their conference “Oracle OpenWorld 2008” held in San Francisco this year, Oracle released a wave of glowing financial successes for its first quarter for 2009.

·         Net Income increased 28% to $1.1 Billion

·         Revenues increased 18% to $5.3 Billion

The second quarter is more in question.

·         Non-GAAP revenues could fluctuate anywhere between a 12-15% increase or drop as low as only a 9% increase due to currency fluctuations

·         Non-GAAP EPS should be around 26¢ due to earnings split between higher and lower tax jurisdictions.

The forecast for new software license revenues are also susceptible to the fluctuating currency markets with estimates at 5% - 15% without fluctuations and 2% to 12% if fluctuations are taken into account.  Kenneth Chin, and analyst for Gartner, focused on this broad range and stated:

"Foreign currency had a plus seven percent impact on earnings this quarter, and they see a minus three percent impact for the next quarter, which can be fairly significant.  There's nothing to say that, if the dollar moves more quickly and becomes stronger, that the negative impact wouldn't hit five percent or more."

Fifty percent (50%) of Oracle’s business is license revenue and maintenance fees.  The fastest growing part of their business is middleware.  Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, is confident that they have or soon will replace IBM in this market space.  For a more complete commentary on the second quarter’s outlook and beyond see Richard Adhikari’s article Oracle Sees Tougher Days Ahead. 

With a broader portfolio of software products to bring to the market the emphasis this week at the San Francisco conference will be on the $8.5 billion purchase of BEA.  The BEA middleware products “are key to Oracle's service oriented architecture (“SOA”) strategy.”

Oracle’s next major release will be 11g, expected by the end of the 2009 fiscal year.  BEA will be an integral part of its latest Web and SOA platforms release. 

Also of note is Oracle’s Green Program and its virtualization initiative.  To read the details on the tremendous increase in savings on these two programs and the Integration of the BEA software products into Oracle’s latest offerings see Oracle's Big Show will be BEA's Coming Out Party.

  

 

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