BPS - A New Acronym for BPM?

OK, I saw this in a press release today on a ZDNet site...



"...Sterna Technologies was one of the few enterprise products to present at Demo 08. The company introduced its Business Positioning System (BPS), which is another name for Business Performance Management (BPM) or any other variety of acronym for dashboards the improve corporate performance..."

Well I sure have never heard the acronym BPS as (quote) "another name for BPM"

Imagine the confusion in the market when companies need to wrap their heads around BI/BPM/CPM/EPM and now BPS!

Why don't we just have a single standard? Is it that hard?

Lets see - who knows what ERP is? And what is CRM? -- aha! it is really not that hard to have a single acronym.

I put a challenge out there to all of you....what about a single understandable acronym?

Personally of course we like BPM -- I wonder why?

Happy 2008 y'all

Justifying the spend on Business Intelligence

I saw this article distiributed by the The Daily Telegraph in the UK (all credit goes to them) on December 13 and thought it was a worthwhile read...

With all that IT spend out there how do you justify the additional costs for a new BI solution?(and they can be quite large)

The overarching benefit any BI project will bring to your organisation is that it empowers users to be more efficient, it provides them more and better information --- all of this should translate to overall corporate improvement!

Overall improvements come in the form of:

• Grow sales and boost profits
• Improve customer retention and satisfaction
• Empower business people to make better, faster decisions
• Help in compliance with regulations and legislation
• Share knowledge and reduce brain drain
• Get promoted!

I agree wiht all of these business benefits and see these types of benefits continually told to me by all my clients (maybe the promoted one not so much!)

There are so many good reasons to do a BI project and these projects have proven to be so empowering and enlightening --- SO GET OUT THERE AND GET ON BOARD --- YOUR COMPETITORS ARE!!!

,,,and then IBM swallows the whole lot

Funny how just recently Cognos were singing the tune to me of being the last independent BPM player. I guess in a way that still holds true. One thing that does remains true is that Cognos will still be ERP independent (which it would not have been if Oracle or SAP or Microsoft had acquired it)

Recently Cognos swallowed Applix (see my last post) and now, well IBM have the lot for a $5B transaction.

So what is worth saying here? Well when I think about it I guess I can only say that there really is still plenty of choice out there... Let's see....

what we have left here is the following at the top end of town:

• Oracle (incl Hyperion)
• IBM (incl Cognos and Applix)
• SAP (incl Outlooksoft and Business Objects)
• Microsoft
• HP (?) -- hmm...not too sure whether they are a player or not!

For anyone who knows me this is what I have been saying for years .... there will only be four big players left!

Ok, so what options does an Aussie mid-sized company have?

Well there are still many small players left to choose from for those companies not wanting to get into bed with one of the big four, there is:

• ZAP Technology
• Corvu
• Calumo
• SeeMore Data
• Microstrategy
• Qliktech
• Satori
• Prophix
• Board

see, there really are still many choices for you!

IBM/Cognos Press release: http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2007/1112.html?mc=-web_hp

M&A continues....Cognos buys Applix

Ok, so there is plenty analyst stuff out there and plenty of commentary... you can see BPM Partners Blog (Craig Schiff at

http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/schiff/)

but what does it mean for us down here in Australia?

Well.... anyone currently in the market looking to buy will surely find this a bit 'grey' --- which technollogy is better for your particular needs? the choice of company between cognos and Applix becomes a moot point (and by the way you gotta say Cognos is a far more stable, less risky option as a software supplier overall than Applix was)

Locally Applix has a very small direct team and mostly work via their partners (who by the way are mostly also very good - need to know who they are? send me a question and I'll tell you)

I suspect that Cognos will simply 'fold' the Applix partners into their family so from an implementation point of view any Applix customers should still receive the best implementation and will now get Cognos direct support.

From a pure technology point of view, again I see this as positive --- Applix customers will in future have access to the Cognos8 BI suite which has many distinct advantages over Applix. I of course have no idea what the prices will be like.

A win-win for Applix and Cognos Australian customers? I reckon!

For those currently evaluating and deciding what to do? Hmm.... a little more tricky.. you really do first need to decide on which technology is best for you (Applix and Cognos are truly quite different) and then decide how to negotiate the pricing for each of the range of products...Cognos Planning, Applix (which will no doubt be rebranded into a Cognos xxxx, Cognos Controller, Cognos BI - of which by the way there are many areas of functionality)

SAP buys Outlooksoft

Hmm... have to admit this one took me by surprise!

SAP always needed to improve their BPM capabilities but it has not really been their style to go out and procure competitors (even if that competitor is tiny compared to them)

This is a good thing I reckon - both for SAP and for OLS, especially locally (in Australia) where my opinion is both companies were struggling to gain real traction in this particular space. And by that I mean against their core competitors.

OLS really needed a fresh injection of new people and SAP will no doubt bring that to them. SAP now have a much more 'user friendly' BPM offering to show their existing client base and prospective clients.

It will however be interesting to see how the technologies are integrated in the coming releases.

I am also proud to see that two companies that BPM Partners CEO (Craig Schiff) was involved with in their start-up phses have done so well --- Hyperion being purchased by Oracle and OLS being pruchased by SAP. I am proud to be associated with Craig Schiff! He is truly a visionary!

Cool Vendors

Gartner have just published a new report called "Cool Vendors in Analytics, Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management, 2007" - You have to buy it unfortunately and I have no permission to reproduce it here.

I am persoanlly all for innovation. And it would appear that depsite all the 'big names' in the BPM (or CPM as gartner call it) space, there are still innovative companies out there.

Here are some local (Australian) ones for you to consider in your mix when evaluating BI/BPM companies. They are all locally grown and highly innovative:

• SeeMoreData (Melbourne)
• Enovation (Sydney)
• ZAP Technology (Brisbane)
• Mondelio (Sydney)
• Corvu (Sydney)
• Calumo (Sydney)

So, before you rush out and purchase only those with the large marketing budgets, consider some of the innovative companies too. You may be pleasantly surprised!

M&A activity continues

On March 5th Corvu announced that they were to be acquired by Rocket software.

Extract of Press release follows: "...Minneapolis – Monday, March 5, 2007 - CorVu® Corporation (OTC BB: CRVU), an innovative provider of Business Intelligence and Performance Management software solutions, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Rocket Software, Inc. and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rocket Software, Inc. under which CorVu will be acquired in an all cash merger transaction..."

So who exactly is Rocket software? I sure never heard of them, have you?

They certainly are a company on an acquisition trail (see http://www.rocketsoftware.com/news/news).

But what do they want with a BPM/BI Vendor? Well, it would appear from their website that they are quite a 'mixed' company and have their own BI tool called Rocket which appears to have multiple usages. So I can only guess that Corvu would server to add to that capability because Corvu has some great functionality surrounding a complete BPM solution.

I wonder if Rocket, who do not appear to have any exsiting Aussie presence plan on entering our market via Corvu?