Business Intelligence Software Product

Today Business Intelligence feature is included in almost ERP software. It becomes one of the most important ERP’s features where enables you to generate analytical reports based on ERP database. It makes ERP is not just for data automation but also decision making tool.

There are so many Business Intelligence software products out there which most of them I never heard before. The BI software can be grouped into some categories, such as

• BI Platform : IBM DB2 / Cube services, SQL Server Analysis Services, Oracle, SAP NetWeaver BI, Hyperion Essbase, Siebel Analytics and so on..
• Business Needs : Scorecarding, Dashboarding, Analysis, Reporting, Modeling and so on..
• Industry : Retail, Financial Services, Manufacturing and so on…

Anyway, I have two favorite Business Intelligence software products, that are Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Service, because it uses Ms. SQL which I am familiar with, and Ms. Excel for generating report analysis.

As long as I know, Microsoft BI software is cheaper than other two behemoth BI vendors like Oracle and IBM. You can get Ms. Service Analysis without additional charge when you purchase Ms. SQL Server database while BI software of Oracle and IBM DB2 is sold separately and quite expensive. For detail price you should contact the resellers

IBM, Microsoft and Oracle top Gartner’s business intelligence platform rankings

According to Gartner report in 2009, IBM was top leader, which completed its acquisition of Cognos. Gartner said the Cognos BI platform’s “Web services-based SOA” is tops in the market, “with shared metadata across the platform enabling ease of transfer from report to query to analysis.” Cognos’ Microsoft Office integration and advanced visualization capabilities also helped its cause.

The second leader was Microsoft, largely on the strength of its “broadly capable product set at a low price point,” according to Gartner. The software giant’s BI pricing and packaging options make it particularly attractive to first-time BI customers and companies looking to reduce the number and complexity of BI tools, the report said.

The next was Oracle. Gartner cited as Oracle’s strengths its 70+ industry-specific BI applications, its improved security and administration capabilities, and its ability to federate data from multiple sources into its BI applications.

Leading Business Intelligence Software Products

I found several leading BI software in the internet. Frankly I have never tested them all but they are famous BI software. But I do not guarantee that the software is the best for your company since it depends on some factors, such as required features, pricing and so on.

Here is the list (This list is NOT ordered “best to worst” or vice versa):

• Microsoft Power Pivot. It consists of two software : PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint. PowerPivot for Excel is a user-friendly way to perform data analysis using familiar Excel features you already know, such as the PivotTable, PivotChart views, Office Fluent user interface, and, and slicers. PowerPivot for SharePoint enables organization to share and collaborate on user-generated data models and analysis in Excel and in the browser.
• IBM Cognos 8 BI. IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence delivers inclusive suite featuring a range of BI capabilities: Reporting, Analysis, Dashboarding and Scorecards on a single, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The suite includes Report Studio, Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Metric Studio, Metric Designer, Event Studio, Framework Manager and PowerPlay Studio.
• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus (EE). It’s a comprehensive suite of enterprise BI products, delivering the full range of BI capabilities including Oracle’s BI Server, BI Interactive Dashboards, BI Answers, BI Delivers, BI Publisher, BI Disconnected Analytics, and Oracle BI Briefing Books. Additionally, it offers Hyperion Interactive Reporting, Hyperion SQR Production Reporting, Hyperion Financial Reporting and Hyperion Web Analysis.
• SAP Crystal Solution. It’s a suite of products which differentiated into three categories :
  • Design and deliver reports that visualize your data using charts, graphs, and video files : SAP Crystal Reports, SAP Crystal Reports Design Package, SAP Crystal Reports Dashboard design Personal Edition, SAP Crystal Presentation Design.
  • Share and view interactive reports and dashboards securely over the Internet : SAP Crystal Reports Server, SAP Crystal Reports Viewer, BI On Demand, SAP Crystal Interactive Analysis Desktop Edition, Crystalreports.com
  • Embed reports into Web, desktop, .NET, and Java applications : SAP Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET, SAP Crystal Reports for Eclipse, SAP Crystal Reports Server OEM Edition, SAP Crystal Reports Runtime Server license
• SAS Enterprise BI Server. SAS Enterprise BI server delivers following features :
  • Portal and dashboard
  • Business visualization
  • Web and desktop reporting
  • Microsoft Office integration
  • Query and analysis
  • OLAP storage and OLAP data exploration interface
  • Business metadata management
  • Flexible deployment options
  • Guided analysis and model development
  • Applications development
• MicroStrategy Reporting Suite. It’s free reporting software and runs on Windows®, UNIX®, and Linux® operating systems. MicroStrategy is optimized for all major database platforms, Web servers, and application servers. It can present data in tabular grid reports, graphs and charts, and combination grid-and-graph displays.
• TIBCO Spotfire Analytics. TIBCO Spotfire Analytics combines business process management (BPM), complex event processing (CEP), predictive analytics (PA) and visual data mining (DM) software. It handles everything from real-time data capture and streaming to data analysis, forecasting and interactive reporting on a single platform.
• InetSoft. They have three kind of product : Style Intelligence – Business Intelligence software, Style Scope – Visual Analysis plus Real Time Reporting and Style Report Enterprise – Reporting Software. They also offer free applications, such as Visualize free, Style scope free edition and Style chart. Just click the link above to know more detail about those product.

For more list of information about Business Intelligence Software Product, you can get from Wikipedia.