Overview

An Overview of The BI Survey 10

How will The BI Survey 10 help me?

The BI Survey 10 will enable you to compare leading BI products across multiple criteria and find out which tools are the best fit for your organization. It also reveals the best practices which lead to the most successful BI projects and will save you time and money in research hours and consulting fees.

What do I get when I purchase The BI Survey 10?

The BI Survey is made up of three main components:

The BI Survey Analyzer

Access to an online tool that allows you to analyse the survey data every which way. You can select your own customized group of products and run reports displaying how the products stack up against each other in real world deployments. Click here to find out more.

The BI Survey: The Results

A PDF report containing expert analysis of the survey results, revealing the best and worst products, emerging market trends and other interesting findings. Click here to find out more.

The BI Survey Best Practices

A PDF report highlighting the most important factors that contribute to a successful BI tool selection project. This will help to ensure that your BI project is always on the right track. Click here to find out more.

What is the basis of The BI Survey 10 data?

The BI Survey 10 is based on findings from the world's largest and most comprehensive survey of business intelligence end-users, conducted earlier this year. In total, 2961 people submitted responses to the survey of which 2262 answered a series of detailed questions about their usage of a named product.

Which products are analyzed in The BI Survey 10?

All products that attracted over 30 survey responses are analyzed in detail in The BI Survey 10. This year twenty-six products are included, the most ever. These range from offerings from all the major vendors to a number of tools from independent software companies.

Click here for a full list of the products included in The BI Survey 10.

What will The BI Survey 10 tell me?

The BI Survey 10 answers a myriad of questions about BI product selection and usage. This is just a selection of the issues that The BI Survey 10 tackles:

The Business Benefits Index

One thing that all BI deployments ought to have in common is that they should deliver business benefits. This section explains The Business Benefits Index (BBI), our proprietary nine-point method of identifying the level of success achieved from the implementation of a BI solution and provides a variety of analyses based on this measure.

Goals Achievement Index

In addition to our analysis of the Business Benefits of BI software projects, we also carried out a detailed analysis of goal achievement. This analysis compares project results with the initial list of goals set when a project was started. There are many ways to evaluate BI products technically, but measuring their customers’ success focuses more on the real purpose of implementation. This allows products that are not technically comparable to be evaluated side by side in a meaningful way.

Deployment, costs and applications

This section looks at several aspects of BI deployments, including how widely BI is deployed, the ongoing admin/maintenance effort and the cost of ownership and applications. We aggregated results of several questions in the survey and calculate a cost of ownership index which shows the relative costs per seat of the products in The Survey.

The purchase cycle

This section analyzes how people buy BI tools and how satisfied they are. It considers the various influences on their decisions, what factors they feel are important and the resultant success rate with different tools.

Vendor effectiveness

A software vendor's marketing department does more than run campaigns and design the website. It is responsible for a whole set of product management, positioning, pricing, packaging and promotional activities, the purpose of which is to help increase sales while keeping selling costs down. We do not try to evaluate the individual activities, but their overall effectiveness based on a variety of criteria including marketing, sales, deployment, product support and loyalty, all of which are measured in terms of how buyers and prospects behave.

Implementation and rollout times

The success of a project depends at least as much on how well it is implemented as on what product is used. We therefore asked respondents which resources had been used to implement their systems, what the external consulting costs were, and the length of time to the initial rollout. We also examine the correlations between those factors and overall project success.

Problems in BI projects

BI deployments depend on a complex choreography of people, data and technology. If any of these fails to perform, the problems soon mount up — and the majority of our respondents identified at least one major problem that had occurred. This section analyzes these problems and how they relate to other factors. It also looks at what would deter people from deploying their solutions more widely.

Web BI

For several years, it has been confidently assumed by many observers that BI applications were mainly deployed via web browsers. Through a series of analyses of web deployment and extranet usage, this section looks at what our respondents actually reported, which turns out to be rather far from the received wisdom.

Clients for multidimensional databases

Several OLAP servers allow a choice of front-end tools from both the server vendor and third parties, and most BI front-ends can be used with both relational databases and other sources, such as ERP applications and OLAP servers. This section analyzes the usage of different front-ends with OLAP servers.

Data Volumes

Most BI vendors enjoy boasting of their products’ scalability. They frequently fail to define what they mean by ‘scalable’, but one common definition is based on the amount of data they can handle. We therefore try to cut through this boastful fog to find out how much data real users report handling in their applications. This section seeks to analyze reported data volumes by a number of parameters before addressing that perennial question: "Is bigger better?"

Performance

Poor query performance is by far the most frequently reported product-related problem in previous editions of The BI Survey. By having a better understanding of which products perform well or badly, you will be assisted in your product choice, and will know what problems are likely to occur if you choose a product that is known to be slower. You will also have more realistic expectations for performance than you can get from a slick demo with trivial amounts of data and no complex architectures. And if you do choose a product that is known to have performance problems, you should be prepared to invest in faster hardware.

As with previous editions, but unlike most other published surveys, The BI Survey 10 remains completely vendor-independent. This means that vendors had no power to set any of the questions, nor any influence over how the survey responses were analyzed and presented. All information provided is used only in aggregate form and is kept strictly confidential.


	Overview
Overview Explore The BI Survey 10 Products covered Why buy? Free Preview Purchase About us Contact us	An Overview of The BI Survey 10 How will The BI Survey 10 help me? The BI Survey 10 will enable you to compare leading BI products across multiple criteria and find out which tools are the best fit for your organization. It also reveals the best practices which lead to the most successful BI projects and will save you time and money in research hours and consulting fees. What do I get when I purchase The BI Survey 10? The BI Survey is made up of three main components: The BI Survey Analyzer Access to an online tool that allows you to analyse the survey data every which way. You can select your own customized group of products and run reports displaying how the products stack up against each other in real world deployments. Click here to find out more. The BI Survey: The Results A PDF report containing expert analysis of the survey results, revealing the best and worst products, emerging market trends and other interesting findings. Click here to find out more. The BI Survey Best Practices A PDF report highlighting the most important factors that contribute to a successful BI tool selection project. This will help to ensure that your BI project is always on the right track. Click here to find out more. What is the basis of The BI Survey 10 data? The BI Survey 10 is based on findings from the world's largest and most comprehensive survey of business intelligence end-users, conducted earlier this year. In total, 2961 people submitted responses to the survey of which 2262 answered a series of detailed questions about their usage of a named product. Which products are analyzed in The BI Survey 10? All products that attracted over 30 survey responses are analyzed in detail in The BI Survey 10. This year twenty-six products are included, the most ever. These range from offerings from all the major vendors to a number of tools from independent software companies. Click here for a full list of the products included in The BI Survey 10. What will The BI Survey 10 tell me? The BI Survey 10 answers a myriad of questions about BI product selection and usage. This is just a selection of the issues that The BI Survey 10 tackles: The Business Benefits Index One thing that all BI deployments ought to have in common is that they should deliver business benefits. This section explains The Business Benefits Index (BBI), our proprietary nine-point method of identifying the level of success achieved from the implementation of a BI solution and provides a variety of analyses based on this measure. Goals Achievement Index In addition to our analysis of the Business Benefits of BI software projects, we also carried out a detailed analysis of goal achievement. This analysis compares project results with the initial list of goals set when a project was started. There are many ways to evaluate BI products technically, but measuring their customers’ success focuses more on the real purpose of implementation. This allows products that are not technically comparable to be evaluated side by side in a meaningful way. Deployment, costs and applications This section looks at several aspects of BI deployments, including how widely BI is deployed, the ongoing admin/maintenance effort and the cost of ownership and applications. We aggregated results of several questions in the survey and calculate a cost of ownership index which shows the relative costs per seat of the products in The Survey. The purchase cycle This section analyzes how people buy BI tools and how satisfied they are. It considers the various influences on their decisions, what factors they feel are important and the resultant success rate with different tools. Vendor effectiveness A software vendor's marketing department does more than run campaigns and design the website. It is responsible for a whole set of product management, positioning, pricing, packaging and promotional activities, the purpose of which is to help increase sales while keeping selling costs down. We do not try to evaluate the individual activities, but their overall effectiveness based on a variety of criteria including marketing, sales, deployment, product support and loyalty, all of which are measured in terms of how buyers and prospects behave. Implementation and rollout times The success of a project depends at least as much on how well it is implemented as on what product is used. We therefore asked respondents which resources had been used to implement their systems, what the external consulting costs were, and the length of time to the initial rollout. We also examine the correlations between those factors and overall project success. Problems in BI projects BI deployments depend on a complex choreography of people, data and technology. If any of these fails to perform, the problems soon mount up — and the majority of our respondents identified at least one major problem that had occurred. This section analyzes these problems and how they relate to other factors. It also looks at what would deter people from deploying their solutions more widely. Web BI For several years, it has been confidently assumed by many observers that BI applications were mainly deployed via web browsers. Through a series of analyses of web deployment and extranet usage, this section looks at what our respondents actually reported, which turns out to be rather far from the received wisdom. Clients for multidimensional databases Several OLAP servers allow a choice of front-end tools from both the server vendor and third parties, and most BI front-ends can be used with both relational databases and other sources, such as ERP applications and OLAP servers. This section analyzes the usage of different front-ends with OLAP servers. Data Volumes Most BI vendors enjoy boasting of their products’ scalability. They frequently fail to define what they mean by ‘scalable’, but one common definition is based on the amount of data they can handle. We therefore try to cut through this boastful fog to find out how much data real users report handling in their applications. This section seeks to analyze reported data volumes by a number of parameters before addressing that perennial question: "Is bigger better?" Performance Poor query performance is by far the most frequently reported product-related problem in previous editions of The BI Survey. By having a better understanding of which products perform well or badly, you will be assisted in your product choice, and will know what problems are likely to occur if you choose a product that is known to be slower. You will also have more realistic expectations for performance than you can get from a slick demo with trivial amounts of data and no complex architectures. And if you do choose a product that is known to have performance problems, you should be prepared to invest in faster hardware. As with previous editions, but unlike most other published surveys, The BI Survey 10 remains completely vendor-independent. This means that vendors had no power to set any of the questions, nor any influence over how the survey responses were analyzed and presented. All information provided is used only in aggregate form and is kept strictly confidential.
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