Business Intellegince

[*SynergyX*]

Hows the BI market these days?? - in the MS & SAP stack.
looking at stuff like Microsoft RS,AS,SSIS and SAP Business Objects?
i currently working on the microsoft side and enjoying it somewhat...but MAY delve into SAP @ some point.

any inside knowledge would be appreciated.

 

[xrapidx]

Its only just starting

 

[Chunkyfeather]

In my experience its beginning to gain huge momentum. Alot of companies are seeing value in mining their data.

We have landed a few big projects in the BI field in a industry we thought would've already had this kind of information available to them, but they don't. Its actually scary to think that a lot of big businesses don't mine their own data.

Its ludicrous, but they are seeing the errors of their ways.

One example i will use is for a HUGE client; their previous MD had vision and asked us for this BI solution, which we are almost done with (2 year project), he subsequently left and went to their competitors who are much bigger, and the company we started the BI project got a new MD and he has no effing clue, he doesn't see the value in the BI system. LOL, how can he be an MD if he doesn't have any foresight. No wonder the previous MD left he had vision and was head hunted by the bigger company.

BI is growing and there is so much information that is not mined properly in a way that businesses can use the info.

 

[TKD01]

Business Intelligence is gaining momentum world wide - more companies are getting information focussed. Must say our SA BI market is quite mature compared to the UK for instance.
As for Microsoft - they are investing loads into BI, and their latest and future offerings are geared towards BI if you look at Office 2007 / Sharepoint 2010 / SQL Server 2008 etc... google for Microsoft Surface Business Intelligence - though not extremely practical you can see where they're headed.

 

[hyperian]

I've been working on a business intelligence project for around 8 months now. We're working with around 150gigs of data from multiple data sources, doing some magic, and generating reports off data provided by the cube. Cube design and MDX is a mind-bender. It definitely seems that larger companies are definitely starting to look closer into capitalizing on the data that's sitting in their data centers.

 

[diabolus]

Well it's always been growing and i'm sure it will continue to. BI is not what i consider a "quick solution", many companies don't even have a central ERP system [or any system at all!]. We've been at companies that either run off Excel or have little applications all over the show for this and for that and when you try to reconcile this into a warehouse it's just chaos. Nothing matches, nothing balances and even employees will admit they have no clue which data is the "master" anymore. So it can be a painful and slow process, and all this tends to fly under the "BI Project" radar.

And then once you figure out your data sources, then no one actually knows what to measure or what they want to see. [This is where you realize most companies somehow run totally blind, they only know they are losing money or time or performance AFTER the fact or when the bank phones...].

I think the SQL Server / Sharepoint / Performancepoint / Analysis Services stack from Microsoft is a pretty good deal both money wise and development wise (it's possibly one of the cheapest BI solutions out there if you got the developers) , but does need quite a bit of technical expertise [it sometimes feel a little too modular too me] . There are solutions out there that 'encapsulates' everything into a much less complicated package, but it's usually extremely expensive and/or not very flexible.

Business Objects vs. Microsoft ....amusing part, Microsoft is DIRT cheap in comparison. BO is very very expensive if you want to go all the way. Believe me, price difference is enough to let even major corporations think twice.

 

[hyperian]

I think the SQL Server / Sharepoint / Performancepoint / Analysis Services stack from Microsoft is a pretty good deal both money wise and development wise (it's possibly one of the cheapest BI solutions out there if you got the developers) , but does need quite a bit of technical expertise [it sometimes feel a little too modular too me] . There are solutions out there that 'encapsulates' everything into a much less complicated package, but it's usually extremely expensive and/or not very flexible.

Business Objects vs. Microsoft ....amusing part, Microsoft is DIRT cheap in comparison. BO is very very expensive if you want to go all the way. Believe me, price difference is enough to let even major corporations think twice.

Make no mistake, BI via the Microsoft route is pretty costly. We run a monster machine for our BI work, with 16 cores and 70gb+ RAM. Bear in mind that the license cost of Sql Server 2008 R2 Standard is $7,499 per processor!, and maxes out at 64GB memory. Moving on to Enterprise will set you back $28,749 per processor, so it soon adds up

 

[undesign]

Congratulations - you win the thread title of the month award.

 

[xrapidx]

Make no mistake, BI via the Microsoft route is pretty costly. We run a monster machine for our BI work, with 16 cores and 70gb+ RAM. Bear in mind that the license cost of Sql Server 2008 R2 Standard is $7,499 per processor!, and maxes out at 64GB memory. Moving on to Enterprise will set you back $28,749 per processor, so it soon adds up

Compare that to an annual SAS Enterprise license.

 

[diabolus]

Make no mistake, BI via the Microsoft route is pretty costly. We run a monster machine for our BI work, with 16 cores and 70gb+ RAM. Bear in mind that the license cost of Sql Server 2008 R2 Standard is $7,499 per processor!, and maxes out at 64GB memory. Moving on to Enterprise will set you back $28,749 per processor, so it soon adds up

Yes, but your "Database" and licensing + hardware thereof is a different matter. No matter what BI solution you take, it must run on a database server. If you pick Oracle, trust me it's even MORE expensive. SAP itself runs on SQL Server and/or Oracle [not sure what exactly nowadays] , so even without any BI, you are most likely paying towards a Database server anyway.

The main advantage of the Microsoft solution is, if you buy a SQL Server License, they give you almost all the BI tools with it, and most companies don't even use it. This is where the cost calculation comes in, we've countless times walked into a company who wants to see "KPIs" and "Slice and Dice" goodies and don't have any money for a big software package, and most of the time they have a massive SQL Server licensing for their existing systems [ERP / Payroll / HR etc] without realizing they had all the tools ALREADY.

Anyway i've seen quotes from the likes of business objects. If you thought $30,000 for a sharepoint server with the full monty is expensive, trust me BO will quote you over a million rand+ for their equivalent software packages.

 

[hyperian]

Yes, but your "Database" and licensing + hardware thereof is a different matter. No matter what BI solution you take, it must run on a database server.

This is true. However, we found that our project was progressing to an advanced stage that desperately required features such as semi-additive measures that were only available in SQL Server Enterprise edition. It's difficult to justify a $120k upgrade to this version from Standard, purely for a few BI features that we could not find workarounds for.

I will admit, I have not delved much into the costs of implementing BI systems based on different software. Even so, our dedicated BI server, including software, cost over R500k, and is running SQL Server Standard edition.

 

[diabolus]

This is true. However, we found that our project was progressing to an advanced stage that desperately required features such as semi-additive measures that were only available in SQL Server Enterprise edition. It's difficult to justify a $120k upgrade to this version from Standard, purely for a few BI features that we could not find workarounds for.

I will admit, I have not delved much into the costs of implementing BI systems based on different software. Even so, our dedicated BI server, including software, cost over R500k, and is running SQL Server Standard edition.

Yea, one thing is certain. BI is big money , lots and lots. Just when you think you covered the software and hardware , then you need to pay highly qualified/technical analysts and developers to actually maintain,support and design this whole thing.

 

[xrapidx]

It's a good job to be in - you get to see some quite interesting statistics and values in various industries. I've done BI projects in retail, financial, hr, medical, IT, etc, etc...