Do Big BI Vendors Have a Role in Driving Technology?

Continuing with my comments on Manufacturing Business Technology’s article on BI hype, I can’t help but reveal what I think is the source of this skewering of BI vendors: an “ax to grind”. It appears that the author of the report does not like big BI vendors nor does he understand their role in introducing technology to the marketplace:

“The biggest BI-related myth of all, according to Pendse, is that larger, more expensive solutions deliver greater business value. “We have found that some of the big-name vendors and the most expensive products are not delivering the same business benefits or level of support achieved by some of their lesser-known counterparts,” Pendse concludes. ”There are smaller vendors out there producing cheaper and all-round better solutions than some industry giants,” Pendse concluded.”

The overuse of “some” in the quote indicates a lot of uncertainty about the claims. Certainly there must be smaller, more innovative vendors, out there that produce better results, but this obvious slam on the “big-name” ones, who in reality tend to drive technology into the marketplace, leads me to question the author’s judgement.

Last but not least Manufacturing Business Technology can’t help themselves and must add more fuel to the “skewer” by saying that the report “dispels myths”:

“In addition to dispelling myths about BI usage, the BI Survey 7 also compares 16 market-leading products from vendors such as Microsoft, Microstrategy, Business Objects, and Cognos.

I think the report creates more myths than it dispels; i.e., real world use indicates market acceptance, data explosion isn’t real, big vendors can’t deliver.

How do you see this? Are big vendors driving technology? Should early adopters of big vendor technology be analyzed more closely for indications of market acceptance? What does all this have to do with remaining competitive in a highly changing business environment?

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