Microsoft is often disregarded as a major player in the enterprise BI space; this is despite its being the leading business intelligence (BI) platform on the market globally, according to The OLAP Report and - through the ubiquitous Excel - having more BI users than any other vendor.
"The fact that Microsoft solutions are often deployed as small or departmental solutions allows competitors in this market to dismiss Microsoft as a small- or mid-market player," says Keith Jones, MD of Harvey Jones Systems, the South African distributor of ProClarity. "This assumption is based on wishful thinking, however."
The Microsoft entry and domination of the enterprise BI market sector has been meteoric by any measure. Just a short four years ago Microsoft was not even seen as a serious competitor in the market and the major players had a relatively easy time of it. Yet Microsoft`s entry into the BI space has been one of the single largest influencing factors on the consolidation that has taken place in the BI market. And there is more to come, says Jones.
The combination of the new product releases in the short-term, SQL 2005 including Reporting Services, Maestro and Longhorn, and the maturing of the Share Point and Biztalk markets, will ensure Microsoft widens the gap between itself and its competitors.
For once SA is ahead of the curve as a result of the strong partnership in the region between ProClarity distributor Harvey Jones Systems, and Microsoft. A client such as Edcon has over 13TB in its SQL Server-based data warehouse and over 700 ProClarity BI users. Shoprite, with 9TB in SQL Server and over 500 users, is not lagging far behind.
"The much-awaited release of SQL 2005 later this year is only one of a number of factors that will force competitors to take Microsoft seriously as an enterprise player," Jones says. "The other components of the solution set, such as Longhorn (the 64-bit release of Windows due next year), and the latest Biztalk server (released last year) ensure the underlying infrastructure is up to the job."
SQL 2005 has a number of features that will ensure it extends its domination of this market sector significantly. Most of the enhancements to the SQL 2005 BI platform are in the backend, and allow the environment to be created and administered with less effort than ever before.
"What has been lacking in the past is a user-friendly interface to the data; this shortfall has allowed vendors such as ProClarity to gain excellent traction in the market," Jones adds. "Maestro, the Microsoft Scorecarding product that is due for release with or just after SQL 2005, will give business users a visually appealing way of presenting key performance indicators (KPIs) and other data to the business users."
Reporting Services has also been released, and the single gaping hole in this product, the ability to allow users to quickly author reports using a wizard, has been plugged in SQL 2005. While this product is still not as functional as the more mature reporting tools on the market, it now has a value proposition that simply cannot be ignored.
Jones says Microsoft Share Point is also maturing quickly into one of the leading portal products in the market. "From a slow start it is now gaining significant traction in the market and is now part of the technical roadmap for many organisations."
ProClarity is the first BI product to support SQL 2005 and Harvey Jones Systems is the only African partner in the Early Adopters programme for Maestro. "This gives us a great insight into the functionality of the solutions and what they are capable of," he says. "We are excited by what we have seen so far, and we believe both SQL 2005 and Maestro will have a significant impact on the market and will deliver highly functional solutions."
What does the future hold? There are some more interesting products coming from Microsoft in the long-term, but the one that will have the largest impact on the BI space is likely to be the next release of Office, due out at the end of 2006.
During the rest of 2005 and for most of 2006, Jones sees Microsoft entrenching itself as the tool of choice in the enterprise BI space in this region. "The scalability myths have been destroyed; the functionality is there; many of the tools are included with the platform; front-end tools such as ProClarity are easy to use; and the total cost of ownership, one of the single largest driving factors in this region, is the lowest in the market."
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Harvey Jones Systems (HJS) was established in SA in 1997 as a specialist information delivery company focusing on financial, business intelligence and business performance management solutions on the Microsoft platform, using SQL 2000 Analysis Services as the deployment mechanism. HJS distributes a number of best-of-breed software packages, the flagship being ProClarity.
Its solutions are all based exclusively on the Microsoft platform and it has become the dominant player in this sector in the region with over 100 customers, scaling from small to the largest deployments. HJS is an award-winning company, and its team has a solid understanding of the products it supports and the business issues faced by users deploying these types of solutions.
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