MS beats Business Objects, Cognos

Microsoft has made a leap ahead of Business Objects and Cognos in its ability to execute on BI products and pricing, says Information Week.

Business Objects, Cognos, and Microsoft were placed among the leaders in Gartner's just-released Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms, 2008.

But the research firm placed Microsoft above the other two in its ability to execute, including the competitiveness and success of its BI goods and services, its viability and investment in BI, and the execution of its sales and pricing. In last year's BI platform report, Gartner put Microsoft in the challenger quadrant.

Ensuring that pizza delivery meets customer expectations is an important issue for Papa Gino's, a company that operates more than 370 Papa Gino's pizzerias and D'Angelo sub shops, says Computer World.

In December, the restaurant chain began analysing delivery data with BI software from Cognos, which has since been acquired by IBM under a deal that was announced in November and completed last week.

Papa Gino's executives now use Cognos 8 to analyse the data and look for exceptions, both positive and negative, in an effort to improve delivery-time estimates.

Database vendor Ingres and BI software maker Pentaho have formed a technology partnership to ensure ongoing integration of their open source product lines, says Intelligent Enterprise.

In addition, the companies said they would offer customer support and conduct joint sales and marketing activities.

The partnership is in response to customer demand for analysis and reporting on data locked away in operational databases. BI is among the fastest growing software segments, experts say.