AN EPIC BATTLE IN THE MAKING
Over $15 billion in business intelligence (BI) mergers and acquisitions were announced in 2007. These
acquisitions are re-igniting the debate on the most fundamental issue in enterprise software today – whether
it is better for companies to have their software supplied by a few conglomerate vendors or by a range of
independent vendors.
During the past 15 years, the BI platform market has been well-served by many vendors offering open
systems solutions, designed to interoperate with a variety of databases, operating systems, Web servers,
application servers, and portal technologies. More than 50 different BI platform vendors have been part of
this market at one time or another, each delivering innovative ideas and solutions to meet the rapidly
evolving business requirements for BI.