Comments on: Business intelligence: PivotLink v SAP, a tale of two worlds

By: Open Source vs. SaaS BI: Choose Wisely | GoodData

Open Source vs. SaaS BI: Choose Wisely | GoodData — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:05:17 +0000

[...] BI: Has SaaS Killed Open Source? BI SaaS Vendors Are Not Created Equal Business Intelligence: PivotLink v SAP, a tale of two worlds SaaS BI Continues to Draw Interest, Traction Share [...]

By: Nathan

Nathan — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:42:12 +0000

Check out http://www.edificeinfo.com for a hosted BI service tailored to the retail industry.

By: Bob Jones

Bob Jones — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:15:23 +0000

Great post, accman. I am a big SaaS BI proponent. I have evaluated and used many of the tools you are familiar with and I must say putting applications like BO or Cognos in the cloud is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. What impresses me about PivotLink is their data storage architecture, which gives you great flexibility and short implementation times.

Companies like Greenplum, Neteeza and Asterdata are eating into Oracle’s and Teradata marketshare, in the same way that you have seen the open source apps, Jaspersoft and Pentaho gaining inroads vs. Microstrategy, BO, and Cognos. I suspect with PivotLink’s 100% SaaS approach you will see this trend continue as fatigued IT execs scramble to move from under the burden of their existing BI contracts and more importantly, their resource abusing BI platforms.

Fahed: I think you make Ajay’s point when you say “difficulty and risk associated in trying to find PivotLink professionals” as PivotLink does not require a “professional” to administrate or operate. I am looking forward to this paradigm shift in BI. Bring it on!

Bob Jones,
A twice burned BI deployer

By: Fahed Ismail

Fahed Ismail — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:55:41 +0000

@Ajay, I think your opinion in this matter is likely biased considering your role with PivotLink. Also in regards to the BusinessObjects “full OnDemand Solution” it is not exactly what AccMan is complaining about, as he stated that he did not participate in a call pertaining to that solution and stated the following
“John Schwarz mentioned this when we last met and I do need to get around to looking more closely at these things”
Also speaking to the 600 page manual I would consider the difficulty and risk associated in trying to find PivotLink professionals compared to Crystal Reports professionals. Should it really matter if you use a desktop product to create your analytics? (I mean from a Business Value perspective).
Also Dennis mentioned the following “BusinessObjects is powerful stuff if you’re manipulating millions of records but who really does that?”, so assuming your statement is correct that the “full OnDemand Solution” is just Business Objects hosted, then the value of the following statement “PivotLink has production customers doing heavy duty BI modeling billions of rows of complex data from multiple sources and presenting self-service ad-hoc report creating and sharing capabilities to hundreds of business users – with enterprise grade security” is likely lost, as a customer could select the Business Objects OnDemand solution and have the same capabilities and more leveraging, world class business intelligence from a proven vendor that has had success with over 43,000 customers worldwide.

Disclaimer: Also with Business Objects OnDemand

By: Aaron Mittler

Aaron Mittler — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:42:43 +0000

Ajay ~

With all due respect, to classify Business Objects BI OnDemand (the “full solution” that Timo references) as the “same Business Objects product, just hosted” is a gross mischaracterization.

BI OnDemand was specifically created to address the challenges to which Dennis refers. I.E. ~ making BI simpler, faster, easier and less costly to deploy.
Furthermore, Business Objects OnDemand is leading the way in SaaS BI with many paying customers.

Yes, BI OnDemand does leverage our best of breed, industry proven B.I. tools for certain components. But our approach is to offer the best of both worlds: Industry proven, best of breed B.I. capability delivered via the SaaS model. Our customers have chosen us because we can offer them the long-term stability of an industry leader with the cutting edge benefits that SaaS provides.

Dennis ~ You may be interested to know that, while many of our BI OnDemand customers are SMB’s, we have also deployed BI OnDemand at some very large companies. In my opinion SaaS B.I. can be a fit in organizations of any size. I’d be happy to arrange for a presentation of this solution if that is of interest.

Full disclosure, I work for Business Obects in our Ondemand group.

Aaron Mittler

By: Ajay Dawar

Ajay Dawar — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:10:55 +0000

Timo

With all due respect CRDC (crystalreports . com) is not the equivalent of http://www.pivotlink.com. Far from it. The CRDC website clearly says “Crystal Reports (sold separately)”. You create a report in desktop software called Crystal Reports (if you get past the 600 page manual) and then you upload it to CRDC to share so that end users may not have to install Crystal Reports on their desktops. CRDC is just a report sharing service and not a full BI stack – which is what you allude to when you mention the other “Full on-demand solution”.

That said, this “full on-demand solution” is exactly what AccMan complained against – the same Business Objects product – just hosted. PivotLink has production customers doing heavy duty BI modeling billions of rows of complex data from multiple sources and presenting self-service ad-hoc report creating and sharing capabilities to hundreds of business users – with enterprise grade security. All On-Demand. Check out the REI case study (http://www.pivotlink.com/customers/rei) as an exmaple.