To BI Suite or not, that is the question (and SAS is the world’s best kept secret)
Friday, March 7th, 2008Over at Data Doghouse there is an interesting article about the pervasiveness of software suites vs standalone tools. They use the example of Microsoft Office as proof of its effectiveness in gaining market share, and I have blogged before about how the convergence of Business Intelligence vendors is mirroring that of ERP vendors in the past.
I don’t agree with their statement that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the main reason niche players still flourish. In my experiences with both ERP and BI solutions, TCO is much higher when you have to integrate a number of different tools and technologies. However as most companies don’t track the cost of internal resources on projects (who typically do the integration) let alone TCO, the perception is that cost of these niche solutions is lower (well the license fee’s are anyway).
If we took the cost of replacing the niche products in a couple of years when they are brought out by the the big boys into consideration the TCO would be even worse.
What surprised me though was the positioning of SAS as a niche tools player and not a provider of Data Integration, Business Intelligence and Data Analytics suites.
If they were comparing vendors who had Database, Middleware and Business Intelligence offerings (i.e. Oracle, IBM, Microsoft) to niche players then yes SAS is a nicheplayer. But in terms of BI suites I don’t think so.
Just goes to show SAS is still one of the worlds best kept secret.