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Technology Stocks : Business Intelligence & OLAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sultan who wrote (86)	7/4/2001 6:47:48 PM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 144

I did likewise. Now that IFMX is ARDT, I will be looking at it again. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Carl

To: Sultan who wrote (86)	7/5/2001 11:53:50 AM
From: Thomas DeGagne	Respond to of 144

Here are some random thoughts on the BI market from a message to Carl R.: Thursday, July 5, 2001 11:50 AM ET To: Carl R. (who wrote) From: Thomas DeGagne I dont believe that SGNT is going after the BI tools (COGN, BOBJ, BRIO) market the core OLAP database HYSL,etc) or stand alone ETL. My understanding is that they offer an integrated package solution that includes real-time data access from outside databases for their OLAP and AA components. Rather than a best-of-breed, build it yourself approach, they are providing a turn-key system that addresses the needs of organizations who need access to large, real-time 3rd party databases. This is a different approach then most of the other companies we focus on, but I believe there is merit to it. In addition, what they offer is highly complementary to the BI tools product offerings. I don't consider COGN, BOBJ or BRIO to be direct competitors at all. HYSL and ASCL are much closer competitors. I like SNDT's technology but I dont believe they will survive as an independent company. They are narrowly focused on OLAP and have a very small market share. I dont believe that most large companies will trust a large scale OLAP implementation to a tiny company with a totally different approach, even if it appears to be technologically superior. They will most likely be acquired. In the ETL market, many firms offer products that are primarily sold together with another core product. I dont believe that COGN, HUMC, BRIO, BOBJ or SGNT have significant stand alone sales of their ETL products. If you sell BI tools, you must have access to many different databases, so these companies have all developed products of some sort, but it isnt their primary revenue source. I believe that the customer can choose between the solution offered by their BI vendor (probably at a lower cost), their database vendor or a specialist such as DataMirror or Ascential. I would say that ETL is a wide open market at this time with many players having a small market share. For this reason and the bundling of sales described above, I think it is difficult to predict long term winners in this market. At some point a would expect a merger to create a company with a large market share in both BI tools and OLAP databases. This company should be able to leverage their positions in the markets to garner a comparable market share in ETL, is that is the glue that binds BI to OLAP. Independent ETL vendors will be squeezed when this occurs. Any thoughts?