- Business Climate
According to the recent Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant report by Gartner, "2009 is likely to be a critical year in which the total cost of ownership of BI comes under increased scrutiny, and its value as a decision-making tool in the toughest economic conditions is put to the test." Identifying resources that will be able to help integrate and implement these systems will make the difference between creating competitive advantage and realizing the expected return on your technology investment.
Level Six supports each of the following Business Intelligence platforms. In addition to services we provide, we have also included summary analysis from Gartner's report on each vendor.
- Services Details
IBM
Topping the leaders' quadrant was IBM, which completed its acquisition of Cognos last January. Gartner said the Cognos BI platform's "Web services-based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)" is tops in the market, "with shared metadata across the platform enabling ease of transfer from report to query to analysis." Cognos' Microsoft Office integration and advanced visualization capabilities also helped its cause.
In order to effectively implement Cognos Business Intelligence capabilities, Level Six can provide resources that effectively assist with the following:
- Data Modeling and Access
- System Administration and Reporting
- Business Application Integration
- Business Application Integration
- Deployment and Architecture
- Report Authoring
Oracle
Oracle, too, remained in the leaders' quadrant this year. Gartner cited as Oracle's strengths its 70+ industry-specific BI applications, its improved security and administration capabilities, and its ability to federate data from multiple sources into its BI applications.
Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion extends Oracle's business intelligence capabilities to offer the most comprehensive system for enterprise performance management.
Level Six can provide resources that have Oracle application and Hyperion Business Intelligence experience.
Application Support
- Oracle Hyperion System Upgrades
- Oracle Hyperion Essbase Analytics Development
- Oracle Hyperion Planning
Implementation and Upgrade Support
- Data Modeling
- Data Conversion
- SQL Development
- Automation
SAP
Regaining its leader status thanks to its acquisition of Business Objects was SAP, which fell to the challengers' quadrant last year. The acquisition has proven a good fit, Gartner said, melding Business Objects' superior reporting and ad hoc query capabilities with SAP NetWeaver's OLAP functionality.
In addition to Business Objects, SAP had also acquired OutlookSoft's performance management product that has a Microsoft Excel-based user interface and integrated planning, financial consolidations and business performance analytics capabilities.
SAP's acquisition strategy creates a set of challenges when recruiting Business Intelligence resources. Level Six can provide resources that have the required skill sets to implement and support SAP's BI platform.
Business Planning and Consolidations (BPC - Formerly OutlookSoft)
- Strategic planning
- Budgeting
- Forecasting
- Statutory consolidation
- Reporting & analysis
- Predictive analytics
- Scorecarding