Business Intelligence: Time for VARs to Choose Sides
The VAR Guy is intrigued by the Business Intelligence market. For many years, major BI companies focused mainly on direct sales. Some companies such as Cognos continue to employ that strategy while also working a bit with giant integrators.
But change is under way in the BI sector. VARs must choose between database players that are moving into BI (such as Microsoft and Oracle), established BI giants that are embracing the channel (such as SAS Institute) and open-source start-ups (such as Jaspersoft).
During a visit with SAS earlier this week, The VAR Guy sensed that the company continues to make progress recruiting and training solutions providers. And while many BI companies are starting to buy one another, there’s still room in the market for innovative start-ups.
Consider the situation at open-source BI specialist Jaspersoft. The VAR Guy isn’t suggesting that enterprises will universally abandon traditional BI software for an open-source alternative. But there’s still a niche here for JasperSoft, folks. The company recently signed up its 5,000th customer. And JasperSoft claims it has surpassed 2 million product downloads and 20,000 deployments. A few of the engagements involve big businesses such as Harland Financial, L3 Communications, Siemens and Walgreens.com.
This is a particularly interesting time for database solutions providers. Will VARs stick with Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle as those vendors move into BI? Or will solutions providers embrace new partners?
