Vendors criticised at BI summit

Analyst Gartner has bad news for BI vendors

The vendor community bore the brunt of some harsh criticism on the opening day of this week’s annual Gartner BI summit in London, as the analyst firm announced that the BI market will grow by 10 percent this year in Europe, to an estimated 1.5bn Euros.

In his opening keynote, Gartner research vice president Andreas Bitterer explained that, over the years, many firms had invested in too much BI software from multiple vendors that now resides in multiple places, with a result that it cannot be used effectively to support the business.

“We’re saying reduce the number of tools and you will see the benefits,” he explained. “Organisations are trying to standardise but it is very cumbersome because you can’t just migrate over data – vendors make it very difficult.”

Bitterer said he would support any legislation that would mandate BI vendors to provide functionality that enables firms to export data into a standardised format, thus easing migration problems.

According to Gartner's 2007 CIO survey, the number one concern among IT decision-makers remains business intelligence, while ERP moved up the agenda to second place.