SAS Launches Analytical Model Management Tool

On October 23rd SAS announced SAS Model Manager, which supports enterprise life-cycle management of predictive analytics models. SAS Model Manager, which will ship in November 2006, supports best practices for organizing and tracking the tasks of model development, deployment, and optimization.

Recommended Competitive Responses

► Rival predictive analytics and data mining tool vendors—including SPSS, NCR/Teradata, Oracle, and IBM—should portray SAS Model Manager as a proprietary offering that can’t work with all models developed in SAS products, and can’t import models created in non-SAS tools.

► SPSS and NCR/Teradata should emphasize that they already have life-cycle model management/governance tools, and that SAS is late to market in this regard.

► Rivals that lack model-management tools—such as IBM and Oracle—should develop and/or acquire them as soon as possible to match SAS, SPSS, and NCR/Teradata in this regard.

► SPSS and NCR/Teradata should develop vertical, horizontal, regional, and compliance market templates for model-management in their respective tools, as well as matching the general templates that SAS implements out of the box in SAS Model Manager.

► Analytics/mining vendors that focus on particular vertical, horizontal, regional, or compliance markets should note that they already provide embedded model-management “templates” for those markets.

Recommended End User/Customer Responses

► Existing customers of SAS Enterprise Miner should obtain an evaluation copy of SAS Model Manager as soon as possible and strongly consider it as a possible platform for life-cycle governance of SAS-based analytics models in their organizations.

► Existing users of SAS Forecast Server should evaluate the new SAS Model Manager, but should not consider adopting it until a subsequent feature enhancement release (as yet unscheduled) under which their models will be supported. There is no support for SAS Forecast Server models in the first version of SAS Model Manager.

► SAS customers that are strongly considering adopting SAS Model Manager should clearly scope out the management, organizational, technical, and training requirements for deployment of the new tool throughout their organizations, across all stages in the model management life cycle (including model creation, testing, deployment, optimization, and retirement).

► Prospects that have not yet chosen a strategic vendor of predictive analytics and data mining tools should include SAS in those shortlists, due to the vendor’s best-of-breed status, diverse product set, maturity, and extensive partner ecosystem.
• Users of non-SAS predictive analytics and data mining tools should not adopt SAS Model Manager. The product does not import models from third-party tools.

Oracle Makes Its SOA Suite an Actual SOA Suite

On October 23rd Oracle released the next version of its “SOA Suite.” This time it has a unified interface through its JDeveloper tool, and has brought in its SOA management and governance into the suite, making this more than a marketing bundle.

Competitive Concerns

► This unification, although positive, has been anticipated for months, as Oracle has already been talking about its SOA Suite as it was already a coherent whole. The company’s product is finally matching the rhetoric.

► Oracle’s higher level BPM product, Business Process Analytics (BPA), recently OEMed from IDS Scheer, still has its own interface.

► Oracle often confuses its marketing by including MDM, BI, portal and other items as part of its SOA Suite. The firm’s Web site refers to a smaller subset of functionality (ESB, SOA management etc.), although apparently more can be added on in an ad hoc manner and still be dubbed a “SOA Suite.”

► Improvements to the core ESB/integration functionality are minor at this point. Although Oracle has improved queuing and pub/sub options, the company still lacks an enterprise messaging systems to compete with TIBCO, IBM and others.

► The firm does not specifically market a “services repository,” instead it is marketing a traditional developer oriented repository that can store all types of assets. Although this market is young and the exact needs are unclear, several competitors (webMethods, IBM and BEA) are gearing their repositories toward service and composite applications.

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Business Objects Pre-Announces BI Productivity Suite

On November 6th Business Objects pre-announced BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Productivity Suite, a new set of capabilities that will extend and enhance its flagship BI platform. The new release, currently scheduled to be available in the first half of 2007, will include enhancements in BI search, OLAP performance, grid-based scalability, and SOA.

Recommended Competitive Responses

► Competing BI, CPM, DI, and DQ vendors should pay close attention to every promised new feature of BO XI R2 PS, and to every demonstrated future feature that will undoubtedly be rolled out in the next one to two years.

► BI competitors should stress that this is only a pre-announcement for the first half of 2007, and is not accompanied by further details on pricing, packaging, licensing, and migration requirements.

► DI and DQ rivals should point out that Business Objects did not include any mention of new ETL, EII, change data capture (CDC), event stream processing (ESP), data profiling, data cleansing, or data enrichment features in BO XI R2 PS.

► BI competitors should step forward to highlight the extent to which their product families and/or roadmaps support embedding of BI functionality in “operational” BPM environments.

► Other data management (DM) vendors that partner with Business Objects to gain access to its best-of-breed BI platform should highlight the forthcoming BO XI R2 PS release as further validating that partnership.

Recommended End User/Customer Responses

► Current users of Business Objects BI, CPM, and DI tools should educate themselves on the features promised for this next major release. Business Objects has pre-announced many valuable new BI features designed to improve user productivity, enhance performance and scalability, expedite standards-based integration, and consolidate platform management.

► Current users of the vendor’s BI, CPM, and DI tools should not make firm plans to migrate/upgrade to BO XI R2 PS until the vendor provides further details on availability, pricing, packaging, licensing, and migration requirements.

► Current users of the vendor’s pre-XI generation products should ask the vendor to clarify whether they will need to migrate first to BO XI R2 before they upgrade to BO XI R2 PS.

Hyperion Pre-Announces BI/CPM Suite Enhancements

On October 30th Hyperion announced Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3, which includes enhancements in data integration services, business process modeling, capital expense planning, desktop integration, search integration, and integration with enterprise systems.

Recommended Competitive Responses

► Rival BI/CPM vendors should position Hyperion as a niche player, focusing primarily on financial analytics.

► Rival BI/CPM vendors should state how their best-of-breed product sets match or surpass the promised functionality of Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 in data integration services, desktop integration, search integration, and integration with enterprise systems.

► Rival BI/CPM vendors should call attention to the lack of pricing and availability commitments in the announcement of Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3.

► Rival BI vendors should note that Hyperion is not promising any substantial new enhancements to its platform’s underlying BI, DI, and data quality features, or to its MDM tools that rely on this functionality.

► Other vendors that have licensed their technology to Hyperion (e.g., Informatica, Tableau, etc.) should play up these partnerships, positioning the relationships as validating their own best-of-breed status in their various niches.

Recommended End User/Customer Responses

► Existing customers of the Hyperion System 9 BI platform should begin to consider Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 for a possible future upgrade. However, customers will need to wait until the product is actually released (right now, it is tentatively slated for sometime in the first quarter of 2007), and until pricing is announced, before beginning their evaluation in earnest.

► Existing customers of Hyperion System 9 Planning should seriously consider the new Capital Expense Planning module when available. The new module has pre-built best-practices functionality and flexible customization tools and extends the capabilities of Hyperion System 9 Planning software.

► Prospects may want to give greater attention to BI vendors - such as SAS, Business Objects, Cognos, Oracle, and SAP - that are both extending their platforms and diversifying their targeted CPM applications. Hyperion seems to be focusing primarily on financial analytics and not to be following an aggressive roadmap of BI and DI platform enhancement.

► Users of rival BI/CPM products should stay put with their existing vendors. Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 offers no compelling new functionality that would justify a migration from competing vendors’ BI/CPM platforms and tools.