Business Intelligence in the Commodity Era

I really was awake in college! I learned all about the product lifecycle from my Marketing 101 class. Of most interest to my student loan-laden wallet was when the cycle would begin to benefit the consumer's pocketbook. This is when the product has reached the point of becoming a commodity – widely available with a large selection of sellers and options. The only potential downside is that now the consumer is fully responsible for making the purchasing decision.

Similarly, business intelligence tools were once new products with very few vendors, limited features, and high price tags. However, today there are many different vendors with multiple, similar features causing pressure to differentiate them on price.

For the consumer, this makes today a fantastic time to invest in a business intelligence solution, but also means a significant and often difficult decision lies ahead.

In this article, I compare 3 of the top business intelligence commercial tools and one leading open source tool. I will present a feature comparison of each one to help you with this selection. We expect you will learn from this matrix that while many of these vendors offer similar features, some may be more suited to you than others may. We present this matrix as compiled by Ashvan Technologies.

View Business Intelligence Product Comparison Chart

Your decision will often involve a comparison of features. For this, we present an interactive dashboard that will help by allowing you to give weight to specific features. Go through this selector and apply the level of importance to each feature in order to see which tool will may best fit your organization's needs.

In life, I have never been one of those early adopters that paid top price for the latest and greatest new thing. I always sought the most for my money by having many options and good information to make the right choice. I hope you have found from this article that you do have options when it comes to business intelligence and that you now have good information to help you make the right choice.

*** This matrix is not meant to be a stand-alone solution to choosing a tool. There are many other factors to consider including current architecture, scalability and resources. This exercise is meant to provide you with a comparison based solely on features and benefits. A thorough blueprint analysis should be performed when implementing any new business intelligence solution.

Written by Tom Fallwell, Data Management Group Practice Manager