That's not to say that everything is A-OK at B.O. "Business Objects' vision and execution will change as it shifts from being a pure-play vendor to being a SAP acquisition," states the Gartner report. "These changes may have consequences for its product lines, channels, support and contracts."

In addition, while the vendor has had some success nudging its customers to upgrade to its XI versions, "this has proved painful in the main, with customers rating their migration experience as challenging and costly," states Gartner. "Several customers with large deployments have been vocal in stating the difficulties they have had with their XI Release configurations, implementations and support."

Cognos (owned by IBM)
Like Business Objects, Cognos, which is now owned by IBM, has "an exceptionally high proportion of enterprise-standard BI platform deployments," states Gartner. And the IBM acquisition appears to be a victory for both sides (and their customers). "Cognos' acquisition by IBM will increase its access to the WebSphere and Data Stage installed base," notes the Gartner report. "Moreover, it should significantly bolster Cognos' data integration and unstructured/text analysis capabilities, which have lagged behind its main competitors."

While Forrester analysts note that IBM's Cognos acquisition is "cleaner" than Oracle's and SAP's purchases (because there's less product overlap), the move does raise serious questions about IBM's vaunted partner relationships and long-term partnering strategies.

The Gartner report notes that Cognos's predictive analytic and data mining capabilities are "much weaker" than the other BI platform leaders. In addition, Cognos 8 "lacks robust caching, resulting in users hitting the database each time the report is refreshed," the Gartner report states. "Based on feedback from some end users, Cognos needs to look at ways to enhance query performance."

HP
Though HP claims to be a business intelligence vendor of note, analysts say they are still waiting for HP to actually deliver a BI solution set. And now that IBM has acquired Cognos, "will HP follow the same path and acquire smaller vendors like Actuate, Information Builders or Microstrategy?" ask the Forrester analysts.

Possibilities abound for HP, it seems. "There's also still SAS, the acquisition of which would give HP a complete BI stack—but acquiring the world's largest privately held company can be a financial and cultural fit nightmare," states the Forrester report. "That's why acquiring Cognos, Informatica or Teradata could have given HP the best-of-breed components in all areas of the BI stack."

Don't be surprised, say BI analysts, if the Big Four megavendors add number five (HP) in 2008.