Because Microstrategy has focused more on BI platforms and less on performance management and data integration, Gartner states that it "removes itself automatically from the shortlist of those organizations that want an integrated approach to these disciplines, particularly planning and reporting," says the report. "This issue will become more prevalent given the stack-centric direction that the market has taken following the megavendor acquisitions in the BI space."

Oracle (Hyperion)
Oracle's BI vision, as Gartner terms it, became a lot more compelling in 2007—especially when its Hyperion acquisition went through. Oracle's "combination of BI platform and analytic applications (Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, or OBIEE, and Oracle Analytic Applications) is one of the better sets of offerings available," Gartner notes. "With its portfolio of BI products and technology, Oracle has the potential to deliver operational and strategic BI capabilities, either stand-alone or embedded into horizontal or vertical applications."

But Oracle's M&A strategy (buy not build) could pose problems as it tries to integrate its BI products into its core lines, Gartner says. "There is strong evidence that Hyperion's BI installed base is taking a wait-and-see approach and not updating to latest versions—in fact, of all customer groups surveyed, Hyperion BI users had the lowest proportion running the latest major release," according to the Gartner report. "Oracle must be careful to ensure it does not lose former Brio customers, in particular, some of whom are unhappy with Hyperion's plan to charge them an 'enablement fee' to move to System9 before the acquisition."

The Forrester report predicts that Oracle may make yet another critical acquisition: Informatica. The move, which would be primarily to "block" SAP from getting the data-integration company, would help Oracle "effectively support the data integration and data quality needs across its application, middleware and database portfolio," write the Forrester analysts. "While introducing some redundancy for sure, Informatica would help Oracle fast-track that goal."

SAP (and Business Objects)
SAP now claims more than 13,000 NetWeaver BI deployments, and its BI Accelerator product, which uses "in-memory analytics and column-based vectoring," has put the pressure on the other major BI platform providers to ramp up their products' data scalability and performance, states the Gartner report.

With its prized Business Objects purchase under its umbrella, SAP is now the largest BI platform vendor, almost twice the size of its next largest competitor, according to Gartner. "Business Objects' areas of strength (such as formatted reporting and self-service report creation)," notes the report, "will help address the areas of weakness in SAP BI."