RESEARCH NOTE DOCUMENT P192 NOVEMBER 2015
TECHNOLOGY VALUE MATRIX 2H2015 - ANALYTICS ANALYSTS
ANNE MOXIE
THE BOTTOM LINE The analytics market continues to evolve at a rapid pace, as customers are demanding usable, yet highly advanced solutions that can quickly deliver actionable insights. Nucleus has found that scalable analysis is the key differentiator for successful analytics deployments. To achieve this, solutions must be able to automate data preparation to some extent, which has been a time-consuming and tedious challenge for users across the board. It also requires that there is data accessibility for business users and repeatability for data scientists.
This Value Matrix assesses influential analytics and business intelligence (BI) vendors based on the value that they deliver to customers, which is driven by the functionality and usability of their solutions. For all software solutions, there is a tradeoff between the two, but most leaders in this market are able to quickly deliver relevant and actionable insights to a range of users. To achieve scalable analysts, vendors must consider their target audience to deliver tailored and streamlined products. For example, business users require data accessibility with data discovery tools to provide them with relevant, actionable insights. For data scientists dealing with the issues presented by the volume, velocity, and variety of big data, it is essential that they have tools making their models and analyses repeatable. Vendors are heavily investing in tackling these hurdles and as a result, the market is constantly shifting.
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INNOVATIVE CLOUD SOLUTIONS In the analytics space, cloud solutions are often built for business users, and have always been highly usable. More recently these cloud vendors have considerably built out functionality and as a result, customers are able to access more advanced tools and insights. This exponential increase in capabilities is possible for cloud solutions because they are able to adopt a faster release cadence. Nucleus found that, on average, cloud analytics solutions deliver 2.3 times more ROI than on-premise solutions (Nucleus Research, p125 – Cloud analytics deliver 2.3 times more ROI, September 2015). In addition to the increasing benefits that the cloud delivers over time because of continuous innovation, the higher ROI is also driven by shorter implementation periods, lower investments in personnel and software, and a higher propensity to upgrade.
AUTOMATING DATA PREPARATION Although the cloud continues to be a major factor in driving innovation in the analytics space, there are still a number of hurdles that vendors across the board are investing in to meet customer needs. One of the primary focuses is data preparation, which is a heavily manual and time-intensive task. Nucleus found that 86 percent of analytics users are dissatisfied with their current data preparation techniques because the time spent on it takes away from the time spent on analysis Copyright © 2015 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Nucleus Research is the leading provider of value-focused technology research and advice. NucleusResearch.com
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(Nucleus Research, p171 – Buying intentions survey – Analytics, October 2015). This is largely driven by the nature of big data, because it is often unstructured and haphazardly collected, leading to massive amounts of disparate datasets. As a result, data analysts and scientists are spending more time preparing data instead of analyzing it. Despite the challenges presented by data preparation, 95 percent of users want to increase the number of data sources they use. This is because with additional data sources, customers will be able to find new and more accurate correlations. To tackle these challenges, vendors are offering prebuilt data connectors, or wizards to guide a user through adding new data sources. The goal of this would be to put selfservice data integration into the hands of more users. This will significantly improve productivity for users, removing them from the tedious manual processes of data integration and allowing them to spend more time on analysis.
LEADERS Leaders in this Matrix include GoodData, IBM, Information Builders, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, SAP, and Yellowfin. GOODDATA GoodData offers a cloud-based, multi-tenant platform that supports BI and data governance capabilities for distributing analytics at scale to business networks. It has a platform as a service that helps users build solutions, with specific use cases for sales, social, and marketing. Some of its functionality includes collecting, storing, refining, visualizing, analyzing, discovering, and integrating data. Nucleus has found that customers receive high ROI from the GoodData solution because it offers scalable data accessibility for a wide range of users with minimal training requirements (Nucleus Research, p113 – GoodData ROI case study – Anonymous, June 2015). In October, GoodData announced new functionality for business users for faster data distribution and monetization with features including:
Enhanced distribution, automation, and product lifecycle management. Users are streamlining the management of their deployments with automated provisioning and workspace updates.
Interactive mobility. The solution supports responsive mobile capabilities with the most relevant KPI dashboards and alerts.
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Improved self-service analysis. Users are able to blend local data with centralized data for easier data discovery analysis.
Nucleus expects that as GoodData continues to invest in new functionality that is geared towards arming business users with analysis tools, the company will further improve its Matrix positioning. IBM IBM offers analytics solutions for performance management, big data management, core business intelligence, and advanced analytics tools such as predictive functionality. As a result of its ongoing investments and innovations, the company has been the leader in the Matrix for years. In May, IBM announced new industry-specific analytics solutions that leverage IBM’s advanced analytics technologies and its decades of experience in working at customer and partner sites around the globe. Nucleus found that these solutions drive an accelerated time to value for customers because prebuilt functionality requires less custom code and as a result, customers experience a faster deployment time. In addition to the benefits that industry-specific solutions provide during implementation, customers experience ongoing benefits because the prebuilt solution are easier to upgrade. This is also due to reduced custom code, which must be tested and debugged for upgrades. With IBM’s constant innovation in the analytics space, customers that remain on top of the most recent releases will have an edge over their competitors (Nucleus Research, p88 – Accelerating time to value – IBM industry analytics solutions, May 2015) In September, IBM Watson Health announced that it would be expanding the IBM Watson Health Cloud by adding the IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance, and the IBM Watson Care Manager. This expansion will provide users with a number of benefits including:
Faster deployments. With its industry-specific focus on regulation, biomedical companies are able to create a compliant infrastructure and applications quickly with IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance.
Integrated data. The IBM Watson Care Manager allows users to apply cognitive analysis to integrated clinical and individual data. To collect the individual data, patients can opt-in to provide information from their wearable devices or wireless enabled scales. As a result, healthcare providers will be able to apply the collected analysis and knowledge to future care management options.
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On October 14, IBM announced the Watson Analytics Expert Storybooks. Developed by third parties and IBM partners, these Storybooks showcase the Watson Analytics capabilities for a range of use cases using real data. This is a key tool for business users, the audience of Watson Analytics, who will have access to a complete view of what they are able to accomplish with the tool (Nucleus Research, p188 – Expertise in Watson Analytics, October 2015). With its recent releases, IBM’s analytics customers are experiencing increasing benefits from its continuous upgrades and new releases. As the company further invests in both its tools for business users as well as its solutions for highly advanced analyses, Nucleus expects that IBM will continue to lead the market. INFORMATION BUILDERS Information Builders provides offerings for BI and analytics, data integrity, and integration with strong functionality for data governance, data discovery, and predictive analytics. Nucleus has found that it has made ongoing investments in its vertical offerings, playing a significant role in its positioning as a leader in this Matrix. In September, Information Builders announced the availability of Omni-Payer, its solution for health insurers that provides a complete view of each patient. Some of its key benefits include improved management of chronic care patients and reduced gaps in care. On the implementation side, it requires less customization, driving a faster time to value. With further investments in vertical capabilities and pre-built offerings, Information Builders will continue to improve its positioning in the Matrix because Nucleus finds that these features are key to providing customers with successful deployments. MICROSOFT Microsoft has made weekly ongoing investments in Power BI tool, which provides a range of users with analytics functionality. The first release of Power BI, Power BI for Office 365, was launched in February 2014. In July 2015, Microsoft announced Power BI with a range of new features:
Power BI Desktop. The Power BI Desktop is a free, standalone desktop authoring interface and provides data exploration and an interactive reporting tool with drag-and-drop usability. Some of the enhancements include new visualizations and visualization formatting, new data source support, and direct connection to SQL Server Analysis Services for data exploration. Power BI is independent of Excel, so users can develop analytic content locally without license cost.
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Power BI Web authoring and data exploration enhancements. Users have access to improved Web-based authoring functionality for easier visualization and dashboard creation.
Power BI visuals open source project. Microsoft is allowing customers and partners to easily extend and build custom visuals by opening its commercial grade visualization framework and visuals that are built on D3.js on both Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop. It also supports a community site that enables creators to upload new Power BI visuals, allowing users to browse, select, and download those visuals.
Q&A. This is a natural language query capability that allows users to query and return result sets, and create visualizations easily. Users can also find data sources based on keywords or ask questions within a dashboard.
Power BI Content Packs. This offering provides pre-built solutions for Microsoft Products like Dynamics NAV and services from companies like Salesforce, Marketo, GitHub, and Quickbooks Online. Moving forward, Microsoft will continue to increase its support for new content packs and integrations.
Team collaboration and enhanced Excel support. Power BI will support Groups, which allows users to collaborate and work on the same dashboards, reports, and datasets. In addition, it will allow users to support deep Excel integration.
Direct connectivity to Apache Spark. Users can connect to Apache Spark or Microsoft’s SQL Server Analysis Services and Azure SQL Data Warehouse directly. Power BI also allows users to query live in these data sources.
Power BI mobile app for Android. Users have access to a Power BI mobile app for the Android phone, which is an addition to the existing mobile support for iPhone, iPad, and Windows devices.
Microsoft has a considerable offering with its Power BI solution and Nucleus has found that, while it has value as a standalone solution, users of other Microsoft products like Dynamics are experiencing considerable benefits from it as well. Microsoft will release updates for Power BI Desktop on a monthly basis and Power BI in the cloud will be updated weekly. With further investments in embedding and integrating Power BI with its other tools, the solution will continue to improve its Matrix positioning.
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MICROSTRATEGY MicroStrategy offers analytics applications, mobile accessibility, and security platforms for enterprises. Some of the key capabilities in its flagship offering, MicroStrategy 10, involve data discovery, advanced analytics, visualization, enterprise reporting, dashboards, embedded BI, branded reports and statements, distribution, and mobile support. In September, MicroStrategy announced the availability of MicroStrategy 10.1, which provides a number new features and enhancements including:
Additional support for data preparation and blending. The solution allows business users to prepare and wrangle from data sources from the cloud, ODBC, social sources, and local sources.
Presentation and editable modes. The new release offers two modes for usability, offering customers more streamlined access.
Use of existing ad-hoc reports in Desktop. MicroStrategy Desktop now supports preexisting ad-hoc reports, allowing users to interact with the reports in the solution or use the reports as data sources.
Previews and search. Users are able to preview what reports and dashboards will look like before they execute a query. Also, MicroStrategy 10.1 provides a consolidated search, so that users can access an index of all project reports and dashboards.
Improved Teradata Access. This new feature supports high speed data transfer from Teradata, allowing users to update in-memory cubes faster and more often.
SAP SAP has further invested in providing business users with access to advanced analytics tools, allowing them to analyze historic data and run simulations in parallel. Across the board, the company has leveraged SAP HANA, a columnar-store database that offers users in-memory computation and real-time analysis capabilities, as the cornerstone of its offerings. In September, SAP announced SAP HANA Vora, which is a new in-memory query engine for Hadoop and also supports new capabilities for the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. The new release addresses the challenges that companies face as they manage distributed big data. SAP also announced its plans to extend the SAP HANA Cloud Platform with new features and improvements including:
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Advanced digital connectivity. With the SAP HANA Cloud Platform for IoT, users will be able to have access to device management, device data connectivity, and bi-directional device data synchronization tools.
Improved collaboration. The SAP Jam social software supports new capabilities for developers to build collaborative apps more easily. Also, developers will be able to incorporate game concepts into applications with a workbench, software development kits (SDKs), and widgets via the SAP HANA Cloud Platform gamification services.
Increased mobile security. With SAP HCP mobile secure solutions and mobile app protection, customers will have a more secure mobile environment via tools including application management, remote locking, and the ability to wipe managed devices.
Pre-delivered applications. The cloud trial of SAP Fiori allows customers to utilize a set of apps to connect with their own systems to try the new user experience, extend an existing app, or create a new app.
Access to business services. Cloud users will have trial access to the business services, providing them with best practices that can be combined to build a personalized cloud application using the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.
In October, SAP announced SAP Cloud for Analytics, which runs on SAP HANA Cloud Platform and offers customers a single resource of capabilities ranging from data preparation to analytics tools. Some of its features include actionable workflows, line of business (LOB) and finance collaboration, social media analysis, and planning, budgeting, BI, and predictive functionality. In addition, the tools support improved data preparation with the ability to sample, wrangle, combine, and blend data together from cloud and on-premise data sources. In addition, the solution is supported by the in-memory SAP HANA database. Nucleus expects this offering to help users experience more scalable data analysis because it utilizes a centralized source of tools that can be leveraged by a wide range of users (Nucleus Research, p185 – Ongoing benefits of SAP Cloud for Analytics, October 2015). As SAP continues to invest in providing business users with access to advanced analytics tools that leverage the SAP HANA technology, Nucleus expects that the company will remain a leader in the Matrix. YELLOWFIN Yellowfin provides a cloud-based BI platform with a focus on simplifying the user experience to drive a higher ROI and a faster payback period. For easier IT
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governance, the company delivers its solutions on one platform that also supports an administration platform to manage, view, and search the system. Some of its BI capabilities include alerts, notifications, and data visualization supporting a range of functionality such as forecasting and regression analyses. Yellowfin also offers location intelligence that enables time animation and multilayered analysis that can integrate with preexisting GIS tools. The company also leverages the expertise of its partner ecosystem to give its customers access to industry-specific solutions. Yellowfin has made a number of investments over the past few months including:
In June, Yellowfin announced a partnership with Proskriptive, a company that offers solutions for the healthcare industry. The partnership is geared towards providing users with predictive modeling capabilities that are built to address some of the unique challenges of the healthcare industry (Nucleus Research, p107 – Assessing the value of Yellowfin, June 2015).
In October, the company launched DashXML, a browser-based Java application that allows users to create customized functionality and applications. In line with Yelowfin’s mission to provide a usable solution, DashXML does not require IT programming.
Nucleus expects that Yellowfin will continue to invest in self-service tools, further improving its usability. Although there are a number of cloud analytics solutions that are rapidly appearing in the market, Yellowfin will continue to maintain a strong foothold because it has an extensive partner program that delivers tools to customers that are designed to address their industry-specific needs.
EXPERTS Experts in this Matrix include, Infor, Jinfonet, Oracle, Pentaho, and SAS. INFOR Infor BI is a platform with in-memory multi-dimensional analysis that supports Infor Dynamic Enterprise Performance Management (d/EPM) for BI, analytics, product lifecycle management, ERP, HCM, and CPM. It also provides integration for enterprise management in its solution, offering write-back for forecasting and planning, and supporting R for advanced analytics. The Infor Intelligent Open Network (ION) has a standards-based architecture that helps to decrease data siloes and provides unified workflow and event monitoring via support for third-party applications. Data Link, Infor BI’s semantic data layer, Copyright © 2015 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Nucleus Research is the leading provider of value-focused technology research and advice. NucleusResearch.com
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offers streamlined access to databases and applications for reporting and analytics. Finally, Infor Ming.le supports collaboration capabilities to share information and key insights. The Infor ION Business Vault helps customers model hierarchies and provides users with a singular view of company performance metrics and definitions. In addition, it gives users that ability to trace data transformations back to the data source, providing customers with data accountability and quality reassurance. Infor offers a full portfolio of analytics tools that integrate deeply with its other products and solutions, including industry-specific analytics content for their ERP solutions. Nucleus expects that, with its ongoing investments in building out its tools, it will improve its Matrix positioning. JINFONET SOFTWARE JReport, Jinfonet’s flagship solution, is a flexible Java-based BI platform that offers interactive reporting, data visualization, mobility, and can be easily embedded because of its extensive API library. As a result, it has a strong base of OEM customers who report that the solution provides a faster deployment time with an accelerated time to value while also helping to customize solutions. This is because Jinfonet offers support and service teams that are responsive and provide extensive expertise. In addition, the company provides a flexible pricing model for OEMs to help reduce costs. The JReport Cluster Server enables auto-scaling, load balancing, and also eliminates single points of failure. JReport 13.1 was released earlier this year, providing advancements in interactive dashboards, visual analysis, and embedded reporting for multi-tenant cloud solutions. Distributed joins allow users to mash up data from separate databases into the same chart, table, or crosstab component for analysis and reporting. Jinfonet also continues to expand its support of big data environments such as NoSQL, Hadoop, as well as Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. Nucleus found that Jinfonet has had an ongoing focus on providing users with self-service tools, giving users a range of capabilities spanning from easier access to data sources, to quick dashboard creation. Jinfonet has continued to invest in self-service capabilities, improving its usability positioning in the Matrix. In particular, in October it released enhancements to its usability with the goal of providing more streamlined access to functionality, thereby improving adoption and productivity. Nucleus expects that Jinfonet will continue to invest in this area, further improving its usability positioning in the Matrix while driving increased customer success.
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ORACLE Oracle provides a full set of analytics solutions with capabilities including performance management, predictive analytics, BI, data mining, and other big data tools. The company has also made investments in providing a range of solutions for cloud deployments. In October, Oracle announced the availability of MySQL 5.7, which supports improved performance, scalability, and easier management. It also provides more advanced NoSQL capabilities with JSON support and MySQL Router for easier connection between applications and multiple MySQL databases. The company provides extensive functionality with advanced capabilities. Nucleus expects that it will achieve a better positioning in future Matrices with further investments in the usability of its solutions, which would drive greater adoption and productivity for end users. PENTAHO Pentaho, an independent subsidiary of Hitachi Data Social Innovation, offers big data integration and analytics tools supported by open standards and open architecture. With this focus, users are able to access data from multiple sources for operational and interactive reporting, data discovery and analysis, as well as more advanced analytics capabilities including predictive analytics and data mining. In September, Pentaho announced version 6.0 of its big data integration and analytics platform. It will include a new enterprise-grade server with the ability to automate, manage, and enhance the analytics data pipeline. The new release will also support functionality to blend and visualize datasets, as well as improved management with data lineage capabilities. Moving forward, Nucleus expects that Pentaho will be able to leverage its advanced functionality for supporting the large scale big data and analytics initiative of enterprises. SAS SAS offers a range of analytics tools with an extensive list of functionality including advanced analytics, data management, decision management, solutions for Hadoop, in-memory analytics, performance management, risk management, supply chain intelligence, customer intelligence, and fraud and security intelligence. In June, SAS announced SAS Factory Miner, which aims to increase the productivity of data scientists. The solution is delivered via a Web-based interface with drag-anddrop capabilities that allows data scientists to automatically build and revise predictive models. In addition, users are able to identify models with poor performance, encouraging a management by exception approach. With its machine Copyright © 2015 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Nucleus Research is the leading provider of value-focused technology research and advice. NucleusResearch.com
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learning capabilities, the software will recognize use patterns and will proactively anticipate next steps, allowing analysts that are more along the line of business users to leverage the solution as well. Nucleus found that SAS customers are pleased with the functionality that the solution provides, although for non-technical users it does have a steep learning curve. The company recognizes this and has been making increased investments in automation and usability. As a result, we expect SAS to raise its positioning in upcoming Matrices.
FACILITATORS Facilitators in this Matrix include Adaptive Insights, Birst, Board, Domo, Qlik, Salesforce Wave Analytics, Tableau, and TIBCO. ADAPTIVE INSIGHTS Adaptive Discovery, the analytics application offered by Adaptive Insights, provides self-service capabilities for business users. Some of its capabilities include visual discovery and analytics, ad-hoc analysis tools, and identification of analytics trends and exceptions. Adaptive Discovery integrates deeply with the company’s CPM solution, which offers actionable insights with improved context. As a result, users have the ability to analyze both operational and financial performance data. Customers have reported strong usability in the solution with little required training, and Nucleus expects that with further investments in its functionality Adaptive Insights will achieve an improved position in the Matrix. BIRST The Birst architecture is based on a two-tiered structure. The first tier encompasses data warehouses or applications that help to automate data cleansing and the second tier offers traditional BI functionality with visualization, as well as collaboration capabilities and data discovery tools. The company also offers a number of integrations with customer releationship management (CRM) applications, increasing its functionality and ease of use simultaneously. In addition, the solution also provides industry-specific capabilities for healthcare, technology, manufacturing, insurance, and mining. In September, Birst announced Networked BI, which allows for global governance while supporting local execution. This encourages improved self-service capabilities and also creates a centralized overview. Nucleus expects that further investments Copyright © 2015 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Nucleus Research is the leading provider of value-focused technology research and advice. NucleusResearch.com
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along the lines of improved functionality will increase Birst’s positioning in the Matrix. BOARD INTERNATIONAL BOARD offers an all-in-one platform for BI, analytics, and corporate performance management (CPM). This integrated approach drives a database of information that supports client -based and Web-based interactions. Its product aims to minimize any programming requirements or IT dependence, giving customers the ability to use self-service creation of reports or analyses and conduct self-service data preparation and mashups. In September, BOARD announced the availability of BOARD 10, which is the most recent release of its platform for BI, Analytics, and CPM. It provides users with cloud analytics and self-service data visualization tools via Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The offering will include a number of prebuilt applications that will allow users to further experience a faster time to value. Nucleus expects that the availability of the BOARD platform as a cloud solution will be key to driving further adoption in the market because it will provide a lower total cost of ownership for users and will also drive a faster payback period. In addition, BOARD will be able to adopt a faster release cadence with the cloud, which will help the company to further add to its offerings and improve its positioning in the Matrix. DOMO Domo offers a cloud-based business management platform that leverages responsive graphics and visualization tools to provide data accessibility to business users with consistency across all platforms. Its solutions are organized by role, industry, and by connector, allowing customers to prioritize their needs when choosing a solution. The solution offers alerts, workflow capabilities, and a profile/org chart that helps users to understand organizational hierarchy as well as employee profiles and contact information. Some of the prebuilt apps that Domo provides include:
Sales: All Reps Scorecard. The strengths and weaknesses of sales reps are identified across six benchmarks, allowing a complete view of individual sales people’s performance.
Marketing: Lead Engagement. Marketing teams are able to visualize and compare the key metrics of each campaign, identify how many touches a lead needs before converting, and discover the days and times that have the highest click rates.
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Finance: Profit and Loss. Finance professionals can more easily compare income statements, track the gross profit and operating margins, and set threshold alerts for disproportionate spending. When thresholds are passed, users will be sent SMS and email alerts, allowing a management by exception approach.
In addition, Domo offers self-service capabilities, helping to remove IT from the everyday needs of business users. For example, Domo offers a large, and increasingly growing, selection of prebuilt data source connectors, which accelerates the time to value for business users because they have easier access to data. Having announced its offering in April, Domo is fairly new to the market but has made significant movement in the space in that short amount of time. It has quickly expanded its functionality with the addition of drag-and-drop ETL and plug-in support for R. Nucleus expects that with the rising awareness around Domo, it will continue to increase its market traction. QLIK Qlik provides users with two analytics products, Qlik Sense and QlikView. Qlik Sense is built for business users and provides self-service capabilities for data visualization as well as search and exploration. It also includes collaboration tools, and a mobile design. QlikView is the platform that provides developers and partners with the ability to build applications built for specific use cases. In the last few months, Qlik has released a number of announcements including:
In July, Qlik partnered with AFAS Software, a cloud-based ERP provider, to offer deep integration benefits. Users will have access to drag and drop tools to build visualizations that will illustrate key insights.
In September, Qlik announced the Qlik Continuous Classroom, which provides users with 24/7 access to training tools. This will help to increase user adoption and productivity levels.
In October, Qlik announced Qlik Proactive support, which allows customers to monitor their solution for issue prevention and resolution. Some of its functionality includes real-time anomaly detection, live diagnostics, health check reports, and recommendations for best performance and risk mitigation.
Nucleus expects that Qlik’s recent announcements will provide users with key functionality that will allow for easier use of the application overall. Embedding and
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integrating its tools with other solutions, as it did with AFAS Software, will help Qlik to improve its Matrix positioning moving forward. SALESFORCE WAVE ANALYTICS On the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, the company’s analytics platform, Salesforce Wave Analytics offers analytics tools to business users, focusing heavily on providing users with interactive data visualization tools that drive quick access to relevant insights. Some of its key features include collaboration, presentation functionality, self-service dashboarding, mobility, and ability to take CRM actions from within Wave. In May, the company announced partnerships with Google, Cloudera, Hortonworks, New Relic, Informatica, and Trifacta. These partnerships are a part of Salesforce Wave for Big Data, which will help customers to access large sets of complex data for analysis. In June, Salesforce introduced Sales Wave Analytics, which is an app that delivers role-specific analytics applications with personalized templates, historical analysis, and the ability to take immediate actions. In September, Salesforce announced updates to the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, which provides insights across the Customer Success Platform. Some of its new features include:
New Wave Actions. This update provides users with actionable insights from within a Wave Analytics Dashboard. Users are able to build a menu of Wave actions for creating cases, assigning tasks, or updating accounts.
Increased accessibility. Across the entire Salesforce Customer Success Platform, users have access to analytics tools including new Lightning Reports and dashboards, which provides users with the capability to more easily design and edit reports and dashboards, using a charting library as well as on-the-go modification and filtering tools. Users will also have Wave embedded Dashboards, which offer more advanced functionality that can be embedded into any Salesforce record or object.
New Wave Analytics Apps. More than 80 companies have joined the Wave partner ecosystem and ISVs are offering new apps that will provide users with a prebuilt functionality, driving a faster access to specific insights.
Nucleus has found that providing actionable insight to users is key to recognizing the value of an analytics tool. In addition, providing users with insights in context
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drive improved productivity and a higher adoption rate. Salesforce Wave provides a number of capabilities in this area via its ISVs. Essentially it leverages the ISVs to provide users with seamless access to Wave functionality. These updates played a significant role in improving Salesforce Wave Analytics’ positioning in the Matrix, and Nucleus expects that the company will continue with an ongoing stream of investments into Wave, which will continue to drive its progress in the space. TABLEAU Tableau offers a portfolio of analytics solutions geared towards delivering strong analysis capabilities, while upholding self-service manageability and appealing data visualization. The company’s commercial offerings include Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online, and Tableau Mobile. It also provides free applications, Tableau Public and Vizable, built for individual users. Tableau released a host of announcements in October including:
Vizable. This is an application for tablets that approaches data exploration by focusing on touch, allowing for an easy and fast visualization of a spreadsheet.
Amazon partnership updates. This included the availability of Tableau Server on AWS Marketplace, which will give customers more deployment choices. Also, Tableau announced enhanced cloud integration with AWS cloud data sources, the latest being Amazon Aurora. In addition, the company announced plans to integrate with SPICE, part of QuickSight’s in-memory data store.
Core functionality advancements. The company updated its product with a number of new features for its offerings such as clustering capabilities, version control, and Mapbox integration.
Having been in the market for 12 years, Tableau has made ongoing investments over time and now has a mature list of functionality that does not compromise its usability. Moving forward, Nucleus expects that Tableau will continue to make investments in improving its more advanced analytics functionality, which will continue to advance its positioning in future Matrices. TIBCO TIBCO offers a solution built for business users, developers, and executives that provides visualization, dashboarding, and reporting capabilities. TIBCO’s Analytic Fabric allows users to embed analytics tools into their applications and platforms, providing users with improved context for faster decision making. In addition, its solutions are available as both on-premise and cloud deployments per the needs of the customer.
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In September, TIBCO announced the availability of TIBCO Spotfire Cloud’s data discovery and advanced analytics connector to Apache Spark SQL and commercial integration with SparkR. This will allow users to query, analyze, and visualize Apache Hadoop data more quickly and easily. It will also allow customers to run analytics on big data via Spark with Spotfire Interfaces and templates. This investment provides users with more advanced functionality. Nucleus has found that the market of analytics for business users has become more competitive with the maturity of cloud solutions and expects that further investments in the usability of its solution will help the company in future Matrices.
CORE PROVIDERS Core Providers in this Matrix include BIME, and Logi Analytics. BIME BIME offers data visualization, analysis, and dashboarding via the cloud. Its solutions focus on delivering a highly usable interface and self-service capabilities that provide greater accessibility to users. In addition, the company provides a number of connectors to different data sources that help to accelerate the time to insights for users. Nucleus has found that data preparation often takes up the majority of a data analyst’s time, and it is essential for companies like BIME to deliver tools such as prebuilt connectors that will help speed up the process for users. BIME can combine and analyze data from both offline and online data sources by leveraging its Query Builder technology. Some of the sources include flat files, data streams, SQL Databases and Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, SAP HANA, and Twitter. Moving forward, Nucleus expects that BIME’s continued investments in its connectors and usability will further improve its positioning in the Matrix. LOGI ANALYTICS Logi Analytics provides a cloud-based analytics solution and a platform that supports an embedded use of their application. The company has an extensive partner ecosystem that provides its customers with functionality that is geared towards specific use cases. In July, Logi Analytics announced the release of Logi 12 that aims to deliver more self-service tools to users that are designed for the needs of different types of users. The release provides a number of new tools including:
Copyright © 2015 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Nucleus Research is the leading provider of value-focused technology research and advice. NucleusResearch.com
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November 2015 Document P192
Logi DataHub. This new offering helps to streamline and simplify data preparation, giving users more self-service data analysis capabilities. Some of its functionality provides the ability to connect, load, and blend data from databases, file, or other applications such as CRM or ERP solutions. The database connections include, HP Vertica, SQL, Server, Oracle, MySQL, and Salesforce, Marketo, Hubspot, Quickbooks, and MS Dynamics.
Discovery Module for Logi Info. This new module provides users with self-service data discovery and visualization with a recommendation function, the capability to publish and share new insights, and the ability to embed the Module in existing applications.
Improvements to Logi Vision. Enhancements to Logi Vision include a more advanced data visualization recommendation engine that can learn and improve as it is used. In addition, it provides new project templates with prepoulated connections, visualizations, and dashboards.
Enhancements to the Logi Info BI platform. The advancements made to Logi Info offer new interactive visualization tools, self-service dashboarding capabilities, and real-time charts.
Copyright © 2015 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Nucleus Research is the leading provider of value-focused technology research and advice. NucleusResearch.com
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