IT News Archives | Site Search | Advertise on IT Direction | Contact | Home

Business Intelligence's renewed interest of late

January 25, 2007

Overall, Hewlett-Packard has taken a new step in an ongoing reorganization of its software operations. The IT vendor has formed a new unit to bring together its BI (business intelligence) and information management expertise, which is presently 'loosely' spread out across HP.

Announced yesterday, the new BIO (Business Information Optimization) unit will consist of two groups, according to David Gee, v.p. of marketing for HP Software.

The first group will focus on BI, particularly data warehousing and analytics, while the second group will concentrate on information management as defined by data archiving and management.

One important piece of the BI group is HP's new Neoview data warehouse software, server and storage product family, which the vendor started shipping to early customers three months ago.

Another key segment are HP's new BI services capabilities it gained with its acquisition of the 700-person consultancy KnightsBridge Solutions, which closed two weeks ago.

With company headquarters in Chicago, KnightsBridge had a strong presence in the US and Canada, and in Western Europe, particularly in the U.K.

KnightsBridge focused on providing BI, data warehousing, data integration and information quality services to Fortune 500 customers. Heading the new BI group is Ben Barnes. HP expects to name a general manager for the information management group within a few weeks.

Barnes was previously CEO of ActiveIdentity Inc., a provider of authentication and digital identity software. Barnes said he expects HP's renewed focus on BI to go down well with the company's partners, including BI pure-play vendors like Business Objects SA, Cognos, Hyperion Solutions Corp., MicroStrategy and other BI partners including IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

It's not HP's intention to try and enter the BI market already occupied by those firms, but instead to strengthen existing partnerships, Barnes added.

One of HP's prime competitors in data warehousing will be TeraData, which is in the process of splitting off from parent NCR Corp.

Barnes' resumé includes a stint working at Teradata while NCR was also home to HP's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd.

Other likely data warehousing rivals are Netezza Corp. and Data Allegro, Barnes said.

In December, following the completion of its US $4.5 billion acquisition of Mercury Interactive, HP created a BTO (Business Technology Optimization) unit as part of its software business to unite Mercury's application management software with HP's OpenView systems and network management technologies.

The newly announced BIO unit is best seen working in parallel to the BTO unit, Gee said. The goal of both of the optimization units is to better group together HP's software assets so as to position HP as more of a "trusted advisor" to chief information officers, he added.

HP will likely continue growing its overall software business through a combination of homegrown technologies and acquisitions, Gee said.

Source: IT World Canada