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« 'Agility': Can It -- Should It -- Be Measured? | Main | Wall Street Journal Columnist Heralds Death of 'Gut Instinct' » January 24, 2008Hey, Someone Forgot to Tell the BI Sector that Times are 'Tough'
While commentators seem to be in a state of utter panic over recession talk, the business intelligence vendor community doesn't seem to have gotten the message. There seem to be plenty of funds flowing to BI. For example, IBM has been pouring money into the sector -- it just acquired Cognos, of course, and just the other day announced it was acquiring AptSoft, an event processing platform and tools provider. Then, there's last week's announcement that Sun Microsystems is buying MySQL, the open-source database provider, for $1 billion. Claudia Imhoff observes that money is flowing to many smaller BI vendors as well. "In just the past few weeks," she wrote on January 23rd, "BI and MDM [mater data management] companies have scored big -- like almost $80 million BIG! ...Certainly says a lot about the confidence venture capital firms have in our space." Claudia provides examples of big BI-related deals going down, including ParAccel snagging $20 million on December 10, 2007 to further fund their Analytic Database product. "The funding will be used to expand engineering, sales and support, and to open their Cupertino office according to Scott Humphrey, their marketing communications person." Greenplum - another data warehouse appliance company like ParAccel - just received $27 million in venture capital. "And this only 11 months after a $15 million venture round," Claudia points out. "They plan to use the new funds to continue development on Greenplum's database and to expand their sales and marketing efforts, especially internationally." Claudia also points to Siperian, a developer of MDM software, which announced that had closed and "oversubscribed" $25 million. The additional funds "will be used to expand their European presence, develop their channels and further advance their MDM Hub technology." Claudia sums up the state of business intelligence and data management, which are must-haves, whether the economy is booming or busting: "Am I enthusiastic about our industry? You bet I am. Corporations all over are realizing now more than ever in these stressful times that their very survival depends on their ability to make the right decisions. What better time than now to invest in the very companies that make that possible?" Posted by joemckendrick in BI Vendor Watch | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: |
