Business intelligence (BI) aids in the organization of data collection and information, and in the technical system infrastructure by allowing managers and users to fully understand information that is critical in order for a business to move forward, and by using information to arrive at a decision of what merchandise or products work best in an organization and what techniques are best to use. BI “includes the practice of predicting, tracking, analyzing, and presenting quantitative measures as they relate to business performance and empowering decision makers with critical insights at the right time and place” (IBM, 2008). BI is one of the key supporting disciplines of Information on Demand (IOD). The vendors that are currently dominating the market are Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and Oracle (Richardson, Schlegel, Houstmann, & McMurchy, 2008). This paper will explore the four major vendors in business intelligence software.
Microsoft’s software products are great to choose from. Microsoft has more comparability with operating systems and appeal to the larger community of Microsoft applications developers. Many organizations are content with the bundling and pricing of its BI products (Richardson, Schlegel, Houstmann, & McMurchy, 2008). Microsoft’s products are cheaper and most organizations tend to choose from a software program that will not be expensive and complicated. Microsoft’s BI technology has been internally developed rather than acquired. Microsoft is the largest software maker in the world, and its BI software applications are economical, easy to understand and to use, and most systems already have Microsoft placed in their data base, so continuing to use Microsoft’s BI software would be an easier and smoother transition in any organization. Microsoft’s latest office version is Windows 2007. The system software that is required for office Professional 2007 is XP or Vista. In addition, it is easier to go to Amazon to find price quotes for...