Boris Evelson
Vice President, Principal Analyst

Author Insights
Blog
TIBCO’s Acquisition Of Information Builders Signals More BI Market Consolidation
The business intelligence (BI) vendor consolidation trend that started earlier in 2019 continues. Today, TIBCO announced its intent to acquire Information Builders, Inc. (IBI) — one of the oldest players in the market. Want to get the real sense of how far back IBI goes? It was one of the first vendors to offer reporting and analytics on mainframes! It still does, and it’s quite a unique capability today, only […]
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Amplify Intelligence With AI And Analytics — Forrester’s Virtual Data & Insights Forum, October 13–15
They say data is the new oil. They say data is the new currency. They say data is the key competitive differentiator. All true. But reality is sobering: Only 7% of firms report advanced, insights-driven practices. Respondents to the same survey claimed that less than half (49%) of all business decisions in their enterprise are […]
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BI Is Dead; Long Live BI
Enterprise BI is not dead, It's alive and thriving. But there are changes ahead. Learn about five of them here.
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Just Published: Dual Forrester Wave™ Evaluations On Text Analytics
Enterprises have been successfully leveraging analytics platforms such as business intelligence (BI), predictive analytics based on machine learning (PAML), cognitive search, and others for multiple applications and use cases for decades. That has not been the case with text analytics or natural language processing (NLP) technologies. Forrester tracks over a hundred vendors whose platforms are […]
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Data, Analytics, And Insights Investments Produce Tangible Benefits — Yes, They Do
If you set out to build a “boil the ocean” business case for why to invest in data, analytics, and insights initiatives — stop. Use your precious time to instead focus on prioritizing the investment categories across where you are in your business-insights maturity, because they will yield tangible benefits — both top- and bottom-line […]
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Forrester 2019 Enterprise BI Platform Wave™ Evaluations — Research Update
Forrester has just published 2019 refreshes of our enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform Wave™ evaluations. As the BI market and the technology continue to evolve, so does our research. This year, we emphasized: New market segmentation by both vendor-managed and client-managed platforms, which roughly equate to on-premises and cloud-based platforms, respectively, but not quite. Since […]
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Business Intelligence Market Consolidation — What To Expect Next
The past two years have seen a significant divergence in the maturity of the supply and demand sides of the business intelligence (BI) market. This divergence will influence market dynamics for the next two years and affect enterprise insights leaders making strategic vendor and platform decisions. Specifically, the: Supply side is very mature. BI technology […]
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Enterprise BI Platforms Are Low-Code App Dev’s Best Kept Secret
I recently had the privilege (not to mention a lot of fun) to participate in a brainstorming session with a large enterprise software vendor and my esteemed colleagues John Rymer, Rob Koplowitz, and Jeffrey Hammond on the topic of low-code app dev. It’s not a well-known fact (but Forrester has been publicizing it for a […]
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The BI Vendor Landscape Is Going Through Significant Changes — What Can You Do To Protect Your Investments?
The business intelligence (BI) market is going through a round of significant consolidation. Earlier this month, Sisense acquired Periscope Data; last week, Google announced its intention to acquire Looker; and today, Salesforce announced the intention to acquire Tableau Software. A smaller company, Logi Analytics, has also been on an acquisition spree, acquiring Zoomdata today and […]
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Forrester’s 2019 Business Intelligence Vendor Landscape
Information technology keeps moving forward at an ever-increasing pace. Business intelligence (BI) technology isn’t falling behind and keeps constantly evolving. Gone are the days when vendors categorized themselves as: IT-focused and enterprise-scalable vs. business-user-focused BI platforms mostly going after departmental and line of business use cases. All legacy, formerly IT-focused BI vendors have moved squarely […]
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Transform Your Organization From Data-Driven To Insights-Driven
Over the last five years, most large enterprises have slowly but surely matured from being data-aware to data-driven. They all collect data from operational and transactional applications; process the data into data lakes, data hubs, data warehouses, and data marts; and build business intelligence (BI) and analytics applications to understand what the data is telling […]
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A Use Case For Business Intelligence Vs. Text Analytics Tools
I recently answered a client question regarding an application that could be based on either business intelligence (BI) or text analytics technology. Question: “We receive quarterly and yearly account statements for our investments. Each statement will contain key pieces of information, such as total contributions, expenses, interest income, etc. However, each vendor may format their […]
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BI Buyers Look For End-To-End Platforms — Qlik Acquires Podium Data
Qlik, a Leader in our recent Forrester Wave™ evaluation on business intelligence (BI), has acquired Podium Data, a Contender in our big data fabric Wave. In a humble opinion of yours truly, this is further proof of a trend showing that BI buyers are increasingly seeking end-to-end platforms and solutions, rather than separate BI/ETL components that need […]
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Use Text Analytics Technologies To Handle Mountains Of Unstructured Data
Enterprises are sitting on mountains of unstructured data — 61% have more than 100 terabytes, and 12% have more than five petabytes! Luckily, there are mature technologies out there that can help. First, enterprise information architects should consider general-purpose text analytics platforms. These are capable of handling most, if not all, text analytics use cases, both […]
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Continued Convergence Of Analytics Products And Services
I’ve been watching this trend with great curiosity (and first wrote about it in 2008). On the one hand, software product vendors are slowly but surely migrating from just selling products to selling solutions — and solutions always require professional services. IBM led the trend when it acquired PwC Consulting in 2002. For the last few […]
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AI Unlocks The Business Intelligence In BI
In most enterprises, data access is a fait accompli: 72% of global data and analytics decision makers say that they can access the data they need to obtain insights in a timely manner. However, even the most modern BI tools that make data more accessible still require significant subject matter expertise to find the right […]
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Make BI Applications More Intuitive With Search Like GUI
Most business intelligence (BI) applications are constructed using point-and-click drag-and-drop graphical user interfaces (GUI), but still require end user training and long ramp up times, although not to the extent of learning and writing SQL code. Few business decision-makers access data directly, instead rely on trained business analysts, even for basic information. Modern BI tools […]
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Predictions 2018: AI Hard Fact – Treat It Like A Plug-And-Play Panacea and Fail
Look right, look left, you’ll see a fellow CIO contemplating their AI move. Failing to act is not an option in most organizations. However, as enterprises are kicking off their AI pilots or seeing early results, the honeymoon is over as enterprises that naively celebrated the cure-all promises of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is over. Enterprises needed better data foundations. They underestimated the level of business expertise […]
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Everything you wanted to know about SAP Leonardo but were afraid to ask
Large enterprise software vendors seem to be enamoured with using the names of historical figures or literary characters as brand names. Unfortunately, this is really confusing for the buyers, since the vendors apply these branding names differently. For example (in an increasing order of branding approach complexity): OpenText Magellan is a collection of business intelligence […]
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Forrester Methodology To Select Business Intelligence Implementation Service Providers
Business Intelligence (BI) pros continue to look for outside professional services. Forty-nine percent of decision makers say their firms are already engaging and/or expanding their engagements with outside data and analytic service providers, and another 22% plan to do so in the next 12 months. There are two main reasons for this sustained trend: The […]
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