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 Jinfonet earlier this year. Why the consolidation? BI is a mature market; most capabilities and features — such as data visualizations or slicing and dicing data — have commoditized and become table stakes. And the price pressure is huge: Microsoft and Oracle discount their BI products to less than $5 per user per month in large enterprise deals. It’s inevitable that more acquisitions and mergers are on the way. What does it mean for the buyers and users of enterprise BI? Anticipating turbulent times in the BI industry, Forrester already made that call two years ago and started recommending integrating multiple BI platforms via BI fabric. BI fabric can not only make your life easier dealing with multiple BI platforms but can also be your Plan B — easier migration to another platform — when vendors get acquired and platforms change.