January 1, 2003

http://www.iemagazine.com:8080/030101/602feat2_1.jhtml

Companies to Watch 2003

Watch these important enablers of the intelligent enterprise.

Intelligence

by Justin Kestelyn

This list proves it: Visibility, transparency, predictability, and collaboration are the "four horsemen" of strategic IT's Intelligence category. Business performance management (BPM) has clearly replaced CRM as the lodestar for BI and analytics vendors in 2003.

Adaytum Inc.

Founded: 1990
HQ: Minneapolis

After spending years developing linked spreadsheets for financial departments, since 1996 Adaytum has used collaborative modeling technology originally developed at IBM to fashion a lucrative enterprise business planning niche. Intense interest in performance management will only sharpen Adaytum's edge in 2003.

Brio Software Inc.

Founded: 1989
HQ: Santa Clara, Calif.

Brio Software was among the first BI tools vendors to board the BPM bandwagon, aggressively rebranding itself as the business performance software company. The company got it right: Brio Metrics Builder, which is carefully marketed as a BPM enabler, not solution, has inspired imitation among competitors.

Cognos Inc.

Founded: 1969
HQ: Ottawa

In a year when positive news was scarce, we could rely on Cognos to deliver it: In August, Gartner Dataquest ranked the company the revenue and market share leader in the BI industry, which we can primarily attribute to Impromptu's and PowerPlay's enduring popularity. In 2003, interest in its new analytic apps and Series 7 enterprise BI framework should accelerate.

Crystal Decisions Inc.

Founded: 1984
HQ: Palo Alto, Calif.

Thanks to a knack for forging blockbuster partnerships as well as sound product management instincts, Crystal Decisions emerged from the Seagate Technology turmoil with one of the most valuable brands in the business. If the company can diversify beyond its successful reporting suite, its impressive growth will continue.

E.Intelligence Inc.

Founded: 2000
HQ: Minneapolis

E.Intelligence, founded and led by serial BI entrepreneur Richard Tanler, combines Web-based data warehousing technology originally developed at Information Advantage and forecasting models licensed from SPSS Inc. (also an investor) to bring predictive analytics and collaborative planning to the demand management process. Its agenda looks prophetic in 2003.

Fair, Isaac & Co. Inc.

Founded: 1956
HQ: San Rafael, Calif.

Thanks to its surprising acquisition of HNC Software in 2002, Fair, Isaac could become the dominant force in decisioning solutions worldwide; the company claims that its analytic engines drive more than 14 billion decisions annually. If the merger generates the synergies that inspired its execution, the combination will be formidable.

Hyperion Solutions Corp.

Founded: 1991
HQ: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Interest in BPM has healed the internal schism between Hyperion's OLAP and financial management app constituencies: Now, few people question that BPM will fuel most of its growth this year. The company's ability to offer integrated solutions spanning financial-operational and analytic systems should keep it a step ahead of pure-play BI software rivals in that space.

Information Builders Inc. (IBI)

Founded: 1975
HQ: New York

IBI is one of the oldest companies in the BI industry, and having mastered the scalability challenges of enterprise information delivery, it's now working to simplify the deployment of template-driven, self-service BI applications that cross the firewall, especially in financial reporting. In 2003, IBI's experience in creating large-scale information transparency will be an advantage.

MicroStrategy Inc.

Founded: 1989
HQ: McLean, Va.

MicroStrategy isn't unique in its new financial transparency evangelism, but considering its financial travails, few companies will be more attentive to the implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The latest version of MicroStrategy7i includes new financial analytics and reporting features, and by early 2003, will run on AIX and Solaris.

ProClarity Corp.

Founded: 1995
HQ: Boise, Id.

The fastest-growing private company in BI, ProClarity has crafted a customizable analytic framework based on Microsoft Analysis Services that carefully balances the needs for customization and quick deployment. Its advanced, OLAP, and Excel interfaces make it equally attractive to power and business users, and the new release 5 adds a business logic repository for sharing analytic best practices.

Siebel Systems Inc.

Founded: 1993
HQ: San Mateo, Calif.

Does Siebel's new "dramatically expanded" relationship with Microsoft presage an acquisition? It's hard to say, but the company still deserves watching. Siebel Analytics, which fell out of the 2001 acquisition of nQuire, deserves respect from pure-play BI companies and may help insulate the Siebel installed base from their incursions.

Spotfire Inc.

Founded: 1996
HQ: Somerville, Mass.

Spotfire DecisionSite, which offers a winning combination of data mining and visualization, is now turning heads with new collaborative analysis functionality. The company has gained most traction in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries, which also happen to be deep reservoirs of potential analytic application customers.

Integration

by Jeanette Burriesci, Justin Kestelyn, & Michelle M. Young

Budgets for new IT projects may be tight, but back-office integration remains at the top of the short list of priorities. Whether the goal is creating a real-time, unified customer view or simply moving batch data from one place to another, the technologies involved are more strategic than ever.

Acxiom Corp.

Founded: 1969
HQ: Little Rock, Ark.

Acxiom continues to bolster its value proposition by responding to expanding business needs related to consumer intelligence. Its new Patriot Act Solutions help customers comply with the 2001 USA Patriot Act with capabilities such as identity verification. And after two years' development, Personicx was released as a unique consumer household-level segmentation system.

Ascential Software Corp.

Founded: 2001
HQ: Westboro, Mass.

A strong cash position, growth in sales of its core ETL products, joint development with SAP, and a new partnership with Brio Software keep Ascential important in the data integration space. Introduction of the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite adds promising new potential.

Data Junction Corp.

Founded: 1985
HQ: Austin, Texas

Data Junction is a popular vendor among small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) and department-level projects in large enterprises. The combination of increasing demand for data integration among SMBs and widespread budget pinches work in Data Junction's favor. Meanwhile, through development and partnerships, Data Junction is working to increase support for BI.

DataMirror Corp.

Founded: 1993
HQ: Toronto

DataMirror reorganized this year and announced a new product marketing identity: LiveBusiness. The LiveBusiness line of products supports real-time data handling requirements, arguably a long-term strategy. At the same time, offers targeted to economical solutions for IBM shops demonstrate DataMirror's good tactical survival skills.

Informatica Corp.

Founded: 1993
HQ: Redwood City, Calif.

Informatica may be the information integration market share leader, but this company continues to innovate. In a bold effort to speed analytic app deployments, the company recently modularized its applications into plug-and-play components that sit on top of its PowerCenter ETL platform.

Kalido Group

Founded: 2001
HQ: London

Kalido, which began its existence as a data integration project at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, attracted attention throughout 2002 with its federated, reference data-driven approach to information integration. This year, the technology's potential appeal to customers with highly complex (and expensive) back-office integration problems should help Kalido move beyond core accounts.

Software AG

Founded: 1969
HQ: Darmstadt, Germany

With a profitable first half of 2002, the dominant XML database company maintained its market leadership despite increased competition from Microsoft. And by incorporating support for SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI into Tamino, Software AG hopes to provide the Web services repository of record.

Sonic Software Corp.

Founded: 2001
HQ: Bedford, Mass.

Sonic Software, a unit of Progress Software Corp., earned notice in 2002 for its lightweight, highly open, and relatively affordable approach to internal enterprise integration. With Progress' recent acquisition of XML specialist eXcelon, Sonic will soon bring message transformation capabilities to the table for more complex integration projects.

Sybase Inc.

Founded: 1984
HQ: Dublin, Calif.

With its acquisition of OnePage and the full incorporation of New Era of Networks' integration capabilities, Sybase is well positioned as one of the leaders in the enterprise portal market, and its iAnywhere subsidiary is swiftly emerging as a mobile computing leader.

Tibco Software Inc.

Founded: 1997
HQ: Palo Alto, Calif.

Not content to rely solely on its integration savvy, Tibco has taken a step toward providing more complete enterprise information management solutions by acquiring Praja, a business activity monitoring (BAM) company. This acquisition, in combination with recent activity in the portal space, suggests that Tibco will work hard in 2003 to move up the strategic IT stack.

Trillium Software, a division of Harte-Hanks Inc.

Founded: 1968
HQ: Billerica, Mass.

A strategic approach to information quality is a key differentiator of the intelligent enterprise. Trillium Software System contributes to that goal with reporting functionality that reveals data quality ROI; in 2003, it should piggyback onto a growing number of integration projects.

WebMethods Inc.

Founded: 1996
HQ: Fairfax, Va.

Already well known for smart partnership moves, webMethods is now working with Informatica to promote BAM solutions that combine the webMethods integration platform and enterprise Web services tools with PowerCenter. And the bundling of the JBoss open-source app server with webMethods 6.0 may make the company more of a one-stop shop for enterprise development.

Infrastructure

by Michelle M. Young

No longer relegated to "just the cost of doing business," infrastructure is increasingly an integral part of organizations' strategic vision as tough economic times force organizations to demand value from their existing resources. And these companies are listening.

BMC Software Inc.

Founded: 1980
HQ: Houston

BMC's acquisition of Remedy from Peregrine Systems may transform the company from a tools and utilities vendor to an enterprise management solutions leader. The combined product offerings offer customers both increased employee productivity and customer satisfaction, while improving IT performance and lowering operational costs.

Borland Software Corp.

Founded: 1983
HQ: Scotts Valley, Calif.

Not just for solitary developers anymore, Borland - by adding acquisitions Starbase Corp. and BoldSoft MDE Aktiebolag to the fold - is realizing its goal of becoming the "Switzerland" of enterprise development tools. And another revenue growing quarter certainly only helps its chances.

Computer Associates International Inc.

Founded: 1976
HQ: Islandia, N.Y.

After taking some public relations damage in 2002 (not to mention facing serious legal scrutiny into its finances), the market leader for software that manages corporate networks is out to prove that it understands what enterprises want. A rebranding of its complex product line and more flexible licensing policies are steps in the right direction.

Dell Computer Corp.

Founded: 1984
HQ: Austin, Texas

Increasing acceptance of Dell-EMC entry-level storage systems, recent successes in high-performance computing clusters, and industry analyst figures showing that more U.S. customers purchase industry-standard servers from Dell than any other company prove that competitors can't afford to label Dell as a PC company any longer.

Embarcadero Technologies Inc.

Founded: 1993
HQ: San Francisco

With more than 90 of the Fortune 100 using its products to design, develop, and administer their mission-critical database applications, Embarcadero Technologies continues to win raves. Its new ER/Studio 5.5 beat out rivals in a usability study of data modeling and design tools.

Hewlett-Packard Co.

Founded: 1939
HQ: Palo Alto, Calif.

Now that the merger with Compaq has made it the third-largest global technology services provider behind IBM and EDS, HP has no time for a honeymoon: It's moving quickly to identify and eliminate overlapping platforms and storage products, and demonstrating to skeptics how its new roadmaps and branding strategy bring value to intelligent enterprises.

Hitachi Data Systems Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd.

Founded: 1989
HQ: Santa Clara, Calif.

Sluggish IT spending and the performance gap between EMC Corp.'s current late-cycle Symmetrix vs. the latest high-end Lightning system 9980V have helped Hitachi gain ground on EMC. Will Hitachi's acquisition of Comstock Systems Corp. and partnerships with Sun Microsystems and HP help it administer a coupe-de-grace by 2004?

Mercury Interactive Corp.

Founded: 1989
HQ: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Not content with its load testing market leadership, Mercury Interactive unveiled its Business Technology Optimization initiative and Optane suite as part of its ambitious strategy to optimize the quality of companies' applications and infrastructure, eliminate technology waste, and better align IT with the business.

Network Appliance Inc.

Founded: 1992
HQ: Sunnyvale, Calif.

No longer No. 1 in network attached storage (NAS), Network Appliance is climbing back by unleashing the FAS900 series - touted as the industry's first standards-based unified storage engine that can handle networked storage in SAN or NAS mode - and plans to deliver SAS BI tools on Netapp storage filers. And Network Appliance is getting serious about sales: It's aggressively revamping its much maligned channel program and actively wooing distributors, a new move for the company.

Novell Inc.

Founded: 1979
HQ: Provo, Utah

Acquiring SilverStream Software supplied the missing components Novell needs to become a player in application development. It outlined an ambitious strategy for 2003 involving Web services development and secure ID management - including Novell exteNd 4.0 - with a new focus on business decision makers.

Rational Software Corp.

Founded: 1981
HQ: Cupertino, Calif.

The new S&P 500 member's acquisition of NeuVis Inc. adds another piece to its life cycle development tool offerings with NeuArchitect's ability to generate new, model-driven code from legacy applications - critical for companies wanting to make the most of their existing resources.

Unisys Corp.

Founded: 1873
HQ: Blue Bell, Pa.

Unisys' Wintel-based ES7000 is quickly gaining ground in the competition with Sun Microsystems and other Unix system vendors for the high-end server business. Unisys also plans to promote the ES7000s for supercomputing applications via a partnership with Cornell Theory Center.

Collaborative Commerce

by Jeanette Burriesci

Areas of IT that support collaborative commerce have outperformed many others. Anything that can squeeze more cost savings from operations is worth a price tag with a believable ROI potential. And just in case the CFO is incredulous, several c-commerce vendors are taking on the burden of risk by guaranteeing results.

Agile Software Corp.

Founded: 1995
HQ: San Jose, Calif.

Agile generated a buzz in 2002 with several important new product life cycle management (PLM) products, executive appointments, and awards. Customer satisfaction is high, and the volume of sales to existing customers has been healthy. Agile is also among the vanguard of vendors adopting a risk-sharing sales model, eliminating a major source of contract hesitation.

Baan, a division of Invensys plc

Founded: 1978
HQ: Barneveld, Netherlands

Baan announced OpenWorldX this year, which will "combine, enhance, and extend" its existing offerings including OpenWorld, DEM, B2B Server, Business Intelligence Server, and Enterprise Server. It simultaneously announced iBaan Value Apps, which will use OpenWorldX to enable specific business processes. Look for releases in early 2003.

BEA Systems Inc.

Founded: 1995
HQ: San Jose, Calif.

BEA exudes vibrancy: Java afficionados love the company, and it constantly delivers new enhancements and products that keep it in the technological forefront. BEA is poised to remain on top of the application server market and be a key player in the future of collaborative commerce-enabling Web services.

Datasweep Inc.

Founded: 1998
HQ: San Jose, Calif.

With its Advantage 5.0 product suite, Datasweep has expanded well beyond its core competency of manufacturing execution systems. Its capabilities now include include analysis, integration, and collaboration. The Datasweep Advantage Collaborate product line gives controlled visibility and distributed application functionality over the Web to all constituents.

E.piphany Inc.

Founded: 1996
HQ: San Mateo, Calif.

E.piphany continues to garner critical acclaim for its analytic CRM software after the release of its E.piphany E.6 suite, and now it carries the endorsement of Big Blue: Its software will be optimized for and integrated with IBM's e-business middleware, hardware, and services. E.piphany's solid J2EE architecture is partially credited for its selection.

Formation Systems Inc.

Founded: 1995
HQ: Southborough, Mass.

Formation Systems is thriving in its fertile niche: the complicated world of PLM in process manufacturing. A Coca-Cola exec went on record to say that Formation's Optiva software reduced the product introduction cycle from four years to four months. It's also the only product we know that lets you rationalize purchasing by matching chemical formulations.

J.D. Edwards & Co.

Founded: 1977
HQ: Denver

J.D. Edwards' eXtended Process Integration middleware technology is a big-picture approach to collaborative commerce. It links business processes across and within enterprises, embracing even existing enterprise applications. ERP 8.0, released in 2002, contains several enhancements and new features that support collaborative commerce - within reach of the midsized enterprise.

Optiant Inc.

Founded: 2000
HQ: Burlington, Mass.

Optiant released 4.0 of PowerChain this year and won awards for its ability to optimize complex supply chain operations. PowerChain lets you model the effects of decisions such as inventory reductions or cycle time changes and yields projections in terms of financial metrics.

SAP AG

Founded: 1972
HQ: Walldorf, Germany

SAP supports collaborative commerce on multiple fronts. Most recently, it has begun investing in "collaborative adaptive solutions" - extending well beyond traditional ERP to integrate the shop floor into its supply chain management capabilities. SAP Collaborative Master Data Management is also on the horizon, with the goal of harmonizing data to support e-business scenarios.

Sun Microsystems Inc.

Founded: 1982
HQ: Santa Clara, Calif.

Sun is positioning itself to finally capitalize on the J2EE market it created. A long-delayed decision to join the Web Services Interoperability Organization and plans to release a free low-end version of its Sun ONE Application Server may help it rapidly pull respectable share away from BEA Systems, IBM, and Oracle.

Tradec Inc.

Founded: 1996
HQ: San Jose, Calif.

Privately held Tradec acquired competitor PowerMarket and secured additional venture capital in 2002. PowerMarket adds supply chain decision management capabilities to Tradec's cost management software, which includes supplier management functions. The new capital will fund development as well as expanded sales and marketing efforts.

Viewlocity Inc./SynQuest Inc.

Founded: 1988
HQ: Atlanta

Viewlocity, Formerly Frontec AB, moved to a focus on supply chain execution management in the late '90s, and from there began to specialize in enabling the adaptive supply chain. This market is volatile and highly competitive, but Viewlocity's leadership combined with its late 2002 merger with SynQuest holds much potential.