The Dozen 2004
Information Builders Inc.
New York
Taken for granted: That's what you get for delivering BI reporting, integration, and other critical technology to the world since 1975. However, when it comes to the stuff of turning information into knowledge that enables smarter decision-making, few companies dare relegate it to inconsequential overhead. Certainly not the customers of privately held Information Builders (IBI), who have enjoyed well-timed technology evolution and declining total cost of ownership since before some of the BI industry's titans learned how to master basic arithmetic.
As BI pushes up into the enterprise realm, more companies will take a long look at IBI's expertise in accessing, disseminating, transforming, and integrating data from the multitude of resources: mainframes, enterprise applications, nonrelational sources, and more. And unlike most of its competitors that have had to fill out their portfolios through acquisition and partnership, IBI's enterprise BI thrust stands on homegrown technology for both BI and integration solutions.
IBI (in tandem with its iWay Software subsidiary) is one of the few vendors with leading products in both the intelligence and integration categories — and importantly, thanks to 2003 product releases, a native ability to put the two together to further customer goals for real-time BI, Web services, and intelligent business processes. IBI's wisdom of experience will shine brightly in 2004.
