Business Performance Management platforms overview Part 1: Market presentation
Daniela Ioana SANDU IBM, Milan - Italy

Abstract: Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company who delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms report presents a global view of Gartner's opinion of the main software vendors that should be considered by organizations seeking to develop BI/BPM applications. Based on the BI capabilities provided by their platforms and based on the client portfolio, vendors are classified as leaders, challengers, visionaries and niche players. In order to consolidate their position as leaders and in order to gain more market share, the past few years where characterized by numerous and sound acquisitions that repositioned the main software vendors in the Magic Quadrant. This is the first of the series of articles intended to describe the BPM platforms of the main vendors on the market as a result of the acquisitions of the last years. The vendors whose platforms will be described are Hyperion/Oracle, Cognos/IBM, SAP, Business Objects, SAS, Microsoft. Keywords: market, platform, Business Intelligence, Business Performance Management. Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company who delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms report released quarterly presents a global view of Gartner's opinion of the main software vendors that should be considered by organizations seeking to develop BI/BPM applications. The BI platform vendors are classified based on the capabilities a BI/BPM platform is to provide. The capabilities are grouped in 3 categories of functionalities: 1. Integration a. BI infrastructure – refers to