Complete Ion Draft

Business Intelligence tools 1
Business Intelligence Tools
By
Vikram R Gollamandala
MISM 799- Fall 2009
Ferris State University

DEDICATION
This capstone project is dedicated to my parents, Ferris State University MISM
faculty, and friends. Without their love, help, and blessings this capstone project work
would not have been possible

Abstract
This capstone project focuses on the business intelligence tools. In the following
capstone project popular BI tools available in the market are analyzed, the advanced
features and services provided by the BI tools of popular BI vendors are analyzed by
comparing different services and features provided different vendors. The importance of
BI tools for a business organization is also explained. The role played by BI tool in the
success of Organization is also analyzed.

Table of Contents
Dedication………………………………………………………………………. 2
Abstract………………………………………………………………………….. 3
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………. 5
Chapter
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………… 7
Purpose………………………………………………………………….. 9
Value……………………………………………………………………. 10
Research Questions……………………………………………………. 10
Limitations……………………………………………………………… 10
Definitions of Terms…………………………………………………… 11
Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 14
2. Literature Review………………………………………………………… 15
Introduction………………………………………………………………. 15
Evaluation of Business intelligence tools or ETL……………………….. 16
Quick History of Business Intelligence…………………………………… 19
Quick History of Popular BI or ETL……………………………………… 20
Conclusion………………………………………………………………… 27
3. Methodology……………………………………………………………… 29
4. Findings…………………………………………………………………… 39
5. Conclusion and Recommendation………………………………………… 58

List of Figures
Figures
4.1 Business Intelligence vendors………………………………………… 39
4.2 Business Intelligence vendors………………………………………… 39
4.3 Business Intelligence features………………………………………… 44
4.4 Business Intelligence Services………………………………………... 48
4.5 Compare and contrast of BI tools…………………………………….. 51

Chapter 1- Introduction
Business Intelligence (BI) denotes a process, an organizational function, and a
product. A formal organizational unit or an individual produces a product after the
process of BI which can be termed as business intelligence. In 1966 Greene defined the
BI product as “processed information of interest to management about the present and
future environment in which the business is operating.” The definition points first about
processed information which distinguishes data (the raw material composed of facts) and
intelligence. The processed information is digested, analyzed, and interpreted for the
purpose of decision making. Next the definition point’s management as having a crucial
role in BI which decides what will be the domain of BI. Finally BI considers both tactical
intelligence for present environment and strategic intelligence for future environment.
(Gilad, 1988, p. 1).
Business Intelligence takes the data available from the organization and processes
it into useful information. We can call this processed data as processed information which
will be used by organization for decision making. “Business Intelligence is a set of
technologies and processes which allow all people of levels of an organization to access
and analyze data to manage business, improve performance, discover opportunities, and
operate efficiently.” (Howson, 2007, p. 1). BI can provide best service only if it used
effectively. The performance of the organization can be directly proportional to the
effective usage of BI. It provides valuable information to organization managers to track
sales in different region by various product lines, to predict plans which are running over
budget, and to find regions where sales can be good. An organization can get more
flexibility for decision making by using BI than paper based reporting. It is hard for an
organization to find the business unit which was over budget and then to take immediate
action against the unit by paper based reporting. An organization can take immediate
action if it is using BI instead of paper based reporting.
To generate BI business organizations must be able to collect, access, analyze,
and share information. Organizations have to build their platform to gain insight into the
reality of the business. Business organizations have to understand the problem, collect
and analyze the data, share results, and act on the information to create a successful BI
platform. As a first step to build platform organization have to understand the problem by
mapping existing data flows and structures in the organization. After determining the
areas where there is great need to take attention organizations have to focus on those
areas for establishing a platform in that area. Next the organization has to prepare a plan
for collecting data. Accurate and timely data is the key for successfully building BI
platform. The most difficult task in building BI platform is gathering metadata. The data
that represents organizational data is called as metadata. The decision makers cannot
distinguish the meaning of given analysis without exact metadata. To gather accurate
metadata requires support and cooperation of organization’s experts and executives. After
gathering accurate metadata organizations have to analyze the gathered data. In this step
the tools to analyze data plays crucial role, these tools can be called as BI tools or
analytical tools. The BI tool chosen by the organization should be placed broadly through
the organization to get more benefit. The results of the analysis must be shared and
published because the value of business intelligence is subject to effective network.

The organizations must consider the step to analyze data in building BI platform
as critical. Even though the organizations are able to use data cubes and data mining to
generate useful information, the challenging task is to use the available information
effectively. Analytical applications or BI tools come into picture in this step for analyzing
available information effectively. This capstone project mainly focuses on the study of
effective analytical tools or BI tools and will provide:
 Study of Effective Business Intelligence tools available in the market
 Explaining the services provided by the BI tools for business organizations
 Study of advanced features included in the BI tools
 Comparing and contrasting all features of BI tools by providing rating
 Projecting the influence of BI tools on business organization’s success
The first chapter of this capstone project will include the purpose, value, research,
questions, limitations, and definitions of the terms for this project.
Purpose
The basic interest in doing my capstone project on BI tools is because of the
influence of business intelligence course in my masters. So the main purpose of my
project is to explore BI tools available in the market, explain the services provided by the
BI tools, exploring the features of effective BI tools available in the market, and also
exploring how can a BI tool effects the success of business organization. This project
provides me an opportunity to explore and learn about the trends and technologies
available for business intelligence. This paper also provides me an opportunity to explore
BI tools used by the small to larger scale business organizations to be successful in the
competitive world. My capstone project on BI tools might help me in my feature field of
work.
Value
My project will help both large and small scale business organizations, people
having business intelligence as their field of work, and end users will learn about the new
technologies, and techniques of business intelligence used by the business organizations.
Business organizations can use my findings in the Findings chapter (Chapter 4) in
building their business intelligence platform. The findings will be useful for business
organizations in choosing analytical tools which was appropriate for their organization.
Research Questions
This capstone project mainly concentrates on answering the following five
questions:
1. What are the popular Business Intelligence Tools available in the market?
2. What are the services provided by the BI tools for business organizations?
3. What are the advanced features included in BI tools?
4. Compare and contrast all features of BI tools by providing rating
according to their performance?
5. How can a BI tool influence business organization for its success in the
competitive market?
Limitations
The limitations of my capstone project are:

 This project assumes that the reader has minimum knowledge of data mining, data
warehousing, hardware, database management, BI tools, ETL (Extract Transform
Load) tools, and analytical tools. These topics are related to this project but were
not explained in depth as the readers are expected to be having knowledge on
these topics, and also because of the length and limitations.
 The BI tools or analytical tools analyzed in this project are not practically
implemented or executed. No practical analyses of data or data cube analyses is
performed for this project. The analysis is made through internet keyword
searches, online books, databases, and telephone interviews.
 The effective BI tools or analytical tools are chosen by their availability for the
analysis and popularity but not by their performance.
 The sources used are online books, databases, and internet key word searches.
The text books available in the market are not used due to the cost considerations.
 The analysis on BI tools is limited up to their features and services provided by
them. This project is not going to include how good the employees of the business
organizations would use the BI tools and this project will not consider the
capability of the employees of business organizations on usage of BI tools.
Definitions of Terms used in the project
Business Intelligence (BI): Business Intelligence is a set of technologies which
transform large amount of data available in the
business organizations into useful information and
analyze useful information for producing results
which can track sales, plans running out of time and

budget, and regions where sales can be good.
Finally share these results throughout the
organization to take appropriate action.
Business Intelligence (BI) tools: The tools which analyze useful information by
applying mathematical or statistical operations
which produce results related to sales performance,
operational performance, inventory stock analysis,
vendor performance, and production time to
delivery.
OLAP: Online analytical processing which merges and then
submerges the multidimensional data available from
data warehouse or data marts. The supervised data
available from OLAP is submitted to data mining
which presents the data to higher levels for further
abstraction in some domain.
Data mining: Data mining is a process of looking on your own
data and summarize into useful information. It also
finds the patterns among fields in relational
database.
Data warehousing: Data warehousing is a process which collects
unstructured useful information and databases, and

put them together for further analysis by reporting
and analytical tools.
Query and reporting: Query and reporting is a process that helps decision-
making tools to translate business question into a
format that can be understood and used by them in
generating reports.
Regression: It is a data mining service which can predict profit,
sales, temperature, distance, and property estimation
by using mathematical algorithms of linear and non
liner regression.
Classification: It is a data mining service which predicts the target
categories or class in the data for each case. It can
be used for predicting risks while choosing a
customer for the business organizations.
Anomaly: It detects the cases in the data which pretends to be
homogeneous. It detects frauds, illegal activities,
network intrusions, and many minute events
difficult to predict.
Clustering: It detects the cases in the data which are having
similar characteristics or having some relation. It
also helps in anomaly detection process. It helps in
detection of intra clusters having high similarity.

Association: It is data mining service for detection of activities
may happen together. It helps business
organizations in detecting customer purchases
which can happen at the same time.
Feature selection and Extraction: It is a data mining service to refine the attributes
which are closely related from the huge amount of
metadata by raking attributes according to their
importance in predicting the target. It helps in
reducing the unnecessary data in the mining process
and also increases the prediction rate of a target.
Conclusion
The capstone project mainly focuses on the Study of Effective Business
Intelligence tools, explaining the services provided by the BI tools for the business
organizations to analyze their business activities, study of advanced features of BI tools
for the business organization to improve their performance and sales, comparing and
contrasting all features of BI tools by providing rating to figure out the analytical and
graphical capabilities of BI tools, and projecting influence of BI tools on the business
organizations for their success in the competitive world.

Chapter 2 – Literature Review
Introduction
There are considerable changes are occurring in the technologies and approaches
used for the business decision-making.
In late 1980s Business intelligence was called as DSS (Decision Support
Systems). Now Business intelligence has the highest priority in business decision-
making. For the past few decades there has been revolutionary changes were occurred for
extracting and transforming data from operational systems and load into data warehouses.
As a part of business intelligence ETL (Extract Transform and Load) tools or BI
(Business Intelligence) tools are used to extract, transform, and load data into data
warehouses. There have been several changes are occurring in these BI tools for the past
few decades. This Literature review will examine what are the changes occurred in BI
tools, changes in approaches used for business decision-making, and changes made in the
popular BI tools or ETL tools in the market. (Power, 2007)
According to Power (2007) there are important technological changes occurred in
late 1980s in the field of business decision-making field. These changes occurred because
of changes occurred in the size of the data stored by the business organizations. These
changes might have also occurred because of the increase of the intensity of competition
in the business world. To meet the increasing needs and to survive in the competitive
world business organizations have to innovate their approach towards holding huge
amount of data and converting uneven data into useful information to analyze their
performance.
This literature review is divided into three sections. First section of the literature
review will focus on the evolution of the BI tools. This section will focus on the changes
occurred in technological approaches used for BI tools of ETL tools. Second section of
this chapter focuses on the changes occurred in the field of business decision-making.
Finally the third section of this chapter focuses on the history, technologies, and features
of popular ETL tools or BI tools in the market. The chapter ends with the brief summary
of the changes happened in technologies and approaches of business organization to
survive in the competitive world.
Evolution of Business Intelligence Tools or ETL tools
According to the Eckerson (2003) the evolution of BI tools started in the early
1990s. This section focuses on the changes in approaches of business organization
towards BI tools in early 1990s and present usage.
In early 1990s most of the business organizations relied on code generation tools
to analyze their metadata. Business organizations used to develop custom code to extract
and transform metadata from operational systems and then load it to data warehouses.
The individual code generation for an organization proved to be expensive because they
have to pay huge amount for the labor of writing custom ETL programs. In the mid 1990s
vendors started shipping ETL tools to organizations to reduce the labor cost. They
provided third generation language programs like COBOL. These code generation tools
helped to simplified the ETL development work but they failed to reduce the effort to
automate the runtime environment, lesson code maintenance, and change control work
because the administrators have to manually distribute and manage compile code,
scheduling jobs, and transport files.
In mid to late 1990s vendors started building engine based analytical tools for
business intelligence. They started running proprietary scripting languages running within
the ETL or DBMS server. The language interpreters are used by ETL engines to process
ETL workflows at runtime. The developers in the graphical environment define ETL
workflows and are stored in a metadata repository. Engine reads workflows in the
metadata at runtime and process incoming data. This approach unifies design and
execution environment but fails to reduce custom coding and maintenance. In engine
based tools the whole process takes place in engine instead of source systems. The engine
runs on UNIX or Windows machines and connects to the source systems and if the
source systems are non relational then the administrator establishes a direct connection by
using third party gateway. The code generators can handle more complex processing than
engine based tools. Engine based BI tools provides better visual development
environment than code based BI tools.
Now the ETL tools capabilities are embedded in the DBMS (Database
Management Services) products. The vendors of DBMS are launching their products with
BI tools capabilities, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) capabilities, and data mining
capabilities. Most organizations prefer this option because of the reduction in cost and for
simplifying their BI environment. According to the Eckerson (2003) these tools are
termed as database-centric BI tools. These tools can be further divided in to three basic
groups as cooperative BI tools, complementary BI tools, and competitive BI tools. In
cooperative BI tools the third party ETL tools will leverage stored procedures to perform
transformations and aggregations in the database. The third party ETL tools can leverage
database to perform ETL processing in cooperative BI tools. Here the third party ETL
tools can improve the performance by enhancing scalability, parallel processing, and
optimizing features of database management systems. Some database vendors are
providing the services of third party ETL tools and avoiding the usage of third party ETL
tools. For example they provide summary tables which can be updated automatically
when there is change in detailed data in one or more associated tables. This group of
DBMS vendors is termed as Complementary ETL. The third group of database vendors is
providing graphical development tools as third party ETL tools. They provide most of the
features offered by third party ETL tools for free of cost and license for low fees. This
group of DBMS vendors is termed as Competitive ETL.
The business requirements of the business intelligence projects have been
increased for the past several years. The ETL vendors started to enhance the performance
of their products. The new generation ETL tools can process larger volumes of data at
greater speed and are able load data warehouses at greater speed and perfection. These
tools are using data capturing techniques, continuous processing, and improved runtime
operations to handle huge amounts of data and process them at grater speeds. They
exchange and coordinate metadata among heterogeneous systems which integrates an
environment that is easy to use and adopts changes easily. Vendors started integrating
ETL and enterprise application integration (EAI) capabilities in a single product. EAI
enables the users to create event driven interfaces among disparate transaction systems.
EAI captures real-time data and applications and passes them to ETL tools which process
the data and load it into BI environment. The vendors capable of integrating both ETL
and EAI capabilities into single product may be considered as the feature generations BI
tools or ETL tools. Eckerson (2003)
Quick history of business intelligence
The research for developing computerized quantitative model for decision making
and planning started in 1960s. Business intelligence is termed as DSS (Decision Support
Systems) in early 1980’s. This section of this chapter focuses on the history behind the
evolution of business intelligence.
The first idea of using computerized quantitative model for business decision
making and planning was proposed by Scott Morton in 1964. The model was named as
decision support systems. In 1980s the model is categorized as file drawer systems that
provide access to data items, data analysis systems which supports manipulation of data
by computerized tools, analysis information systems which provide access to decision
oriented databases, accounting and financial models which can calculate the
consequences for different actions in business, representational models which provide
guide lines to take actions, and suggestion models perform logical processing.
The origins of business intelligence are from data driven DSS, which emphasizes
the access and manipulation of both internal organization data and external real-time
data. It provides elementary level functionality by accessing simple files by query and
retrieval tools. It provides highest level of functionality and decision support through
online analytical processing. The example of data driven DSS is executive information
systems. The first data driven DSS was built through An Analytical Information
management Systems (AAIMS) which was an APL based software package. In early
1980s the usage of data warehousing and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) gradually
increased and at same time the data driven DSS started getting popular as Business
Intelligence. The business data of organization started to increase, the companies having
hundreds of megabytes of business data ended up with multiple terabytes of data which is
an exponential raise of business data. This intensive change in data storage resulted in
rapid growth of business intelligence (BI).
Quick history of popular BI or ETL tools
There are many analytical tools are available in the market for business decision
making because of the increase in business data of organizations. Each organization
chooses a BI tool depending on their requirement and platform. This literature review
considers Cognos, SPSS, SAS, SAP Business objects, OBI (Oracle Business Intelligence)
enterprise edition, Oracle Hyperion, and Oracle discoverer as popular BI tools. This
section of the literature focuses on the history of these popular ETL tools.
Cognos:
Cognos is one of the best providers of BI solutions for leading and most
successful business organizations. It provides services for more than 17,000 business
organizations in 120 countries of the world. Cognos (Cognos forerunner, Quasar Systems
Limited) was founded by Alan Rushforth and Peter Glenister in 1969. It provided
information system consulting to the Canada federal government. The company’s first
software product QUIZ for HP (Hewlett Packard) 3000s was introduced by Quasar in
1979. It is extracts data from computer, manipulate, format, and then prints report. It
became popular and by 1984 more than 2,500 copies are sold out. After the success of
QUIZ Quasar introduced Power House a fourth generation tool for the HP midrange
platform. The products based on Power house programming language increased gradually
then it was ported to the major proprietary and UNIX platforms.
In 1983 the name of Quasar changed to Cognos, it is from the Latin word
“cognosco”, which means knowledge from personal experience. By 1984 Cognos started
concentrating on international market and has more than 300 employees in North
America and revenues up to $18 million. It headed $ 100,000 study of federal
government of Canada and determined its priorities in AI (Artificial Intelligence)
research. In 1984 Cognos started expanding its share in the world market. It started its
new headquarters in Canada, United Kingdom, USA, Australia, and France in 1985. The
expansion resulted loss in first two quarters of years and by the third quarter of the year it
started getting profits. Even though it started to move in new direction of software
development due to the influence of new CEO Thomas Csathy in 1986, it ended up with
product development and sales support in order to respond to its three vendors distinct
market. Cognos released a new version of powerhouse language for microcomputer as a
part of product development which allowed developers to work with relational databases.
In 1990 it introduced windows based analytical tool Power Play and following year it
introduced Impromptu a power SQL query and analytical tool. It joined OLAP council on
the same year. It launched power play enterprise edition was launched in 1999 which can
support MS excel, windows, and web. In the same year it introduced Cognos Decision
Stream which can form fully integrated business intelligence. It acquired LEX2000 and
Power Stream OY. It released its own platform which can build, manage, and deploy
solutions for e-business and enterprise needs. In 2007, both IBM and Cognos came into
definitive agreement and IBM acquired Cognos. The latest products offered by Cognos
are Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, Cognos TM 1, and Cognos Express. Now it is
offering services to more than 23,000 business organizations and helping them to make
decisions after analyzing their metadata.
SPSS:
A revolutionary statistical software system was invented by Bent, Hull, and Nie in
1968 and named it as SPSS which means Statistical Package for Social Sciences. They
started using SPSS for analyzing volumes of social science data. In mid 1970s NASA,
National forest service, and also companies like Anheuser-bush, and Procter and Gamble
started using SPSS. It continued to be the effective by staying ahead of the technology
and introduced mainframe statistical package which can be used in PC for the first time
in mid 1980s. It started getting stronger by acquisitions, it acquired BI suite for IBM
server I Series, analytical components, web interface for OLAP, and web analytics. In
evolved as international corporate in thirty seven years, it started delivering analytical
tools and solutions throughout the world.
In mid 1990s it started statistical software for windows and acquired statistical
companies SYSTAT, and Jandel. The acquisitions continued in early 2000s, it acquired
market research application software Quantime, data mining software ISL, BI software
for the middle market Showcase, Net Genesisan analytical application for web data, the
text mining software Lexi Quest, and Net Exs a web interface for OLAP. In 2003 it
acquired Data Distilleries a predictive analytic application to enhance predictive
analytics. It continued its enhancements by using acquired technologies and introduced
new version of Predictive marketing which combines decision optimizing and advanced
analytics. It was now finally acquired by IBM which was providing infrastructure to
support BI and performance management solutions for business organizations. In
collaboration with IBM it is now providing Predictive Analytical Software suite PASW
statistics for statistical, PASW modeler for modeling family, PASW data collection and
reports for surveys, and PASW collaboration and deployment services.
SAP:
SAP is a German business software company established in 1972. According to
IDC it is the largest business software company in the world having customers in more
than 120 countries. SAP (Systems Applications and Products) was launched by Hopp,
Hector, Plattner, Wellenreuther, and Tschira former employees of IBM in Mannheim,
Germany. The first financial accounting software from SAP is SAP R/1 where R stands
for real time data processing. After intensive examination and dialogue control system
SAP launched SAP R/2 on early 1980s. SAP R/2 is designed to handle different
currencies and languages for multinational customers. SAP launched SAP R/3 in the
early 1990s. It became most popular business software because of its performance
towards graphical interfaces, concept of client-server concept, and usage of relational
databases. SAP R/3 earned more customers by the end of year 1996 and was installed in
more than 9,000 worldwide systems. SAP is the third largest independent software
vendor in the world because of its service oriented architecture, and with SAP Net
Weaver platform it is able provide solutions end –to-end business processes.
SAP is now supported by Microsoft by providing a platform which supports
planning and consolidation application of SAP. The customers of SAP now can run their
business applications on Microsoft platform. The customers can use all the familiar tools
of Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft SQL server 2008. They can also use all the
features of SQL server 2008 analysis services and database. SAP finally acquired
Business Objects in 2008 and now both companies are working together as SAP Business
Objects.
SAS:
In 1970 Goodnight and Sall launched SAS (Statistical Analysis System) to
analyze agricultural data. SAS institute was launched in 1976 to sell and develop
software and changed its name SAS institute as SAS after getting popular in providing
business analytics software and services. It started with seven employees and launched its
first product Base SAS by establishing partnership with IBM. In 1980s SAS launched
ETS (Economic and Time Series) and Graph software. It started working on components
which can provide editing, browsing, letter writing, retrieval, and for interactive data
entry, and in mid 1980s SAS launched FSP and full screen spreadsheet components. It
started providing software for mini computers other than mainframe computers and then
launched its first project management software. SAS launched its first DOS prompt
software for PC and also a compiler which can link PCs with mainframe computers in
1985. In mid 1980s sixty five percent of IBM mainframe sites are installed with SAS
software. SAS rewrote its whole SAS system with C programming language. It
established partnership with Apple and Microsoft. In 1988 it launched SAS Access for
multi vendor architecture, Assist for user friendly menus, and CPE for computer
performance evaluation. SAS started working on decision making tools and launched
INSIGHT. It introduced customized executive information system and acquired Info Tap
from GESCAN in mid 1990s. It launched Rapid Warehousing and started supplying
solutions for end to end data warehousing. It introduced SAS 9 which started revolution
in business intelligence industry.
SAS now named as one of the best companies providing services for business
analytics. It is expanding its analytical capabilities by offering open source statistical
software R. It is now providing services to organizations for analyzing their web data. It
is now one of the leaders in providing support to different intelligence platforms.
Oracle Discoverer:
Oracle is known for world’s best provider of relational database. It is one of the
best providers for easy to use query, reporting and analytic tools. Organizations want to
track and analyze their sales happened long back ago and want to forecast trends. Oracle
started working on a product which can track and analyze sales of organization easily and
accurately. It finally launched Discoverer in late 1990s. Discoverer is a hoc query and
analytical tool which can view and analyze data in the databases and finally create reports
on that data. The discoverer navigation is easy because of its simple graphical user
interface. Oracle launched first windows and internet versions Oracle Discoverer 3.1 and
3.i respectively in early 2000s. It became popular because of its easy user friendly
components. Even a person without any knowledge or experience in usage of database
can easily analyze data and can retrieve results. All levels of users of an organization can
access data from both relational and multidimensional data sources by simply using any
standard web browser.
Oracle Discoverer is divided into different components to give complete business
solutions. Discoverer plus component is for analyze data and to create new work sheets
from both relational and multi dimensional data sources. Discoverer desktop component
is for analyzing data by using windows on personal computer. Discoverer viewer
component is for viewing data from existing worksheets. Discoverer web services
component is used for getting worksheets, workbooks, connections, and execute queries.
Discoverer portlets component is used for displaying worksheets made by discoverer as
gauges. Discoverer administrator component is used for managing relational database end
user view. The latest version of Oracle Discoverer available in the market is Oracle
Fusion Middleware Discoverer 11g. All the components of previous version of discoverer
(Discoverer 10g) were enhanced. Now the new version of discoverer is providing
advanced features for the users to analyze data and generate reports from all levels of
organization effectively and accurately.
Oracle Hyperion:
Hyperion was found by Robert Thomson in 1981, it was one of the leading
providers of financial software. It is named as IMRS (Information Management and
Reporting Services) by Thomson and later changed as Hyperion. The main idea behind
establishing IMRS is to access data through personal computer not from large mainframe
computers, while the financial information used to deliver to user by time-sharing
technique from large mainframe computers which is time consuming and also required
involvement of information technology department of the organization. In late 1980s
Hyperion became popularized and it started building products like Hyperion enterprise,
Hyperion pillar, and Hyperion OLAP in early 1990s and more than 12, 000 companies
started using products of Hyperion.

Oracle acquires Hyperion in 2007 and started producing products together by
joining Hyperion EPM software with Oracle’s BI tools and analytical applications to
build end to end performance management system. Oracle changed Hyperion strategy of
building products which can run only on Oracle platform to products which can run on
any platform. They produced new version of Oracle Enterprise Performance System.
They produced different business intelligence products which are popular and used by
many business organizations to improve their performance. Some the popular products
produced by them are Hyperion financial performance management, Oracle Hyperion
Planning, Oracle Hyperion capital asset planning, and Oracle business intelligence suite
– enterprise edition plus.
Conclusion
According to Power (2007) there are several technological changes occurred in
decision-making system of business organizations in late 1980s because of the increase in
storage of metadata and increase in competition. This literature review examined
technological changes occurred in decision-making system of business organizations. It
examined changes occurred in business intelligence tools or ETL tools, business
intelligence, and popular BI tools available in the market.
This literature review concludes that there are several changes occurred in
business intelligence tools available in the market and also several changes occurred in
the services and products provided by the vendors of business intelligence. There are
different analytical tools for decision-making available in the market following different
approaches to analyze metadata of companies effectively. The BI tools available in the

market are offering advanced features to make analyzing huge amount of metadata of an
organization easy and effective to survive in the competitive world. The organization has
to choose an appropriate BI tool to analyze and track their performance for long or short
period of time depending on their platform. The choice of BI tool for an organization can
be critical. If the choice is not good enough can result in failure and may also lead to
bankruptcy of an organization.
Chapter 3- Methodology
Introduction
This chapter describes about the procedures and methods followed to retrieve the
information and results for answering research questions of the next chapter 4 – Findings
of this capstone project. This chapter also displays all the results of the methods and
procedure followed in data collection plan.
The main aim of this project is to explore BI tools available in the market, explain
the services provided by the BI tools, exploring the features of effective BI tools
available in the market, and also exploring how can a BI tool effects the success of
business organization.
Data Collection Plan
The methodology followed for this research is by collecting data available in
FLITE (Ferris Library for Information, Technology, and Education) databases, books
available in FLITE (also online copies of books available in FLITE), online books
available for free through the internet (Google Books), scholarly articles, journals, and
white papers available online, and by keyword search using reliable search engines
(Google, Ask, Dogpile, and Bing).
The five research questions considered for the analysis in this capstone project
are:
1. What are the popular Business Intelligence Tools available in the
market?
2. What are the services provided by the BI tools for business
organizations?
4. Compare and contrast all features of BI tools by providing rating
5. How can a BI tool influence business organization for its success in
the competitive market?
The above research questions will be answered by following the methodology
described below:
Research Question 1- What are the popular Business Intelligence Tools available in the
market?
The database selected from the alphabetical list of databases of FLITE is
ABI/INFORMAL Global database. It is a product of ProQuest which provides products
and services for libraries. It is a database available for the current registered students,
registered users and current faculty of Ferris State University. It is a comprehensive
business database which provides more than 3, 040 publications, and 2,060 full length
articles on latest business and financial conditions, techniques, and practices for
researchers including entry level researchers.
After choosing ABI/INFORMAL Global database for answering research
question, the next step taken was to perform a search through a keyword to find full
length articles which can help in answering research question. The following keywords
were used for the article search:
 Business intelligence tools
 BI analytical tools
 Business intelligence tools vendors
 ETL tools vendors
The search can be refined by using the advanced search options provided by
ABI/INFORMAL. It also provides tabs Newspapers, All sources, Refine search, and
Trade publications for reducing the list of results and to display most appropriate
results for the search. It also provides the shortcuts such as abstract, text graphics, full
text-Pdf, and full text underneath the results. After finding the exact article by using
all the options provided by the database the next step is to find the citation and full
text of the document. The references provided by the document are also used to find
the data required for the research.
An online search is performed by using appropriate key words shown as above.
Only scholarly journals and articles are considered for this study project.
Books available in FLITE and also online books available through internet are
also considered as standard sources for the project.
This research question is answered only by studying scholarly articles and books
found by above methodology. The question is only answered by studying the
expert’s articles or books and there will be no actual installation or execution of any
of the BI tools will be done. This question is purely answered through the study of
lists and services of BI tools analyzed by experts in their articles. The popularity of
the BI tool is also analyzed by technology, products and services provided by the BI
tool vendor and also the number of customers will be taken into consideration. This
part of the project helps the reader to learn about popular BI tools and also able to
learn the reason behind their popularity.
Research Question -2 what are the services provided by the BI tools for business
organizations?
 BI tools services
 ETL tools services
 BI analytic services
Trade publications for reducing the list of results and to display most appropriate results
for the search. It also provides the shortcuts such as abstract, text graphics, full text-Pdf,
and full text underneath the results. After finding the exact article by using all the options
provided by the database the next step is to find the citation and full text of the document.
The references provided by the document are also used to find the data required for the
research.
An online search is performed by using appropriate key words shown as above. The
scholarly journals and articles published by the BI tools vendors and experts in business
intelligence are only considered for this part of the project.
considered as standard sources for this part of project. The books published by the BI
tools vendors were also considered as sources for this part of the project.
This research question is answered only by studying scholarly articles and books
found by above methodology. The question is only answered by studying the expert’s
articles or books and there will be no actual installation or execution of any of the BI
tools will be done. This part of the project considers BI tools found in first part of project
as popular BI tools. This question is answered through the study of scholarly articles and
journal on services provided by the BI tools. Books and articles published by the BI tool
vendors describing their new services by using results from the above search were also
used for this part of the project. The services provided by BI tools are analyzed by
studying the product guides given by the BI vendors. This part of the project helps the
reader to learn about services provided by the popular BI tools.
Research Question 3 - What are the advanced features included in BI tools?

 BI tools technologies
 BI analytics features
 Advanced ETL tools
Trade publications for reducing the list of results and to display most appropriate results
for the search. It also provides the shortcuts such as abstract, text graphics, full text-Pdf,
and full text underneath the results. After finding the exact article by using all the options
provided by the database the next step is to find the citation and full text of the document.
The references provided by the document are also used to find the data required for the
research.
An online search is performed by using appropriate key words shown as above. The
scholarly journals and articles published by the BI tools vendors and experts in business
The main purpose of this part of the project is to study the scholarly articles and
journals found through the search made by using above keywords and also the books
available in FLITE and online. The features of all popular BI tools are studied by above
data sources. The question is only answered by studying the expert’s articles or books
and there will be no actual installation or execution of any of the BI tools will be done.
The popular tools found in the first part of this project will be considered as popular tools
of this part of the project. By this part of the project reader will be able to learn about all
the advanced features and technologies provided by the popular BI tool vendors.
Research Question – 4 Compare and contrast all features of BI tools by providing rating
An online search is performed by using appropriate key words. The scholarly
journals and articles published by the BI tools vendors and experts in business
journals found through the search made by using keywords and also by the books
data sources found by keyword search. The question is only answered by studying the
expert’s articles or books and there will be no actual installation or execution of any of
the BI tools will be done. The popular tools found in the first part of this project will be
considered as popular tools of this part of the project. In this part of the project all the
services, features, and technologies offered by BI tools are compared and rating is
provided based on the service, features and performance of the BI tools. By this part of
the project the reader will able to learn that which BI tool is best in providing different
services, features, and performance for business organizations in business decision-
making.
Research Question – 5 How can a BI tool influence business organization for its success
in the competitive market?
 Business intelligence tools
 ETL tools
 Influence of BI tools
An online search is performed by using appropriate key words. The scholarly journals
and articles published by the BI tools vendors and experts in business intelligence are
only considered for this part of the project.
journals found through the search made by using above keywords and also the books
data sources. The question is only answered by studying the expert’s articles or books
and there will be no actual installation or execution of any of the BI tools will be done.
This part of the research question will focus on the influence of BI tools on business
organizations in achieving its success in the competitive world. This part of the project
will also describe how the usages of BI tools can change the success rate of business
organization. From this part of the project the reader will able to learn how important is
the usage of BI tools and how can be the choice of an appropriate BI tool will be critical.
Conclusion
This chapter of the capstone project described the methodology followed to
answer all the research questions of this capstone project. This chapter of the project
successfully found the data sources by following methodology described above and also
able to find all references for citation. The research questions are answered in the next
chapter of findings by using sources found by implementing above methodology.

Chapter – 4 Findings
Introduction
This chapter focuses on answering all five research questions of this capstone
project from chapter- 1 Introduction by using the procedures and processes from the
chapter- 3 Methodology. The research questions in this chapter are completely answered
from the study of scholarly articles and journals from FLITE databases, online keyword
searches and books available in FLITE library. The research questions are also answered
by the study of articles published by BI tool vendors on their products. Most of the
findings include tables comparing BI tools provided by popular BI vendors. The BI tools
provided by popular BI vendors found in this research are only considered in this entire
chapter. The services and features of BI tools provided by popular BI vendors are
analyzed and compared in this chapter. This chapter ends with description about the
importance of BI tools for a business organization.
Research Questions
1. What are the popular Business Intelligence Tools available in the market?
2. What are the services provided by the BI tools for business organizations?
4. Compare and contrast all features of BI tools by providing rating according to
their performance?
5. How can a BI tool influence business organization for its success in the
competitive market?
market?
Purpose:
The purpose of this research question is to analyze the popularity of the BI tool is
by analyzing the technology, products, and services provided by the BI tool vendor and
also by the number of customers and total annual revenue will be taken into
consideration. This part of the project helps the reader to learn about popular BI tools and
also able to learn the reason behind their popularity.
Limitations:
The findings for this question are based on the study of scholarly articles available
through FLITE ABI/INFORMAL Global database, online data by keyword searches, and
data provided by the BI tool vendors. There will be no actual installation or execution of
any of the BI tools will be done. The effective BI tools or analytical tools are chosen by
their availability for the analysis and popularity but not by their performance.
Findings:
According to Simons (2008) Business Intelligence (BI) architecture can be
divided into different layers depending on the process carried out at different stages to
obtain final reports for decision-making. There are many popular vendors in the market
providing different services at different layers of business intelligence architecture. Only
few vendors are providing tools at every layer of BI architecture. The vendors providing
tools at every layer of the business intelligence architecture are popular BI tool vendors
available in the market.
The business intelligence architecture can be divided into five different layers:
 Databases and Source system layer
 Extract Transform and Load (ETL) and Database layer
 Data mining, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), and Query & reporting
layer
 Analytical application layer
 Final Information delivery layer
Business intelligence comprises of all above layers, each layer has its own specific task
and goal to achieve final goal in business intelligence. In first layer huge amount of
metadata is stored in databases. In the next level the huge amount of metadata is
processed by extracting, transforming, and then loading into data warehouse by ETL
tools. The data warehouse collects unstructured data from ETL tools and puts them
together for further analysis. In next layer the unsupervised data from data warehouses or
data marts is submitted to OLAP which converts it into useful information. OLAP first
merges and then submerges the multidimensional data available from data warehouse or
data marts. The supervised data available from OLAP is submitted to data mining which
presents the data to higher levels for further abstraction in some domain. The data is then
subjected for query and reporting for obtaining results and then presenting them using
visualization methods. Finally the data is sent to analytical application and final
information layer.
The BI vendors providing tools at every layer of the BI architecture can be
effective in providing BI tools. So the vendors providing tools at every level of BI
architecture are popular in providing BI tools. The following figure 4.1 displays the
services provided by BI vendors at different layers. In the following figure if the vendor
provides service or products for a particular layer then it will be marked as ‘Yes’ and if it
is not providing any service then it will marked as ‘No’.
BI layers SAS SAP Oracle IBM(Cognos) Microsof Informatic Microstrategy

Business Intelligence Vendors
t a
1st layer Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
2nd Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Layer
3rd layer Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
4rth layer Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Figure 4.1 (Simons, 2008)
BI Vendors Total Customers Total Revenue (In billion dollars)

SAS 45, 000 $ 8.7
SAP 75, 000 $ 15.8
Oracle 345, 000 $ 7.01
IBM(Cognos 23, 000 $8
)
Microsoft 20, 000 $ 6.4
Informatica 3, 850 $4.552
Microstrateg 3, 200 $2.82
y
Figure 4.2 (McDonough, & Vesset, 2008)
The popular BI vendors providing BI tools available in the market from above
figures Fig 4.1 and Fig 4.2 are SAS, SAP, Oracle, IBM (Cognos), and Microsoft. Most of
the customers are interested in choosing a BI vendor who can provide services at all
layers of BI architecture. The above analysis concludes that SAS, SAP, Oracle, IBM
(Cognos), and Microsoft are successfully providing services and products for all layers of
BI architecture. So this capstone project considers SAS, SAP, Oracle, IBM (Cognos), and
Microsoft as popular BI tools vendors in the market.
organizations?
Purpose:
The purpose of this research question is to describe the services provided by the
BI tools of popular BI vendors. This part of the project helps the reader to learn about
services of BI tools provided by the popular BI vendors.
Limitations:
any of the BI tools will be done.
Findings:
According Ranjan (2008) the BI tools represent the third layer of business
intelligence architecture. The BI tools layer consists of:
 Data mining
 OLAP (Online Line Analytical Processing)
 Query and Reporting
Data mining:
Data mining collects useful data from large amount of data. It can predict sales by
analyzing the huge amount of data on sales. It can find best customers and their contacts
to maintain good business relations. Business organizations can determine details about
the products which can be sold together and also determine by which order the products
are added by the customer in his shopping cart. Companies can determine demographics
of their customers. Companies can improve their quality of production by identifying
defective products. Organizations can build their employees profile for hiring by using
the data of successful employee’s profile of the organization.
OLAP:
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) helps analysts, employees, and managers of
an organization in accessing and processing multidimensional data successfully. By
using OLAP organizations can easily build multidimensional model. They can easily
analyze trends and details in their systems without the involvement of database
administrator. It helps users to access multiple data easily from data warehouses by
queries. Organizations can easily find and analyze their performance by calculating day
to day revenue and sales of the organization effectively and easily. It also helps in taking
strategic decisions for an organization.
Query and reporting:
Query and reporting is a process that helps decision-making tools to translate
business question into a format that can be understood and used by them in generating
reports. They usually deal with only two or one dimensional data. They helps in
analyzing sales and revenue, and to calculate the amount of products had been shipped.
They help the user by providing as many as chances for user to build a proper query until
he gets satisfied reports for more detailed information. They also help in calculating
customer satisfaction rates and project delays.
The following are the services provided by BI tools of Popular BI vendors:

Regression:
It is a data mining service which can predict profit, sales, temperature, distance,
and property estimation by using mathematical algorithms of linear and non liner
regression.
Classification:
It is a data mining service which predicts the target categories or class in the data
for each case. It can be used for predicting risks while choosing a customer for the
business organizations.
Anomaly:
It detects the cases in the data which pretends to be homogeneous. It detects
frauds, illegal activities, network intrusions, and many minute events difficult to predict.
Clustering:
It detects the cases in the data which are having similar characteristics or having
some relation. It also helps in anomaly detection process. It helps in detection of intra
clusters having high similarity.
Association:
It is data mining service for detection of activities may happen together. It helps
business organizations in detecting customer purchases which can happen at the same
time.
Feature selection and Extraction:

It is a data mining service to refine the attributes which are closely related from
the huge amount of metadata by raking attributes according to their importance in
predicting the target. It helps in reducing the unnecessary data in the mining process and
also increases the prediction rate of a target.
Multi Dimensional Analysis:
It is an online analytical processing service in analyzing multi dimensional
supervised data from data warehouses. It helps in analyzing data cubes for generating
reports representing the sales, revenue, and customers of an organization.
Analytics:
It is an online analytical processing service for statistical analysis and numerical
calculation by developers or user defined ad hoc query.
Financial Models:
It is an online analytical processing service for analyzing the financial data of an
organization. It helps in generating reports on the transactions made by the organization
for the past few days of months.
The following figure 4.3 displays the services provided by BI tools of popular BI
vendors. In the figure it will be marked as ‘Yes’ if the BI tool is providing service
marked as ‘No’ if it is not providing service.
BI tool Vendors
BI tool Oracle SAS IBM SAP Microsoft
Services (Cognos
)
Regression Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Classificatio Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
n
Anomaly Yes Yes Yes No No
detection
Clustering Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Association Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Feature Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Selection and
Extraction
Analytic Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
measures
Financial Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Models
Forecasting Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Multi Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Dimensional
data analysis
Figure – 4.3
Purpose:
The purpose of this research question is to describe the advanced features
provided by the BI tools of popular BI vendors. This part of the project helps the reader
to learn about advanced features of BI tools provided by the popular BI vendors.
Limitations:
Findings:
Advanced features are included in the new generation BI tools provided by the
popular BI vendors. The usage of BI tools is increasing day by day with the increase in
competition and data of business organizations. In order to support the necessities of the
business organization in this competitive world BI vendors are launching BI products
having advanced features especially BI tools which can help decision-making department
of an organization by predicting the feature steps to be taken by the organization.
Oracle launched Oracle Data mining 11g, and Oracle OLAP 11g including
advanced features appropriate for current business organizations. In Oracle Data mining
11g data mining models are implemented as data dictionary objects, data transformation
is automated without the involvement of the user, supports linear regression and
classification, and uses data tree algorithms. Oracle OLAP 11g defines multi dimensional
values easily through analytics methods having advanced features. It can deliver analytics
to reporting and analysis tools using SQL platform. In Oracle OLAP 11g cubes are
represented by star schema. Java API is used for analytic operations.
SAS is providing SAS enterprise miner as data mining tool. It has powerful user
friendly GUI. It supports Java and all data mining services. It supports parallel processing
and grid computing.SAS launched SAS OLAP Server for providing OLAP services. It
supports both multi dimensional and hybrid data sources. It processes MDX queries to
communicate with 3rd party clients.

IBM launched Cognos 8 Business Intelligence providing all business intelligence
capabilities. It is providing all BI services on one SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). It
is providing access to the user for all self-serve report types. It supports multi
dimensional data with easy to use GUI. It is providing high level user friendly visual
graphics in displaying the results after analysis. It provides links to associated reports.
SAP launched SAP Business Objects Voyager, Business Objects Edge, and
Business Objects Enterprise in association with Business Objects. All products can
handles multi dimensional data and provide OLAP services to the user. They use decision
trees for displaying category quantities. They support both clustering and association for
providing advanced predictive analysis. All products support all OLAP servers having
different platforms.
Microsoft launched SQL Server 2008 integrated within Microsoft BI platform. It
is providing advanced features for data mining. It can analyze multiple data mining
models at the same time by statistical results of errors. It provides an anomaly detection
feature by analyzing the shopping carts of customers. It is providing both churn and
market analysis features. It provides website analysis through which business
organizations can analyze their website usage by the organizations. It supports clustering
and association services. It is providing Microsoft office add-ons options to improve the
predictive analysis.
The following figure- 4.4 displays the advanced features of BI tools provided by popular
vendors. The advanced features described above will be used in the following figure- 4.4.
It will be marked as ‘Yes’ if the BI tool vendor is providing particular feature and marked
as ‘No’ if the BI tool vendor is not providing particular feature.

BI tool Vendors
Advanced Oracle SAS IBM SAP Microsoft
Feature (Cognos)
Data Yes No No No No
Dictionary
objects
Data trees Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Multi Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
dimensional
Analysis
Java API Yes Yes NO Yes Yes
GUI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
MDX No Yes No No No
queries
Multiple No No No No Yes
data mining
models
Multiple Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
platforms
Website No No No No Yes
analysis
Graphics Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Figure- 4.4
Purpose:
The purpose of this research question is to compare and contrast the features and
services of BI tools provided by popular BI vendors by providing rating to particular
feature or service. By this part of the project the reader will able to learn that which BI
tool vendor is best in providing different services, features, and performance for business
organizations in business decision-making.
Limitations:
Findings:
This research question is answered by considering the popular BI tool vendors
analyzed in Research question- 1. Rating is provided to particular feature or service
provided by BI tool using the findings from Research question- 2 and Research question-
3. This research question is answered by providing rating of particular BI tool vendor
taking both features and services of BI tools vendors from above findings.
In the following figure 4.5 rating is provided to the BI tool vendors according to their
services and features analyzed in previous findings. The Rating will be from 1 to 5, if the
BI tool is providing Excellent service and feature then it will be given rating as 5, if it
provides Good service and feature then it will be given rating as 4, if it provides Average
service and feature then it will be given rating as 3, if it provides Below Average service
and feature then it will be given rating as 2, and if it provides poor service and feature
then it will be given rating as 1.

BI tool Vendors
BI tool Oracle SAS IBM SAP Microsoft

Service and (Cognos)
Feature
Anomaly 5 4 4 2 2
Detection
Clustering 5 5 2 5 5
Feature 5 5 2 5 5
selection and
Extraction
Analytics 5 5 5 5 5
Financial 4 4 4 5 4
Models
Multi 5 5 5 5 5
Dimensional
Analysis
Data 5 3 3 3 3
Dictionary
objects
Graphics 4 4 5 4 4
MDX 3 5 3 3 3
queries
GUI 4 5 4 5 4
Multiple 4 4 4 4 4
Platforms
Java API 4 4 3 4 4
Forecasting 4 4 4 4 4
Figure- 4.5
Purpose:
The purpose of this research question is to explain the importance of BI tool for
an organization to get successful in the competitive world. From this part of the project
the reader will able to learn how important is the usage of BI tools and how can be the
choice of an appropriate BI tool will be critical.
Limitations:
Findings:
According to Wetzel (2009) building statistical future models by prediction
analysis became very important practice of industries. The main purpose of mining data
is for the forecasting of sales and trends, to reduce acquisition costs, and to reduce fraud
by fraud detection. The organizations have to analyze the historical data for most efficient
future decision-making. It is not enough to analyze historical data and predict sales where
the most important part is customer satisfaction. The biggest challenge now for business
organizations is to satisfy customers by decision-making using historical data.
The popular BI vendors are providing different predictive and analytical tools
available in the market. Choosing a right tool for their organization to analyze historical
data is critical. If the organization fails in making a right choice results in failure and
bankruptcy. The organizations have to make their own choice depending on their
necessity because the BI vendors are providing both mining and analytical tools. Some
vendors are providing them as a single product (IBM Cognos) and some are providing
them as separate products. If the organization needs only predictive or mining tools then
it is better them for choosing a data mining tool. If the organization needs only
forecasting and analytics tool then they have to choose BI vendors providing best OLAP
and analytics services. If the organization needs both mining and analytical tools then it
has to choose a BI vendor providing both mining and analytical tools as a single product
without buying them as two different products.
The companies or banks which are providing credits are recommended to choose
a data mining tool having excellent anomaly detection and association services because
these companies have to detect fraud and customers having bad credit history. The
merchandise companies or organizations which produce products have to choose both
mining and forecasting tools because they have to predict the sales and risks associated
with the products they sell or produce. They also have to analyze their sales and revenue
associated with products they sell or produce for past few days or past few months, so
organizations having both production and sales have to choose a BI vendor providing
both mining and analytical tool as a single product. The health centers have to choose a
data mining tool having clustering, and feature selection and detection services because
they have to predict the response of a patient for a therapy depending on the past patient
response for that particular therapy. The companies have to select a BI tool depending on
their company profile.
In the present generation organizations are spending huge amount of money on
predicting and analytical tools. So if the organization chooses predictive and analytical
tool which exactly matches to their company profile can earn more than it spend on BI
tools.
Chapter 5- Conclusions and Recommendations
The purpose of this chapter is to describe all the conclusions made after
answering all research questions and also describe the further scope of research can be
conducted.
market?
After answering this research question we can conclude that only few vendors are
able to provide products and services for all layers of BI architecture. The BI tools of BI
vendors providing services for all layers of BI architecture are considered as popular BI
tools in the market because most of the organizations prefer to buy all BI products from
BI vendor who able to provide services and products for every layer of the BI
architecture. This the main reason for acquisitions made by popular BI vendors where
they can attract all levels of organizations by providing services at every layer of BI
architecture. Finally we conclude that Oracle, SAS, IBM (Cognos), SAP, and Microsoft
are the popular BI vendors in the market after comparing the total number of customers
and total annual income of different BI vendors in the market.
There can be further research can be conducted by practical execution and testing
of the BI tools provided by the different BI vendors. It is recommended that the findings
for this research question can be taken as initial step in investigating popular BI tools in
the market.
organizations?
After answering this research question we can conclude that all the popular BI
tool vendors considered for research are able to provide all Data mining, OLAP, Query,
and Reporting services. Only few services are not provided by the popular BI tool
vendors.
of the BI tools provided by the different BI vendors. The services can be analyzed in
depth by practical testing of BI tools provided by popular BI vendors by conducting
prediction or analytical analysis having high level target.
After answering this research question we can conclude that Oracle, SAS, and
Microsoft are able to provide most advanced features for data mining and analytical
analysis. The other popular vendors are also providing advanced features but not as
Oracle, SAS, and Microsoft.
of the BI tools provided by the different BI vendors. More features can be considered for
research while only few features are analyzed in this research. The features can be
analyzed in depth by practical testing of BI tools provided by popular BI vendors by
conducting prediction or analytical analysis having high level target.

After answering this research question we can conclude that Oracle and SAS are
providing best data mining, OLAP, Query, and Reporting services and features for their
customers. In this research question rating is provided after analyzing their features and
services provided in previous research questions.
of the BI tools provided by the different BI vendors. More features and services can be
considered for research while only few features and services are analyzed in this research.
The features can be analyzed in depth by practical testing of BI tools provided by popular
BI vendors by conducting prediction or analytical analysis having high level target.
After answering this research question we can conclude that organization have to
choose predictive and analytical tool which exactly matches to their company profile can
earn more than it spend on BI tools. By predicting the risks and frauds companies can
reduce the bad customers and unnecessary production of products. Organizations can
analyze the trends and sales by simple queries without the involvement of the IT
department.
The findings in this research question can be taken as initial results. There can be
further research can be conducted by a high level survey by interviewing high level
executives of successful organizations using BI tools for predictive and analytic analysis.
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Business Intelligence tools 1

Business Intelligence Tools

MISM 799- Fall 2009

Ferris State University

This capstone project is dedicated to my parents, Ferris State University MISM

would not have been possible

success of Organization is also analyzed.

Evaluation of Business intelligence tools or ETL……………………….. 16

Quick History of Business Intelligence…………………………………… 19

Quick History of Popular BI or ETL……………………………………… 20

5. Conclusion and Recommendation………………………………………… 58

4.1 Business Intelligence vendors………………………………………… 39

4.2 Business Intelligence vendors………………………………………… 39

4.3 Business Intelligence features………………………………………… 44

4.4 Business Intelligence Services………………………………………... 48

4.5 Compare and contrast of BI tools…………………………………….. 51

Business Intelligence (BI) denotes a process, an organizational function, and a

product. A formal organizational unit or an individual produces a product after the

BI product as “processed information of interest to management about the present and

(Gilad, 1988, p. 1).

will be used by organization for decision making. “Business Intelligence is a set of

effectively. The performance of the organization can be directly proportional to the

effective usage of BI. It provides valuable information to organization managers to track

action if it is using BI instead of paper based reporting.

To generate BI business organizations must be able to collect, access, analyze,

published because the value of business intelligence is subject to effective network.

effective analytical tools or BI tools and will provide:

 Study of Effective Business Intelligence tools available in the market

 Explaining the services provided by the BI tools for business organizations

 Study of advanced features included in the BI tools

 Comparing and contrasting all features of BI tools by providing rating

 Projecting the influence of BI tools on business organization’s success

questions, limitations, and definitions of the terms for this project.

The basic interest in doing my capstone project on BI tools is because of the

influence of business intelligence course in my masters. So the main purpose of my

competitive world. My capstone project on BI tools might help me in my feature field of

technologies, and techniques of business intelligence used by the business organizations.

Business organizations can use my findings in the Findings chapter (Chapter 4) in

This capstone project mainly concentrates on answering the following five

3. What are the advanced features included in BI tools?

4. Compare and contrast all features of BI tools by providing rating

according to their performance?

The limitations of my capstone project are:

warehousing, hardware, database management, BI tools, ETL (Extract Transform

not explained in depth as the readers are expected to be having knowledge on

these topics, and also because of the length and limitations.

implemented or executed. No practical analyses of data or data cube analyses is

searches, online books, databases, and telephone interviews.

analysis and popularity but not by their performance.

 The analysis on BI tools is limited up to their features and services provided by

capability of the employees of business organizations on usage of BI tools.

Definitions of Terms used in the project

Business Intelligence (BI): Business Intelligence is a set of technologies which

transform large amount of data available in the

business organizations into useful information and

analyze useful information for producing results

which can track sales, plans running out of time and

budget, and regions where sales can be good.

Finally share these results throughout the

organization to take appropriate action.

applying mathematical or statistical operations

which produce results related to sales performance,