This research details business intelligence (BI) professionals' perceptions of the relative strengths of their installed BI platform capabilities, based on the results of a survey conducted as part of Gartner's research for "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms." It will help BI leaders identify a complete set of capabilities to meet current and future business needs.

• The survey found that BI platforms serve information delivery and analysis needs well, with reporting, ad hoc analysis and dashboards providing the most used and most satisfactory capabilities.
• The integration capabilities of BI rated lower for usage and satisfaction, including BI infrastructure, metadata management and collaboration. Search-based BI and scorecards also achieved weak usage and satisfaction ratings.
• Microsoft is the only megavendor above average for both capabilities and ease of use. Megavendor customers turn to pure-play vendors to fill both functional and ease-of-use gaps.
• The survey shows that some large BI platform vendors (including megavendors) have narrower product use than some small pure-play vendors.

• Look for ways to provide a balanced portfolio of BI capabilities that moves beyond reporting to put analysis into the hands of more users and to optimize business processes.
• Consider collaboration capabilities if decisions involve many users who interact as peers and need ways to discuss information about the business in the context of the decisions that they must make.
• Consider predictive analytics and data mining as you adjust your BI strategy for a return to growth and must seek information patterns, which can help you anticipate customer needs and market developments.

This document was revised on 10 February, 2010. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com."

BI leaders implementing BI platforms and applications invariably identify the capabilities that users in enterprise say they need. However, BI leaders are not always aware of other capabilities that may help their enterprise. BI leaders who understand the full range of capabilities available can give users and managers a better idea of what's going on with the business, provide more consistent information to those who serve customers and solve other problems, such as cost optimization to give the enterprise a competitive advantage.

Gartner has defined a BI platform as software that delivers 13 capabilities in three categories: information delivery, integration and analysis (see Table 1). To help BI leaders identify all the capabilities that their enterprise needs, we conducted a survey of 897 peers in late 2009 (see Note 1). We asked respondents how much they use each of these capabilities and we asked how well they matched their enterprises' needs. Information delivery remains at the core of most BI projects, but enterprises increasingly need to focus on analysis to discover new insights and on integration to cost-effectively implement those insights.

Respondents say that their installed BI platforms serve their information delivery and analysis needs well (see Figure 1 and Note 2 for rating detail). None of the capabilities does extremely well — reporting comes closest with respondents rating their satisfaction about 8.5 out of 10 — and none does extremely badly, the worst ratings of about 7.4 going to predictive modeling and metadata management. The areas of relative weakness lie mainly in the integration category; infrastructure, metadata management, workflow and collaboration serve users less well. Search-based BI and scorecards also receive relatively weak ratings. As in previous years, predictive analytics receives lower ratings and less use than other BI platform capabilities.

In general, the satisfaction with capabilities rises along with the prevalence of use. Only reporting is used by most respondents (76%) while six capabilities are used by 25% or less. These results suggest that many enterprises are missing opportunities to add capabilities that may help their enterprise. In particular, the recent popularity of interactive visualization tools and vendors' increased focus on delivering easier-to-use predictive analytics suggest that these capabilities will see increased use in 2010.

Figure 2 evaluates major vendors' products based on how respondents rated their satisfaction with the capabilities and those products' ease of use. (The dotted lines show the survey average for both metrics.) QlikView had the highest overall composite product score. MicroStrategy was the only vendor to score above average in 11 out of 13 functional categories. Microsoft is the only megavendor to score above average on both capabilities and ease of use. Increasingly, enterprises that use a megavendor's BI platform often supplement it with products from BI pure-play vendors, such as QlikView, Tableau, Tibco (Spotfire) and Board, to meet their needs for ease of use and functionality.

Figure 3 rates satisfaction with the functionality of vendors' products against the products' breadth of use, that is, how many of the 13 capabilities the average customer uses. (The dotted lines show the survey average for both metrics.) The survey data found no correlation between breadth of product use and size of vendor. Some large vendors (including megavendors) have narrower product use that some smaller pure-plays. For example, customers of IBM Cognos, Information Builders, Microsoft, MicroStrategy and SAP use fewer of these vendors' capabilities than average while customers of Jaspersoft, Oracle, QlikView and LogiXML use more of their capabilities than average. This result suggests that the ease of use and deployment of the self contained, departmental BI platforms (such as QlikView, Tibco Spotfire, Tableau and Board) may encourage broader use. Moreover, trends of enterprises standardizing on BI vendors and sourcing from the software stack vendors often do not trump functional needs when business users decide which products to buy.

We asked respondents to rate their satisfaction with and use of, their vendor's reporting capabilities, which provides powerful formatted and interactive reporting and highly scalable distribution and scheduling (see Figure 4). Reporting remains the core of BI platform usage, with 85% of survey respondents using the reporting capabilities and 76% making extensive use of it. Respondents expressed the highest satisfaction with this one out of the 13 BI capabilities; it achieved a mean rating of 8.48 out of a possible 10.

Web-based dashboards deliver intuitive displays of information, including dials, gauges and traffic lights and can support near-real-time alerts from operational data sources. Despite the hype around dashboards, only 65% of survey respondents use this capability, with only 35% using it extensively (see Figure 5). The usage varies widely between vendors. Some vendors' customers (70%) use dashboards, while other vendors' dashboards are used by only just over 10%. Overall, users do seem satisfied with their dashboards, which won a rating of 8.19. This will remain a core BI function.

Ad hoc analysis leverages a robust semantic layer to enable users to ask questions of the data and get answers quickly, without relying on the IT organization. After reporting, ad hoc query was the most used information delivery capability, with 75% of respondents using it and awarding a satisfaction rating of 8.22 (see Figure 6). These results reflect users' need for fast, easy access to information and insights.

BI platforms should have excellent integration with Microsoft Office tools, including support for document formats, formulas, data refresh and report creation. This area presents a challenge for most enterprises because so many users gather and analyze data in the ubiquitous Microsoft Office applications, particularly Excel. This function has not been widely adopted to the point where it can bring these unsupervised efforts under control or at least pull them into a managed BI environment. Just 58% of respondents use this function and only 19% of respondents say they use the functionality extensively (see Figure 7). Respondents listed their satisfaction at an average of 7.75, below the average rating for all 13 capabilities of 7.87.

Search-based BI applies a search index to structured and unstructured data sources and maps them into dimensions and measures that users can easily explore using a Google-like search interface. Again, users want fast, easy access to information and they have got used to search for navigating the Web. Therefore, vendors have rolled out this function with hype. Nevertheless, only 27% of respondents claim to use the capability — the lowest of all 13 capabilities in the survey — with only 9.3% using it extensively, the second-lowest after predictive analytics (see Figure 8). This result agrees with anecdotal evidence from client inquiries. Moreover, the satisfaction score of 7.69 for search-based BI rated it higher only than predictive analytics and collaboration. Vendors must show more production deployments of this functionality before it achieves widespread adoption.

Ideally, enterprises want all their BI tools to use the same infrastructure (security, metadata, and administration, for example) and have the same look and feel. The fourth most used capability overall, BI platform infrastructure achieved a usage of 58% and an above-average satisfaction rating of 7.92 (see Figure 9).

All BI tools should use the same library of metadata objects, such as dimensions, measures and report layouts. Alongside infrastructure and development tools, metadata management is a core function of BI platform integration. Nevertheless, only 40% of survey respondents use this capability from their BI platform vendor and only 14.8% use it extensively (see Figure 10). Usage has fallen dramatically from 71% of respondents in our 2008 survey. The relative lack of usage may be because an increasing number of deployments are departmental, where those BI platforms do not require an enterprise semantic layer — users can access data sources directly. Respondents also gave the function a below-average 7.42 for satisfaction, a result which also helps to explain the low usage.

BI platforms should provide a visual interface for custom development with virtually no need to write code. Survey respondents (34%) said their enterprise uses its BI platform's development environment extensively, third, after reporting and ad hoc analysis (see Figure 11). This function achieved a satisfaction rating of 7.83, just about average for all 13 capabilities. This function seems to satisfy most users, but does not provide many breakthroughs. The interest with BI platforms today lies elsewhere.

BI platforms should enable users to share and discuss information and manage hierarchies and metrics via discussion threads, chat, annotations (either embedded in the application or through integration with other collaboration applications), analytical master data management and social software. Respondents (35%) use collaboration, the least of all 13 capabilities and they gave it the lowest rating for satisfaction, 7.45 (see Figure 12). However, the use of this function is likely to grow rapidly as collaborative decision making becomes more important. Collaborative decisions often involve a large number of users who interact as peers, rather than through an organizational hierarchy and they will need access to information about the business, along with modes of communication to discuss this information in the context of the decisions that they must make.

OLAP enables users to analyze data with fast query and calculation performance. This staple of BI platforms received an above average satisfaction score of 7.93, and 54% of survey respondents use OLAP (28.7%) extensively (see Figure 13). Thus, OLAP ranks fifth in satisfaction, compared with the 2008 survey, where it received the highest rating. This drop may reflect a shift toward advanced visualization and the popularity of vendors such as QlikTech.

BI platforms may provide sophisticated visualization of multidimensional data using the color, size and shape of objects. Users can easily explore data by interacting with the visuals (for example, clicking on a pie wedge in a pie chart). Users increasingly accept this technology for analyzing complex data. Survey participants (52%) use the function, which ranks fourth after dashboards, and 25% use it extensively (see Figure 14). Respondents also gave advanced visualization a high satisfaction rating of 8.15.

This function enables users to classify variables and to estimate their values by using advanced mathematical techniques. Predictive modeling and data mining is the least used and lowest rated of any capability surveyed (see Figure 15). Just 30% of respondents use it at all (up from 27% in 2008), with only 7.6% using it extensively. It received a satisfaction rating of 7.4. This function is likely to play a larger role as enterprises adjust their strategies for a return to growth and become more focused on anticipating customer needs and market developments.

Scorecarding improves the user's ability to align key performance indicators with strategic objectives by using strategy maps and performance management methods. Only 45% of respondents used their BI platform's scorecarding capability (see Figure 16). This capability is used extensively by 14.8%, but that is less than half of the respondents using dashboarding extensively (32.5%). Respondents rated their satisfaction with this function at 7.76, a little below average for all 13 capabilities. These results suggest that some enterprises are missing an opportunity to use this capability to align BI efforts with business objectives better.