Business intelligence is supposed to provide decision-makers with the insight they need. The growth in data is making it harder for people to gain meaningful insight because they can only track data on a quarterly or yearly basis. Increasingly, business leaders want to make decisions faster and this is putting the IT department under more pressure at a time when they are being asked to do more with less.

IBM (with Cognos), Microsoft, SAP (Business Objects) and Oracle have strong BI offerings. IBM and Microsoft lack ERP products that the other two can offer. But Gartner says so far it’s an open and heterogeneous position and increasing use of services in its value proposition are helping IBM to maintain par as a standard with SAP and Oracle.

However, in Gartner’s report, The Changing Attitudes of Business Intelligence Users, Gartner analyst James Richardson notes that, in 2011, more than 50% of IBM Cognos respondents stated that SAP or Oracle is their primary ERP and these firms will form a key battleground over the next few years for Cognos.

Richardson says: “The biggest loser in the standardisation battle is Microsoft, which has neither the strength in ERP nor IBM’s service provider touch to defend its position, and as such has fallen out of parity with the other three megavendors as a BI standard.”

Oracle is offering heavy discounts on the software and hardware for its Exadata database platform in a bid to drive sales. In the past few months, Oracle has offered discounts of up to 70 percent and 30 percent on its Exadata software and hardware respectively.

We believe that the discounts offered by the company were due to the fact that it wanted to drive sales before the fiscal quarter ended on May 31. One source told us that the discount offered by Oracle is based on the list price of the software license deal. For example, for a software license deal worth £250,000, the company offered a discount of 45 percent to 50 percent.

While the discounts and Oracle’s pricing plans for Sun servers and its own database software can be negotiated to a reasonable level for large organisations, many mid-sized and small companies that rely on Oracle’s database services are planning to move to Microsoft SQL due to the large maintenance and support fees being charged by Oracle.

Cisco Systems’ chief executive has announced plans for a company shake-up in the face declining investor confidence. In the e-mailed call to action to Cisco’s 73,000 employees, John Chambers said that while company’s strategy was sound, aspects of its operational execution were not. “We have been slow to make decisions, we have had surprises where we should not, and we have lost the accountability that has been a hallmark of our ability to execute consistently for our customers and our shareholders. That is unacceptable,” he wrote.

Chambers said Cisco would refocus on its core markets in routers and switching, collaboration, datacentre virtualisation and video. Investors are concerned about Cisco’s perceived over-expansion into new and low-margin businesses such as consumer products. Investors are also concerned that competitors such as HP, Oracle, Juniper Networks and Aruba Networks and China’s equipment maker Huawei Technologies are starting to eat into Cisco’s core switch and router markets.

While the Nasdaq Composite has risen 15% in the past year, Cisco’s share price has fallen 35% as the company missed sales targets and profits declined. Chambers did not detail what form the shake-up will take, but analysts say it is likely that Cisco is preparing to cut back in consumer products after years of expansion.

Sounds like a great time to be negotiating aggressive discounts from Cisco!

The database giant Oracle is struggling to ship servers manufactured by subsidiary Sun Microsystems, according to Gartner. The number of servers shipped by Oracle in Europe fell by more than a third (35.3%) in the last quarter. Gartner’s latest figures show that the company’s Sun Microsystems hardware division shifted just over 10,000 units in the third quarter of 2010, compared with more than 15,600 in the year- ago quarter.

Oracle, better known for its business applications and relational database technology, only entered the hardware business when it acquired Sun at the start of 2010. Its server market share stands at 1.7%, says Gartner. Oracle was the only major vendor to lose market share in the quarter. Hewlett Packard grew its share by 9%, Dell by 23%, IBM 10% and Fujitsu 6%.

Negotiation tip: if you want to buy Sun servers, then now is a good time to pressure Oracle into giving great discounts!

SAP has reported record fourth-quarter results software revenue of €1.5bn (£1.27bn), up 34% compared with the same quarter in 2009. Software and software-related service revenue was up 27% on the previous year to €3.26bn and total revenue for the quarter was also up 27% to €4.04bn. According to SAP, this was the best software sales quarter in the history of SAP.

SAP’s strong results reflected a boost in the software market in the past year as companies in emerging markets, the US and parts of Europe made investment to support their economic recovery.

SAP reported software revenue for the full year of €3.26bn, up 25%, and software and software-related service revenue of €9.78bn, up 19%. Total revenue for 2010 was €12.45bn, an increase of around 17%.

That’ll help pay the $1.3bn damages that SAP has been ordered to pay to Oracle for the TomorrowNow case.

There goes the bell…..

A jury has awarded Oracle US$1.3 billion in damages in its corporate theft lawsuit against SAP, a blow to the German applications vendor, which had argued it should pay no more than $40 million for the software stolen by its TomorrowNow subsidiary.

Oracle said it was “the largest amount ever awarded for software piracy.” Members of its legal team embraced as the verdict was read in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, according to a person in the courtroom. Closing arguments had been presented Monday afternoon, so the jury took less than a full day to reach its decision.

It was not the full amount Oracle had asked for, but still considerably more than SAP had said it should have to pay. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison testified two weeks ago that SAP should be made to pay as much as $4 billion to cover the cost of the stolen software.

Round 1 to Larry.

SAP is changing because it needs to find different ways to make money. Companies like SAP and Oracle are under some pressure to generate more revenues from their customer base. They are spending more time farming their client base for new revenues than they are hunting for new clients. So if you thought you had signed a big cheque to SAP a few years ago and that would be that, then think again. You’ve probaby noticed that your SAP sales rep is calling at least once a quarter now and his support team will be mining deep into your organisation to create new opportunities if none are currently on your budget plans. And you’ll be well aware of the furore created when SAP announced it was planing to raise it’s annual software maintenance and support costs from 17% to 22%. Still, it’s no all bad news and there is some good news filtering out; SAP as long been working towards changing its software licencing pricing policy to give greater choice. While you can still choose to pay for the whole lot upfront, they can also offer phased payments and subscription licencing. Remember to ask your SAP sales rep for financing options whenever they present a proposal to you.

Oracle’s $7.4bn bid for Sun has met a stumbling block in the EU, as European antitrust regulators raised concerns that database competition could be damaged, specifically that Sun’s MySQL competed directly with Oracle databases. However, the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) has backed the proposed Oracle takeover bid of Sun in a letter to the European Commissioner. UKOUG’s 1,500 members represent half of the UK and Ireland Oracle customer base. This merger is a huge deal for Oracle and will affect a lot of their strategic thinking and plans. So they are desperate to get approval from the EU. In the meantime, Silver Bullet Associates recommends that buyers should make hay from the uncertainty and negotiate hard with both Sun and Oracle.

Oracle has blamed falling first quarter sales on the recession, currency shifts and weakness in resellers’ performance. The database specialist posted a 5% decline in revenues to $5.1bn but managed to increase profits 4% to $1.1bn. One example of reseller underperformance is quoted as SAP who is selling fewer databases because its application business is down. New Oracle software licence revenues were down 14% while technology licence revenues fell 19%, and software licence updates and product support revenues dropped 8%. Services turnover fell 18%. Keeping expenses in check was partly responsible for the small increase in profits. According to Oracle their sales pipeline continues to grow, although closing rates are more conservative. The firm reckons sales will drop 1% to 4% compared to a year ago. So if you have to negotiate a new or renewal deal with Oracle this year, then make sure you squeeze their sales rep (or their reseller) for every last drop of discount before you sign. They are under pressure to keep revenues moving forward, and it’s your money that they need to keep their commission stream flowing! If you are unsure of how to negotiate with Oracle, then let Silver Bullet Associates guide you through their sales maze.

Many software vendors are now embracing licencing metrics that incorporate the requirements of a virtual environment. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM are just three of the many vendors who have accepted that they have to move away from tying their software licences to physical devices or processors. Licencing software in a virtual environment based on processors can add up fast so it’s a good idea to look at negotiating software licences based on named users.  Data volume is going up fast for many organisations which in turn requires more processors, even though the number of actual users may stay the same or actually be decreasing. And one other point; Silver Bullet Associates is aware that some suppliers support contracts are not written to incorporate virtual licences and could cause a cost problem when the supplier insists the client revert the support contract from virtual to physical licenses before addressing the original issue.