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BI booming in Philippines but challenges remain Read More....

MANILA--Anyone that needs proof business intelligence (BI) and analytics is indeed flourishing in the Philippines need only look at retail giant, SM. The country's biggest mall operator has placed so much emphasis on the technology that it created a separate BI unit under its IT department.

By forming a dedicated division, SM has effectively ushered BI into the big league--a place once reserved only for software tools such as ERP and CRM.

With the exploding commercialism in the country, mall operators such as SM and its main rival Robinsons have all taken up BI and analytics as a way to examine customer trends and to understand the needs of the market.

So far, the software implementations have brought visible results to SM, an executive told ZDNet Asia.

"Unlike before when we had to process transactions for hours, we now see in minutes which branches had consistent sales and those that still have enough supplies," said Pauline Lovino, a BI specialist at the BI division of SM's IT department.

Vendor trends also reflect BI's increasing importance and relevance. German vendor SAP, for instance, has made its BI offerings the main bait for its flagship ERP product.

But the significance of BI and analytics in the Philippines can perhaps be gleaned from SAS Institute, which anchored its success on just three inter-related offerings--BI, analytics and data mining. Some of the largest players in the local market, including the country's tax agency, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, are using SAS software.

Cost, data volume hamper adoption

That said, BI and analytics has remained the domain of large companies such as SM and Robinsons. Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in the country have generally shunned the technology, primarily due to cost.

Among large BI vendors, the cost of the BI and analytics software varies by implementation and typically depends on the scale of the project.

The cost factor, interestingly, has opened a window for open source BI providers which have begun to entice SMBs to deploy BI and analytics at a fraction of the cost of proprietary software.

One such vendor is Orange & Bronze (O&B), a local firm specializing on open source solutions which is the Philippine partner of U.S.-based open source BI provider Pentaho. O&B also forged a tie-up in October 2010 with India-based open source firm GrayMatter Software Services, which said it had signed up a large Philippine retailer to help improve their customer retention process using Pentaho BI solutions.

"BI tools help them better understand the buying behavior of their customers, customer spend and products of interest" said GrayMatter executive Prem Kakani. "This helps them in building better loyalty programs [and better target] marketing efforts to help serve their customers better."

The adoption of BI and analytics software in the healthcare area is quite different, however--at least among government medical institutions.

According to Dr. Alvin Marcelo, former director of the National Telehealth Center, BI has "not yet taken traction in the public sector mainly because of lack of large volume datasets". To that end, only institutions with such resources can seriously consider BI for now, he said.

However, Marcelo cited PhilHealth (Philippine Health Insurance Agency) as an example of a "ready" organization, noting that it has "terabytes of data".

"In fact, there [has been] a heightened interest in BI in PhilHealth since 2005, and this is part of their [technology] roadmap," he said. "The next most ready [agency] would be the DOH (Department of Health)."

Healthcare BI hotting up

Marcelo, an advocate of open source software, also suggested there are BI opportunities waiting to be tapped by the sector. Large volume datasets, he noted, already exist in many health facilities.

"Those which have purchased telemetry systems [such as Holter] and imaging [equipment including MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) systems] may not be aware but there is BI potential with those datasets," he said. "You only need to be creative and imaginative to extract the intelligence from them."

He added that most healthcare institutions in the country are looking at BI deployment, but said they "will have to contend with EMR (electronic medical records) first for their practice management" for them to accumulate enough data. Realistically, "individual practices" can look to performing simple content analysis of EMR data while hospitals which have access to larger datasets would derive more value from BI, he stressed.

Tech giant IBM, which also sells BI software, agreed with Marcelo's assessment. "Local healthcare service providers will need to transform to patient-centered, information-rich organizations. This means building proficiency in health analytics is a must to deliver evidence-based, coordinated and accountable care," Big Blue said.

Marcelo noted that BI offerings "have been costly", but the entry of open source BI has made the technology accessible to even smaller players. "I think [open source BI providers] are serious contenders in the BI space," he said.

This interest in open source BI is now growing, according to Pentaho distributor O&B and GrayMatter, which executives said they are "currently in discussions with some of the healthcare providers in the Philippines".

"We are confident of succeeding in acquiring a couple of clients in this vertical in the coming months," said GrayMatter's Kakani.

Melvin G. Calimag is a freelance IT writer based in the Philippines.

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Cloud Computing and Open Source Luminaries Headline Pentaho Partner Summit 2009

Partner of the Year Awards Showcase Robust BI Solutions; Global Partner Network Comes Together to Discuss Technology and Market Opportunity

ORLANDO, FL--(Marketwire - March 10, 2009) - Pentaho Corp., the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence, today announced the keynote speakers and nominees for "Partner of the Year" awards for its upcoming Partner Summit, BI Acceleration, happening in Menlo Park, California on April 2nd and 3rd.

Bernard Golden, CEO of Hyperstratus, author of "Virtualization for Dummies," and Cloud Computing expert will discuss "The Era of Cloud Computing: Implications for Technology and Service Providers." Zack Urlocker, vice president of products, database group at Sun Microsystems, will present on "Open Source's Next Inflection Point." Larry Augustin, angel investor and former chairman of VA Linux will discuss "The Future of Software: Why Open Source is a Safe Bet." Bryan Senseman, partner, co-founder and CTO at OpenBI, a leading open source business intelligence services firm, will share his firm's real-world experience implementing cloud-based business intelligence using the Pentaho BI Suite.

Since its inception in 2005, Pentaho's partner program has attracted a diverse group of leading firms across multiple segments. OEMs and ISVs have worked with Pentaho to allow them to embed business intelligence features in their applications at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary BI software. Resellers and Systems Integrators have worked with Pentaho so that they can deliver robust BI solutions to end-customers without the customers' budget being consumed by expensive BI software license fees. Pentaho's growing partner community now includes more than 100 companies around the globe.

"We've developed a partner ecosystem that dwarfs any other in open source BI, and we're still only beginning to address the total market for our ecosystem as we transform the BI market together," said Lars Nordwall, senior vice president of Business Development at Pentaho Corporation. "We look forward to recognizing the success of our top partners, and connecting with new organizations that recognize the opportunity that Pentaho provides for their organization."

The following are this year's award categories and nominees for Pentaho's "Partner of the Year" Awards.

Reseller of the Year, by Geography:

North America
- Unisys
- Carahsoft Technology Corp.
- Red Hat
Europe, Middle East and Africa
- Linalis
- SHS Viveon
- Smile
Asia-Pacific
- Bizcubed
- BrainChild
- Gray Matter Software
Latin America
- Matrix CPM
- Vinkos
- Cognus

Partner Community Contributor of the Year:

Chris Lavigne, Breadboard BI
Ingo Klose, SHS Viveon
Nicholas Goodman, Bayon Technologies
Paul Stöllberger, Aschauer EDV

Embedded Business Intelligence Partner of the Year:

BE-Centric
Sircon Corporation
Spidex Software
Sun Microsystems

System Integrator Partner of the Year:

Accenture
Aeturnum
Saama Technologies
Satyam Computer

Technology Partner of the Year:

HP
Oracle
Red Hat
Sun Microsystems

High-Performance Data Warehousing Partner of the Year:

Infobright
Netezza
Teradata
Vertica

Most Valuable Partner of the Year:

Bayon Technologies
GrayMatter Software
Red Hat
Sun Microsystems

GrayMatter becomes Infobright partner. Read More....

TORONTO, Mar 11 (MARKET WIRE) --

Infobright, the open source data warehousing company, today announced the launch of the Infobright Partner Program to enhance the distribution and adoption of Infobright technology throughout the world. The partners were selected based on their expertise in business intelligence and focus on delivering end-to-end open source solutions for enterprise customers.

"The Infobright Partner Program is a major initiative to attract and support the remarkable number of international technology companies that are recognizing the value of Infobright," said Paul Desjardins, vice president of business development at Infobright. "The program will help our partners deliver our popular open source data warehouse as a key part of their business intelligence offering, while allowing them to expand their business opportunities with Infobright Enterprise Edition."

The following companies have recently joined Infobright's Partner Program:

Europe

Ancud IT - Beratung GmbH (http://www.ancud.de) is a leading open source systems integrator in Germany that integrates open source solutions for business intelligence, collaboration, business process management and e- commerce in complex portals.
Azinta Systems (www.azinta.com), based in the UK, is a systems and services company dedicated to using innovative technologies to solve complex business problems, reducing costs and increasing customer revenues.
Linalis (www.linalis.com), headquartered in Switzerland, has been Making IT Happen since 2002 and is a specialist open source systems integrator providing consultancy, services, training and resources.
Road2Biz of Portugal (www.road2biz.com) is a specialized enterprise consulting firm that delivers new business innovations with open source solutions.
Smile (www.smile.fr), the leading integrator of open source solutions in France, explores the best solutions in the areas of content management, portals, ERP, business intelligence, CRM, systems and networks.
Upsys (www.upsys.se), based in Sweden, is an IT consulting company that focuses on software development, databases, IP telephony and technical advice.

Americas

Borja (http://www.borja.cl), based in Chile, specializes in business intelligence.
Solutions Managed (www.solutionsmanaged.com), based in the U.S., is a professional services company that specializes in enterprise performance management and analytic applications design and development.
SQL Power (www.sqlpower.ca), a leading Canadian consulting firm, specializes in business intelligence, data migration and performance measurement
Visao, LLC (www.visaocompany.com), based in the U.S., specializes in technical solutions that help businesses run more efficiently and better connect with other business and customers.

Asia

BrainChild Hong Kong Ltd. is a leading business intelligence solutions provider in the Asia-Pacific region.
GrayMatter (http://www.graymatter.co.in), based in India, is a software solution provider involved in developing business applications, providing technology consulting to its global clients starting with planning, development, deployment, maintenance and support across a range of technologies.

Proven alternatives to today's high-cost, high-maintenance data warehouse products, Infobright Community Edition (ICE) and Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) offer the industry's lowest total cost of ownership and unmatched operational simplicity. The columnar database is ideal for analytics, and the self-managing Knowledge Grid architecture reduces typical implementation and ongoing management costs by up to 90 percent.

About Infobright

Infobright, the open source data warehousing company, has pioneered the development of self-managing data warehouse software. The critical need for business intelligence, coupled with the dramatic growth of corporate data, has outpaced IT's resources and budget within many companies. Infobright's technology solves this problem by delivering a highly scalable analytic data warehouse that reduces ongoing management by up to 90 percent and costs significantly less than other data warehouse solutions. Infobright's solution is being used by companies in online marketing, financial services, telecommunications and other industries to provide rapid access to critical business data with unmatched operational simplicity. For more information, please visit www.infobright.com.

All names referred to are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

February 24, 2009 GrayMatter Launches Pentaho BI Services to South East Asian market