This morning I discovered the existence of the Business Intelligence Index. It is a stock index of Business-Intelligence related companies published by Rick Sherman, the founder of Athena IT solutions.
Rick says the index has been treading water, but compared to what's going on in the market, I'd say it is holding its head ABOVE water. He concludes that the "The software companies in the BI index, although many being in the middle of the performance rankings YTD, are likely to fare better and rebound quicker than other industries and even other high tech firms". This is evident in the numbers themselves, where the drop in value of the BI index is lower, in 2008 terms, than the general NASDAQ or the software segment in it.
It's interesting to note that the index covers mostly "old school" approaches to business intelligence, with data warehouses and large, platform based solutions and none of the new breed of business intelligence vendors (in memory and SaaS). It's no wonder, since in the current climate the ability to IPO anything is close to zero, although companies in the new generation business intelligence market are reporting sales gains.
In any case, we take all this as proof that business intelligence is a must in tough economic times, and not a luxury. However, pricing and project wise, doing it 'right', with low pricing and manageable IT expenses, is the way to go. This is why we believe that were the new generation BI companies in the index, they would fare better than the old school ones.
Roni