BI meets Search meets e-Commerce
QlikTech & Endeca
Check this out. It seams some of the more progressive BI vendors are finding applications on e-commerce sites. Endeca has teamed with Powereviews to create Buzzillions.com. The user experience on this site is Endeca! Endeca is an interesting company although I have to say their market positioning is a bit unclear to me ("social navigation"). I thought of them as information retrieval company (think FAST, Google appliance, etc) but the more I dive in it seams they have aspirations or history in the traditional BI space. I haven't dove in enough to figure out if they are transitioning from to towards BI but my hunch is 'towards'. Google is a real threat to any company in the in the enterprise info retrieval space- including SAP. Either way, Endeca is worth a look if you have an e-commerce site.
QlikTech is on fire. They seem to be filling the white space between difficult to learn analytics tools and brain-dead dashboards. Hat tip to the founders and leaders of this company. The fact that their technology is finding applications on consumer focused websites is truly a testament to the ease of use. That said, While I have lifted the hood to check out the engine and I haven't figured out how often it needs an oil change or tune-up.
