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State of Indian Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence software is becoming more feature loaded by the day. Mehak Chawla evaluates the BI landscape, the choices before IT heads and the heated debates in this domain

It has been established beyond doubt that BI has been among the most wanted technologies during the past couple of years. Ironically, it’s not only vendors who are beating their drums vigorously over BI. IT heads, for once, are equally enthusiastic.

BI has been the saving grace for the overall dreary business application space in the age of the global meltdown. According to Gartner, the Indian market for BI stands at about $65 million (new license revenue), and is displaying a strong growth rate of 15.7%. The global market for BI is pegged at $10.8 billion and, when compared to that figure, the Indian market remains small.

There are varied opinions about the size and growth of the BI market in India. Dinesh Jain, Country Manager, Teradata India, commented, “The market is estimated to be about $40-50 mn for BI/DW platform/products and about $100-150 mn for services. The growth rates are in the region of about 20% and will go up significantly as the competition grows stronger and analytics starts playing a crucial role.” Other estimates put the total BI industry to be around $150 mn in India.

The Gartner report on BI also predicted that the road for BI in India was likely to remain smooth for at least the next five years.

Success and growth have not come easily to BI. We, as a country have traversed the BI curve right from the lower crest. After seeing several failed BI implementations, companies seem to have finally got a feel for the technology.

Nevertheless, many BI implementations have gone awry. Vivek Subramanyam, CEO, iCreate, said, “The problem with BI has been that people have been talking technology, while BI is more about business.”

This, he felt, was the reason for unsuccessful BI projects. Despite the earlier glitches, or perhaps because of them, BI seems to have come of age in India.

However, before we proceed further, let’s just make it clear that if you thought that you knew BI half a decade back, BI has transformed into a wholly different beast.

Changes galore

A few years back, BI was something that would sit on top of your ERP system and churn out reports from transactional data. It was seen as more of a collation tool that would correlate numbers, align patterns and, in turn, help the management take measured, calculated decisions.

Although the purpose of BI has remained much the same, which is to aid decision making; the modus-operandi has undergone a tectonic shift. From just intelligence, BI’s present day definition has widened to include analytics, predictive intelligence and most importantly, intelligence in real-time in its circumference. Indeed, many people disagree with the very term BI nowadays. It's no longer merely about intelligence; today, it is about predictive analytics. Business analytics is the broad spectrum within which various analytical tools exist with BI being the most important part.

Manish Sharma, Head BA and Technology, SAP, said, “ BI is a part of business analytics that includes dashboards, stat-boards and mobile analytics. It has evolved massively and now includes everything from predictive to sentiment analysis.”

"The definition of BI has evolved considerably over the past decade. From a simple reporting tool, it has become a decision making platform." Anand Sam Co-Founder & Head - Business Intelligence, Activecubes

The definitions, however, are still in transit to say the least. Anand Sam, Co-Founder & Head - Business Intelligence, Activecubes, said, “The definition of BI has evolved considerably over the past decade. From a simple reporting tool, it has become a decision making platform.”

If we look back a few years, then we would recognize BI as what was earlier known as a Management Information System or MIS. It evolved from that and acquired the name of Business Intelligence and is now going under the guise of business analytics.

There are other things that have changed with regard to the BI canvas in India. For instance, there’s a lot of optimism around this technology today. CIOs are ready to embrace BI on an enterprise-wide basis as compared to the earlier reluctance that led to adoption in silos. Also, over the past year, BI has moved from the “technologies to be evaluated list” to the “must have technologies list” at least for the IT heads of larger organizations. That’s not to say that SMBs are ignoring BI. On the contrary, they are the ones driving growth for BI in the current era.

"The IDC Asia/Pacific C-Suite survey indicated that business analytics was rated as the No. 1 technology that would enable organizations to gain a competitive edge." Sudipta K Sen Regional Director – SEA; CEO & MD – SAS Institute (India)

Sudipta K Sen, Regional Director – SEA; CEO & MD – SAS Institute (India), said, “The recent IDC Asia/Pacific C-Suite survey indicates that business analytics was rated as the No. 1 technology area that would enable organizations to gain a competitive edge in the year ahead. Business analytics, as a technology area, is aggressively moving to the top of the CIO’s radar.”

CIOs are happy about the efficiency that BI confers while vendors are quick to sniff out an opportunity. Innovation around Business Intelligence was the flavor of 2010. Both the majors and the smaller players made announcements pertaining to BI on a frequent basis.

For thy vertical

There’s been a lot of buzz around vertical-specific BI. This is a trend that you can’t miss when discussing BI. What was speculation earlier is now established beyond an iota of doubt.

Generally, enterprise software always requires some degree of customization to fit a company’s unique needs.

Vertical-specific solutions come a lot closer out of the box and need very little tweaking. Common characteristics of a particular industry vertical are clubbed into a single vertical-specific solution.

The most common one, unsurprisingly, is BI for the BFSI vertical. According to D Rajasekar, Executive VP - BI & Cloud Computing Solutions, Ramco Systems, the BI market for the BFSI vertical in India alone would be worth about $60 million (new licenses plus services). Added Kiran Cavale, Vice President, Global Business Information Management, Capgemini, “BFSI in India has moved into BI adoption in a big way. We have seen several large banks and insurance giants move into the space of data analysis and analytics.”

Figures notwithstanding, BFSI being the largest vertical for BI vendors, a lot of smaller, niche companies saw an opportunity there and have started tapping into the segment with their niche, custom built industry-specific solutions. What’s more, they are tasting success. A lot of banks are opting for the custom solutions built by such players as against what the biggies have to offer.

The reasons are multi-layered. For one, the deployment time of such solutions is considerably lower. Typically, it takes about three to five years for a BI project to go-live. The niche players are offering a go-live period of several months. The other big advantage is that the core expertise that these vendors bring with them is considerable. Dr. Mukund Deshpande, Business Head, BI and Analytics Solutions, Persistent Systems, commented, “In terms of core technology, smaller companies certainly have more scope in bringing domain expertise to the client organization.”

Also, as against the notion that these players are directly competing with the big guns of the trade, there is the argument that they are actually complementing them quite well. Quite a few banks that have already implemented BI solutions from leading vendors are revamping them further by bolting on solutions from niche vendors. On the other hand, a couple of vendors have seen use cases where the banks are seeking to replace their existing solutions with one that is custom built for their industry and developed by a vendor focused solely on their vertical.

Another thing to note about these niche players is that, as of now, most of these players also offer consulting services. It will be interesting to see if they mature into product companies over time.

The challenge for such vendors is not sustenance, since the obvious prediction is that, sooner or later, they will be acquired by one major or another in order to expand said major’s specialized services. Elaborated Dr. Deshpande, “If you look at IBM's acquisitions, they have all been in the space of vertical-specific apps. There is a huge need in the market for vertical-specific solutions.”

The real challenge, for these companies then lies in figuring out what features can be clubbed or defined as common for every organization within a particular vertical.

As for these players, one failed implementation can turn the game, since their target base is comparatively limited to a vertical or two. However, we can't write off the trend that BI is becoming vertical driven.

The verticals that are inciting a tremendous level of interest amongst the niche players are BFSI, healthcare and telecom. There are many niche players servicing the BI needs of these verticals. Vibhor K Singh, IT Head of Dua Pharmaceuticals, has implemented a custom-made analytics solution from a niche healthcare BI vendor. The biggest advantage of customized BI, according to Singh was that, “An IT head is assured that the team that the vendor has sent knows his industry well and can add value to the BI project.”

Other than these verticals, the government is emerging as an important segment around which specialized vendors are expected to mushroom. According to Rajesh Ramaswamy, Global Head,Business Intelligence Practice, Marlabs, “The biggest potential for BI within the government is in two areas—in reaching out to the masses through projects like the UID and in revenue generation using analytics.”

Graphing trends

"Customers are looking for integrated ERP and Business Intelligence to run the back-office and get actionable pre-packaged analytics." Rajagopalan Babu CEO, Enteg

Given the fact that the BI space has been rife with activity, several differentiating trends have surfaced in the last few years. For one, BI is more real-time and predictive. The other big change that is emerging is with respect to an ERP system being the foundation stone for a BI deployment. Earlier organizations used to traverse the curve from ERP to analytics. These days, a lot of IT heads are deploying the two in a parallel fashion. Said Cavale of Capgemini, “Certain trends of adoption have changed in the last few years. BI used to dovetail the ERP implementation but nowadays BI is implemented in parallel along with the ERP system.”

Bundled BI is therefore in vogue. Rajagopalan Babu, CEO, Enteg, described the customer sentiment in India when it came to buying BI solutions. “Customers are looking for integrated ERP and Business Intelligence. This allows them to not only run the back-office but also to provide actionable pre-packaged analytics. With pure BI, customers would get BI as a technical tool.”

Other trends are building around BI visualization. Sam of Activecubes explained that infographics, heat maps and other such innovative visuals where you could see a business graphic and figure out the situation at a glance were gathering steam.

Mobility is another trend that is creating ripples in the Business Intelligence market. A lot of vendors are focusing on delivering BI on the mobile phone. While it is still at a nascent stage in India, it is expected to catch up in a big way. According to Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, “Mobility will be an important trend in the BI space. It is expected that business ownership will increase with the growth of mobility in the BI space. Our tool, 1KEY Mobile, delivers reports directly via e-mail on all PDAs. It also has the capability to send report figures through an SMS gateway.”

There are other interesting things happening in the BI space like experimentation with open source. BI on demand is a model that seems to be catching on in India although it is still early days in that regard because, as of now, transactional systems are just starting to gather their on-demand roots. Said Rajasekar of Ramco, “Transactional security is just being established with the on-demand model. BI on demand will take about two years to enter the mainstream.”

The same applies to BI on the Cloud. Not many IT heads are comfortable sharing their data with a service provider. On the other hand, organizations building their own Clouds are putting their BI in the Cloud, as the data does not leave their premises.

Although there are a lot of interesting things happening in the BI space, CIOs are opting for the technology based on its ability to boost efficiency. Shailesh Joshi, AVP (Information Systems), Godrej Industries Ltd, said, “Decision making time in our organization has decreased significantly [after deploying BI]. The top management delivers decisions directly in the weekly review meetings, something that couldn't happen before the implementation.”

As an IT head, Joshi certainly sees value in deploying BI. His BI road map is focused on offering access to the solution to more users. “Seeing the impact, functional heads are already asking me for BI solutions,” he mentioned.

There are other cases where CIOs have even been able to quantify the benefits of BI. Rajiv Batra, CIO, MTS, said, “Up till now we used to have a thousand odd ad-hoc generated reports. With business intelligence, we have standardized these to some 30 odd templatized reports. Efficiency has definitely gone up.”

Inside your brain

An organization's storage or memory is often referred to as its brain. That is where BI has reached now. In-memory analytics is the freshest color of the BI spectrum.

Although the cost of in-memory doesn't justify the decision to implement it for many organizations, selective uptake is certainly happening. The key, say experts, is to carefully analyze needs and calculate RoI.

"In-memory is advisable when analytics encompasses a large volume of data or when the deployment is at the organizational level, rather than a line of business play." Kaushik Sanyal Asso. Partner, Global Business Services, IBM India/South Asia

Does that mean that in-memory is finally making the transition from the hype cycle to the reality cycle? Kaushik Sanyal, Associate Partner, Global Business Services, IBM India/South Asia said that this was certainly the case. “In- memory is a reality. It is advisable, especially in two scenarios—the first is when analytics encompasses a large volume of data while the second occurs when it is at a larger scale, at the organizational level, rather than a line of business play. It should ideally be an enterprise-wide analytics platform sitting on top of a data warehouse solution.”

Rajesh Uppal, CIO, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd emphasized that in-memory should be application- and line of business- specific. “In-memory is environment-specific. It is a performance issue and not one of functionality. It should be used only when the BI system is linked to real-time decision making. The question to be asked is ‘how fast do you want your decisions?’,” he explained. He elaborated by revealing that he was in the process of testing in-memory for real-time dashboards. As of now, Uppal is doing some pilots for in-memory.

Traditional BI solutions have always faced issues with data extraction and consolidation. This typically results in business heads getting information that is a day old. Therefore, in the traditional approach, BI performance is a major cause of concern. Babu of Enteg believed that in-memory was expected to resolve these issues.

For Rajiv Batra of MTS, in-memory is something that he’s already using. Batra has deployed a home-grown in-memory solution for the telco’s flagship product known as Mbonus. To date, he is quite satisfied with the processing speeds. He is also keen on moving to the next stage and deploying a standardized in-memory solution as they move on to more complex analytics.

The biggest ticket when it comes to in-memory is its processing speed. According to Sharma of SAP, a transaction that traditionally takes about six to seven hours can be processed by HANA in a matter of seconds.

"The integration of in-memory technology with other BI environments, data security issues and regulations are all factors that will limit its scope and adoption." Amarjeet Khanuja Delivery Manager & Competency Leader – BI & Data warehousing, Logica

However, in-memory technology faces challenges including high costs. It is certainly not for everybody and deployment needs to be carefully assessed. Remarked Amarjeet Khanuja Delivery Manager and Competency Leader - BI & Data warehousing, Logica, “It (in-memory) is not suitable for big and complex implementations. The integration of this technology with other BI environments, data security issues and regulations are some of the factors that need to be rationalized before it becomes a technology of choice. These issues limit its scope and adoption in conservative markets such as India.”

ERP like growth?

A lot of industry experts are of the view that BI is likely to adopt an ERP-style growth pattern in India. While it is in the hype stage as of now, deployments will stagnate for larger enterprises after a while. This is likely to be followed by a spurt in demand from the SMB segment, which will sustain growth for a few years, eventually reaching a realistic plateau.

Moreover, revenues from new licenses that are on a high as of now, will display a calmer pattern, something akin to what we witnessed in the ERP space. Like ERP, BI solutions are also expected to reach the micro-vertical level soon. Explained Banesh Prabhu, Global CEO, aurionPro solutions, “Where ERP became an essential tool for resource management almost a decade ago, BI is becoming the tool for a reality check.”

However, not everyone agrees. Logica’s Khanuja said, “BI is not displaying the same growth pattern as ERP.

When ERP entered the Indian market, IT awareness was minimal and people were skeptical as to its success. It took time for people to appreciate its benefits. That’s not the case with BI.”

Whether BI treads on the ERP path is yet to be seen. For now, no one is disputing that there are brighter days ahead for this technology. It is expected to percolate down to more business users within organizations and more industries within the market.

mehak.chawla@expressindia.com