Scoble on Business Intelligence, Panorama and Google Docs

Just before I went out on New Year's Eve I noticed that Robert Scoble posted an article and video on business intelligence (part 1, part 2), specifically the new BI components that Panorama have made available for Google Docs. The interview is with Panorama's VP of Marketing and Strategy and goes through the positioning of Panorama's BI "gadgets" and how they can be used to analyze data from Google Spreadsheets and other data sources.

For anyone following the twists and turns of the BI industry, Panorama is of course one of the most interesting stories. Panorama were an Israeli start-up back in the early 90's who went on to develop what was, at the time, a very innovative OLAP server ("Plato") which Microsoft went on to buy and rebrand as Microsoft Analysis Services, as well as an OLAP client which they sold themselves and through an OEM deal with Cognos. For many years Microsoft then had a policy of not selling their own OLAP query tool, leaving the market to third-party partners such as Panorama, but then Microsoft went and bought ProClarity leaving Panorama in a bit of a sticky situation. About a year after the ProClarity announcement Panorama then went and announced the partnership with Google, moving into the "software as a service" market by plugging web-based versions of their OLAP client technologies into the Google Docs "cloud".

Watching the two videos, it's clear that Panorama's Google Docs gadgets are aimed squarely at Microsoft Excel users, who either want a simplified environment, want to analyze their data on the web, perhaps don't want to pay enterprise-level license fees for tools such as ProClarity (or even Panorama's Novaview, their own desktop-based OLAP query tool), or just want to analyze their own personal data in a more Web 2.0-style environment. The guy from Panorama noted that most users of their gadgets started by uploading data from Excel, with the gadget environment designed to make analyzing your data as simply as possible, with for example an "I'm feeling lucky" button that gets the gadgets to make a best guess as to how you might want to analyze the data.

Under the covers, it appears that at least some of Panorama's OLAP and OLAP client technology has made it into Google Docs and the Google cloud. After data is uploaded it gets automatically "cubed", plus there are connectors through to Salesforce.com and other data sources. The tool is free (like Google Docs) for small data volumes and numbers of users, beyond a certain point it's chargeable like Google Apps ($100/month was mentioned as the top price point).

So, the obvious question: how does this relate to Oracle business intelligence, is it something that should be considered a competitor? Let's take the negatives first, then look at the positives. Firstly, it's clearly aimed at users who would otherwise use Excel as their analysis environment, which I guess is a market you'd categorize as having more modest requirements, but is a very large market in size. There's no semantic model or integration with environments like E-Business Suite, scalability isn't clear and there's no ETL component (though much of the ETL work may well be done automagically). As such it's mostly a competitor for Microsoft Analysis Services, Excel 2007 and ProClarify and potentially also a competitor for Microsoft's Gemini project, and so given the past history of Panorama, and Google's relationship with Microsoft, I'd say that Microsoft are clearly the vendor in Google and Panorama's sights when they launched this initiative. Also, you can't ignore the privacy issue; customers have enough of a problem imagining uploading their most sensitive sales and performance data to a hosted Oracle BI environment that they've directly contracted for, let alone uploading it to Google to use in a potentially free service. I know for example of many customers who refuse to let their staff upload company data to Google Maps, as Google assert their right to own any data uploaded to their systems. I'm not saying that's the case with this application but it's a genuine concern for many organizations.

Looking at the positives though, certainly it potentially democratizes business intelligence and perhaps lowers the training barrier for people looking to chart and analyze their spreadsheet data. If you were a startup, a web business or perhaps a company worker looking to analyze their own data at home, it'd certainly be an interesting option particularly if you already use Google Docs. Indeed, at Rittman Mead we use Google Docs extensively to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and so on, and it'd be relatively easy to take some of our internal data and publish it in the form of these gadgets internally on our intranet. One thing I found particularly interesting about the approach Panorama was taking with their open, Web 2.0-style approach to developing and releasing software, their use of twitter and blogs, and very frequent incremental releases of software (a new feature every day, was how they described it) which compares well with the long, drawn out release schedules for enterprise BI tools, especially now they're becoming integrated with wider ERP and middleware suites.

So, an interesting interview, and it was good seeing Robert Scoble cover our area of interest. As I said, I think it's aimed squarely at the Excel market, but there are some interesting lessons there about how BI software might be developed in the more collaborative, transparent world of Web 2.0. Take a look if you get a chance.