Data Warehousing & BI Companies

As a professional in data warehousing and BI, I need to know the companies in DWBI. And I do intend to stay in data warehousing and BI in the next 10 years, may be 20, making this need even more important. That’s the first purpose of writing this page. Secondly, it’s for you. Everybody knows (or they think they know) who IBM are. But who knows who Adatis are? Not many. And, for those who think they know IBM (in data warehousing/BI context that is), they don’t know that well. For example, did you know what Initiate is? Even people who work for IBM might not know what Initiate is. (it is a MDM service) That was the 2^nd purpose of this page. The 3^rd purpose: people forget. I often ask myself “What was the name of that company again?” If I know the name I can Google it. But I forgot the name! With this page I can browse and find it. And you can too. The 4^th and last purpose is to share the DW/BI companies I have come across throughout the years.

I think that’s enough intro. I’ll get on with it. This page will contain the companies in data warehouse/BI world, e.g. solution providers, product providers, consultancy firms, education/training companies, etc. That is how I will group them. For each company, I will describe who they are in 1 or 2 lines. I will also write the URL. Later on, if I need to write more than 1 paragraph about a company, I will provide a separate page. I will limit myself to data warehousing and BI. A lot of companies are not just doing DW/BI; they do other businesses as well. I will not write about their non-DWBI businesses. If a company is mixed, e.g. they are a product provider, and they are a consultancy firms, I will put them in 1 area only, i.e. the area where they are most known for.

Some people whom I discussed the idea of this page with, responded with “How about individuals?” Why don’t you put famous DW/BI people here as well? We need to know them too? Some of the readers of my “Analysis Services Who’s Who” page said “Are you doing to do the same for data warehousing people, i.e. Ralph Kimball, Bill Inmon, etc?” The answer is I will. I have, in fact. I started writing it 12 months ago, got only 2-3 names then I never finished it. But I will. It would be on a separate page though, not on this companies page. What I will do is probably write about 30 or so companies, then 10 or so people, then publish them. And I will add to them as we go along. But I will finish this page first, before I do the individuals.

Before I start, the credit first. There are many people, web pages, and books (on Safari) that inspired me to write this page. But the most influential of them all is Andrea Vincenzi’s BI & DW Resource Centre. So thank you Andrea, for the inspiration.

So here we go. If you find there’s something is incorrect, I would be grateful if you could let me know and I will correct them.

DWBI Consultancy – UK

1. IM Group: A well known and respected name in London for their expertise in MS BI. One of the very few who are still specialising in MS BI. About 70 consultants.
2. Conchango: Conchango was a well known and respected name in London for their expertise in MS BI. Now part of EMC, a worldwide IT company (not just consulting).
3. Hitachi Consulting (was Edenbrook): A worldwide consulting company. Not a BI consulting specialist, but a general IT consulting practice. Edenbrook was a BI specialist.
4. Altius Consulting: 2 areas: Enterprise Performance Management and BI. A respectable old name in London in MS BI. Now also do Oracle BI (Hyperion and OBIEE).
5. Adatis: A DW/BI consultancy specialising in MS BI.
6. Contemporary: A specialist in BO and MS BI. Also gives training.
7. Business & Decision: A worldwide company, 19 countries, 2800 consultants. Public company (listed on Euronext). Also does lots of non-BI stuff.
8. bIntelligent: Moore Stephens’ consulting arm. Well known in London for MS BI in insurance sector. Its parent company, Moore Stephens, is an accountancy firm.
9. Insource: offering a product called Data Academy which builds a SQL Server DW fast (like Red). Analyzer is the front end client. Pity they chose to specialise on Health Care.
10. Clarity Integration: a generalist BI consulting practice (not specialist in certain platform, well if I must specify: MS BI, Informatica, BO). Also offer their own product (ClearView).
11. Peak Consulting: A DW/BI consulting company, but generalist. In London, NY, Dubai and Mumbai.
12. IT Performs: An BI consulting firm specialising in BO and MS BI. Also QlikView. Based near Birmingham, UK.

Companies Producing DWBI Software:

1. Microsoft: SQL Server, PDW, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, Crescent, Performance Point, PowerPivot. The most widely used DWBI products on the planet, in my observation.
2. Oracle: Oracle 11g, OBIEE (was Siebel), ODI, Hyperion, Essbase, Exadata, Golden Gate, Oracle OLAP. Widely used, good quality, good support. One of the oldest, top, respectable names in DWBI.
3. IBM: Data Stage, Infosphere, Cognos, TM1, DB/2, Express. Now include Netezza. Giant in DWBI, possibly in top 3 if I have to answer “Who’s the biggest in DWBI?”
4. Informatica: PowerCentre, IDE, IDQ. Best ETL/DI tool on the planet, features wise (and performance). One of the oldest, well respected names in BI that hasn’t been bought yet by the big companies.
5. SAP: BusinessObjects, Business Warehouse, Netweaver BI. Giant in DWBI, worldwide.
6. Strategy Companion: offering a product called Analyzer, which is a SSAS client (cube browser) and dashboard. Very user friendly.
7. Tableau: the best SSAS client (appearance wise), in my opinion. Good charting/visualisation.
8. QlikTech: appearance wise, QlikView is the slickest analytics tool on the planet. Quick to build (1-2 month).
9. MicroStrategy: comprehensive reporting solution and integrated BI platform. Multidimensional and relational. One of the oldest, well respected names in BI that is still going strong as individual company (not yet acquisitioned).
10. Ab Initio: ETL/DI tool. Very secretive. I think feature wise much less than Informatica, hence the reason of not revealing.
11. Teradata: a very good MPP, feature wise. Long history, proven in many customers. Wide range of products (in terms of capacity & price).
12. Wherescape: offering a DW product called Red, which is known for its speed in building a DW in any RDBMS. In UK, US and NZ.
13. SSAS clients: various companies producing SSAS tools. The most comprehensive list on the planet (by far), thanks to Vidas. 74 tools (!) and counting.
14. Jaspersoft: growing rapidly in popularity. Widely known for their very low cost. Complete BI platform: DI/ETL, Reporting, Analytics.
15. SAS: analytics, data mining, ETL/DI, DQ (DataFlux), MDM. One of the most complete BI platform. Historically respected as world #1 in data mining.
16. Actuate: a product suite called BIRT (stands for BI Reporting Tool), which is known for its visualisation. No ETL/DI.
17. Inetsoft: a product suite called Style, a reporting tool known for its visualisation. No ETL/DI.
18. iQ4bis: reporting/analytics solution. Prebuilt plugins for JD Edwards & MS ERPs (Dynamics, Axapta, Great Plain, Dynamics NAV) for reporting/analysis via SSAS, SSRS, Excel Pivot tables and iQ4bis own tool.
19. Board: reporting/analytics plus EPM (budget vs performance, etc). Award winning (BI Survey). Quick to build (1-2 months).
20. Trillium: considered as one of the best and widely used data quality tool in DWBI world. The company is a DQ specialist, not acquisitioned by anyone yet.

DWBI Consultancies – World Wide

1. SQLPower: BI, XBRL and data migration. Based in Canada. Many platforms: BO, Microstrategy, Oracle, Informatica, etc.
2. KDNuggets: list of many consulting companies in data mining and analytics, probably 100 companies from all over the world.
3. McKnight: a specialist in DWBI consulting based in Texas. Various DWBI platform & tools. Also do training.
4. Data Warehouse Consultants: DWBI specialist based in Pittsburgh. Founded in 2004 by John Shantz.

DWBI Recruitment Agencies

1. Business Intelligence Recruitment: DWBI recruitment specialist in Australia, based in Brisbane.
2. The Data Warehouse Company (TDWC): DWBI recruitment specialist in UK, based in London.

DWBI Education and Training

1. The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI): provides education, training and certification in data warehousing, based in US. The most well-known and influential certification program in data warehousing.
2. Toronto College of Technology: offering Postgraduate Diploma in DWBI for CAD 9950. Covers Oracle, SQL Server, Erwin, Cognos, Crystal, Informatica and SAS.
3. Koenig: 1 week Oracle Data Warehousing boot camp in India for £790 incl. accommodation, meal and transport.
4. Axioms Semantics: offers DWBI courses in Chennai, India. Microstrategy, MS BI, Informatica, OWB, Cognos and Crystal training courses.
5. CCCITM (Canadian Career College of Innovative Technology and Management): offers a Post Graduate Diploma in DWBI in Canada.
6. Aroha: a training company in Bengalore, India, specialising in DWBI. Offers a Diploma in Data Warehousing, covering SQL, DW concepts, Informatica, BO.
7. University of Dundee: the School of Computing offers MSc degree in Business Intelligence. Taught by Dr Mark Whitehorn, one of well-known, long standing, very respectable names in data warehousing in UK. To my knowledge, this is the only one in the world (formal MSc title in BI), and it’s from a reputable university.

4/1/16 Update:

Apologies I missed Kimball University in the Education section. This is the best data warehouse training course in the world. Unfortunately they stopped doing DWBI courses in December 2015.

I was recently asked to specify DWBI companies in India. In India, the big 6 (TCS, Infosys, Tech Mahendra, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant) all have BI practice.

And these are the top BI companies in India:

• Aditi, Bengalore & Chennai, aditi.com
• Birla, Noida, birlasoft.com
• Exilant, Bengalore, exilant.com
• Advantics, Mumbai, advantics.co.in
• Board, Mumbai, board.com
• Birst, Ahmedabad, birst.com
• Datawise, Hyderabad, mydatawise.com
• Deflytics, Mumbai, Deflytics.com
• ElegantJ, Admedabad, elegantjbi.com
• Graymatter, Bengalore, graymatter.co.in
• Helical, Hyderabad, helicaltech.com
• Inteliment, Pune, inteliment.com
• Ixsight, Mumbai, ixsight.com (look at the MDM)
• Jaspersoft, Bengalore, jaspersoft.com
• MAIA, Mumbai, maia-intelligence.com
• Nalgan, Hyderabad, nalgan.com
• OTSI, Hyderabad, OTSI.co.in
• Progen, Hyderabad, progenbusiness.com
• Sryas, Chennai, sryas.com
• Symtrax, Mumbai, symtrax.com
• Techaxes, Gurgaon, techaxes.com

(source: cioreview.in, removing companies which I think are not DWBI enough)

We must also look at the IT centres of Investment Banks as they do a lot of DWBI development in India, such as: Royal Bank of Scotland (Gurgaon), Bank of America (Hyderabad), Citi (Pune). Or other business sector such as telecom: Verizon (Chennai), T-Mobile, Sprint.

And my favorite DWBI company in India is: Capgemini, Bengalore, https://www.in.capgemini.com/insights-data